Understanding Infanticide

Source: The National Gallery UK

Can psychoanalytic thinking help us to make sense of the crime of infanticide ,which seems unthinkable? It is an act that goes against all that we hold dear in terms of the idea of motherhood and the innocence of babies. What could drive an ordinary young woman, with no criminal history, to kill her own baby? As a forensic psychotherapist, working for many years with women who have inflicted fatal violence on others, including their children, I have had to enter the realm of what is, to many, an unthinkable state of mind, in which the only solution to deep despair or rage is to attack another, or oneself.

For an adolescent who has become pregnant accidentally, or whose family would not approve of her having sex, the prospect of childbirth may be horrifying, to the extent that she cannot even acknowledge the fact of the pregnancy even to herself. Hysterical denial of pregnancy is more common that would be assumed, and results in situations in which termination is no longer possible and a mother might give birth alone, only learning that she is pregnant when her labour begins. Killing a baby within its first 24 hours of life is termed neonaticide; within the first year of life, infanticide; and in childhood, filicide. An unthinkable crime to many, it is essential to understand its causes, the social and psychological factors which give rise to it, and how we, as a society, can prevent it. A recent study reveals that mothers who committed committed neonaticide, infanticide, or filicide were characterised by poverty, abusive relationships, and poor family and social support, but doesn’t allude to the unconscious fears and phantasies that may underlie the killings (Milia and Noonan, 2022).

Aggression exists in even ‘ordinary mothers’ whose unthinkable and unspeakable thoughts and feelings towards infants are hard for society to accept. Such feelings are far more common than imagined, as anthropologist Katherine Mason shows in her research into mothers’ intrusive thoughts. Even for those who do not go on to harm their babies, the intensity and frequency of these violent thoughts reveals how maternal aggression is often suppressed, only to re-surface as ‘alien’ thoughts, intruding from without. (Mason, 2022)

As Estela Welldon first revealed, maternal violence is a reality, although this idea is fiercely resisted in the public imagination. For a woman with a history of narcissistic or neglectful parenting, suddenly asked to care for a tiny creature with unknown needs and unmet desires, childbirth can be devastating. The infant may seem unfathomable and impossible to satiate—a persecutor, its cries and frustration are proof to the mother that she is a failure, as she is unable to soothe or satisfy this infant. Far from the idealized image of ‘Madonna and Child’ the new baby can place intolerable pressures on a mother, and this new coupling is far from idyllic. To acknowledge this is to invite shame and disapproval.

For many women, pregnancy is a time of hope that includes a projection of unfulfilled longings invested in their unborn baby, who is imagined to be a healing force who will offer ultimate satisfaction, as well as representing a triumph of the procreative power of the mother—and evidence of her goodness. Their fantasy is that the baby will offer the experience of being loved, and nurtured; the birth of an actual baby can be a terrible shock, shattering these fantasies. A pregnant woman deprived or abused in her own life may especially hope for a baby to fulfil her need for love and bestow a sense of self-worth upon her. During pregnancy, the fullness in her body, the interest it generates, and the power of her feelings can offer an unexpected sense of being seen, noticed, and attended to. It may also be a kind of suspended animation—with hope for a happy ending, or at least a second chance at enjoying, through their babies, the kind of childhood they had longed for. At an unconscious level, becoming pregnant involves identification with their own mother, and her body as well; for some, this presents a forum for revenge. Attacks on the baby reflect both homicidal and suicidal feelings.

Some women are scared by unusual sensations and afraid of what is growing within them, especially those for whom containment, support, and guidance is unknown. Dinora Pines describes how the birth of a child can be a devastating disappointment and shock, dispelling fantasies of ideal care, nurture, and love for a deprived mother, and instead re-activating earlier pain and a sense of rage. Sometimes this shock and anger is projected onto the baby, whose tiny mind and body become targets for sustained attack. While the aim of the assaults is to project unwanted impulses onto a living creature, rather than kill them, the baby does not always survive.

The strongly held belief in the sanctity of motherhood and the hope that even for the most damaged or deprived women becoming a mother will be the making of them can blind people to the fact that for some women, pregnancy and childbirth can be a traumatic reawakening of early experiences, and for others, it may unleash intense emotions, including violent ones in the context of post-partum depression and post-partum psychosis. The medical and criminal justice systems can be slow to recognize the real meaning and motivation of the women’s actions and the extent to which they can reasonably be held responsible. In the United Kingdom, the crime of killing a baby under the age of one is considered infanticide, and the mental health of the mother is seen as an essential contributor to this tragic offence, whereas in other countries a mother may have to prove 'insanity.' The conditions of post-partum depression and psychosis, and the underlying psychology of despair they give rise to, require intensive and sophisticated understanding and psychiatric and psychotherapeutic intervention, as described in some psychoanalytic literature and the important early work of Resnick and Hatters Friedman in identifying patterns of infanticide and neonaticide.