Du désir à l'acte: Les enfants de la Procréation Médicalement Assistée (PMA)

Abstract

New advances in medically assisted reproduction procedures have resulted in the births of physically healthy children. A review of the literature shows that these children also demonstrate healthy cognitive and emotional development. Some studies indicate that they also experience a positive and warm relationship with their parents. On the other hand, in clinical practice, we often see children conceived by medicallyassisted reproduction presenting with psychological disorders. From a psychodynamic perspective, the child's pathology could be related to the trauma of infertility and the psychological burden of the IVF procedure upon the parents, the maintenance or not of secrecy concerning the nature of me child's conception, the intensity of parental desire to have children and the excessive investment of the child as a rare and valuable object. In such cases, we might hypothesise that the presence of the child has not been able to fulfill the restorative role as regards parental trauma. In each case, the answer is a strictly individual one and may be related to the parents' personality, the relationship they had with their own parents or to conflicts and unmet needs stemming from their childhood. All the above parameters must be taken into account in order to better understand, in a psychodynamic perspective, the disorders of children born after medically assisted reproduction.