PART ONE:  LITERATURE REVIEW, METHOD, AND BACKGROUND

Chapter One:
Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and the Phenomenon of Re-Experience

by

Michael Derzak Adzema

 

 

Pre- and perinatal psychology is the field that deals with the effects of events occurring prior to (prenatal) and surrounding the time of birth (perinatal) upon later life and personality.  An ever increasing amount though certainly not all of the information we have about these periods of our lives and their effects is derived through the later and vivid remembering of these events in a phenomenon known as re-experience.  Correspondingly, the two most frequently asked questions about this relatively new field, put by those initially encountering it, are those concerning the specific meanings of the terms perinatal and re-experience. 

            At the outset of this investigative project, I wish to present an explanation of these two terms and of my unique personal relation to this topic as well as some of my background in exploring it.  I will follow this with a historical review of the pertinent literature and major theorists of pre- and perinatal psychology.  I mention my personal involvement with this topic for reasons that should be clear from my discussion of hermeneutical interpretation and, especially, heuristic research in the Introduction.

Re-Experience and Reliving

For over twenty years, beginning in 1972 when I was a senior undergraduate in college, I have been involved both personally and professionally in a comprehensive investigation into the phenomenon of re-experience.  Also called reliving, this phenomenon is reported to consist of a full somato-cognitive remembering of previous events in a person's life.  Reliving involves experiential but also observable and measurable components, such as brain wave changes, characteristic physiological and neurological changes, and typical observable body movements. 

            This phenomenon can occur, to varying degrees, in many consciousness-altering modalities—including hypnosis, LSD psychotherapy, primal therapy, rebirthing, and holotropic breathwork; to a considerable degree in re-evaluation co-counseling and treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder; and, occasionally and spontaneously, even in mainstream forms of psychotherapy, counseling, and "growth seminars."  Re-experience is a more vivid and more completely somatic catharsis than what has been described in psychotherapy in terms of "abreaction."  It is in such contrast to normal abreaction that when these seemingly bizarre yet healing events have spontaneously erupted in traditional or mainstream Western contexts they have usually been mistakenly labeled psychotic, been intervened upon, and then aborted—via drugs and other highly coercive measures—by the attending therapeutic authorities.  However, with an increasing appreciation for their therapeutic value, these events are gradually becoming understood and accepted in therapeutic contexts and thus allowed to complete themselves and to instruct the participants and observers in their meanings.  Therefore, they appear to represent something new in our culture in terms of both a way of approaching knowledge and in terms of the kinds of information that are discovered (Grof 1976, 1985; Hannig 1982; Janov 1971; Lake 1966/1986; Noble, 1993; Stettbacher, 1992).

My Relationship to the Phenomenon of Re-Experience

My interest in the phenomenon of reliving began twenty-five years ago at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  As an undergraduate there I was most inspired by a course in religious studies titled "Religious and Psychological Approaches To Self-Understanding."  I was so inspired by the course that I constructed my major around its topic and initially even used the same title for my program's name.  This major in "self-understanding" would lead me, in a few years, to a profound interest in and exploration of primal therapy, as presented by Arthur Janov (1970) in his much-publicized book, The Primal Scream: Primal Therapy: The Cure for Neurosis. 

            By 1972, I had completed all but the one final semester for a B.A.  That semester was to include the cumulative project—required of such a Special Studies (individually structured) major.  However, since my project would focus on primal therapy and one of primal therapy's basic premises is that knowledge cannot really be known except through experience, I could not in good conscience turn in a project describing primal therapy without first experiencing it.  Consequently I withdrew from college, for what was supposed to be only a semester, with the intention of "going through" primal therapy and then returning to school to write my cumulative project on it.  In those days, the entire process of primal therapy was reputed to take only three to six months. 

            But a lot was unknown about that modality in those early days.  As it turned out, I would not return to school to complete that final project until 1978—at which point I had five years experience of primal therapy behind me and was living in Denver, Colorado. 

            In addition to these experiences, I have amassed a broad array of other experience and training over the years that has contributed to my understanding of re-experience and of this field in general.  Besides my two decades of primal therapy at this point (both formally and in "the buddy system"), I have received training as a primal therapist.  I am also a trained rebirther, having explored that modality since 1986.  Finally, I have been experientially exploring the modality of holotropic breathwork since 1987 and am currently in training with Stanislav and Christina Grof to be certified as a facilitator in that technique.  Thus, I have experience in my own process in these modalities; but in addition I have facilitated for others on many occasions, and—being a trained rebirther—I have counseled in this capacity, on and off, since 1986.

Pre- and Perinatal Re-Experience

Re-experience of birth and of the events immediately prior to and after birth are termed perinatal—from the Greek, literally "surrounding birth."  It has been widely described at this point by a number of authors but is most closely associated with the work of Stanislav Grof, Arthur Janov, and Frank Lake.

            However, one significant and as yet little explored or understood phenomenon, arising also from the modalities mentioned, is that of prenatal re-experience.  In this case, the experiencer reports (and observationally appears to be) experiencing events that happened en utero, sometimes going back as far as sperm, egg, and zygote states (Buchheimer 1987; Farrant 1987; Grof 1976, 1985; Hannig 1982; Janov 1983; Lake 1981, 1982; Larimore 1990a, 1990b; Larimore & Farrant, 1995).  These reports are at such variance with Western professional and popular paradigms that they are met with near-universal incredulity and, too often, premature dismissal.  Yet the evidence from the mounting numbers of experiential reports and empirical studies attests that something which is at least unique and interesting is going on here. 

            Nevertheless, much of this prenatal information is thus far unformulated, untheorized, and unintegrated into a coherent structure for making sense of these experiences.

