Nontraditional family romance

In our own words: key terms and trends in psychoanalytic history

Inspired by the work of Fonagy (2008) and Dent and Christian (2019), this study applies a form of quantitative textual analysis to 300 terms of psychoanalytic interest in the PEP archives by tracking their historical prevalence in five-year increments using the aggregate number of articles featuring each term in the field's journals. Our results confirm some of the more well-known inflection points in the history and application of psychoanalytic theory, while also revealing some intriguing surprises. Psychoanalysis remains fundamentally a depth psychology, yet it has increasingly acknowledged the external causes of distress and trauma. Changes in the prevalence of terminology around psychopathology, defense mechanisms, development, gender and sexuality, and psychoanalytic technique are discussed.

That Which Was "Not": Some Thoughts Regarding Oedipus's Modern Conflicts

Historically, psychoanalysis has positioned the Oedipus complex as its focal point, based on a parental configuration of two-parent families consisting of a (male) father and a (female) mother. The modern era allows, albeit highly ambivalently, for the diversity of marital and parental configurations, reflecting cultural change as well as advances in the medical-technology of in vitro fertilization and of sperm and egg donations. The author discusses the analyses of two lesbian women who have chosen to mother a baby via an anonymous sperm donation. The author then takes up the question of whether unconscious oedipal conflicts influenced the decisions these patients made. She also questions whether the father in contemporary analytic thinking needs be a (male) "father" who is the "third," the "other." The work of Freud, Loewald, Searles, Poland, Ogden, and others will be brought to bear on these questions.

Challenging Oedipus in changing families: Gender identifications and access to origins in same-sex parent families created through third-party reproduction

Socio-cultural changes and advancements in assisted reproduction over the past 40 years have led to a rise in new family forms, including same-sex parent families formed through donor insemination or surrogacy, wherein the loving couple does not coincide with the generative couple and the parents do not embody sexual difference. Can we still understand the gender identification processes and the path of accessing one's origins through the lens of the Oedipal complex? In keeping with the Freudian concepts of "psychosexuality," "primal scene" and "family romance," as well as the more recent developments in psychoanalysis, attachment theory and infant research, this article aims at revisiting the Oedipal "complex" as Oedipal "complexity," which may apply irrespective of parents' anatomical characteristics. However, this "complexity" does not renounce parents' bodies and sexuality as important to children's development. Maintaining the concept of third following the parental couple, and position within generations in the idea of Oedipal complexity, the authors suggest that a child's development pathways will depend not only on the intersection of the child's Oedipal and pre-Oedipal levels, but also on the parents' early relational events and internalisation of their own parental figures, which are not necessarily pre-determined by their gender or sexual orientation.

Becoming a mother by "AID" within a lesbian couple: the issue of the third

Using data from clinical psychoanalytic research on lesbian couples undertaking Artificial Insemination by Donor (AID), this article explores the position of the third as it appears in the family project of lesbian couples. The third is examined through the analysis of constructions surrounding the image of the anonymous donor, the impact of the medical act of insemination on the women's psychic economy, and the search for other promising bases for triangulation. The complexity of the issue of the third in same-sex parenting is highlighted. Excerpts from clinical interviews with two lesbian couples are used to illustrate and support the authors' hypotheses.

The Gift of Gametes – Unconscious Motivation, Commodification and Problematics of Genealogy

Three-way baby making is not new: genetic surrogacy existed in Biblical times and donor insemination was recorded in Britain over 200 years ago. However, the gift of gametes between women breaks all social conventions. This paper examines the phenomenon of gamete-donation questioning whether a ‘gift’ of such magnitude can ever be ‘free’ (as the Human Fertilisation & Embryology Authority advocates), or a ‘true’ gift (in Derridian terms). Exploration of this unprecedented ‘gift’ from a psychoanalytic approach is supplemented by an interdisciplinary one, drawing on the gift literature in philosophy, anthropology, ethnography and socioeconomics, as well as neonatal research and reproductive medicine. Critics note the dearth of analyses that take seriously the psychological ramifications of contemporary treatments, protocols and expectations in reproductive medicine. Based on psychoanalytic therapy within a clinical practice devoted to reproductive issues, the author argues that institutionalised asexual reproduction alters unconscious conceptualisations of the act of procreation – converting the passionate intimacy of primal scene into a clinical coupling of gametes in a mechanised arena. The author argues that, too charged to contemplate, the gamete's transcendent quality and blurring of elementary personae/ res distinctions leads protagonists, including professionals, to defensive commodification. Multiple emotional meanings are ascribed to gifted gametes by each in the triangle of donor, recipient and offspring, illustrated here with verbatim material. This article addresses some of the far-reaching socio-political consequences for class, race, age, gender and sexuality of asexual reproduction, related to selection procedures and uneven global and local distribution of fertility treatment and its cost in financial, physical, practical and emotional terms. Similarly, feminist unease over (patriarchal) reproductive control and gatekeeping policies are considered, as well as ethical concerns over genetic manipulation, pre-implantation screening, sex selection, selective foetocide and potential exploitation of transnational donors and surrogates.

