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3. Unseen and Unspoken: The Enigma of Pregnancy Denial

Sometimes, pregnancy exists neither in the body nor the mind. Pregnancy denial reveals a rupture in the symbolic order, where a child emerges beyond symbolic recognition. This article explores the clinical and psychoanalytic mystery of a form of motherhood that unfolds in silence.

Some births occur without anticipation, as if the child arrived out of time. Pregnancy denial is neither deception nor performance. It is a psychic reality that takes shape without words, a pregnancy the body conceals and the mind excludes. This clinical enigma raises profound questions about motherhood, the female body, generational transmission and desire. Psychoanalysis, perhaps more than any other discipline, has attempted to decipher its obscure logic, nestled somewhere between repression, foreclosure and the silence passed down through family lines.

Here are a few public testimonies that illustrate the paradoxical nature of this phenomenon, women whose bodies rendered invisible what the psyche could not take in.

Céline, 32: “I wasn’t pregnant, not until the moment I gave birth.”

Laurence, 29: “I would wake up at night with cramps, but I thought it was just stress. When I saw the baby, I said to myself, this can’t be real. He wasn’t planned. He didn’t exist for me.”

Leila, 24: “I gave birth alone, in my bathroom. I thought I had eaten something bad. I screamed when I saw the baby.”

Camille, 27: “No one noticed. Not my husband, not my mother, not even me. I was still wearing skinny jeans in the eighth month.”

In pregnancy denial, a woman carries a child without being conscious of it. Her belly does not visibly grow, or barely so, periods continue or are replaced by misleading monthly bleeding, weight remains stable and typical physical signs of pregnancy (fatigue, pain, fetal movements) are absent or misinterpreted. Sometimes, even pregnancy tests come back false negative. These women continue their daily lives without sensing any change. Some only discover their condition at the hospital, amid the urgency of labor they mistake for intestinal pain or a sudden crisis. They are neither women “in denial” in the usual sense, nor mentally unbalanced. They are potential mothers whose bodies obey a silent psychological command not to know. Society does not see them. Their loved ones do not notice either. And these women experience pregnancy without any symbolic grounding. This invisibility disrupts reality, blurs familiar markers and erases the boundaries of existence.

Pregnancy denial challenges the role of the body within subjectivity. In psychoanalysis, as we understand, a symptom is not merely a medical anomaly. It is a message from the unconscious, a bodily enactment of unbearable repression.

In denial, it is not just the pregnancy that is silenced, as the symbolic meaning of pregnancy fails to register. Psychically, the pregnancy does not occur. The child is present but lacks any psychic representation. It is neither thought of, anticipated nor fantasized. The child exists literally outside the frame.

S. Freud, J. Lacan and F. Dolto each addressed these extreme forms of foreclosure in their own way. This refers to the moment when a fundamental meaning is rejected from the psyche to the point that it never existed. Pregnancy denial corresponds to this mechanism. It is not a classic repression where the idea remains unconsciously present. Instead, it is a black hole in symbolization, a complete lack of access to the meaning of motherhood.

It is important to highlight a key distinction psychoanalysis makes between femininity and the feminine.

According to Lacan, femininity refers to the outward expressions, social roles and traits constructed around the idea of being a woman. It relates to appearance, what is visible and the performance of a culturally accepted feminine ideal. In this sense, one “plays” the role of a woman.

The feminine, however, refers to a deeper, more complex subjective position. Lacan describes it as the “not-all.” It involves what cannot be fully grasped or contained within language. The feminine is an internal experience that escapes norms, exceeds traditional symbolic orders and reflects a different dynamic of desire and lack.

In cases of pregnancy denial, women who appear very “feminine,” attractive and aligned with societal expectations can still be disconnected from their own position as female subjects. They embody the appearance, but the feminine—as the realm of desire, connection and motherhood—is psychically inaccessible. As a result, the pregnancy finds no space to be acknowledged.

For some, denial is linked to traumatic family histories such as absent, toxic or rejecting mothers, experiences of sexual abuse or transgenerational silence around the body and sexuality. Becoming a mother can reopen old wounds, pain or unresolved burdens. The mind’s way of coping is often a split: the pregnant woman and the non-pregnant woman coexist but do not intersect.

There is also a more insidious symbolic violence: in very traditional environments, pregnancy outside of marriage is seen as a fault, a risk of social exclusion. For others, it marks the end of a life of study, freedom and beauty. Caught between the ideal self and the reality of the body, the psyche chooses to disconnect.

The French TV movie L’Enfant que je n’attendais pas, directed by Bruno Garcia and broadcast in 2019, provides a compelling example. Johanna symbolizes a woman leading a comfortable, uneventful life. Even though she is already the mother of a seven-year-old daughter, she is suddenly confronted with an unexpected void—an impossibility—of becoming a mother without being aware of it. The film shows that motherhood is not just a biological condition but a subjective position to be claimed—a space where the feminine and desire dwell, beyond the mere appearance of femininity.

Johanna is 37. She appears to be an active, fulfilled woman and mother. One night, following a sudden and intense physical episode, she collapses and loses consciousness. When she wakes up, she discovers a newborn, as if emerging from a dream, and insists she had no idea she was pregnant. In a state of complete shock, she abandons the infant and faints. The baby is later found alive and taken into care.

An investigation is launched, and Johanna is charged with attempted infanticide. Medical evaluations and witness interviews are carried out, leading to the hypothesis of pregnancy denial. Johanna strongly denies having any knowledge of her condition, and both her husband and close relatives confirm they noticed no signs of pregnancy. Confronted with the justice system, social hostility and rejection from her family, she fights to prove—with the help of a lawyer and an association that supports women in denial—that she did not consciously abandon her child but was entirely unaware of the pregnancy.

For Johanna, the physical symptoms she experienced such as pain, fatigue and cramps were interpreted as unrelated pathological signals. Her body was speaking, but the psyche refused to listen. This resulted in a dissociation between the physical body and the mind. One produced the child, the other rejected it.

Her denial can be understood as a defense against internal rupture. The pregnancy threatens her emotional and psychological equilibrium, especially in a context where the deep desire for motherhood was never consciously activated. Johanna, confident in her outward femininity, is confronted with the feminine as a subjective position, a space her psyche may never have been able to inhabit.

For psychoanalysis, pregnancy denial is not a pathology. It is seen as a call from the infantile, from repressed desire, from a feminine experience that is wounded or impossible to access. A call that only deep, respectful, analytic listening can perceive.

Because what cannot be said, what cannot be thought, what lacks a name will always find a way to manifest through the body.