Ansie Gous

The Ghosts in the Nursery: the Maternal Representations of a Woman Who Killed Her Baby Ansie Gous

Pregnancy is an important phase in a woman¿s life. Parent-infant psychotherapies are a rapidly growing field of infant mental health as many psychological problems have their roots in infancy. Neglect, trauma and abuse and prolonged maternal depression can cause a child to develop a range of problems. The work of Winnicott (1965a) and Bion (1988) put the mother¿s fantasy life about her infant as one of the major building blocks of the infant¿s construction of a sense of identity (Stern, 1995). Fraiberg (Fraiberg, Adelson & Shapiro, 1980) with her ¿ghosts in the nursery¿ revolutionised this perception by placing the maternal representation at the core of the parent-infant clinical situation (Stern, 1995). This book gives an in-depth understanding of the representations of a depressed woman who killed her baby. The concept of maternal representations is the only approach that opens the possibility to start working at the earliest point of prevention, because intervention can start during pregnancy.