Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health 26(4), Summer 2012
Pregnancy as a Feminine Initiation
Nora Swan-Foster
Abstract: Pregnancy as a feminine initiation becomes conscious to a woman when she
engages with her pregnant imagination through dreams, art, emotions, and somatic
changes. If the woman acknowledges her emotional and psychological reactions arising
from core archetypal patterns, a “conscious pregnancy” occurs. Three stages of the
initiation are outlined: Gateway, Attending, and Passage. Focusing on the Attending
stage, three key psychological components are explored: shadow, syzygy, and
simultaneity. Viewing the prenatal psyche through C.G. Jung’s lens of Analytical
Psychology sheds light on how archetypal patterns and symbolic material associated
with initiatory tasks supports maternal confidence and enhances mother/infant
attachment.
Keywords: Pregnancy, feminine initiation, conscious pregnancy, mother archetype,
initiation oriented pregnancy
Introduction
Each pregnancy is unique and psychologically transformative,
although not all women are conscious of this potential. A woman who
chooses to engage with her pregnancy by listening and responding to
her psyche, undergoes an “initiation-oriented pregnancy” or
“conscious pregnancy,”1 which opens her to the sometimes rigorous
demands of an initiatory experience.
1 Most women are aware that they are pregnant, but do not engage with their
pregnancy in any other way than it being a physical experience defined by medical
terms, and a means to an end. Their psychological process remains invisible to the
world and often times to themselves. Conscious pregnancy and initiation-oriented
pregnancy denote the woman who is actively responding to the demands of her
pregnant imagination through psychological and spiritual tasks that result in an
enhanced and valued prenatal individuation experience.
Nora Swan-Foster, MA, ATR-BC, LPC, NCPsyA is a Diplomat Jungian Analyst,
Licensed Professional Counselor, and Art Psychotherapist. She is a Member: InterRegional Society of Jungian Analysts and has a Private Practice at 1137 Pearl Street,
Suite 205, Boulder, CO, 80302.
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Sometimes these women may enter a therapeutic relationship so
as to explore the initiation more consciously. The archetype of
initiation is an essential lens for the woman but also for the therapist
or analyst to consider when working with pregnant women. As one
pregnant woman said, “there is something more to pregnancy than
what is in books or the world.” Using concepts from Jung’s Analytical
Psychology, this paper considers some of the ways in which the
initiation archetype manifests during pregnancy, influencing the
woman’s individuation.
Rather than laying the archetype of initiation over the pregnant
woman, distancing us further from knowing about her inner personal
psychic experiences, the archetypal pattern emerges organically,
particularly when the woman encounters pivotal challenging
incidences that require her to confront unconscious aspects of herself
in relationship to the world. While not the focus of this paper, it is also
worth mentioning the pull on the therapist/analyst to actively
participate in the initiation as the initiator, resulting in possible power
dynamics, polarization and misunderstandings, or a subtle, but
profound, emotional disorientation or abandonment for the pregnant
woman. Becoming more conscious of the rich archetypal material of
initiation that emerges through her own experiences makes room for
the pregnant woman to reclaim a disowned aspect of the archaic
journey that is often in the shadow of the relationship and for those
around her to rightly honor the individual journey.
Literature review
Helene Deutsch’s (1944) seminal research dispelled the myth that
analysis was dangerous for the pregnant woman, courageously
differing from her male colleagues by viewing the biological processes
of pregnancy as a reflection of psychological material that was useful
for women’s development. A wide and varied body of research
continues to emerge from Deutsch’s initial inroads. Throughout his
work, C.G. Jung drew on pregnancy as a metaphor for his ideas on the
Great Mother and the generative creative process within the psyche as
it related to individuation, the transcendent function, symbol
formation, and active imagination. Several Jungian analysts referred
to the pregnant woman as an archetypal image connected to nature
(Neumann,1994; Hall,1980; Harding, 1970; von Franz, 1999) but the
personal dimensions of a pregnant woman’s psyche have not been
specifically addressed by this older generation of Jungians. In her book
on childbearing loss, Savage (1989) considered the archetypal burdens
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that an individual woman carries when she becomes pregnant: “The
elemental nature of the Great Mother archetype constellated with the
awareness of pregnancy contains both positive and negative
attributes. As positive mother, she is the ‘vessel’ which contains,
protects, nourishes, and gives birth; as the negative mother, she is the
one who separates, rejects, and brings death” (p. 32). More recently an
extensive collection of dreams, submitted by pregnant women, were
organized under various predominate symbols (Abt, Bosch, &
MacKrel, 2000), highlighting the depth and breadth of psychic energy
available during pregnancy.
The stages of initiation were used to illustrate a feminine model
during Jungian analysis where the woman’s childbearing life and the
analytic relationship are both ritualized, honored and made sacred by
archetypal images and dreams (Beane Rutter,1993/2009, 2011).
Barone-Chapman (2007, 2011) researched and documented some of
the complexes arising with women who undergo invitro fertilization
(IVF) and pregnancy while in analysis. As an obstetrics doctor drawing
on the myth of Persephone, Kortendieck-Rashee (2011) explored how
the dreams of immigrant pregnant women in Germany may express
the theme of initiation. Within a medical framework, Côté-Arsenault,
Brody, and Dombeck, (2009) documented how the rite of passage is a
useful structural model for pregnancies and childbirths that follow a
perinatal loss.
The early social anthropologist, Westermarck (1906/2007) observed
that tribal communities isolated a pregnant woman because she was
thought to be dangerous, contaminated, and likely to infect those
around her. He assumed that this notion was rooted in the superstition
and fear of the power of blood, which gave the woman hidden powers
over her husband and men in the tribe. Observations on feminine
initiations, including pregnancy, were later noted (van Gnepp ,1960;
Turner, 1987) as a time of isolation, transition, and a rite of passage.
When Lincoln (1981/1991) differentiated between feminine and
masculine initiations, he concluded that feminine initiations do not
bring women increased social status or hierarchal power, as an
initiation does for men, but, instead, she is compensated with a “cosmic
status” (p. 105). The woman’s status is found through her daily life, her
body, and other women, all of which lead to an inner authority with
regards to her life purpose and her connection to the divine. Instead of
altering a woman’s status, “initiation changes their fundamental
being, addressing ontological concerns rather than hierarchical ones. A
woman does not become more powerful...but more creative [emphasis
added], more alive, more ontologically real” (p. 104).
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It follows then that a woman who is receptive to her creativity,
which supports the development of her “cosmic status,” is coming into
a conscious relationship with the Self, an Analytical Psychology term
used to denote the guiding transpersonal function within the psyche.
