Working with Infertility Patients through a Psychoanalytic Lens

Speakers: Golzar Naghshineh, MS, LP, CGP, and Nancy Kaufman, LCSW, LP

While addressing behavioral needs and surface level fears and anxieties is crucial in helping patients who struggle with infertility, it is also crucial that we help patients process their deeper unconscious (and often conflicting) feelings around treatment, failure, loss, inadequacy, and successful pregnancy. This presentation will address (i) the important role the unconscious plays in infertility patients’ mental health (and how the therapy needs to be a safe place for the patient to say everything without restraint); (ii) new theories that explore how infertility, Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) and loss impact the psyche of this specific population; (iii) the role transference and countertransference play in helping our patients explore all of their feelings around ART and how the therapist can be helped to tolerate those feelings. Case presentation will be used to illustrate seven psychoanalytic concepts in practice with ART patients.