Discussion of Dr Mallouh’s Presentation, Primary Maternal Preoccupation: Disturbance in Pregnancy and the Postpartum

Abstract

therapeutic interventions it is to a discussant. I say something briefly about analytic therapy, in particular with Mallouh’s patient, Ms D, and to the concept of primary maternal preoccupation. I think that what Mallouh describes so beautifully are “moments of meeting” in a mother’s contact with an empathic therapist and she also conveys so clearly how the therapist’s countertransference can be agonizing. Dr Mallouh is also real in her therapeutic presence and suggests actions or points others ways to forward development. She is knowledge and experience, and it is not just reassurance that has become false because one’s is but is the therapist intuiting a possible future, so that it and a mother can from it. The therapist had a space for the to feel she her supportive way, rather than the her, so in the nursery” did not need to have a major effect on the developing infant-mother relationship.