“INFERTILITY AS TRAUMA: UNDERSTANDING THE LIVED EXPERIENCE OF INVOLUNTARY CHILDLESSNESS”

by Cristina Archetti ; published in Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11013-024-09871-7

«IoPT theory also helps explaining what happens in the psyche that leads, first, to a ‘moral breakdown’ (Zigon, 2007)—i.e., what trauma translates into in the practice of everyday life—and, later, to moral agency repair through therapy.

A psychotrauma arises from a situation one is unable to deal with through the mental and physical capacities one has at any given time (Menakem, 2017; Ruppert & Banzhaf, 2018, p. 24). It is an overwhelming experience we might undergo as a result of something that happens to us—an accident, a loss—but also something that did not happen—a parent who did not take care of our basic needs or the dream of having a child remaining unfulfilled, for instance. If we are not able to respond to the overwhelming circumstances by removing ourselves from the situation—flight—or directly addressing the cause of the threat—fight—in order to survive we either freeze or submit (fawn) (Thorsheim, 2022). A part of our psyche, in practice, splits off and gets “buried” into our unconscious, where it will continue to live without us either realizing it is there and/or being able to reach it.»