Psychoanalytical Perspectives on Women’s Refusal of Giving Birth for the Sake of Adoption

Childbirth has traditionally been perceived as a fundamental need and goal in every woman’s life and as a sign of her good physical and psychological health. Small girls tend to fantasize about the continuation of their kind while playing with dolls and acting as their mothers, thus acquiring an active role. In the modern world we are dealing with changes in key areas of life, including the phenomenon of motherhood. The technological, social and economic aspects of the new reality allow women to choose whether to give birth or adopt; raise a child with their husbands or be independent single mothers, have a child or make a career. Despite the seeming freedom of choice, from the psychoanalytic point of view, it is possible to identify various intrapsychological aspects that determine any of the choices mentioned above. One type of motherhood, i.e. the refusal of women to give birth to their own children in favour of adoption, became the subject of the research in question. The scientific interest in this topic was aroused by the fact that women do not abandon the experience of motherhood, but choose only its partial aspect. Thus, the main objective of this work was to study the peculiarities of women’s development and to formulate key intrapsychic conflicts while researching the early relationship of the girl with primary objects, the role of the mother in the girl’s identifications with the feminine, and the peculiarities of the female Oedipal period. These studies, based on the classical concepts of psychoanalytic schools, allowed to put forward several hypotheses related to women’s unconscious conflicts which could lead to their refusal of giving birth. The empirical part of the work was based on two clinical cases.