Mothers' fantasy representations and infant security of attachment: A Rorschach study of first pregnancy.

Frank, Mary Ann; Tuber, Steven; Slade, Arietta; Garrod, Emily

doi:10.1037/h0079578

Cited by 11 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…The woman's transition to motherhood has implications for all of her relationships and for her societal role. Furthermore, pregnancy and the postpartum period involve significant psychological adjustments, and the childbearing process has been noted to be a 'psychological stress test' (Frank, Tuber, Slade, & Garrod, 1994).…”

Section: What Is the Relationship Between Childbirth And Mental Disorders?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Childbirth and mental disorders

Leight

Fitelson

Weston

et al. 2010

International Review of Psychiatry

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This review approaches the topic of childbirth and mental illness using a model of perinatal health which takes into consideration the multiple determinants of health, approached from a lifespan perspective. The paper seeks to answer four broad questions using this model and available literature: (1) What is the relationship between childbirth and mental disorders? (2) How common are mental disorders during childbearing, and what is the perinatal course of illness? (3) What are the effects of mental illness during childbearing on foetal and infant developmental outcomes? (4) How do you approach the detection and treatment of mental disorders during the perinatal period?

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Section: What Is the Relationship Between Childbirth And Mental Disorders?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Childbirth and mental disorders

Leight

Fitelson

Weston

et al. 2010

International Review of Psychiatry

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“…This may be all the more true as the primary process mode mental activity, which mothers-to-be deploy, betrays their mental work in favor of attachment with the baby-to-come (see, e.g., Picco, 2005; Cailleau, 2009)—for instance, by metaphorizing unconscious aggressiveness (Bellion, 2001). In an empirical study, Frank and colleagues (1994), for example, showed a positive correlation between primary process levels in the future mother, measured on the Rorschach, and the later secure attachment of the child, in a sample of 25 women and their newborns. Interestingly, DiPietro, Novak, Costigan, Atella, and Reusing (2006) empirically showed that mild to moderate levels of psychological distress may enhance both motor and mental fetal maturation in healthy populations.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Empirical evidence for psychic transparency in pregnancy.

Bazan¹,

Mendes²,

Antoine-Moussiaux³

et al. 2019

Psychoanalytic Psychology

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Bydlowski has proposed that pregnant women show an altered mental state, qualified as "psychic transparency," characterized by a lowering of the usual defenses against the repressed unconscious and the parallel surfacing of (infantile) reminiscences, fantasies, and representations. This state of highly invested mental work is thought to be characterized by a predominance of primary process mentation. The GeoCat, a simple nonlinguistic instrument for the probing of primary and secondary processes, revealed a substantial increase in primary process mentation in pregnant women compared with control groups (n ϭ 118 pregnant women from their 6th to their last month of pregnancy, n ϭ 81 nonpregnant control women, n ϭ 78 future fathers, and n ϭ 40 control men). This difference remained highly significant after factoring out the influence of confounding variables. Also, this increase was not different between women giving birth for the first time and women having a second or subsequent child. For all these reasons, we are drawn to think that it is the mere event of having another being growing inside one's own body, which, by requiring huge mobilization of mental energy, dries up the mental sources required to maintain the usual defenses. As a consequence, primary process mentation would be at work, resulting in a so-called psychic transparency state. This mental explanation is an alternative for a mere biological and deficit interpretation, as it allows us to consider the function of this state, both for the mother-to-be and for the mother-infant bond.

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“…The use of art as an assessment is based on the notion that the work produced by the artist constitutes a projective space, wherein internal content can be externalized (Machover, 1949;Rubin, 1999). Pictorial phenomena may therefore reveal fragments of the artist's inner world (Frank et al, 1994;Gilory et al, 2012). One of the common techniques used for the purposes of assessment in art therapy is the joint drawing, wherein two people share a single piece of paper to make a drawing.…”

Section: Joint Drawing As An Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Friends’ Closeness and Intimacy From Adolescence to Adulthood: Art Captures Implicit Relational Representations in Joint Drawing: A Longitudinal Study

et al. 2020

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This longitudinal study, employing a mixed-methods explanatory design, explored the power of art to express aspects of one's inner world using the joint drawing technique, which allows for observation and treatment of implicit representations of relationships. At Time 1 (T1, 1977-1978), 200 adolescents created a joint drawing with either a good friend or with a classmate who was not a friend and filled out the Intimate Friendship Scale (IFS) in relation to their best friend. In 2014 (T2), 36 women and 21 men from the original cohort completed the IFS with regard to a good friend and with regard to their spouse. The drawings were analyzed qualitatively to define pictorial phenomena that may be indicative of closeness. The analysis was conducted in accordance with the phenomenological approach to art therapy and with the principles of thematic analysis. Fourteen pictorial phenomena were defined, and a scale was constructed to quantitatively evaluate the extent to which each phenomenon was present in the joint drawing. This yielded a closeness score for each drawing. Quantitatively, no correlations were found between intimacy as measured by IFS at T1 and at T2. In contrast, there was a correlation between the degree of closeness in the joint drawing at T1, and the IFS score with the partner in T2, suggesting continuity over the 36-year time span. This correlation was likewise found when examined separately among participants who drew with a friend. The multivariate ANOVA (MANOVA) results showed a marginally significant effect for the interaction between closeness in drawing and drawing with a friend/non-friend-on IFS. An ANOVA showed that the IFS regarding the participant's best friend and their romantic partner at T2 was higher when the closeness in the drawing at T1 was higher. There was also a significant interaction between closeness in the drawings and the participant's IFS score regarding their best friend at T1. The differences between the joint drawing with the close friend and the non-friend are discussed. These findings, from a span of over 36 years, thus contribute to the validity of the IFS and the joint drawing technique when assessing closeness and intimacy.

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Mothers' fantasy representations and infant security of attachment: A Rorschach study of first pregnancy.

Cited by 11 publications

References 39 publications

Childbirth and mental disorders

Childbirth and mental disorders

Empirical evidence for psychic transparency in pregnancy.

Friends’ Closeness and Intimacy From Adolescence to Adulthood: Art Captures Implicit Relational Representations in Joint Drawing: A Longitudinal Study

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