When baby makes three or four or more: attachment, individuation, and identity in assisted-conception families

Using examples from clinical work with parents and children in assisted-conception families, this chapter explores the anxieties, conflicts, and psychological defenses of parents as they intersect with the developmental tasks and emotional experiences of the children. Coining the term "birth other" to refer to the outside party in conception--donor, surrogate, or gestational carrier the resurfacing of early primal scenes and oedipal dramas on the part of parents is connected to psychological strategies and defenses, particularly denial, to ward off anxieties generated by introducing an outside party into the most intimate arena of family life--conception of a child. The parental negotiation of conflicts is then associated to three developmental tasks for the child: confronting one's sense of uniqueness; establishing a sense of belonging; forging an identity based on assisted-conception origins. Lastly, developmental facilitators are outlined to enhance success in each of these tasks respectively: age-appropriate narratives of the child's origins; family reveries (shared fantasies about the birth others and their position in the family); a child's family romances that include the birth other. The intent of this discourse is to sensitize clinicians to the psychological issues in their work with children and parents faced with internal or interpersonal challenges when baby was conceived with the help of an outside party.

Just Molly and me, and donor makes three: lesbian motherhood in the age of assisted reproductive technology

The psychological experiences of lesbian mothers, both coupled and single, are compared and contrasted with heterosexual and gay parents who use assisted reproductive technology, focusing on issues of parental desire, fertility, babies conceived from science rather than sex, presence of an outside party in conception, genetic asymmetry, social anxieties, legal protections, disclosure, and gender. The psychological meaning of the donor or surrogate as "extra" and "missing" piece of the family, along with the interactive effects of homophobia and "reproductive technophobia" are considered. Lesbian families are recognized to be constructing a new narrative of a bio-social family as they define and live their experience.

Conflict in relational treatments

Various features of relational perspectives on conflict are outlined. Points of contact and difference between relational and modern conflict theory are discussed. Five approaches to considering conflict are examined: countertransference conflict as the site of interfaces between the social and the intrapsychic; conflict within the register of speech; conflict within a theory of multiple identifications; conflict as the site of psychic change; and conflict in the context of intersubjectivity. Clinical vignettes are introduced to illustrate the scope and function of conflict within one relational perspective.

Parents’ contributions to the narrative identity of offspring of donor-assisted conception

Donated sperm, eggs, and embryos are an increasing feature of assisted reproduction; people conceived in this way have different genetic and social histories. Although most offspring of donor-assisted conception are ignorant of their genetic history, recipient parents must negotiate increasing demand for full disclosure to offspring. This paper illustrates some of the reasons parents give for not telling their children, underlines the experience of many parents of being uncertain of how to go about telling, presents information from some parents who have endeavoured to be open with their children about conception from very early childhood, and discusses implications for the narrative identity of offspring of donor-assisted conception. Recipient parents (n=55) and offspring (12) from Australia; Canada, US, England, and Argentina were interviewed and subsequently consulted about the development of their narrative accounts and the way in which these have been interpreted. Parental narratives were found to be located along a continuum, broadly encompassing: (1). Parents who intend to exclude donor-assisted conception from the narratives they construct for their children, (2). parents who are uncertain about what they want to do, or confused about the best way to disclose and discuss donor conception with their children and (3). those have incorporated the donor in their children's narratives from the beginning. From interviews with offspring and on the basis of human rights issues and the increasing salience of genetic knowledge, it is concluded that disclosure to offspring before adolescence should be encouraged.

Rethinking homosexuality: what it teaches us about psychoanalysis

This presentation, written ten years after the American Psychoanalytic Association adopted a nondiscrimination policy with regard to sexual orientation, discusses the evolving relationship between psychoanalysis and homosexuality. The paper is in three sections: (1) the process of policy change and the overturning of injustice; (2) the excursion after Freud's death into analytic bias and extreme pathologizing of homosexuality, the struggle to overcome those distortions, and the lessons to be learned from this history; and (3) the search, in the coming decade, for new understanding of homosexuality and all aspects of sexuality.