GETTING SICK IN ORDER TO GET WELL

What does this all mean?  What does this portend?  What might be the outcome of this emerging perinatal unconscious?  In other words, consciousness evolution or apocalypse?  To answer what an emerging perinatal unconscious might mean on a macrocosmic or societal-global scale, it is helpful to look at what an emerging perinatal unconscious portends on the individual or microcosmic level.

What we have learned from the experiential modalities — Holotropic Breathwork™, primal therapy, rebirthing, and others like them — is that unerringly people need to get "sicker" before they can get well.  This should not be news to psychoanalysts or any of the other mainstream psychotherapists or counselor's either.  Basically, the underlying repressed material must come to the "surface," must become more conscious . . . and obviously when it becomes more conscious its accompanying symptoms are exacerbated.  This can be called a healing crisis in that the symptoms get worse, more obvious, more blatant; and there is a period of acting them out before integration and resolution happens.  When Grof talks about birth/death scenarios in the perinatal unconscious, he is including these sorts of healings, where one must "die" to one’s sickness before one can be "reborn" into another way of being, without those sick patterns or symptoms.
 

DEGREES OF DISEASE

So, for example, we see a progression over the last century in which there was complete dissociation from the perinatal unconscious by those of the World-War-Two and previous generations -- hence complete projection of it on the Other -- to lesser dissociations from it by the generations since, Baby-Boomer and afterward, which involve more awareness of it as being a part of oneself and less projection of it on the Other.  In this latter instance, there is more suffering from it and more individual acting out of it, so that in a sense one appears "sicker" -- the perinatal is more obvious in one's behavior, taking more individual forms, and it is more easily recognized and seen to be a personal problem, i.e., a "sickness."  To understand the ways the perinatal manifests depending upon one's "closeness" to it, let us contrast the two extremes of being split off from it and being close to it.
 

Being Really Sick, But Denying It:  World-War-Two Generation

First let us take a look at what the perinatal appears like when it is completely split off from one's conscious personality.  This complete splitting off from the perinatal entails a complete repression and denial of it.   Consequently, one has absolutely no access to it, and thus one is in total ignorance of the underlying motivations of one's actions.  One unconsciously acts out perinatal elements and traumas and manifests them in one's behavior, rationalizing all the while that one has really good -- non-perinatal, "real world" -- reasons for why one is doing the things one is doing.  Psychohistorians deem this state to be such an oblivious one that they use the term trance-state for it, fully intending all the implications and connotations that term engenders.  That is, they are saying that people who are this repressed and split off do their acting zombie-like and out of motivations completely hidden to themselves.

In such total ignorance, and of course being totally ignorant that one is in ignorance, people in the past century have been able to act out their perinatal underbellies in ways to make such hideous and all-encompassing wars as World War I and World War II possible.  Leaving aside for a moment the myriad ways the perinatal has unconsciously been acted out in this century in creating the current situation in which we are on the brink of extinction -- which can be considered the most serious consequences of this splitting off imaginable -- simply focusing on this century's major wars as evidence of perinatal acting-out alone is instructive.

The Nazis, in particular, were extreme in their dissociation from their perinatal, in their projection of it onto the Jews, and their consequent ability to act it out in horrific ways on them and others.  Alice Miller¹ and Lloyd deMause² have each detailed the psychodynamics of this projection of primal pain — both perinatal and childhood — in the creation of the people that Adolf Hitler and the Nazis became in their adulthood.  The Nazis present us with the patterns of these processes of dissociation and projection in blatant and obvious relief.  The way Nazis, especially in concentration camps, acted out perinatal trauma on their prisoners has been described in great detail by Grof as well.³
 

Being "Weller," But Appearing Sicker -- Generations Since

Now, by way of contrast, the extreme acting-out and total dissociation from the perinatal exhibited by the World-War-Two Generation was followed, in the generations coming after, by less relative dissociation and less horrific forms of acting it out as exemplified by polluting the atmosphere, water, and food; population explosions and crowding of cities; and traffic jams.  The common everyday traffic jam is especially instructive of perinatal dynamics as traffic congestions replicate asphalt birth tunnels where one not only breathes exhaust fumes from trucks and other autos — fetal malnutrition — but also can become gridlock at any moment, thus re-creating the intense frustration and no-exit hopelessness, and rage, of BPM II.
 

