To review and synthesize existing psychoanalytic literature on the psychological impact of stillbirth on mothers and fathers. This qualitative systematic review followed, as far as possible, the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. The Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing Archive, the Single Case Archive, and PsycINFO (1999-2019) were searched to identify relevant articles published between 1999-2019 that report clinical material or theoretical considerations concerning the psychological effects of stillbirth on parents, as emerging during classical analytic or psychoanalytic therapy session/journey. A thematic synthesis was performed. 46 articles were identified, providing data on the parents' experiences of grief and gender differences, the detrimental effects on the parental couple's relationship, the mother's identification with the dead baby, the importance for mothers to meet and care the stillborn baby, the mothers' drive for another pregnancy and the fear of further loss, the mothers' ambivalence toward subsequent pregnancy and child, the potential negative effects of unresolved bereavement on subsequent baby, and the replacement of a stillborn child. Our findings reveal there is some psychoanalytic literature providing insight into the psychological dynamics of parents after a stillbirth, with observations that could be used to improve psychological health care practices. One of the main therapeutic tasks was to facilitate parents to create a psychic space where they can bring to life, psychically, their lost and never- really-known stillborn baby, and to let him or her to be part of the on-going family narrative.

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.13109/zptm.2021.67.3.329DOI Listing

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

psychoanalytic literature
12
psychological effects
8
effects stillbirth
8
stillbirth parents
8
stillborn baby
8
psychological
5
psychoanalytic
5
stillbirth
4
parents
4
parents qualitative
4

Similar Publications

Background: Current research on the transmission of trauma and eating disorders across generations is limited. However, quantitative studies suggest that the influence of parents' and grandparents' eating disorders and their prior exposure to trauma are associated with the development of eating disorders in future generations. Qualitative research exploring personal accounts of the impact of transgenerational trauma on the development of eating disorders has been largely unexplored.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The Unbroken Circle: From Child Analysis to Mentalization-Based Treatment (MBT) with Children, Adolescents, and Families.

Psychodyn Psychiatry

December 2024

Professor of Psychological Therapies with Children and Young People, University College London, UK; Director of the Child Attachment and Psychological Therapies Research Unit (ChAPTRe); Director of the Child Attachment and Psychological Therapies Research Unit (ChaPTRe), Anna Freud, London.

It is now more than 30 years since Peter Fonagy published his classic 1991 paper introducing the concept of "mentalization" into the psychoanalytic literature, and in the period since then mentalization-based treatment (MBT) has emerged as an important therapeutic approach. In reviewing the history of this treatment, it is often assumed that MBT emerged at the interface between three domains: first, the developmental research on theory of mind; second, the clinical challenges of treating borderline personality disorder; and third, the empirical research on intergenerational patterns of attachment. This article suggests that there was one more domain, which was equally important to the development of MBT and which is perhaps less widely recognized.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The function of structuring images: the concept of epiphany from literature to psychiatry.

Int Rev Psychiatry

September 2024

Italian Psychoanalytic Society, Rome, Italy.

In the course of the psychiatrist-patient relationship, and especially during a psychotherapy, an image sometimes appears that is greeted by the therapist with a sense of surprise and rediscovery. Such an image has the quality of condensing many of the scattered elements of the patient's life and giving them a form that makes it possible to recognise something stable and permanent in the functioning of the patient's subjectivity. I propose to call these images, which have a valence of enlightenment, clarification and condensation of scattered elements, structuring images.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The author distinguishes between two kinds of beginning, conceptually tied to two ways of approaching the psychoanalytic situation described as and . Through a clinical case, the author shows how her work with a troubled adolescent had two beginnings that corresponded to these types. In this way, she tries to expand on the literature about the focusing on what means in this context.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?

Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!