How studying “neural pregnancies” can illuminate denials

Absence of periods, sore breasts, weight gain, bloated abdomen and feeling of movement inside the abdomen… Despite denial of pregnancy, some women sometimes think they are pregnant when they are not. The symptoms they describe seem indisputable, and they are convinced of the reality of pregnancy, some of whom remain so sometimes even against all medical evidence confirming its absence. “It is troubling to note that in these women, as with denial, the psychic will influence the somatic to create a kind of parallel reality.”, notes Isabelle Derrendinger, President of the National Council of the Order of Midwives. Documented cases of pseudopregnancy or pseudopregnancy, formerly called “nervous pregnancies”, are very rare; Isabelle Derrendinger herself reports that she has met only one patient of this type during her career. But these pregnancy illusions can teach valuable lessons…