Baby-Boomer Perinatal Awareness

Other examples of the scenery of modern times where the perinatal is manifesting but is even less projected onto the other:   Some access to the perinatal and more obvious acting it out personally is exhibited by many of the Baby-Boomer Generation.  On the one hand many of them had enough access to their perinatal underbellies to question the absolute rightness of the Vietnam War and so they campaigned against it.  This is indicative of closeness to the perinatal because it shows an ability to doubt one's egocentric defenses -- as given by society and family of origin -- and to look at situations from the eyes of the Other.  So much was this evident in the Baby-Boomer Generation that some were even able to see the Vietnam War through the eyes of the enemy -- exemplified by Jane Fonda's trip to Hanoi, the waving of North Vietnamese flags at demonstrations, and the carrying of little red books of the sayings of Chairman Mao tse Tung.

The Baby-Boomer -- or Sixties -- Generation also indicate their closeness to their perinatal in their campaigns against some of the act-outs of the perinatal mentioned above:  These include actions against pollution; a rejection of city life, with its gridlocks, pollution, and crowdedness, and a return to the country, in communes or otherwise; an awareness and rejection of polluted foods and creation of a natural and organic foods movement; and actions against global overpopulation including support for birth control, a pro-choice stance on abortion, and delaying of baby-making on their own parts along with a reduction in the size of their families.

Many more examples could be given.  But the proof of their closeness to their unconscious dynamics lies not only in their actions -- as mentioned above, in their more blatant acting them out or in their actual actions against the blatant acting out, both of which indicate closer access -- but also in the study of their unconscious dynamics.  As mentioned in Chapter Four, Kenneth Keniston found in his study of the psychodynamics of the Sixties Generation when they were in their youth an unusual amount of perinatal symbolism and self-analysis.  (See "Digging One's Way Under Ground.")
 

The Factor of The Angry Electorate

And more recently -- in the 1992 and 1994 national elections -- these Baby-Boomers continued to exhibit their perinatal influences in the totally unexpected phenomenon of the "angry electorate."  At the time, pundits and media analysts were at a total loss to explain the rage of the electorate that was affecting these elections.  In 1992, they were totally surprised by the showing of three men in particular — Jerry Brown, Pat Buchanan, and Ross Perot — who seemed to have one thing in common: the angry tones and rebelliousness that characterized their speeches, as compared to others.⁴  The demeanor of these candidates was at such odds with the other candidates that when Bill Clinton one night responded angrily to a comment by Jerry Brown about Hillary, Clinton’s wife, it was that part of the debate — of Clinton being angry, all issues aside — that made the news that night!

Now, keep in mind that a huge aspect of the perinatal is feelings of restriction, thus frustration, and, consequently rage against large entities of obstruction -- like the womb was in relation to the small and helpless fetus.  In doing so, we see that the reason for the rage is simple and understandable.  The Baby-Boomers, who as I have explained are characterized as being closer to their unconscious, especially the perinatal, because of having been raised in a way that required less in the way of ego defenses, to keep their primal pain suppressed — are of course also closer to the frustration, rebellion, and yes, rage, that is part of the perinatal complex.  We saw it exhibited by them in their anger at authority in the Sixties, their rebellion against the Vietnam war; and the sexual excess that is characteristic of the perinatal was evident in their free love and promiscuous sexual behavior.

And more recently these Baby-Boomers have been coming into the triumphant phase of their lives.  They make up a larger sector of the electorate than they ever have before, and their influence is reflected more as they come into positions of power in the media and elsewhere.