It also follows that in the pregnant initiate’s daily life, and in her
analysis, she participates in an investigation, clarification,
reorganization, and integration of the parental complexes so as to
enhance her maternal confidence and nurture an increased adaptation
and attachment to the baby.
Pregnancy as Initiation
The emergence of the initiation archetype within the psyche brings
with it various challenges and tremendous shifts in consciousness.
There is not only a deepening of the analytic/therapeutic relationship
but a distinct psychological indwelling in which the pregnant woman
may become profoundly connected to her own feminine nature through
responding to the demands of her psyche. Phillip Bromberg’s (1998)
description of an analyst’s experience in analysis is analogous to the
pregnant woman’s initiatory experience in her relationship with her
pregnancy and the fetus. “… the analyst’s ability to experience the
intersubjective field as a process in which ambiguity, paradox, and
sometimes even chaos are felt to be relationally valid elements in the
growth of the self” (pg. 28). These words set the stage for an unwritten
play to unfold in which the woman discovers the depths of her personal
psychological world during pregnancy, a process that is quite
autonomous. It is best described as an initiation from the Self, which
is exactly why we cannot apply the initiation model to every pregnant
woman, yet, by becoming conscious of the archetypal pull through her
emotional and creative efforts, she uncovers her own mythic story.
All initiations contain challenging tasks and ordeals with the
presence of risk, danger, and the possibility of death. While often
idealized by the collective, pregnancy is precisely one of those powerful
psychological feminine initiations. As reported in Ploss-Bartel’s
research, the Hova tribe considered the pregnant woman dead from
conception until she gave birth, at which point she was considered
resurrected (van Gnepp, 1960, p. 43). The contemporary pregnant
woman may indeed feel psychologically “dead” to herself, and others,
because she is no longer who she was and yet has not been born into
the woman she will become within her community. This is rarely
spoken about. Her new awareness can stimulate fears of her own
separation or death, the separation and death of her fetus, or the
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separation and death of her partner.
Within this psychological realm, the pregnant woman exists in a
transitional space that can constellate such loss or grief for her past
and ambivalence for her future that daily language is insufficient.
Paradoxically, while new life grows within her body, death is a stark
emotional consideration for her, highlighting the richness of the
potential space, just out of reach, in which she temporarily lives.
Although more physically visible than ever, she may feel invisible
because her intra-psychic feelings of joy mixed with fear, worry, and
mourning may be unknown to others. This paradox is hard to reconcile
and even more difficult to speak about. An unexpected confusion may
ensue for the woman and those who support her. Suddenly she exists
outside her familiar daily life, not who she was and not yet who she
will become.
Psychologically, this state is not a negative regression but a
softening of the ego so that the Self can expand and influence the ego’s
development through personal psychological work, which includes her
use of her imagination. Once in this temporary “dead space” the
pregnant woman may unearth a fertile creative hearth within her
referred to as a pregnant imagination (Swan-Foster, 2010). The notion
of a pregnant imagination formed out of an interest in the
phenomenological experiences associated with imagination (Corbin,
1972; Cwik, 2010; Schaverien, 1992) as well as the imaginative
accounts provided by the pregnant woman through clinical work and
exploratory research (Swan-Foster, 1989, 2010; Swan-Foster, Foster,
and Dorsey, 2003). During these creative encounters, the woman
grapples with complex prenatal feelings such as grief, fear, or love that
eventually reveal the creative gnosis within her. Without this
imaginative space the initiation archetype during pregnancy does not
have the opportunity to fully emerge into consciousness.
At times, because of the powerful archetypal pull of pregnancy, a
woman’s pregnant imagination is misunderstood, too quickly judged or
assessed by those around her, who may forget that she exists in a
unique state of consciousness. She may express grief, ambivalence,
confusion, helplessness, depression, or anxiety. While post-traumatic
stress, obsessive compulsivity, and anxious depression are clearly
researched, documented, and treatable concerns, for some perinatal
women, using only a biomedical perspective may inadvertently
simplify her condition and dismiss the opportunity for integrating a
new consciousness surrounding her creative feminine instincts and
her maternal role.
Winnicott (1958/1992) originally described the change in the
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woman’s behavior and affect as maternal preoccupation, a nonordinary state that may typically appear pathological or concerning.
Instead, seen as a specific kind of altered state, this psychic/somatic
condition may often stimulate the right brain where the limbic and
autonomic nervous systems are concerned with implicit memories and
subtle emotional and somatic changes. These “soft tissue” feeling
states are best expressed through authentic shared language,
metaphor, imagery, and symbols (Schore, personal communication,
2011).
Furthermore, within this transitional state a compelling
countertransference reaction may occur in which those around the
woman may be pulled into a prenatal “field” to share personal stories
of the idealized and overly positive experiences as well as undigested
traumatic content. The impulse to “make nice” or make infantilizing
statements, or resort to advice-giving that arises out of one’s own
implicit memories is also sometimes constellated. Such external
reactions and projections towards her emotional state indicates the
pregnant woman’s powerful expression of the binary mother
archetype, along side the archaic feelings associated with the
archetype of initiation, in which trauma, fear, grief, separation, and
death may predominate.
We have much to learn from the pregnant woman regarding these
unconscious right brain states that are deeply rooted into primordial
material within the collective unconscious. Unfortunately, wellmeaning preemptive reactions from those around her may reinforce
her fears causing a fight/flight reaction and a sealing off of the
potential to come to know herself in a more meaningful way. Such
hyper-arousal curtails and inhibits her curiosity and trust in her
pregnant imagination, which indeed offers a particular guidance
system to navigate the challenging path of initiation that she must
ultimately travel on her own, alone.
When the woman recognizes her personal relationship to this
prenatal process within a symbolic and imaginative space such as
analysis, therapy, art, dreams, or active imagination, she gathers
greater individual understanding and meaning from her physical
condition and emerges with an enhanced feminine experience that
often lasts throughout her life. Ultimately, within an analytical
psychology framework, her conscious pregnancy, or initiated
pregnancy, results in a more resilient ego that accepts an enriched and
ongoing growing maternal confidence that is yoked to a meaningful
connection with the Self.
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The term pregnant imagination also reflects C. G. Jung’s notion
that a symbol has the potential to be “pregnant,” enlivening the
psyche. Chodrow (1997) refers to Jung’s use of the German word
betrachten, which means “to make pregnant. … And, if it is pregnant,
then something is due to come out of it; it is alive, it produces, it
multiplies” (p. 7).
Pregnant imagination describes the inner creative process that
orients and validates the woman’s encounter with her own creative
and religious nature, expanding the possibilities for experiencing the
numinous. Further, the softening boundaries associated with time and
space are often unconsciously expressed in her drawings through the
use of transparencies (Swan-Foster, Foster, and Dorsey, 2003).
