Return to the womb: Ultrasound technology and psychoanalytic observation, 1985-2016

This article explores the research method of psychoanalytic ultrasound observation, which first emerged in the 1980s as a means for learning about foetal personality. Marking a significant shift in psychoanalysis's engagement with technologies of observation and methods for gaining knowledge about prenatal life, this article examines some of the complexities involved in doing such work. The findings indicate that in the first phase of this type of studies, the researcher's fantasies and projections profoundly shaped notions of foetal personality and subjectivity more generally. The second phase of this kind of studies provides a more nuanced perspective on the limits of knowing the foetal subject, using psychoanalytic thinking to reflect on the unconscious processes involved in the act of ultrasound observation. In sum, these studies can help us confront the limits of psychoanalytic knowledge about prenatal life, as well as offering a helpful intervention on the ethics of observation and the problematic notion of “foetal personhood.”