Though the rage of the electorate in 1992 caused the Brown, Perot, and Buchanan phenomena, it was split among them, so Clinton ended up winning.  This of course was also OK with the Baby-Boomers in that (1) Clinton and Gore were Baby-Boomers like themselves and (2) in the race against Bush, Clinton was the challenger, and thus the rebel; and Bush was the "bum to be thrown out."

However, this rage did not go away after the election, which highlights its having perinatal origins.  In fact, after the shortest "honeymoon period" in history, by some accounts, it became directed at the most likely target/center — the President, Bill Clinton, himself.

We all know how despite the successes and progress of Clinton’s first year, he was especially singled out for ridicule and denigration by the media.  He could not seem to do anything right, and the most incredibly outrageous behaviors were attributed to him.

This rage spilled over into the next year and, sure enough, during the midterm election — the issues be damned — the angry electorate was in a mood to "throw the bums out" again.  It did not matter the party.  (I do not claim that all those of my generation are always as politically astute as they are angry.)  The Republicans called it a "revolution."  It was simply the acting out of an electorate in the throes of perinatal feelings — i.e., feelings of frustration, being "tied up" by red tape, an inability to go forward (that is, up the economic ladder — wages had been stagnating since the early 80s), being overcontrolled and pushed around by regulations (big government being the big mother womb keeping the fetus locked in and unable to move); and out of all this, the consequent anger and rage.

We also see perinatal feelings in the focus of the Baby-Boomers on empowerment.  This word appears to come up in every area of their lives.  It can be seen as the natural focus of a generation that feels itself inside to be a helpless fetus facing an overpowering obstruction of a womb.

At any rate, succeeding elections bear out this analysis of an angry electorate.  In 1996, despite the much ballyhooed "Republican Revolution," sure enough, the electorate was spoiling to "throw the bums out" again — only this time it was the Republican Congress.  So there were Democratic gains at the time.  And in 1998, when everything pointed to a huge Republican landslide because of the Lewinsky scandal, the electorate again showed their rebellion and anger toward both the pundits and the Republicans who had been lambasting them with details of the scandal for nearly a year by giving the Democrats gains again!  (See "It's the Attack on Privacy, Stupid! What Republicans and Pundits Don't Get About Clinton's Support" on this website.)  Can anyone at this point still maintain that the politics of the last few elections had anything at all to do with ideology or issues?
 

Perinatal Access of "Baby-Boomer Echo Generation"

Meanwhile, in modern times, the youth of today show this same access as their baby-boomer parents; they demonstrate as well their parents’ consequent refusal to act it out on a larger scale:  It has been said that the greatest concerns of those in elementary and high school are pollution and racism.  We know how pollution and action against pollution indicates a closeness to one's perinatal; or to put it another way, it is clear that only a total denial and disconnect between one's consciousness and one's unconscious perinatal dynamics would allow one to act it out unconsciously in the creation of pollution and in the denial of it as a problem or a mindless neglect of it.  So the fact that these Baby-Boomer children (the Baby-Boomer Echo Generation) are so cognizant, concerned, and active in relation to global pollution shows their lack of denial of this perinatal act-out.

But what of racism?  How is this an indication of a closeness to the perinatal.  There are several ways in which this is so.  As mentioned, a closeness to the perinatal allows one to doubt one's given defenses and to glimpse alternate perspectives -- in particular to look at things from the eyes of the Other.  In this way, the Baby-Boomer Echo Generation are able to see oppression, injustice, and unfairness as it is played out in the lives of minorities who don't share their (predominantly) middle-class advantages.  But there is another, stronger element.  This is the factor of oppression and unfairness itself.  We experience compression (oppression), and frustration at our attempts to go forward, and what feels like hopeless unfairness and injustice, when in the throes of BPM II birth trauma.  To see these facets of the fates of minorities, as in racism, points to this Echo Generation's closeness to their own perinatal oppression; hence their ability to empathize with oppressed minorities.  
 