Certainly her pregnant imagination stretches the woman’s perceptions
of reality, encouraging a more flexible and supple ego that can tolerate
a greater range of being. Engaging in betrachten moments with her
psyche or the fetus promotes an awareness of the emerging
attachment process with her baby.
Most importantly, a woman’s pregnant imagination is a specific
and essential ingredient that shifts the woman’s prenatal experience
from one that is linear, concrete, non-symbolic, and ego-driven to a
multi-layered, paradoxical, and symbolical sacred initiation journey
that is guided by an expanding ego, but greatly influenced by the Self.
This process only occurs when the woman embraces her personal
relationship to an inner imaginal world of pregnancy that is both
individual and archetypal. Taylor (2009) reinforces the wide range of
archetypal imagery, reinforcing the role of the collective unconscious
and the depth of the pregnant initiate’s unconscious process that
spontaneously emerges through women’s art, dreams, or imagination.
Certainly, the initiation model is not for every pregnant woman.
For those who lack psychological interest or a certain level of ego
strength to access the symbolic realm of the psyche, remaining with
the concrete medical and technological models of pregnancy provides a
certain security. These protections may be especially needed with
unconscious or unresolved complex trauma that the woman is unable
to face. These can be considered ego-oriented pregnancies and they
tend to rely on cognitive behavioral approaches aimed at managing
anxiety and fear.
A woman does not automatically undergo a feminine initiation
simply because she exists in a liminal space (Swan-Foster, 2010).
Sometimes a pregnancy is uneventful yet each individual comes to it
with a varied history and psychological awareness. Some women
endure and survive pregnancy, including the unfortunate traumatic
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incidences, without introspection or conscious integration of the
available psychological tasks, while other women are thrown into a
process of deep self-investigation.
Initiations are not to be undertaken lightly. They signify a
confrontation with separation, danger, and the possibility of death
with unbidden adjustments or transformations. While most
pregnancies go well, pregnancy is a period of tremendous uncertainty
and the possibility of death may secretly lurk in the woman’s mind.
She has no specific map for her pregnancy, no guarantees. The
initiation archetype brings to the psychological foreground a model
through which challenging nuances of pregnancy that arise from both
her physical and psychological ordeals are filtered.
As stated above, the phrases “initiation-oriented pregnancy” or
“conscious pregnancy” describe a personal process that is not driven by
the ego, but exists as an underlying archetypal pattern available to her
if she suspends her reliance on the pragmatic “reality,” “truth,” and
“certainty” of a medical model and engages with her pregnant
imagination. While coming to terms with separation, danger, and
death on a psychological level, she may also have a compensatory
reaction of engaging with the potential space where creative play
occurs (Winnicott, 1971). This paradoxical process allows her pregnant
imagination to conceive, form, and give birth to whatever is
psychologically paramount for her in the moment. Ultimately, this will
be a new conscious attitude within her feminine psyche.
While it is useful to loosely hold and consider the images and
structures of the initiation archetype for the pregnant woman, we
remain cautious against replacing, yet again from outside the woman’s
experience, another linear structure or label to repackage, or
encourage a false or unwanted process, for the woman’s personal
prenatal journey. This only sets her up yet again for misunderstanding
and judgment, and seals off the most conflicting prenatal thoughts and
feelings.
Feminine Initiation Stages for Pregnancy
Lincoln (1981/1991) defined and named the three stages of a
feminine initiation as containment, metamorphosis or magnification,
and emergence. The terms Gateway, Attending, and Passage (SwanFoster, 2010) are used in order to distinguish the initiation process of
the pregnant woman as separate from other feminine initiations. In
order to not overlook the woman’s psychological well-being, these three
phases were purposely chosen in place of the medical term of
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trimesters, primarily referring to the growth stages of the fetus. An
initiation-oriented pregnancy is not to be confused with a medical and
childbirth-oriented perspective, which may acknowledge the liminality
of the major transition but not fully incorporate the psychological
complexity nor consider the role of the pregnant imagination that
relies on the purposive nature of the Self.
Phase 1: Gateway
The word Gateway has the root meaning of gate, suggesting a doorlike structure, a hole or opening (Ayto, 1990, p. 250). The term defines
the state of expectancy and urgency that a woman encounters when
she is considering, through imagination, dreams, art, or visions,
whether or not she wants to become pregnant and how she might
experience pregnancy should it occur. The image of a gate suggests a
formally defined space with the possibility of moving through into
another world, not yet encountered, but imagined. The other side of the
gate is the world of pregnancy. During the Gateway phase a woman
may be longing for pregnancy. She may change her daily habits,
secretly hoping that this will enhance her fertility. She may fear the
pregnancy will never happen. She may have preparatory dreams, or
feel the presence of dread or emptiness that she hopes a pregnancy
could rectify.
If she has experienced a prenatal loss, then her longing is more
intimately intertwined with her knowledge of danger and death. A
woman who waits at the Gateway phase for a difficult or unfulfilled
conception faces an intolerable psychological and physical emptiness
that becomes conscious through analysis when seeking alternative
medical options (Barone-Chapman, 2007, 2011) or adoption to fulfill
her desire and hope for a child.
Unlike the hero, who is called out from his familiar territory into
the world, the pregnant woman is called inward to consciously work
with her pregnant imagination, and, as a result, the sacrifices she
makes may be invisible to others. The call of conception may come from
an inner voice through a dream, or as an image in response to her
procreative urges. One pregnant woman remembered the call this way:
One day when I was dozing I “saw” this little soul pulling at my
hand. It didn’t feel it was good timing for us nor my career, but
I knew the soul had been waiting. It took my hand, pulling me
in a different direction, begging me to listen. I wanted to push it
away, but I really felt I had no more choice in the matter. It was
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time. While I didn’t believe what I had imagined and I forgot
about it once I got on with life, shortly after I learned I was
pregnant.
Another pregnant woman spoke of a dream that she later realized
was her call to try to become pregnant, although she did not know
what it meant at the time. She recounted the dream: “my daughter was
an infant in my arms and said, “Mama—it’s time now. I am ready to be
with you.” Another woman met up with a nonpoisonous snake while
out in nature that turned towards her and touched both her feet. She
later called it a blessing for her pregnancy that she had not yet
consciously confirmed.
Each of these women received powerful messages from the
unconscious, but it was only when they were pregnant that they
reclaimed the images as meaningful messages from the cosmos. Once
pregnant each woman confirmed the power of her unconscious and
acknowledged the role of her imagination that had served to make her
pregnancy conscious. In other words, the pregnant woman is drawn
into the initiatory process, which has autonomously presented itself in
the form of a living symbol. It is the living symbol that is often the
calling to cross the psychological threshold into the next phase of her
prenatal journey.
