Empirical evidence for psychic transparency in pregnancy.

Abstract

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.

Review of Creativity and the erotic dimensions of the analytic field.

“…In keeping with Freud’s notion of ferocious sexuality, Laplanche’s idea of demonic sexuality, and Kristeva’s view of the sexual death drive a series of studies summarized by Bazan, Jorge Mendes, Antoine-Moussiaux, and Prys (2019) about women’s ideation and cognitive communication during pregnancy, show consistencies with their position. Pregnant women tend to communicate their “traumas,” early painful experiences, “archaic,” even “psychoticlike” communications.…”

Nine Months of Labor: The Psychosocial Weight of a Pregnancy After a Gestational Loss

“…The maternal psyche then becomes easier to read and to capture because desires, conflicts, impulses, and relational regressions become exposed (Oriol et al., 2016). This state is said to put women in phase with the emerging functioning of the child’s psyche and help the mother take part in the shaping of their interactions (Bazan et al., 2019). Psychic transparency differs from Donald Winnicott’s concept of “primary maternal preoccupation” in that the latter refers to the dynamics (a process) of the mind during pregnancy whereas the former addresses the content of it (Bazan et al., 2019, p. 240).…”

“…This state is said to put women in phase with the emerging functioning of the child’s psyche and help the mother take part in the shaping of their interactions (Bazan et al., 2019). Psychic transparency differs from Donald Winnicott’s concept of “primary maternal preoccupation” in that the latter refers to the dynamics (a process) of the mind during pregnancy whereas the former addresses the content of it (Bazan et al., 2019, p. 240). More precisely, the predominance of primary process mentation during this state suggests that pregnant women tend to engage in “thinking and dreaming of the child to come,” in a way that some authors have gone as far as describing as “psychotic-like,” “archaic,” “effervescent,” and “fleeting” (Bazan et al., 2019, p. 240).…”

“…Psychic transparency differs from Donald Winnicott’s concept of “primary maternal preoccupation” in that the latter refers to the dynamics (a process) of the mind during pregnancy whereas the former addresses the content of it (Bazan et al., 2019, p. 240). More precisely, the predominance of primary process mentation during this state suggests that pregnant women tend to engage in “thinking and dreaming of the child to come,” in a way that some authors have gone as far as describing as “psychotic-like,” “archaic,” “effervescent,” and “fleeting” (Bazan et al., 2019, p. 240). Primary process thinking tends to be dominated by wishes, affects, conflicts and/or unconscious fantasies, expressed through dreams and non-verbal ways of communicating.…”

“…Empirical evidence suggests that psychic transparency occurs in every pregnancy and particularly during the second half of pregnancy (Bazan et al., 2019). Oriol (2016) argued that the mere desire for a child can create changes in the dynamics of the mind (i.e., psychic transparency).…”