SURROUNDING BIRTH

How are we to characterize these strangest of days and the current unprecedented global condition?  As I have said, they are driven by what I call an emerging perinatal unconscious.

Why perinatal?  First, let us remind ourselves that perinatal means, literally, "surrounding birth."  As a one-time college instructor of pre- and perinatal psychology and as an editor of a professional journal concerned with perinatal psychology¹ — as well as a psychohistorian, let me explain what might be considered elements of a perinatal unconscious.  The elements I will describe are near universally accepted among perinatal psychologists as unconscious forces, factors, matrices that exist in us all as a result of a human birth that is unique, by comparison to all other species, in its degree of trauma and hence of its impact or imprint on what we might call — dare I say the word — our "human nature."

These perinatal elements have come to our understanding through the efforts of both the inner explorations of experiential pioneers into the perinatal, as well as the hard empirical work of pre- and perinatal researchers.  I might also point out that I, myself, have over twenty-five-years of experiential exploration into these perinatal elements.  My experiences confirm, in my own mind, their absolute validity, as well as validating for myself the theoretical constructs put forth by others to describe and explain them.  Be that as it may, these perinatal elements in the unconscious have been described most thoroughly be three figures in particular: Stanislav Grof, Arthur Janov, and Lloyd deMause.  It might help, also, to keep in mind that entire new fields of pre- and perinatal psychology, primal psychology, and to some extent, transpersonal psychology have grown up around the existence of these perinatal factors and these unconscious perinatal elements have, at this point, been confirmed by thousands of researchers and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of experiential voyagers into the perinatal unconscious.
 

ELEMENTS OF BIRTH EXPERIENCE

Based upon all this, then, let us look at some of the elements, in general, that characterize this perinatal unconscious. Stanislav Grof² describes basic perinatal matrices (BPMs) — in other words, typical experiential constellations related to our births, which happen to be very much akin to deMause’s perinatal schema, with some slight differences in emphasis, and more elaboration on the part of Grof.  So let us use Grof’s schema as a basis.
 

All Needs Met . . . with luck

Grof’s Basic Perinatal Matrix I, or BPM I, involves the experiences and feelings related to the sometimes, or at least relatively, undisturbed prenatal period — that time in the womb sometimes characterized by feelings of peace, complete relaxation, a feeling of all needs met, or "oceanic bliss."  It corresponds to deMause’s societal periods of "prosperity and progress," which he claims are accompanied by feelings and fears of being "soft" and "feminine" — understandably here, for in BPM I, that is, prenatally, the fetus is largely identified with his or her mother and is very much "soft," i.e., undefended.  Since the time in the womb may also be disturbed by toxic substances that the mother ingests — drugs, chemical additives, and so on — as well as by disturbing emotions that the mother experiences, which release stress hormones into the mother’s bloodstream, which then cross the placental barrier and affect the fetus, BPM I is also sometimes characterized as feelings of being surrounded by a polluted environment and being forced to ingest noxious substances, toxins, and poisons, which sickens the fetus.
 

No-Exit Despair

In Grof’s schema, BPM I is followed by BPM II (i.e., Basic Perinatal Matrix II), which are experiences and feelings related to the time of "no exit" in the womb and claustrophobic-like feelings occurring to nearly all humans in the late stages of pregnancy and especially with the onset of labor, when the cervix is not yet dilated.  Since there does not seem to be any "light at the end of the tunnel" — metaphorically speaking — it is characterized by feelings of depression, guilt, despair, and blame, and a characterization of oneself as being in the position of "the victim."  It is very much like deMause’s period of collective feelings of entrapment, strangulation, suffocation, and poisonous placenta, which he has found to precede the actual outbreak of war or other violence.³
 

Birth Wars

This of course is followed by BPM III, which involves feelings and experiences of all-encompassing struggle and is related to the time of one’s actual birth.  Characterized also by intense feelings of aggression and sexual excess — in the position, now, of "the aggressor" — it is related directly, in deMause’s schema, to a time of actual war.
 

Hallelujah! . . (I think. . . . )

BPM IV follows this; it corresponds to the time of emergence from the womb during the birth process and is characterized by feelings of victory, release, exultation, but also sometimes, after that initial relief, of depression — when the struggle does not bring the expected rewards, as when, during modern obstetrical births, the neonate is harshly treated and then taken away from the mother, disallowing the bonding which should occur, naturally, immediately after birth.

In my own experience, the exultation and relief of release was replaced suddenly by feelings of being assaulted by the attendants at my birth (which of course they thought of as "attending" to me) as they went about roughly removing mucous from my mouth; prematurely cutting my umbilical cord to leave me struggling for breath; scrubbing, weighing, measuring, and otherwise probing me; and wrapping me like a tamale and taking me away from all I had previously known (i.e., my mother).  This felt like ritual abuse to me, and I have often likened it, after the intense period of compression and crushing before birth, to a situation of "going from the frying pan into the fire."

At any rate, this experience of actual emergence or birth coincides, societally, with deMause’s period of the ending of a war.
 

Heaven and Hell

In summary, we have euphoric, oceanic, blissful feelings, sometimes feelings of being poisoned or being in a toxic or polluted environment; followed by crushing, no-exit, depression, claustrophobia, compression, strangulation, suffocation, and being force-fed by a poisonous placenta; followed by struggle, violence, war scenarios, birth/death fantasies, sexual excess; and finally release, triumph, feeling of renewal or rebirth and a new golden age, but also possibly of being abandoned, tortured, ritually sacrificed, probed medically, and assaulted by sensations.  These are some of the elements that characterize the experience of the perinatal unconscious.
 

FOR DREAMING OUT LOUD!

In the next chapter we will take a look at how these elements have erupted into our collective dreams in recent history.  By this I mean, we will see how our artists and creative people have projected them into the media, movies, and TV -- in which we all participate -- and how our fascination with them, because these artists are reflecting things that exist deep inside of ourselves as well, has caused them to grow, creating the dominant underlying mythos of our time.

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CHAPTER TWO NOTES

1.  Primal Renaissance: The Journal of Primal Psychology, formerly published by the International Primal Association, currently published by SSILLY God Press, P.O. Box 1348, Guerneville, CA  95446-1348.  [return to text]

2.  Stanislav Grof, Realms of the Human Unconscious: Observations from LSD Research. New York: Viking Press, 1975; LSD Psychotherapy. Pomona, CA: Hunter House, 1980; Beyond the Brain: Birth, Death, and Transcendence in Psychotherapy. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1985; The Adventure of Self-Discovery: Dimensions of Consciousness and New Perspectives in Psychotherapy and Inner Exploration. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1988; The Holotropic Mind: The Three Levels of Human Consciousness and How They Shape Our Lives. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993.  [return to text]

3.  Lloyd deMause, "Restaging Early Traumas in War and Social Violence." The Journal of Psychohistory 23 (1995): 344-391.  (Reprinted, with permission, on this website as "Restaging Prenatal and Birth Traumas in War and Social Violence")  [return to text]

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Copyright © 1999 by Michael Derzak Adzema 

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(To continue, click on the link:  Chapter Three:  Birthing Into the Media)

Comments?  E-mail me by clicking on:  mickel@primalspirit.com      Mickel Adzema

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