Phase 2: Attending
The ending of the Gateway phase is marked by the moment a
woman learns she is pregnant. What follows is the Attending phase,
which is the nine months that follow Gateway and precede the onset
of labor, defined below as the Passage phase. While the etymology of
the word “attend” means to stretch, listen, or direct the mind toward
something (Ayto, 1990), originally the word comes from the Latin
“attendere,” a compound verb of “ad,” (to) and “stretch” that eventually
led to the Latin verb “tenere,” which means to hold and contain (p. 42).
The word attend took on the meaning of caring for and finally to be
present with something or someone, suggesting a more feminine and
religious quality.
The idea of “stretching to” evokes not only how the body stretches,
but also how psychologically, in a conscious pregnancy, the pregnant
initiate’s ego is stretched towards a relationship with the Self, allowing
an expansion into a larger personality while simultaneously
recognizing the numinosity of her condition. While in the middle phase
of Attending, three key psychological components are revealed:
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Shadow, Syzygy, and Simultaneity. Each concept illustrates particular
aspects of the feminine psyche that serve the pregnant woman’s
individuation journey.
When the Shadow presents itself, a range of denied or unexpected
aspects related to pregnancy begin to surface in the woman’s
psychological world. The gradual process of integrating the shadow
implies that the ego encounters defeats because of what she is
suddenly forced to consider or accept, such as thoughts that her body
is no longer her own, an increased emotionality or imagination, the
strong opinions of people around her regarding how to handle her
condition, or the unexpected shifts in her own view of pregnancy.
Indeed, the body’s changes denote that the Attending phase is
underway and the shadow demands attention. Because shadow is
what the ego rejects or disowns, “to become conscious of shadow
involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and
real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge,
and it therefore, as a rule, meets with considerable resistance”(Jung
[1959/1978] p. 8, para 14). While doing so can initially constellate
increased fear for the pregnant woman, the results can be deeply
satisfying.
While a non-pregnant person can resist the shadow, a pregnant
woman may not always have the defenses to do so. The softening and
expansion of her body force her to accept a certain amount of
psychological change. Many mistake the shadow as holding only the
negative aspects, yet the positive aspects condemned early on by
cultural complexes and the collective shadow also need to be reclaimed
from being feared as dangerous and contaminating. This implies that
much of what is vital and psychologically essential for the pregnant
initiate exists in the unconscious; her initiation journey is a call, a
particular type of regression that is concerned with a lowering of
consciousness so that she can redeem what is essential for her
psychological wholeness. For instance, a woman who has lost a
previous baby must courageously work with her emotions regarding
the past as well as her fear of another death (Figure 1).
Figure 1.
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This drawing shows one woman’s greatest fear. In attempts to
avoid the shadow and protect her feelings through emotional
“cushioning” (Côté-Aresenault and Donato, 2011), she may sometimes
reject rituals such as a baby shower or organizing baby clothes. The
rituals that honor her current pregnancy and a new beginning also
bring the memory of what she has lost, including confidence in her
body. While making a drawing can be emotionally painful,
paradoxically, the image also may provide her with emotional distance,
clarity, and relief.
Sometimes her mourning may be a call to reclaim her faith in
survival through an unpredictable process and to engage with
repetitive feelings of grief and suffering until a new level of
consciousness emerges. In Figure 2 this same woman used the image
of the hand as a protective resource until the baby arrived.
Figure 2.
This image acknowledges the presence of the Self and her reliance
on something larger than her. Drawings can support a woman who
straddles her need for self-protection with her need to understand and
articulate her inner experience. When her reaction to the previous
trauma constellates a self-care response (Kalsched, 1996) that
obstructs her opportunity for an initiated pregnancy, the therapeutic
relationship can offer adequate containment for the unraveling of her
feelings associated with previous trauma or loss. Ultimately such work
may shift her perspective for the emergence of a good enough
attachment to her current pregnancy.
Somatic challenges are also invitations to work with shadow
material. McNealy (1987) described the psyche/soma relationship this
way: “It is about bringing life back to deadened psyches through the
body [emphasis added], and to deadened parts of the body through the
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psyche [emphasis added]” (p. 10). For the pregnant woman, the
prenatal psyche and body thins and softens, making room for the fetus
and the potential for new consciousness. The interaction between
psyche and soma during pregnancy prods her towards an emotional
alchemical process that supports wholeness and individuation, as well
as maternal adaptation, and attunement to psychological states in
herself and her baby. Another way of understanding her experience is
that she exists as a living and visible container of an inter-subjective
field.
But the body is, of course, also a concretization, or a function, of
that unknown thing which produces the psyche as well as the
body; the difference we make between the psyche and the body
is artificial…there is nothing but a living body…psyche is as
much a living body as body is living psyche: it is just the same.
(Jung, 1998 [1934-1939], p. 114).
Here Jung was referring to the body and psyche as one interactive
dynamic metaphorical container, an alchemical vas or retort, for
challenging and unacceptable feelings or thoughts that can be
clarified, cooked or transformed, and digested. Today the advances in
neuroscience explain some of what Jung observed and intuited,
particularly the way that affect is stored in and expressed through the
body.
With pregnancy, literally “something” has entered the pregnant
woman’s body and now lives within her, constellating psyche and
soma. More often than not she is silently preoccupied with the impact
of the fetus on her body while, at the same time, incorporating a new
unknown psychological aspect of herself. Indeed, for the first time in
her life, she may not know who she is from moment to moment. At the
same time that her body softens and expands to make room for the
fetus, her ego faces defeat as it softens to incorporate what is somewhat
foreign to her, not yet born and yet very much alive within her.
One pregnant woman said, “I’m in a state of mild panic. I’m
physically nauseous, but I’m also emotionally nauseous with panic.”
Although not fully conscious of it in that exact moment, this woman
was becoming aware of how her body and mind were interconnected.
More specifically, her body made the pregnancy known to her, first
through nausea and her relationship to smells and food and then
through her own metaphors of nausea, panic, and dizziness that
highlighted her emotions. By consciously working with her physical
experience, she could slow the “spinning” and explore her panic. Her
feelings became opportunities for us to explore the personal complexes
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as well as the archetypal themes that arose through dreams or art
images. These prenatal feelings were her ordeals or tasks. She did not
want to be fixed or encouraged; what she encountered emotionally was
essential material that was “making,” “stirring,” or “cooking” her into a
mother.
