From Fetus to Child: An Observational and Psychoanalytic Study

By Alessandra Piontelli

Book Overview

The use of ultrasonic scans in pregnancy makes it possible to observe the fetus undisturbed in the womb. Dr Alessandra Piontelli has done what no one has done before: she observed eleven fetuses (three singletons and four sets of twins) in the womb using ultrasound scans, and then observed their development at home from birth up to the age of four years. She includes a description of the psychoanalytic psychotherapy of one of the research children, and the psychoanalysis of five other very young children whose behaviour in analysis suggested that they were deeply preoccupied with their experience in the womb.

Dr Piontelli has discovered what many parents have always thought - that each fetus, like each newborn baby, is a highly individual creature. By drawing on her experience as a child psychotherapist and psychoanalyst as well as on her observational research, she is able to investigate issues relating to individuality, psychological birth and the influence of maternal emotions during pregnancy. Her findings demonstrate clearly how psychoanalytical evidence enhances, deepens and supports observational data on the remarkable behavioural and psychological continuities between pre-natal and post-natal life.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0415074371
• ISBN13: 9780415074377
• Release Date: April 1992
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 7.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Proof that it DOES matter

I hope that the idea that an embryo has no feelings, that a fetus is just a blank slate-in-the-making is fast fading from society's belief systems. But just in case some of us still don't think we can influence a baby till it's born, take a lok at "From Fetus to Child," by psychoanalyst A. Piontelli. She sat day after day with obstetricians watching for an hour at a time how fetuses behaved in the womb. Her camera was a sonogram, peering into the uterine world to discover the truth about prenatal life. Though she is a highly educated researcher and practicing analyst and psychotherapist, Dr. Piontelli writes in a style almost as easy to follow as a newspaper human interest story, with few technical words to stumble over. One could not stumble past her eye-witness accounts of fetus after fetus, which became single or twin births and demonstrated with no doubt remaining how the earliest developmental stage studied was mirrored by the behavior of newborn, toddler, and up to the four-year-old, her age limit to study. Nature vs nurture is studied in action. And some of each appears to contribute to the behavior of the children as they grow. Expectant parents, health care workers, midwives... Here's a book I'd highly recommend.