Postpartum depression and attachment: Is anybody here?

Abstract

The paper presents a developmental and dynamic multitheoretical overview of many dimensions of attachment-related processes activated under the conditions of maternal depression. The clinical vignette (from the analytic practice of Eva D. Papiasvili) of reconstructive anaytic work with an adult patient illustrates the profound impact of maternal depression on precocious early differentiation between the attachment styles, of the depressed parent and the substitute caregiver, at the root of early “counterdependent” self-sufficiency. Through reconstructive interpretive work, first with enactments and then dreams, pertaining to not-remembered, represented, or symbolized events of earliest infancy, the patient is able to make a series of developmentally transformative symbolic leaps, restoring the capacity for intimacy, hope, trust, and pleasure. This breaks the intergenerational mother–daughter transmission of postpartum depression and related problematic attachment.

Key words:

• attachment styles
• intergenerational transmission of postpartum depression
• pre-representational and presymbolic processes
• developmentally transformative symbolic leap

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Eva D. Papiasvili

Authors

Eva D. Papiasvili, PhD, ABPP, is a is co-chair for North America (USA, Canada, Japan) of the International Psychoanalytical Association’s Encyclopedic dictionary of psychoanalysis, and senior clinical faculty and supervisor on the doctoral program of clinical psychology, Columbia University in New York. She is past executive director and dean of the Institute of the Postgraduate Psychoanalytic Society of New York, where she has been a training, teaching and supervising analyst. She is also a teaching and supervising analyst of the Object Relations Institute, New York.

Linda A. Mayers

Linda A. Mayers, PhD, is past director of training and a training and supervising analyst of the Institute of the Postgraduate Psychoanalytic Society (International Federation of Psychoanalytic Societies),adjunct associate professor at LaGuardia Community College, City University of New York, and former adjunct clinical professor at City University, Teachers College, Columbia University, and Yeshiva University. She is also a member of the editorial board of Journal of Infant, Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy and an editorial reader for the International Forum of Psychoanalysis.