As she embraced the weekly ritual of attending to herself in our
sessions, the deadened parts of her psyche and body were enlivened
through meaningful investigations into somatic feelings, dreams,
affect, and spontaneous drawings. As she mourned her past
relationship with her own mother, her psyche softened and expanded
along with her body. She grew more aligned with the fetus and
congruent with her image of herself as a mother. Her distraught
clinical state may have been immediately assessed as prenatal
depression and anxiety that required medication, but for this woman,
there was much more to the panic than simple anxiety or nausea.
Instead, having a space to explore these unnamed experiences led
her to hold and tolerate her thoughts and feelings, (indeed, practicing
what she would eventually provide for her infant), where she had
previously tended to grasp onto a judgmental view point or collapse
emotionally and shut out the world. Her ability to “ride” and survive
her feelings while also calming her body and reassuring her fetus led
to a rich inner psychological journey and increased maternalconfidence. Ultimately this process laid the groundwork for what was
needed from her during the post-partum attachment process.
A woman brought this dream a few weeks prior to the Passage phase.
I am in a helicopter circling above a particular place, trying to
find a good place to land. The pilot seems uncertain, checking
out different places, maybe lost, but not out of control. I
remember that my cousin died in a helicopter accident. Then, I
am worried about running out of fuel and crashing and nobody
finding us. I feel helpless and I awake with a sense of urgency.
This dream illustrates the struggles of facing the unknown, being
caught out, feeling unprepared, suspended, and searching for a safe
landing while being haunted by the fear of death. The dream suggests
that this woman was looking for a place to give birth, a place to come
home to herself. Kortendieck-Rasche (2011) points out that this type of
dream is common when the woman is preparing for birth, or the
Passage phase; however, these feelings are often expressed throughout
the Attending phase with such images as drifting, being lost, feeling
suspended, or drowning, all of which constellate ambivalence,
Swan-Foster
221
uncertainty, feeling overwhelmed, and having a fear or terror of the
future and losing what is familiar. Figure 3 is a visual description of
this difficult state of confusion and uncertainty.
Figure 3.
For instance, another woman, in her second pregnancy, noted a
reoccurring prenatal dream of her daughter nearly drowning but being
saved in the last moment. This dream series suggested a young
creative feminine aspect of her psyche that was overwhelmed by the
emotional and physical experience of pregnancy that highlighted
feelings of confinement and restriction. When we discovered her
feelings of loss were associated with how her creative professional
identity had been unconsciously transferred into motherhood, these
dreams did not return.
Amidst this process, it is not unusual for a woman to come in
contact with her shadow through a critical inner voice that is ruleoriented, unforgiving, or dismissive, all of which limit the possibility to
build trust in her pregnant imagination. Barred from this exploration,
perhaps because of an interfering negative animus stemming from a
negative mother or father complex, “the capacity to assimilate shadow
qualities is lacking…there is often an inability to tolerate the psychic
pain of facing one’s own destructiveness and its effects on others”
(Culbert-Koehn, 1997, p. 4).
The destructive aspect of the power shadow can be constellated
when a pregnant woman is caught in a painful struggle of having to
make choices. The feminine aspect of her psyche may feel kidnapped,
dominated, betrayed, and even destroyed; as a result, the relational
aspect of her psyche is nowhere to be found. In this case, the woman
may psychologically separate from her feminine body and,
consequently, from a feminine initiation. Psychologically, this
foreclosure on her feminine authority by deferring to others may stir
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Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health
up feelings of betrayal and shame that ultimately silence her. The
woman may become almost captive to any medical procedure without
first asking questions to consciously discern what choice is best for her
and her unborn baby.
Certainly, if dissociative defenses are in place and a rigid ego
defends to keep these same structures active, the process of cultivating
a relationship with her fetus, with herself, or a therapist is not as easy
it sounds. Terrifying contents may remain unconscious for the woman
and even so firmly locked in the body that only a trusting therapeutic
relationship to hold the heat of the suffering can allow the destructive
shadow contents emerge. Until that point, a woman caught in this
struggle will inflict the pain on herself by rejecting and sealing off the
shadow material, and even leaving the therapeutic relationship.
While she remains “in charge” of the process with a “get through it
myself” attitude, she is isolated and only partially alive. This woman
may say, “I just have to get through this pregnancy and birth and then
everything will be okay.” A significant part of her psyche is “killed off”
by such a statement. Working with the contents of her destructive
shadow is critical to understand and transform the negative mother
complex. This requires a capacity for her to tolerate shame and guilt
while at the same time holding the possibility for repair and
transformation.
The second essential component during the Attending phase is to
work with internal opposites so as to understand the role of the
feminine/masculine Syzygy. The word “Syzygy” is rooted in Latin and
means “yoked” or paired and “in a straight line” (Merriam Webster,
1995, p. 1198). From a biological perspective, syzygy is described as “a
conjunction of two organisms without loss of identity” (Oxford English
Dictionary, 1971/1979, p. 3214), suggesting a psychological state of
feeling joined or connected but differentiated.
This definition also suggests the supreme pair of opposites, such as
the King and Queen or the anima and the animus. These poles
embrace the natural presence of the opposites in nature that can be
brought together, or yoked, to serve a greater purpose. Nature is filled
with opposites: dark/light, masculine/feminine, or sun/moon,
psychologically the pregnant women may encounter such additional
opposites
as
birth/death,
seen/unseen,
wandering/home,
contained/container, abandoned/related, and conquered/conqueror.
These last four pairs of opposites reflect the possible archetypal
patterns imbedded within pregnancy (Swan-Foster, 2010).
Lincoln (1991) referred to the “play of opposites” (p. 97) as a
particular kind of feminine initiation that is less definable than other
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223
types of initiation because it lacks a locus of action. Instead, there is a
dialectical complexity that is presented; the initiate becomes identified
with the synthesis of what she is enduring with the idea of
transcending the conflicts (Ibid). Psychologically, this may be
understood through Jung’s synthetic method and the role of the
transcendent function within the psyche that gives birth to a living
symbol.
Physical discomfort and emotional suffering during pregnancy
often contradicts the excitement and joy of becoming pregnant and the
plans to have a baby. While pregnant a woman may become
particularly aware of how her feminine attributes contrast the
masculine aspects of her psyche. In other words, her physical
condition stimulates an awareness of the play of the opposites within
her psyche. In the feminine/masculine syzygy process, the component
within her psyche that is lacking is brought into sharper focus; it may
improve her ability to have more courage and discernment (animus) or
it may enhance her ability to patiently nurture and soften to her life
(anima). This depends upon what she personally needs to stretch into
the syzygy.
