“Birth is the prototype of freedom”

Psychologies: How do we get the desire to have children?

Elena Zhalyunene: Elena Zhalyunene: For a woman, it is quite natural, although it has many facets. For some, this is the embodiment of love, something that unites two, for someone – the need to have support or the desire to fill the inner emptiness. For all people, children are the realization of the fantasy of immortality, the continuation of life through generations. In addition, this may be the embodiment of the main childhood dream, because of which little girls love to play with dolls so much: to become like a mother, to have children like a mother. But we also have unconscious fantasies. Pregnancy is a time when a woman comes into close contact with them: there is someone inside her whom she knows nothing about. As a rule, the expectant mother returns to her childhood state, and she needs support. First of all, a female figure, as we regress to our memories of life and communication with our mother. And during pregnancy, it is especially important for us that in the past we had a fairly good relationship with our mother.

What if they were different?

E. J .: E. J .: A woman who has not experienced separation from her mother is still connected to her, overwhelmed by her, hates her, most likely will not have children: there is simply no place for them. And the desire to take revenge on your mother can manifest itself in unwillingness to be like her – that is, to give birth. Such women sometimes refuse contraception in order to check: “Am I infertile?”, And when pregnancy occurs, they rejoice at their fullness. But all their thoughts are not about the child, but about themselves. Then they often have an abortion, finding many reasons for it: lack of money, housing conditions … This has nothing to do with reality – it has to do with narcissism. The same, oddly enough, can be said about some mothers of many children who give birth to five, eight children, without seriously thinking about what they can give them. The modern glamorous, narcissistic message is also to have many children. Children become things or jewels: a large number of them certainly turn into an obligatory attribute of well-being. Although, of course, there are wonderful mothers, including those with many children, who know that all their children are different and they are not their continuation, the embodiment of their omnipotence.

How does a narcissistic mother behave?

E. J .: E. J .: She takes care of the physical health of her child, can give him to different circles and sections, dress beautifully – but she knows nothing about his inner world and his needs. Who he is, what he is and what he wants – this interests her the least. She herself knows everything for him, because she perceives him as an extension of herself.

Some women say they don’t want to have children because they don’t have time: career, friends, entertainment…

E. J .: E. J .: In general, if partners love each other, they in any case create something third. This can be embodied either in their common child, or in an adopted one, or in some of their common project … French psychoanalysts say that a person is always either one or three. But this “one” person seems to me to be zero – he does not feel joy, pleasure from life. And even the most avid feminists want to have children at certain points in their lives. If my clients tell me: “I’m selfish, I don’t even think about children …” – I ask: “Why do you consider yourself selfish? The greatest selfishness in the world is having children, because that is the greatest pleasure that can be.” It’s hard to believe those who say they don’t want to have children. Because the female essence is motherhood. Women choose a career and later suffer because of their loneliness. But it is also difficult to believe those who say that they do not want a child, but at the same time become pregnant: if this happened, then the woman wanted this, no matter what she said. Children are born only from desire; no desire – there will be no child. And pregnancy and the desire to have a child are largely related to how successful the female identity is, which primarily depends on the woman’s relationship with her mother and father.

To what extent does a woman’s desire to have children depend on her own father?

E. J .: E. J .: A good father is one who at least once in his life invited his daughter to dance and told her that she was dancing like a princess. The ritual, when a father leads his daughter to the altar, is the dream come true of every girl experiencing an oedipal complex – to marry her father. And it is from her father that she expects support for her femininity. And when her father dances with her, he tells her that she is a princess and someday she will become a queen, and she will have her own family, her children … These are the words that every father should say to his daughter. But just to say, in no case should you allow yourself incestuous reactions, which can manifest themselves in hints, gestures, manner of dressing with a child, a way of communicating with him. Otherwise, the unconscious childhood fantasy of a child from the father will persist and may prevent pregnancy.

Why can a man not want a child?

E. J .: E. J .: A man wants a woman first. And if he wants this woman, he wants to have children from her. But men, just like women, dream of immortality, and narcissistic men, just like narcissistic women, want to see an extension of themselves in a child. In the fact that he does not want children, I see, in particular, a failed male identification with his father or grandfather.

And the woman?

E. J .: E. J .: Due to some unfinished work of grief, unresolved sadness for one of the lost loved ones. This keeps her in constant melancholy. Her body, her unconscious does not give her the opportunity to give this world someone else, if she does not feel herself in the world at all. Depression triggers the mechanism of infertility. In addition, pregnancy causes a lot of ambivalent feelings, which is why women hesitate to get pregnant. The writer Boris Vian said through the mouth of one of his heroines: “I adore my son so much that I think only that he can meet the worst in this world.” In the same way, a woman treats herself ambivalently – she does not love herself, because she was not loved. But such a woman has a chance to relive her childhood in a relationship with her child and, thanks to him, get out of depression: because children do not take anything, they only give. Psychoanalyst and philosopher Julia Kristeva says that freedom is not destruction or crime, but the creation of something new. Only a free person can create something new. And a free woman, a real egoist, allows herself to have as many children as she can raise, knowing perfectly well that these are different, new, perhaps completely different people. The birth of a child is the prototype of any freedom.