Sadism Toward the Pregnant Woman

Women generally enjoy talking about their pregnancy (current or past) and about childbirth; they compare notes, give each other advice, and, with the best of intentions, try to warn others about the difficulties they went through. Sometimes they feel the need to describe in detail the situations they faced, especially when these were difficult, not to say tragic. And they often don't realize that pregnant women would rather not be informed about everything that does nothing but stir up, or intensify, certain fears, more or less dormant.

It could be said that during pregnancy, most women fall victim to this experience, which could be called «sadism toward the pregnant woman».

This kind of sadism can be seen as a genuine «symptom», one that of course has nothing to do with the pregnant woman herself but with the person speaking to her, since it acts as a warning sign of a set of repressed conflicts that resurface in the presence of a pregnant woman, who, simply by being pregnant, has the power to bring back distant, conflicted feelings and images.

During childhood, in fact, it happens that one has to come to terms with the pregnancy of someone emotionally more or less important; it's a situation that raises the possibility of being pushed aside and losing the love of someone one loves. This experience is a source of ambivalent feelings of varying intensity, which differ from person to person depending on the age at which it occurred, the quality of the bond with the pregnant woman, and the way one became involved in her pregnancy.

The intensity of the jealousy felt causes and fuels unconscious aggressive desires toward both the loved person and the child to come.

These desires, which may seem unacceptable, nonetheless conceal an immense love for the object they are directed at, since they express the utopian wish to possess them totally and unconditionally.

The «sadistic attack», directed at a pregnant woman, thus represents the eruption of this repressed unconscious conflict, whose real target is a figure belonging to one's own childhood. The pregnant woman, then, merely serves as a substitute for someone else, onto whom certain desires present in the other person's unconscious are directed.

This analysis, however, still doesn't explain why a pregnant woman might be particularly affected by these sadistic attacks. It should be said that this happens when they bring back to the surface, in her, those same unconscious childhood desires mentioned above, which, because of guilt, turn against her during pregnancy.