Secrets and Secrecy in Reproduction

Reproduction, a biopsychosocial process, is surrounded by many secrets and secrecies. Reproductive medicine, in particular, which for more than 40 years carries out fertilization extra-corporally, employs frightening, and hitherto unanticipated and, to psychoanalysts, ‘indigestible’ methods, which may well negate both blood ties and the generational chain. A child may have up to seven different parental parts at the beginning of its life. Optimally, these parents and children should be accompanied psychotherapeutically all along the way. The Mother-Embryo-Dialogue I have developed, which creates bonding between the mother and child from the very beginning, is a suitable method for this purpose. It serves to humanize reproductive medicine as well as mental and physical health of the mother-to-be and the child. My chosen clinical case study illustrates the course of a therapy, which began as treatment for the desire to have a child and ended as trauma accompaniment.