"Hate Groups":  World-War-Two Mindset in the Extreme

One might also note the rise of "hate groups" occurring at this same time.  These are folks on the extreme right and their actions are exemplified in the Oklahoma bombing tragedy.  But notice again then that these hate groups are always on the extreme right of the political spectrum and thus exemplify a World-War-Two mindset in relation to their perinatal unconscious:  Specifically, the mindset is one of being completely cut off from one's unconscious dynamics and in total denial of unconscious motivations so that one can have the complete certitude, lacking any access to the unconscious which would give rise to doubts, that makes violent actions possible.  However the reason for bringing up the hate groups is to show how much their actions as well are dominated by perinatal (in their case, totally unconscious) dynamics.  For without exception their reasons for rising up against the government (representing the overwhelming womb) has to do with frustrations (like the trapped fetus feels) in regards to governmental red tape, laws, and other regulations that they feel restrict their freedom (to move freely, as one wanted to but couldn't, in the womb).
 

A HIERARCHY OF HEALING?

Now this idea that those close to their unconscious conflicts are more likely to act them out blatantly goes completely against one of deMause’s tenets.  He wrote, "3D.4. The higher the psychogenic mode of the psychoclass, the less it is necessary for it to act out its conflicts."⁵

However this is exactly the crux of my difference with his theory and is a central point I am making.  For from my perspective, the higher the mode of child-caring equals the less the defenses.  Hence, the more it is likely that that generation’s conflicts will be close to the surface, seeking resolution . . . like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory.  We might want to call it a hierarchy of healing theory.⁶

In other words, our observing the supposed "acting out" of an underlying trauma does not mean that the group or person in question is actually or, at least completely, "acting it out" and defending against it.  It may be that that group is resolving, healing, or integrating it — taking it inward rather than acting it out (in the world, on others), whether to a small or great extent.

The difference between acting out and resolving is whether the actions are done in total dissociation from the unconscious dynamics, i.e., in a trance state — as explained earlier in regard to the World War Two generation — or whether there is at least a modicum of insight into it occurring as a result of things inside of oneself, not completely projected onto the outside.  So in non-acting-out behavior there is a tad of insight (the "overexamined life" of the "uncommitted," the "self-analysis" of the young radicals, for example).
 

Flaunting One's Sickness Beats Hiding It

Hey, It Was Tough!

In more recent times, the regression in Europe shows a bit of insight (and resolution happening) in that the baby song being hummed is about the very real hardships of being a baby.  Therefore, an actual truth about their own lives is being faced here, by those singing along with it.  The song is not being used to deny or defend against those traumas.  One might suspect that in carrying around such blatant examples of regression as a pacifier (someone in a more defended mode would be highly threatened by such an obvious symbol that they are really needy children inside. They would be terrified it would make them look like a sissy — i.e., look like that vulnerable, frightened baby that they really feel themselves to be but are doing their damnedest to hide from everyone.)  So in actually carrying around a pacifier these youth are not only displaying an insight into their feelings of sometimes being needy babies, on the inside, but are actually flaunting this awareness, as if to shame, or slap the face of, or be "in the face" of a generation of their parents who did not see their needs when they were babies — however effortfully and obviously they sought to demonstrate them.  Thus the symbols needed to become more and more shocking and obvious.
 

Look At What You Did To Me!

