The New York Times interviews Dr. Sarah L. Berga this week.  Berga investigates the relationship between a woman's chronic stress level and difficulty getting pregnant. For example, Berga showed that some women with excessive levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, were able to restore ovulation after undergoing cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).

I get Berga's concept, but there is something about this that just irks me.  A doctor assuming that a woman who is having difficulty getting pregnant might need talk therapy strikes me as the old "It's all in your head," school of medicine, which women have been victims of far too long.  

The author of the NY Times interview, Randi Hutter Epstein M.D. asks about this issue:

Q. (Epstein): In the 1940s, Freudian analysts told infertile women that lurking antimaternal thoughts made them sterile. Feminists later attacked this theory. Do you think of yourself as a continuum of this practice, or do you feel your ideas are completely different?

A. (Berga): Back then they did not know the mechanisms and they intuited relationships, but they were not all wrong. They were closer to the truth than we’d like to believe. The truth is that if you are not in harmony with yourself and your culture, you are stressed. That is not totally different from Freud.