Winnicottian Contributions to Understanding the Experiences of Motherhood in Women with Fibromyalgia

Abstract

This study aimed to understand the experiences of motherhood in women with fibromyalgia. This is a clinical-qualitative study, which had as participants two women selected from the sample of a broader research. Data were obtained in the context of two group interviews guided by the Drawing-Story with Theme Procedure and audio recorded. The corpus of this study was constituted by the transcription of the recordings. Inductive thematic analysis was used as a method of organizing the corpus, and the discussion of the results was undertaken based on psychoanalytic formulations taken from the framework of Donald Woods Winnicott’s theory of emotional development. It was found that, for the participants, being a mother consists of fulfilling certain roles in order to respond to the child’s needs as a whole, but this is often not possible due to the physical limitations caused by fibromyalgia. It was also found that, for the participants, the experiences of motherhood, mainly due to fibromyalgia, are also permeated by an intense desire to receive care, in particular through an instrumental support that, however, is not usually offered to them. Winnicottian perspectives on maternal responsibility and health, among others, were used to discuss these results.