For example: the jeans with requisite holes around the knees saying, "You did not take care of me; you made me feel like a poor, orphaned, ragamuffin child"; the piercing of mouths, nose, ears, and even tongues saying "I am in pain, dammit!  Can’t you see that when you stick needles in me as a little baby that I hurt?  How can you be so insensitive?  Can’t you see that when you refuse to breastfeed and thus nurture me orally that I am forever damaged there, ever painful there?  What does it take, my sticking pins — safety pins make the point even more that it was when I was in diapers — in myself to make you see that I hurt there?"  And, of course, the black clothes, the hideous macabre makeup, and depressed, sullen expressions saying, "Look, you might think we’re a wonderful family and everything is hunky-dory here; but I wish I were dead!  I’ve felt so much pain, from in the womb, at birth, and right after birth, that I wish I’d never been born.  Also, somehow in courting death, I have the feeling that I might somehow be reborn again into a good life, not like this place of torture and tears, right from the beginning, where my welcome into the world consisted of being drugged, handled like an object or piece of meat, blasted by bright lights, scrubbed by rough cloths, having needles and suctions stuck in me, blasted with noise, made to lie on cold stainless steel surfaces, and then bundled like a tamale so that I could not move (making me feel again like I was back in the hellish womb where in the later stages, for a time that felt like an eternity, I felt unable to move and was suffocating for lack of sufficient oxygen) and the only action that was possible was for me to scream my bloody head off for long periods of time or go into a stupor — which is what I did, alternating between them.  Can’t you see that I’d rather be dead than live in such a world of insensitive zombies like you.  Hell, in fact, to further drive the point home, I’ll even look and act like a zombie, I’ll try to appear as unfeeling and morose as you all seemed to me, especially at my birth.  And I’ll go a step further and mirror yourselves back to you by becoming enamored of vampires. . . .  Can’t you see that you sucked my very life force, my blood, and turned me into an unfeeling vampire like you, by suffocating me in the womb, poisoning me with your toxic blood which you both sucked from me and then forced down my throat!"
 

Different Levels, Different Defenses

It is instructive at this time to note that Arthur Janov once compared the defenses that characterized the youth of the time (the late Sixties, early Seventies) with those of their parents and older people in general and came up with findings that amplify my own assertions here.  Specifically, he found that older people (clients of his as well as others of whom he was aware) were characteristically more repressed, more split off, more prone to dissociation, more defended and, most importantly for our uses here, tended to use defenses of denial and obfuscation against inner information and impulses.  Correspondingly, they tended to use drugs that repressed and blotted out reality, such as alcohol and nicotine; and they tended to be sexually repressed.  They were also more compulsive.  They tended to suppress their tension and hold it in for all their worth.  Truth was greatly feared, and all attempts were made to fend off incoming information that might threaten the delusional reality set of the conscious mind.  This left them open to the characterization:  "My mind's made up!  Don't confuse me with the facts!" which was leveled at them by anti-Vietnam War protestors.  Consequently, Janov found that the dominant mode of reaction, when threatened, was to act out aggressively against the supposed "oppressor."

On the other hand, he found that his youthful clients (under 30) tended to use defenses of excess, release, and addiction, or to be unusually lacking in defense mechanisms .  They were more impulsive.  They tended to have weak barriers to incoming information, to be open to negative unconscious content, even at the expense of their self-esteem, and to be tension expressers.  They were therefore more likely sexually promiscuous than repressed, and they tended to drugs that opened them to information and unconscious knowledge -- such as marijuana and LSD.  Consequently they were less split off from their unconscious truth (though it made them uncomfortable), were less repressed, and, if anything, used defenses of masochism, self-denial, and self-inflicted aggression or depression.  Truth was more important to them than emotional comfort; they tended to go out of their way to dig up negative information about themselves, and they accepted the low self-esteem and sense of self-worth that came with that kind of openness.  Their delusional reality set -- if it could be called that -- entailed taking on the worries and cares of the world as their own, since their openness to their own cares and worries allowed them to empathize with others in obviously similar conditions.  When triggered into their pain, their dominant reaction was to take it inward and to take it out on themselves causing depression.  In doing so they showed they would rather hurt themselves than hurt another.

I don't believe you need to be a rocket scientist to see that Janov was discovering an historical -- one might say millennial -- "changing of the guard" as regards access to the unconscious, openness to personal truth, and lessening of the tendency to act out early trauma in violent or belligerent ways.  The older generation had more tendencies to blame others, to find scapegoats for their ills, and to act out violently on them.  The younger generation had more tendencies to look inward and to blame and punish themselves; and to prefer to hurt themselves before hurting another.

