THE PHENOMENON OF LOVE IN INFERTILITY TREATMENT
THE PHENOMENON OF LOVE IN INFERTILITY TREATMENT
Margarita Sovkova
PhD in Psychology, University Paris 7, Head of the Community of Helping Practitioners "Phoenix",
Russia, Saint-Petersburg
ФЕНОМЕН ЛЮБВИ В ЛЕЧЕНИИ БЕСПЛОДИЯ
ABSTRACT
Purpose: The article deals with the phenomenon of love as a fundamental process involved in the human reproduction cycle.
Method: Observation and analysis of numerous cases, as well as the study of research papers in the field of biomedicine, psychoanalysis and reproductive psychology.
Outcome: Assuming that the outcome of this article can be a description of the process of separation of childbearing and love experiences, then to some extent this result has been achieved.
Conclusions: Women and men struggle with infertility by making some attempts that exclude love experiences. Whereas it is precisely the return to the sarcal, to the divine enjoyment of others through the experiences of love, that can shift the focus from the survival of the individual to the creation of a new life.
Love as a spiritual phenomenon, as a manifestation of the divine, the sacred in man - this is what allows the process of reproduction, without leaving the subject, to create a new life.
Keywords: infertility, reproduction, biomedicine, fertility, love, attraction, desire, pleasure, childbearing.
Humanity is living in a unique time when the breakthrough in biomedical engineering and technology allows science fiction to become our everyday life in the coming years.
On November 26, 2021, a publication was published in the Journal of Biomedical Engineering. It describes in detail the experiment of carrying mouse embryos into an artificial womb under the supervision of artificial intelligence with the functions of a nanny. Scientists from the Suzhou Institute of Biomedical Engineering and Technology report that such an artificial womb, in their opinion, will help to understand the causes of birth defects and serious problems with human reproductive health.
Also on June 10, 2021, the research results of the Shanghai Naval Medical University were published. Scientists conducted an experimental study of the possibilities of successful pregnancy, bearing and birth of healthy offspring in male rats. “Male pregnancy is a unique phenomenon among syngnathids that refers to the gestation of embryos by males. However, it remains unclear whether male mammals are able to conceive and maintain pregnancy. We constructed a rat model of male pregnancy using a four-step strategy: first, a pair of heterosexual parabiotics was created by surgically connecting a castrated male rat and a female rat. Uterus transplantation (UTx) was then performed on the male parabiont after 8 weeks. After recovery, the embryos at the blastocyst stage were transplanted into the grafted male parabiont uterus and the native female parabiont uterus. The caesarean section was performed on embryonic day (ED) 21.5. The modeling success was only 3.68%, but 10 cubs were still obtained from parabiont males and developed. Our experiment demonstrates the possibility of normal embryonic development in male mammals and could have a profound impact on reproductive biology.”
On March 3, 2018, another controversial study was published in the scientific journal Molecular Human Reproduction. In the laboratory, scientists have grown human eggs to a mature state. These findings could lead to new reproductive health treatments, the scientists say. However, it is not clear yet what are the differences between these "laboratory" eggs and those that grow in the body. And the main question is whether they can give healthy offspring when fertilized by spermatozoa. All these examples show the highest level reached by mankind in search of ways to overcome infertility and other reproductive difficulties. But it will be much more productive to turn to the search for the root causes of infertility or reproductive disorders. Exploring the origins of the problem, it is possible to understand what influences the formation of reproductive disorders.
Humanity is infatuated with fantasies of omnipotent control over natural childbearing through contraception on the one hand and assisted reproductive medicine techniques on the other. The gap between concepts such as sex and childbearing is widening more and more. And now, on the horizon, one can see the day when not only sex, but also the person himself will not be needed for conception, bearing and giving birth to a child. What place is there for love in this enchanting prospect of the future of human reproduction? Let's turn to psychoanalysis and try to discover what gives rise to love in a person. A love that eventually takes on real forms through the birth of a child.
