A Cell Is Not Just a Cell

ABSTRACT

Two brief case reports are utilized to illustrate phenomena that arise as women seek known individuals to donate sperm cells for the purposes of assisted reproductive technology. Intrapsychic and interpersonal dynamics arise and, at times, collide. Close scrutiny reveals a number of fantasies on the part of all participants: those seeking a donor, potential donors, and the parents of women seeking a donor. These very human forces play out in the context of highly controlled biomedical procedures. I caution that human beings bring the depths of their very human minds to these procedures, and infuse cells with meaning far beyond the technical procedures involved in ART.

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R. Dennis Shelby

R. Dennis Shelby, MSW, Ph.D., is on the faculty of the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis and Professor Emeritus at the Institute for Clinical Social Work. His areas of research and clinical interests include the development of psychoanalytic theory and the subsequent impact on the GLBTQ people, long term consequences of HIV infection, war-related trauma and portrayals of dream interpretation and sexuality in 17th-century Ottoman literature.