The youthful generation might also become alcoholic, addicted to drugs, or do something else to injure themselves . . . rather than act it out on another.
 

Less Wars, More Suicides

And this "acting in," as opposed to acting out, is indicated as well in the rise of teen suicides currently.  So you might say that the tradeoff we are currently getting is a reduction in the use of wars and racism to solve problems (i.e., to act out one’s Pain on others and by scapegoating) but, since the perinatal trauma is still there, and one is even more conscious of it, we have increased suicides.  Thus less wars, more suicides.

As deMause pointed out, "Those considered ‘neurotic’ in each age may often be a higher psychogenic mode than those considered ‘normal,’ only they must stand the anxiety of not sharing the group-fantasies of the age."⁷
 

AWAY FROM HUBRIS:  NATURE BALANCES HERSELF

In this chapter we have seen how perinatal acting out can be of two kinds:  totally unconscious and trance-like, or semi-conscious with at least some access.  We have looked at how a progression to more access to one's perinatal underbellies has led to more acting in than acting out; we have seen how it has led to less violence and more depression.  At this point, one could make the point that the tradeoff is worth it:  That individuals suffering more emotional pain and trauma is preferable to the horrors of war . . . put bluntly, suffering beats dying.

But we are still looking at the situation from the microcosmic scale.  We are talking and acting here like we are the only ones that matter.  This is natural of course, in that this is always the way we have thought of things:  that is, as if all things were to be considered around the concerns of humans.  This is called anthropocentrism -- a form of species-centrism -- in which Home sapiens is considered the reason for the existence of the rest of the Universe.  With the Universe as awesomely and unimaginably large as it is, one might wonder at our hubris in our considering things in only this way -- i.e., from our perspective.  Likewise, with an uncountable number of species living or having lived on this planet alone -- species numbering in the millions -- again one might question the validity of choosing the perspective of our species alone in making our analyses.

Yet this is the way we have always done it.  And this is the way I have been slanting my perspective so far in this book.  But now let us do something radically different.  Let us walk out of ourselves now -- figuratively speaking -- and seek to stand upon that Archimedean point from which we might view the events currently transpiring.  From such an attempted non-species-centric viewpoint let us view this emerging perinatal unconscious as it is currently manifesting in humans.  However tenuous our attempt, let us at least try such a new-paradigm viewpoint, for certainly all old-paradigm ones -- containing all the hubris of anthropocentrism that they do -- have failed in their attempts to save our species and indeed have contributed to such a likelihood.  Let us attempt to see through the eyes of Gaia, now, as we look at how the current human predicament may in fact be an example of Nature balancing HerSelf.

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CHAPTER SIX NOTES

1.  Alice Miller, For Your Own Good. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1984.  [return to text]

2.  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]

3.  Stanislav Grof, "Planetary Survival and Consciousness Evolution: Psychological Roots of Human Violence and Greed." Primal Renaissance: The Journal of Primal Psychology 2(1): 3-26, p. 23. (Article reprinted, with permission, on this website).  [return to text]

4.  See "It's the Attack on Privacy, Stupid!  What Republicans and Pundits Don't Get About Clinton's Support," on this website, for more on the angry electorate and how it played out in the 1992 election.  [return to text]

5.   Lloyd deMause, The Foundations of Psychohistory. New York: Creative Roots, 1982, p. 139.  See also  "Are Some 'Sick' People More Healthy Than Normals?"  [return to text]

6.  See also "Are Some 'Sick' People More Healthy Than Normals?" on this website.  [return to text]

7.   Lloyd deMause, The Foundations of Psychohistory. New York: Creative Roots, 1982, p. 143.  [return to text]  

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Copyright © 1999 by Michael Derzak Adzema 

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(To continue, click on the link: 
Chapter Seven:  Through Gaia's Eyes:  Nature Balances HerSelf

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

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