SummaryDespite a growing interest in the psychoanalytical understanding of pregnancy there is as yet no literature regarding spontaneous abortion or miscarriage, although some attention has been paid to planned abortion. Analysis of women patients who have miscarried often reveals their sense of loss, prolonged grief and unresolved mourning many years after this event. [It should be noted that one first pregnancy in four ends in miscarriage.] Analysis of these women frequently reveals a longstanding depression, a loss of self-esteem and hatred of their female bodies which do not bear live children as their mothers did. Their self-representation is damaged.