Most women who had an abortion were well aware of the methods of contraception. Jungian analyst Eva Pattis Zoya believes that in some cases an unwanted pregnancy is not so undesirable.
Jungian analyst Eva Pattis Zoya sees the deep meaning of abortion in that this experience reveals her true self in a woman.
Eva Pattis Zoja, clinical psychologist, lecturer at the Jung Institute (Switzerland).
The reasons why women choose not to have a child are well known and usually have a social and emotional side to them. However, it is less well known that abortion is chosen by women who are well aware of the means of contraception. This partly suggests that along with the reasons, there is a goal that a woman (often unconsciously) is trying to achieve. Abortion may mean that a young woman wants to make sure that she is able to get pregnant.
Why is this need so strong that a strict test of practice is needed, but the presence of menstruation and the conclusion of a gynecologist are not enough? I think because in modern civilized society there are no initiation rites for young women that existed in ancient and medieval traditions. On a rational level, a woman knows that she is fertile. But she needs a bodily, physiological experience. As a result of pregnancy and abortion, the woman receives the final answer: «I can become pregnant and give birth.»
- Sex education in the family and school
Young women often become pregnant before graduating and defending their diploma, when they are faced with a sharp choice — to keep the pregnancy and become a mother, or to have an abortion and pursue a career. By resorting to abortion, they, accordingly, choose a job and a creative path. At least at one stage of your life.
Finally, abortion is an opportunity to experience the most dramatic situation in order to change. Many need to subject themselves to a painful test in order to feel like adults. It is unlikely that there is a stronger means of «getting out of childhood» than to kill the child in oneself. Many of the women I’ve worked with have said that as a result, they said goodbye to the childish notion that they would have a new doll. Often this is the only way to abandon this infantile fantasy. But most importantly, they admitted that abortion influenced their worldview and attitude to the world: those components of their identity that had previously been hidden came to the fore.
Abortion, being an initiation, changes life and personality.
So why today, when childbirth is safe enough, contraceptives are available, and mothers do not interrupt their careers even after the birth of several children, abortions are still quite frequent? Because a modern woman needs at least two initiations. Full initiation — childbirth — makes a woman a mother, and abortion as a partial initiation allows her to enter a new life, to be herself. After all, it is very scary — to reject the values uXNUMXbuXNUMXbthat have been inherent in society since time immemorial, to express contempt for all mothers with your act. Those who decide to have an abortion are still condemned today, they are burdened by a sense of guilt. And yet, for the first time in her life, a woman says “yes” to herself.