As two oxen in harmony in the yoke, the internal psychic
feminine/masculine syzygy provides a way to harness the tension of
these opposites and have them work together. So as to enhance this
process, the woman may specifically draw on her pregnant
imagination to illuminate the tasks, ordeals, or sacrifices of her
feminine initiation. Since the syzygy emerges from the unconscious, or
imaginal space, the experience of the union may offer a purposive
image that makes way for the relationship with her baby. It is not
uncommon, nor surprising, that once she has reconnected with the
feminine initiation, a woman may dream of a powerful feminine image
that offers wisdom or support, suggesting the presence of the Great
Mother archetype.
But before this syzygy can occur, the shadow or “other” also needs
to come into relationship with its conscious opposite. This takes place
through a relational and imaginative process that yokes the conscious
with the unconscious. The other is most obviously experienced by the
pregnant woman through first the conception and then the fetus
because the unknown takes residency within the woman’s body.
Psychologically, this generative principle can have masculine or
feminine qualities depending upon the prenatal psyche. An important
task for the pregnant woman is to recognize her own bi-polar nature.
Syzygy is about her coming to terms with and finding value in her twosided nature as expressed by her physical pregnancy. The next other is
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Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health
the deepening relationship to the masculine aspect of her psyche or the
animus.
The role of the animus within the pregnant woman’s psyche is next
addressed for the purpose of amplifying the process of yoking the
conscious with the unconscious. The animus serves as a contra-sexual
aspect of her psyche that supports the development of her feminine
pregnant psyche. Viewed here as psychopomp, or traveler, between the
conscious and unconscious worlds, the animus is continuously
developing in the psyche of the woman, and may become visible and
meaningful for the first time during this major transition. Because of
the threshold nature of pregnancy, the animus can either hinder or
support this particular feminine initiation process. Through the
connection to the Self, the pregnant woman’s animus may offer the
psychic energy necessary to facilitate her pregnant imagination. The
animus is persistent, helping to load the imaginal work with psychic
energy and move her from the concrete nature of the physical
experience into the metaphoric and the symbolic.
Consequently, the mediating quality of the animus encourages her
individuation process by bringing vitality and integrity to her feminine
connection to the Self. Gaining an awareness of this animus energy
may be difficult for her to name without some analytic work, but she
often discovers it through shadow projections onto her partner, doctor,
father or other men in her life. She may also come across an experience
of the animus in dream images.
For instance, when a woman is overly directed by a negative
animus, her task is to expand her consciousness of the feminine
aspects in her psyche so as to accept the indwelling, softening, and
uncertainty that hold personal meaning. On the other hand, when a
pregnant woman is overly identified with the softening of her feminine
psyche and views her physical pregnancy as only a positive experience,
her ordeals challenge her to work more consciously with her animus,
honing her skills of discernment, assertiveness, differentiation, and
clarification. Her initiation task is to connect with another side of her
instinctual nature, completing tasks that she may not normally be
accustomed to doing and yet through the process she comes to
understand and integrate the life changing events. One woman
reported the following dream:
This gentle man about my age arrived carrying a pile of nicely
folded blankets. He said he was a chaplain. He was feeling sad
about a death. I did not feel worried in the dream and I trusted
him although I didn’t know him. I feel more worried in real life.
Swan-Foster
225
In an active imagination, the woman expanded her relationship
with her “chaplain man.” She drew the dream and had a “conversation”
with him about her pregnancy and impending childbirth. When she
said she felt as though she was rambling, I expressed curiosity about
the “wandering” energy that was arising from the unconscious and
encouraged further wandering and curiosity. The woman used the
dream to explore her ambivalence about becoming a mother because of
her fear of her baby dying during childbirth. This was a predominant
concern as two acquaintances had babies who died. Her dream ego was
“not worried,” but her conscious ego was often obsessed by the fear of
death, struggling to defend against the images or minimizing her fears
with humor, yet inside she felt confined by a psychological vault of
dark anxious thoughts.
When her anxiety reached a peak in her life, she sought out
therapy. She commented that her anxiety was just like her father’s and
was keeping her away from authentic feelings. This illustrates how
during pregnancy a mature and respectful psychological relationship
with the animus may emerge for the first time. While she explored
disavowed feelings behind her fear, the chaplain man became a living
symbol, an animus resource of calm support through daily routines
and finding spiritual order in her “messy life.” This purposive image
would bode well for her relationship with her baby and the chaotic
adjustment process of post-partum.
The third concept of the Attending phase is Simultaneity, which
describes a reflective and contemplative place of both being and
becoming. The word is derived from the word similar and refers to
things being similar or happening at the same time (Ayto, 1990, pg
478). The pregnant woman is a vivid example of how layered states of
awareness co-exist at the same time. The image of the Russian
stacking dolls comes to mind, all existing together, one within the
other, to form one doll with an outer shell, hiding inner multiple inner
states. Her ability to move fluidly between these psychological states
while recognizing that they co-exist without conflict opens her to an
expanded sense of imagination and a creative trust in both the being
and becoming of this transitional time. This layered psychological
experience was found in drawings (Figure 4, and 5) she created of
herself pregnant that include transparencies of the baby, her naked
body, her clothing, and then the space around her (Swan-Foster, Foster,
Dorsey, 2003).
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Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health
Figure 4.
Figure 5.
Typically pregnancies exist within a linear state of consciousness
with a beginning and an end. However, when a pregnant woman is
able to psychologically soften to her deeper feelings, then she is
engaged in the tasks of initiation through emotional and spiritual
indwelling that is enlivened and made valuable by the imaginal and
symbolic realms. She discovers a place within her that is inherently
both complex and quiet. She feels less emotionally desperate for those
around her to save her. The experience becomes nonlinear,
multilayered, and allows the physical and psychological aspects of her
existence to consciously co-exist in a dynamically inter-related way.
Along with integrating shadow material and recognizing the yoking
process of syzygy within her psyche, there is an opportunity for the
pregnant woman to recognize and tolerate the challenging complexity
of simultaneity as a source of vitality that is naturally fed by her
connection to the Self.
When the woman tolerates the tension between remaining
still…waiting and simultaneously stretching towards and making
room for other, the power of the initiation often becomes conscious. It
Swan-Foster
227
is in this quiet, still place that she may finally come to understand the
power of what she is encountering, and respect her own process of
discovery and inner wisdom as idiosyncratic and valuable. When
referring to initiation, Jung (1960/1972) said, “transformative
processes…have to do with the realization of a part of the personality
which has not yet come into existence but is still in the process of
becoming” (p.293, para 558). Indeed a pregnant woman may be aware
of a unique psychological state of becoming that grows within her and
emerges from her physical experiences of pregnancy.
