Abstract

R. M. DO NASCIMENTO, Fátima  and  TERZIS, Antonios. Parental project postponement: a psychoanalytic study with couples fighting sterility. Psicol. rev. (Belo Horizonte) [online]. 2010, vol.16, n.1, pp. 103-124. ISSN 1677-1168.

This study aimed to investigate parental project postponement, emphasizing psychological and social aspects that determined it, effects of sterility on marital bonds, and the experience with reproductive treatments. Three straight couples, aged over 30 and with no biological children, took part in the research, receiving reproductive treatments. Contents obtained through an open psychological interview were analyzed using the Content Analysis technique and discussed with basis on the theories of psychoanalysis and group psychoanalysis. Results showed interference in the parental project by specific social conditions (access to biotechnology, as well as familiar, social, economic and religious influences) associated to unconscious factors (conflicts, resistances, ambivalence, fantasies and anguish); damage to the marital bond (decrease in spontaneity and sexual desire; difficulty in reorganizing the vital project and interference in daily life); negative influence on family and social interaction; and regression to early stages of mental functioning, characterized by persecution complex and depressive anguish and the use of primitive defences (denial, illusion, projection, displacement and rationalization

Keywords : couple; parenthood; sterility; group psychoanalysis.

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