Abstract:
Infertility, to those who are affected by it, is much more than whether one manages (or not) to have a child: it can be a traumatizing experience. Based on a clinical case study that involved one-to-one psychotherapy sessions and semi-structured interviews with six involuntarily childless women living in Norway, this article develops the argument that there is a need to treat infertility as trauma, both conceptually and from the perspective of therapeutic practice. The analysis contributes to our understanding of trauma as a disruptive event that erodes a person\'s moral agency. It does so by outlining conceptual and therapeutic tools that illuminate what happens in the psyche as a result of the trauma: they help explaining why the moral agency of different individuals is damaged to different extents, and how therapy can repair it. In relation to the issue of involuntary childlessness, the analysis shows where infertility fits within one\'s traumabiography-a map of the way adverse experiences over the life-course have affected one\'s psyche and behavior-both as traumatizing in itself and connected to previous traumas. This understanding enables more effective therapeutic support and better care for many individuals whose long-term suffering would otherwise remain unacknowledged and untreated.
摘要:
不孕症,对于那些受它影响的人,远不止一个人是否设法(或没有)生孩子:这可能是一次创伤经历。根据一项临床案例研究,该研究涉及一对一的心理治疗课程和对居住在挪威的六名非自愿无子女妇女的半结构化访谈,这篇文章提出了一种观点,即有必要将不孕症视为创伤,无论是从概念上还是从治疗实践的角度来看。分析有助于我们理解创伤作为一个破坏性事件,侵蚀一个人的道德机构。它通过概述概念和治疗工具来阐明由于创伤而在心理中发生的事情:它们有助于解释为什么不同个体的道德机构受到不同程度的损害,以及治疗如何修复它。关于非自愿无子女问题,分析显示了不孕症在一个人的创伤分析中的位置——一张关于一生中不良经历影响一个人心理和行为的地图——既是创伤本身,也是与以前的创伤有关。这种理解能够为许多个体提供更有效的治疗支持和更好的护理,否则这些个体的长期痛苦将保持未得到确认和治疗。