The woman/fetus dyad is often viewed in psychotherapy, and
particularly psychoanalysis, as a physical or symbolic state of
enmeshment and fusion, a regression of the psyche, a time when the
pregnant woman is unconsciously identified with a fetus that is fully
dependent on the mother. Rothman (1989) said, “…it is not the fetus
that is denied; the fetus is increasingly seen and valued, while the
relationship with the woman in whom it resides is disvalued. And so
the fetus becomes a patient, a captive, an ‘unborn child,’ needing
protection—including protection from its mother” (p. 53). In other
words, the pregnant woman’s experience is overlooked. She may be a
faceless container in service of the fetus while carrying projections
from the collective.
The illusion and projection that the woman is fused with the fetus
is dispelled with the role of the placenta. The pregnant woman and her
fetus exist in a unique interconnected state of simultaneity, with the
placenta serving as the mediating organ. In an interview with the
philosopher Luce Irigaray, the French biologist Helen Rouch provided
support for the idea that the woman and fetus are separate (Irigaray,
1993). She defined pregnancy as a:
Successful transplant [since the] embryo is half-foreign to the
maternal organism….[B]ecause of [the paternal antigens] the
mother should activate her defense mechanisms to reject this
other to her self. The placenta, which is also this other, prevents
this mechanism from being activated. In a complex manner, it
will block or at the very least greatly minimize maternal activity
leading to rejection, but only locally, around the uterus (p. 40).
Rouch’s description of the biological process of the placenta
emphasizes how the pregnant initiate consents to having a foreign
object grow inside of her despite the inherent dangers of life and death.
It is the placenta that serves to mediate the adjustment process
between two separate beings. It serves as a symbol for the imaginal
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Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health
capacity within a transitional space where the two separate life forces
come together: “the mother and fetus are strangely organized and
respectful of the life of both” (p.38).
Rouch explained to Irigaray (1993) that the traditional language
such as “fusion” or “aggression” do not adequately reflect the biological
process of pregnancy, so it is no wonder that the pregnant woman may
feel strangely misunderstood while coming to understand herself as
both mother and not mother at once. Or, additional misunderstandings
may arise from her understanding that she and the fetus are separate
yet connected, particularly when she and the fetus are seen from afar
as one unit. More explicitly, Rouch suggested that because the fetus
creates the placenta from the combined parental genes, the organ
marks an already established and clear differentiation. In fact, the
mother has always known that the placenta was other and that by
letting the placenta know this, she enables the maternal organism to
accept it as other (Irigaray, pg 41).
The fact that the implantation of the ovum is both the woman’s
tissue and tissue from another person forces a biological tension of the
opposites within her body that exists within and extends beyond the
feminine/masculine towards the more layered opposites such as
inside/outside, container/contained, life/death and self/other. This
syzygy expressed through the physiological tension emphasizes once
again how the pregnant woman both contains and expresses nature’s
polarities as well as experiences a profound state of simultaneity that
transcends the physicality of her condition.
With Irigaray (1993), Rouch spoke further of confronting the
“blindness” that we may hold towards the pregnant woman because of
our personal and cultural projections:
it seems to me that the differentiation between the mother’s self
and the other of the child, and vice versa, is in place well before
it’s given meaning [emphasis added] in and by language (in
psychoanalysis), and the forms it takes don’t necessarily accord
with those our culture…relays: loss of paradise, traumatizing
expulsion or exclusion…I am not accusing these forms of the
imaginary of being wrong, but of being the only ways of
theorizing what exists before language. It makes one wonder
about this remarkable blindness to the processes of pregnancy
[emphasis added], and especially to the particular role of the
placenta”(p. 42).
The four archetypal patterns mentioned above provide an alternative
Swan-Foster
229
lens to old psychoanalytic concepts and language referring to
pregnancy such as fusion, expulsion, or exclusion. These words are
one-dimensional and lack the relational aspect of syzygy that is
inherent within pregnancy. In contrast, the archetypal patterns
(wandering/home, contained/container, abandoned/related and
conquered/conqueror) conjure images of the initiatory challenges that
the pregnant woman encounters and confronts within herself as well
as in the world. Through this process she may discover a new
expanded aspect of her psyche. Much like the Russian dolls, archetypal
themes and the relational interactions may be experienced
simultaneously during pregnancy. While this may appear chaotic at
first, engaging in psychological work can certainly help the pregnant
woman clarify, differentiate, and yoke these complex feelings.
Although the Self is a psychological concept, Jung (1953/1966)
considered it the center of the psyche, and that it “might…be called the
‘God within us’”(par. 399, p. 238) capable of holding the complexities of
emerging consciousness. When the pregnant woman embraces the
Self’s role in facilitating her pregnant initiation, then the ego has
surrendered to a conscious pregnancy and the woman undergoes a
powerful feminine initiation that transforms who she is as a woman.
Moreover, the relationship between the ego and the Self becomes
enriched through a discovery of personal meaning and unearthed
treasures.
An important aspect of the Attending phase is the underpinning of
the archetypal patterns. As the woman becomes more conscious of the
mother archetype during her pregnancy, each day of pregnancy can
feel emotionally and physically different, expanding her flexibility and
spontaneity in response to an emerging new pattern within her
psyche. What worked yesterday may not work today or tomorrow. And
what worked without a baby may not work with a baby. For instance,
her own need to create a home or “nest” for other may constellate a
wandering. The following woman poignantly spoke about her
disorientation when she was six months pregnant:
I am drifting…in a whole other world, unable to think about
things in a linear way, like I used to. I seem to sail around things
as if I am in a fog and yet eventually the fog clears and I discover
I have not lost my way. What I have needed to do has gotten done
what I have been looking for has been found. The drifting
actually has some kind of direction. It is not definable. If I
struggle against it I get anxious. (The drifting) is chaotic, but in
some funny way restful and fun too.
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Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health
This woman is discovering alternative ways of moving through life.
Sometimes such wandering includes a state of mourning (Savage,
1989) as she lets go of her past. The archetype of wandering is also
awakened in the Attending phase of pregnancy when she feels
removed from “regular time” and falls into lunar time, which contains
states of reverie and imagination. This non-ordinary state may be
expressed physically by nibbling throughout the day or waking up
periodically during the night. Her body moves slowly and is no longer
comfortable in certain chairs, particular clothing, or crowded
environments.
These details force a woman to adjust her relationship not only to
the expanding space within her, but also to the space around her. She
is not visibly going out to search for new space, as in the masculine
initiation, but rather she is adjusting, recreating, and adapting to the
spaces that were once familiar to her. In reality she is disconnected
from and unfamiliar with the world she once knew and moved freely
in; she now lives in a “thin place” (Wright, 2000) of the non-ordinary
realm of consciousness. Powerless to the teleological movement of the
physical and psychological initiation, the pregnant woman both
patiently waits and actively searches to find her new self so as to know
herself once again.
