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  discussionof  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.