Conceptions on Conception: Dreams and imagery
about conception and pregnancy
Judith Setton-Markus, M.Ed. R.Psych. FIPA
Scientific Meeting | Saturday, November 19, 2016 | Venue: Arbutus Club
2001 Nanton Avenue, Vancouver, B.C. V6J 4A1
The usefulness of dreams for understanding and facilitating the mastery of the developmental challenges of pregnancy and working through related unresolved conflicts and earlier developmental problems has been documented in the psychoanalytic literature (Bibring & Valenstein, 1976); (Birksted-Breen, 1986); (Lester & Notman, 1986, Ablon, 1994). Less has been written about how similar conflicts and developmental problems emerge more directly in women as they contemplate the desire to conceive. Through the analysis of dreams and unconscious phantasies, this presentation will illustrate the usefulness of dreams and imagery in revealing and working through unresolved developmental conflicts during the pre-pregnancy period as well as during pregnancy. Caught in the throes of the desire for a baby, and the emotional blocks that complicate that desire, women’s ‘conceptions of conception’ offer the opportunity to work through the prevailing conflicts in regards to the maternal object, stemming from their experience of being the child to that mother. A focus will be on the expression in the body of anxieties that emerge in anticipation of and as a natural consequence of the physical changes that occur during pregnancy and how these relate to the emotional genetic inheritance.
Learning Objectives:
- View the usefulness of dreams and imagery in revealing the developmental challenges of becoming pregnant and pregnancy itself.
- Develop an appreciation of the function of dreams and imagery in the working through of unresolved conflicts and developmental problems as these emerge more fully with sight on conception and during pregnancy itself.
- Discuss some bodily anxieties associated with conception and with the physical changes during pregnancy.
Judith Setton-Markus, M.Ed., R. Psych., FIPA, is a psychoanalyst in private practice in Vancouver. She is past president of the WBCPS, where she has fulfilled many roles, including the development and chair of the Western Branch Scientific Program since 2005, and faculty member of the Western Branch extension program. She is an assistant clinical professor in postgraduate education at the University of British Columbia and a clinical associate of Simon Fraser University. Judy runs infant observation seminar groups and has a deep interest in treating pregnant women and mothers in her psychoanalytic practice.
The 2016 Scientific Program Committee: Judith Setton-Markus (Chair), M.Ed., R. Psych, Karin Holland Biggs, PhD., RCC, James Fabian, MD, FRCPC, Endre Koritar, MD, FRCPC, Catherine Young, PhD, R. Psych.
