Living with Emotional Deprivation: Investigating the Primary Representations of Mother/child Interaction in Female Patients with Psychosomatic Disorders

Background: Psychosomatic disorders are psychological disorders that lead to physical symptoms such as cardiovascular, respiratory, and gastrointestinal disorders, migraine headaches, dizziness, excessive fatigue, memory impairment, low concentration, shortness of breath, nausea, vomiting, and insomnia. There are many disputes over the pathology of psychosomatic disorders. However, the primary parent-child relationship is one of the factors effective in the pathology of many psychological disorders. To this end, the present study sought to examine the relationship of primary representations of mother and child in female patients with psychosomatic disorders. Methods: The present study adopted a qualitative and descriptive phenomenological method. The participants were people who visited psychiatric offices in Tehran in 2023 and were selected through purposive sampling. The data were collected using in-depth semi-structured interviews. The sampling process continued until the data were saturated through interviews with 16 participants. The collected data were analyzed using Collaizzi’s seven-step content analysis method. Results: Analysis of interview data revealed five main themes that were extracted from 32 sub-themes, including: “regret for lost dreams”, “living with humiliation, fear, and feeling of abandonment”, “experiencing emotional deprivation”, “the mother’s ineffective parenting”, and “changing the child’s and mother’s roles”. Conclusion: The findings from this study revealed the need to take care of the early toxic relationship for every person by raising the awareness of mothers about meeting the needs of the infant/child on time while creating a sense of security and self-worth in the child. The insights from this study can contribute to further investigation of mother/child relationships in psychosomatic patients.