Psychoanalytic Aspects of Assisted Reproductive Technology

This book contributes in an important way to the psychoanalytic understanding and impact of Assisted Reproductive Technology on a majority of patients who have difficulties starting new families. Recent advances in reproductive technology and the increased use of techniques based upon it have created a need for psychoanalytic thinking and understanding of the psychological implications of Assisted reproductive procedures, in-vitro fertilization and other similar procedures.The recent and rapid advances in medical technologies confront us with a mandate in our clinical work to understand their complex impact on women, men, and children. However, attention to the intra psychic conflicts and traumatic experience of the use of such techniques has not been addressed in psychoanalytic literature. The developmental trauma and intra psychic conflicts of individuals using reproductive technologies are ubiquitous, yet it has been neglected as a topic of special interest in our clinical work.The centerpiece of these collective chapters deal with psychic trauma of infertility, the compulsion to repeat through persistent repeated use of assisted reproductive technology, anxiety about motherhood, and finally the lives of children who are born and do not know from where they came.These poignant topics deal with family complexes and the Oedipal circle, repetition compulsion, trials and failures, anxiety related to motherhood, egg and sperm donors, parental identity formation, infertility, trauma, and discussion of a contemporary film depicting the challenging and newly defined family structure.

Mali Mann, MD, is on the faculty of the San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis, where she serves as a training and supervising psychoanalyst. She is also a clinical Professor, Adjunct at the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University, where she is a member of the Pegasus Physicians writing group. She is a faculty member and supervisor at San Mateo county psychiatry residency Program. She currently serves as the Co-Chair for the North American Committee of Child and Adolescent Psychoanalysis. She teaches and supervises candidates at Palo Alto Psychoanalytic psychotherapy training program. She has authored several chapters and psychoanalytic papers, and has served on several local, and national psychoanalytic committees. Her interests focus on identity formation, immigrant children and mothers, shame dynamic, aggression in clinical setting and applied psychoanalysis in orphanages and school system. In addition, she has a special interest in maternal development and immigrant motherhood, and holds a member in the American Society of Reproductive Medicine.