Tamara Landau

Foreword by Professor François Olivennes

Tamara Landau’s book is the result of a psychoanalytic therapist’s long experience working with women. Her main interest revolves around the periods of pregnancy and childbirth.
The role of early childhood is well established in the adult’s development. However, the originality of the perspective elaborated by Tamara Landau lies in the importance she gives to pregnancy, a period of intense emotional upheaval.

The description of such a peculiar timespan, which she describes as “a revolution of the mind as well as the body”, focuses on the mother’s ambiguities, her emotions and anxieties.
For Tamara Landau, the impact of the turmoil caused by pregnancy on the mother’s future life is absolutely crucial, yet many tend to underestimate it. And the importance of the mother’s experience in the relationship she will have one day with her child can also lead us to imagine its potential impact on the future life of the child itself.

The variety of the feelings perceived by the mother, as contradictory as anguish of death and life drives, shows how much the experience of pregnancy can be different from one woman to another, and probably from one pregnancy to another in the same woman.

Tamara Landau insists on the nature of the relationship of the mother-to-be with the fetus in utero. She fully analyzes the determinism of these relationships and the potential consequences of possible disorders that may arise.

Besides its innovative and didactic nature, this book broadens our views through the very structure of its approach, separating the analysis of phenomena observed at the time of the first, second and third trimesters of pregnancy.

This book will clearly be useful to pregnant women wishing to have a fuller understanding of their experience but also to carers, whoever they are, in search of keys to surprising behavior or phenomena.

It could also help future pregnant women anticipate a number of thoughts that sometimes frighten them, even though they are so widely shared.
In a word, this is a work of great interest.

Professor François Olivennes
Obstetrician Gynecologist, Specialist in in vitro fertilization and reproductive medicine, Former Head of reproductive medicine unit at Cochin Hospital (Paris).