Psychosis in Pregnancy and the Postpartum: Webinar with dr. Marie Brown

For everyone interested in feminist, psychosocial and psychonanalytic perspectives on psychosis during and after pregnancy, on Friday May 13th (in the international 'maternal mental health' month) the working group 'Te Gekke Moeders' (Mad Mothers) organizes in collaboration with the Dutch 'Foundation for Psychiatry and Philosophy' (Stichting Psychiatrie en Filosofie) and ISPS The Netherlands-Flanders a webinar with dr. Marie Brown.

Dr. Marie Brown is a clinical psychologist, former vice-president of ISPS-US, and co-founder of the Hearing Voices Netwerk NYC. Marie Brown edited Women & Psychosis: Multidisciplinary Perspectives (2019), Women and the Psychosocial Construction of Madness (2020), and Emancipatory Perspectives on Madness: Psychological, Social, and Spiritual Dimensions (2020). In the first-mentioned book she authored the chapter on postpartum psychosis titled 'Snakes in the crib'. Furthermore Brown authored many research articles and chapters on related topics. At the moment she is working on a book on psychosis and the female fertility cycle for the book series 'Women & Psychology'.

Marie Brown herself about her lecture:

Biomedical assumptions locate the source of postpartum psychosis within women’s bodies, suggesting that the physiological changes of childbirth 'cause' psychosis. Furthermore, 'master narratives' on postpartum psychosis emphasize risk and danger.

Feminist psychology has long critiqued biomedical explanations for women’s suffering (e.g. postnatal depression, PMS), as these frameworks obfuscate the role of socio-political and cultural oppression in women’s lives and cast the female body as inherently unstable (and therefore inferior to the male body). Similarly, critical voices within the 'psy' professions have challenged discriminatory notions of psychosis as equated with 'dangerousness' and 'violence'.

In keeping with these traditions, this talk will present a psychosocial and feminist critique of dominant narratives of postpartum psychosis. Postpartum psychosis will be understood as existing on a continuum with the radical changes that all women undergo during pregnancy and birth as they renegotiate their experience of themselves, their relationships to others, and to the world.

Postpartum psychosis is an experience that leads us to ask: how can one become a mother under patriarchal oppression?