Lacan believed that true love is "to give to those who did not ask for what we do not have." Such love is beyond the material. In the Ethics of Psychoanalysis seminar, Lacan sees the modern world as a space where the symbolic dies out. A world where love itself dies. A world in which the very relation of the subject to desire seems to go unnoticed. But it is precisely the attitude of a person to love experiences that reveals the connection of the subject with desire itself. The virtues of the object of attraction seem to explain to us the full power of love experiences, shifting our attention from love itself.
In Seminar X of Lacan's series of seminars, we encounter the idea that “only love allows pleasure to descend to desire”. This idea is revealed in the following - instead of enjoying your body alone, you go through the desire for the body of the Other; this desire is experienced through love, that is, the encounter with lack, through the experience of lack. Monique Bydlowski, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, researcher on mental issues related to motherhood and fertility, author of articles and books, including “The Psychic Transparency of Pregnancy” (Freud's Studies, 32, 1991), “Life Debt” (1997) ) and “I Dream of a Child” (2000), offers a very interesting perspective on infertility work in his book "Children of Desire”.
Monique Bydlowski focuses on man's fantasies of omnipotent control over natural childbearing with contraception on the one hand and assisted reproductive medicine techniques on the other. The author, recalling the demographic decline around the world, analyzes the situation in Western countries, where the work and education of women have delayed the average age of first birth after 30 years. Here it is important to clarify that it is after 30 years that a natural decline in reproductive function begins in both men and women. As a result, often impatient but not necessarily infertile couples in their 30s fill the doctors' offices of fertility clinics in hopes of hastening childbearing. “Such mastery would reduce the child to the level of objects that the material world has to offer,” writes Monique Bydlowski, warning against medical activism and fantasies about the possibility of controlling reproductive processes.
The separation of the process of childbearing and sexual desire draws our attention to an attempt to realize the biblical story of the virgin birth.
The author claims that the desire or refusal of children, manifested in a conscious dialogue, is often only the visible face of an unconscious counter-will that counteracts the declared desire. This refers to the intrapsychic attraction/defence conflict, to the narcissistic aspect of the desire to have a child. Thus, we observe in these women, who "can only imagine a child identical to their own image, not changed by the radical nature of meeting with another," the desire for complete external and internal conformity to themselves. In a more general sense, it refers to the struggle in which, both on an individual basis and on a collective scale of the reproduction of species, the life and death instincts are involved. The proof of this is the few voluntary abortions, paradoxically implemented with successful artificial insemination.
In this sense, infertility should be considered not only as a source of suffering, but also as a survival strategy, because thanks to it, life continues. However, here we are faced with the substitution of true attraction to love experiences with suffering in order to survive.
One of the points of the revolutionary manifesto of the contemporary French philosopher Alain Badiou says: "Love should be reinvented, but for starters, just be protected." An event close to the truth is colored by affect. In love, this is happiness, as evidence of the subject's involvement with the process of truth, in which all the ability to create, to sublimate, is manifested. And if man is the crown of creation, then is the love the manifested truth? So, is it love that serves as the experience that creates a person, giving birth to him in the womb? Can we then talk about reproductive medicine, which is currently passionate about the search for minimizing human participation in the very process of childbearing, as a direction in the treatment of infertility?
After all, it is customary to consider women and men, that is, people, to be barren. Outside the subject, apart from a woman or a man, infertility as a reproductive disorder does not exist.
References:
- Bydlowski Monique. Children of desire. Paris: Odile Jacob, 2008. 43 p.
- Bydlowski Monique. Become a mother. Paris: Odile Jacob, 2020. 60 p.
- Lacan Jacques. Ethics of Psychoanalysis. Seminars, Book 7. Moscow: Gnosis. Logos. 2006.
- Lacan Jacques. Anxiety. Seminar, Book 10. Moscow: Gnosis. 2019.