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Pregnancy and the arrival of the other: Transgenerational trauma, dissociation, and the analytic relationship

Abstract

This paper explores how the therapist’s pregnancy may function as an embodied analytic intervention that mobilizes dissociated transgenerational trauma within the analytic field. Drawing on psychoanalytic theory, myth, and clinical material, it examines the links between severe dissociation, sibling-related trauma, and the hostile construction of the “other” at both intrapsychic and group levels. Two clinical vignettes—from work with a dissociative young adult male and an adolescent male patient—illustrate how pregnancy intensifies transference–countertransference dynamics, activating unconscious conflicts around rivalry, alterity, and inherited guilt rooted in familial and historical trauma. The paper argues that hostility toward the other, often displaced onto external figures or groups, serves as a defensive organization that protects loved objects while perpetuating dissociation and splitting. When the therapist can tolerate occupying a paradoxical position of profound closeness and difference, such hostility may become thinkable rather than enacted, thereby allowing previously unsymbolized material to emerge and be transformed into symbolic thought, creativity, and adult agency.

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Posted in: Journal Article Abstracts on 08/28/2026 | Link to this post on IFP |
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