In contrast to wandering, the archetypal pattern of containment
may be felt by the pregnant initiate as an inward movement away
from the collective to the invisible lunar world of her psyche. Her
pregnancy may have come as a surprise, or it may justify her
introversion and for the first time she has a substantial concrete
reason of the pregnancy and fetus to reassess and possibly reject the
collective demands upon her, all of which seed her own growing sense
of feminine authority. The shadow side of the containment pattern is
the ambivalence with how the pregnancy suddenly means a loss of her
mobility and autonomy and increased responsibilities, what one
pregnant woman named as “forever a mother.” She may happily
recognize that new life requires a relationship with the dark lunar
world, but this realization also brings painful feelings of isolation and
loneliness that precede the birth of something bright and new.
The uncertainty of her changing life may constellate painful
archaic feelings in which the archetypal pattern of abandonment
emerges. The pregnant woman may suddenly realize that, while she
may have support during her pregnancy, she may also confront
feelings of aloneness and feeling abandoned to be pregnant on her
own. Jung noted the transcendent symbol that is discovered during the
darkest hour may resolve the painful tension and illuminate the value
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231
of abandonment in the creative process (Jung, 1959/1990, p. 167, para 285).
Feeling conquered by the physical and emotional aspects of
pregnancy is a common archetypal pattern that comes unbidden for
the woman. It can constellate feelings of being captured, kidnapped,
betrayed, disappointed, a fear of retaliation, distrust, and death.
Complicated struggles around choosing sides, the right side, may force
a pregnant woman to confront the double binds inherent within her
process such as fears of being kidnapped by her physical experience or
shuttled back and forth without power by those who are more
“knowledgeable” and carry authority with the possibility to rescue her
if something goes wrong. Decisions can often be very hard for a
pregnant woman, when facing the unknown. Those around her may
not appreciate her psychological dilemmas so she is conquered by their
demands and becomes kidnapped by her own inner complexes.
Finding a way out of the power complexes that are constellated
around the pregnancy and within her own psyche depends on the
presence of other archetypal aspects within her psyche to help shift
and relieve her of the pain and suffering. This does not always occur in
the first pregnancy and the feminine aspect of the psyche can be
“killed” only to resurface with another pregnancy or during a later life
transition.
Phase 3: Passage
With the onset of labor, the breaking of uterine waters or the loss
of the cervical plug, the Attending phase of pregnancy comes to an end.
The term Passage is used to describe the final phase of the initiation
process and is defined when the woman realizes her labor has started.
In this post-liminal stage, the laboring period offers her an opportunity
to gradually enter into a new life. The woman brings to consciousness
a new aspect of her feminine psyche through the laboring process. The
word passage suggests a hallway, a passageway, or a way to arrive at
a destination. Passage also suggests a movement through a space with
a tight squeeze. For the pregnant initiate a shift in psychic energy is
required by her to move into and through labor towards birth, which
is marked by her desire to push the baby out into the world. Before the
birth, her body may go through a variety of states during the Passage
phase: an absence of energy, a gradual building of progressing energy,
or an immediate onset of terrifying energy forcing its way through the
container of her body. She typically remarks how she was caught in an
archetypal possession without access to her ego, feeling the powerful
force of birth as a separate archetype. She may fear her own death or
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Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health
the baby’s death, without being able to verbalize her feeling states as
her body takes over.
A woman in the Passage phase is similar to a vessel moving
through the symbolic passage between Scylla and Charybdis where
some do not survive. Indeed during this stage both mother and child
are again faced with the fear of death as they are painfully pushed,
squeezed, forced, and carried along by the passing labor pains,
wondering when it might end, until the Passage gives way to the
actual birth when both mother and child are born into a new life.
Conclusion
Clearly one of the predominate archetypes that surfaces during
pregnancy is initiation. Whether or not the woman embraces such a
concept depends upon the woman’s psychological interest and
readiness to engage with her pregnant imagination while held in this
transitional state. Having an archetypal model as a backdrop to the
relational focus inherent during pregnancy reformulates how we
consider the woman’s feminine experience and recognizes that her
initiatory experience is an important aspect of her individuation, not
something that needs fixing. By understanding and clarifying the
Attending phase of her initiation, the pregnant woman has a greater
opportunity to engage with her inner psychological world and the
poignant archetypal themes that are naturally constellated by her
transitional state of transformation. Exploring her hopes and dreams,
along with the fears and challenges that come with any true initiation,
prepares her for a new role and the powerful attachment process.
The Attending stage, with its unique psychological softening,
makes room for insights into developmental issues that arise from the
mother and father complexes, and time to address some of her own
traumatic history related to previous childbirth issues. By responding
to the call of pregnancy as a feminine initiation, she acknowledges that
her journey is not simply driven by her ego and the outcome, but a
process of uncovering and integrating essential shadow material.
Importantly, pregnancy gives a woman time to explore her role and
her connection to the bi-polar mother archetype. In so doing, there is a
strengthening relationship between the ego and the Self; the presence
of the Self may take on new meaning for the woman, giving her the
sense that she is no longer alone on the journey. The pregnant woman
can be seen as held in a contained space between two trees, suggesting
the transitional or liminal state of initiation that is influenced by
nature and supported by the Self. This inner work with material and
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233
images from the woman’s unconscious creates room for clarification,
flexibility, endurance, spontaneity, and patience that seed and fertilize
her maternal philosophy. Importantly, it can be visually anchored into
place prior to the baby’s arrival. In addition, the inherent creativity
within the biological and psychological processes of the Attending
phase provides a stunning view into understanding the feminine
psyche from a fresh perspective. Her journey illustrates for us the
valuable role of the pregnant imagination, how it validates her liminal
state and brings balance to the more goal-oriented, practical, and
technological approach, which may overlook, dismiss, or devalue the
hidden experiences of the feminine experience for the pregnant
woman.
The timelessness of the various images that surface during the
pregnant woman’s initiation are honored and made sacred when she
attends to her pregnant imagination and allows the archetypal themes
of wandering/home, contained/container, abandoned/related and
conquered/conqueror to become more conscious. The tasks of her
pregnancy allow her to connect with the archetypal experience of
initiation while at the same time giving value and meaning to her
unique person journey.
Viewing pregnancy as a feminine initiation with specific tasks and
ordeals reminds us of the struggle for creative potential that is
available in each person’s psyche. It is the pregnant woman’s personal
initiation journey that gives us insight into how engaging with images
leads to the birth of new consciousness.
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Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health
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