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

Dr. Mallouh’s paper beautifully depicts the tumultuous process of transition into motherhood with Dr. Mallouh’s sensitive interventions. As Fraiberg (Fraiberg et al., 1983) mentions in her paper on treatment modalities, multiple components of interaction construct a live intervention: brief crisis intervention, developmental guidance, and representation-oriented Infant-Parent Psychotherapy (IPP). Dr. Mallouh sensitively applies each intervention, according to the moment-to-moment need of the mother in the therapeutic sessions. In doing so, she had to tolerate and contain a great deal of emotional turbulence and upheaval. This way of being in her intervention was felt as vigilant and intuitive, demonstrating a total commitment to protect and prevent her unstable patients from collapsing into mental breakdown.