Overview of This Book

The present work represents an attempt to bring this new information concerning our origins and our earliest experiences into such a coherent structure.  After the initial overview of the field to be presented in this chapter, I deepen that review of the current understanding and findings in this area in making a case, in Chapter Two, for the legitimacy of prenatal spirituality.

            Making this case is important for two reasons.  For one, there is a strong tradition in the field of re-experience that reduces all spirituality and spiritual experiences to early traumas and neurosis.  This is the dominant attitude in psychoanalysis, articulated initially by Freud, but it has been carried and promulgated forcefully into the field of re-experience by Arthur Janov—one of the field's leading theorists.  This idea that all spirituality is derivative of underlying primal pain, as Janov contends, thus needs to be addressed; and I do so in Chapter Two.

            Second, just as spirituality and spiritual experience are denigrated in the light of primal experience by Arthur Janov, from the other end of the spectrum Ken Wilber denigrates primal and prenatal experience in the light of spiritual experience.  That is, Wilber (1982)—the dominant theoretician in the field of transpersonal studies—claims that preverbal states (like primal and prenatal re-experience) are the opposite of transverbal states (what he considers to be true spiritual experience).  Thus, the idea expressed by Wilber that primal and prenatal states are not spiritual states, are in fact the opposite of spiritual states and  are not, in the least, on the path of spirituality needs also to be addressed.  I focus on this aspect of Wilber's thinking beginning in Chapter Two, but also throughout the rest of this work.  That prenatal states are identical to, akin to, or at least leading to transpersonal states and that Ken Wilber has made a major mistake in contending the contrary is a central theme in this work.

            Thus, the idea, presented initially in Chapter Two, that there exists prenatal and cellular consciousness as well as an inherent spirituality or proximity to the numinous and transpersonal, if not also divinity, at these levels of development is a crucial idea in all that follows.  Increasingly the evidence suggests that such spiritual consciousness and transpersonal access exists in relation to the phenomenon of re-experience of these early states; we are also led to believe that such transpersonal consciousness and spirituality exists in relation to the events themselves as they originally occurred.  This case is made, in Chapter Two, on the basis of the available evidence in relevant fields and in particular from the viewpoint of findings in primal therapy.

            Chapter Three follows up on this empirical and logical analysis of the case for prenatal spirituality with examples of it from my own re-experience through the modality of holotropic breathwork—a technique of transpersonal access and reliving developed by Stanislav and Christina Grof.  This chapter presents slightly edited transcripts of descriptions of my experiences therein, which I recorded immediately after they occurred.  The chapter should be seen as providing a sample of the sorts of experiences, insights, and perspectives that can occur through the phenomenon of re-experience.  It should not in any way be taken to represent either the essence, expanse, or necessary outline of that area—as experiences at this level are highly individual and, especially in relation to the transpersonal elements, vastly diverse. 

            Still, there are some commonalities of prenatal experiences, which will be brought out more fully in Part 2; and Chapter Three demonstrates clearly the overlap between the personal and transpersonal—between the biographical/biological and the spiritual/numinous—that characterizes this arena of experience.  Thus this chapter provides raw data which expands the understanding of theory and model provided in preceding as well as subsequent chapters.

            Part 2, following immediately afterwards, represents the ontogenetic model of consciousness and "devolutional" (the opposite of evolution) development based on such inquiry.  It is the heart of this work.  Titled "Falls From Grace," it details a process of removal from divinity or a higher state during the process of coming into this world as a series of stages—focused on the events of conception, birth, the primal scene, and puberty—which happen to correspond to Wilber's (1977) levels of consciousness in his "spectrum of consciousness."

            Part 3 follows this in presenting the implications of this model for child development and childrearing (hereafter to be referred to as childcaring), for psychotherapy and personal growth, and for spiritual evolution and higher consciousness.  This part will carry forward some of the themes from Parts 1 and 2 to their logical conclusions in terms of their effects on current models and thinking and on society and culture.  The earliest indications are that the implications from including the prenatal and primal perspective are vast—one might even say revolutionary, in the true sense of the word.  For indeed this new perspective, this new information seems to call for an overthrow, or at least a reversal, of many of the aspects of the dominant paradigms in childcaring, child development, psychotherapy, and spiritual growth.

            To begin, then, let us review what has so far been conceived in relation to our life and our worldview in the arena of pre- and perinatal psychology.

Overview of the Pre- and Perinatal Psychology Field

Sigmund Freud

While Freud (1927/1959) disregarded major effects of birth on personality, he still saw the birth experience as the prototype of all later anxiety.  His overall disregard of birth, however, was largely influenced by the belief—although discredited (see Chamberlain, 1988), still common in mainstream psychology and medicine today—that a newborn does not possess the neurological capacity for consciousness at birth.

Otto Rank

Other early psychoanalysts disagreed with Freud on this.  Otto Rank is the most notable of these.  Following Freud's basic psychoanalytic reasoning for personality patterns in early infancy, he asserted basic patterns of experience and ideas that are rooted in even earlier experience.  Rank (1929/1952) claimed the deepest, most fundamental patterns of these personality constructs originated at the time of birth, which Freud thought was not possible.  Based upon the dream, fantasy, and other patterns of associations arising in his patients in psychoanalysis, Rank postulated a birth trauma, which he saw as a critical event in laying down in each of us particular patterns of thinking, motivation, and emotion for the rest of our lives.  Notable among these prototypes was a feeling of a paradise once known but somehow lost, a separation anxiety caused by the separation at birth, and a resulting futile and lifelong struggle to re-unite with that golden age and that early beloved because of a desire to return to the womb.

Nandor Fodor

Also a psychoanalyst, Fodor (1949/1951) focused on the reflections of birth and prenatal material in dreams.  He also designed interventions in therapy to release the negative effects of birth and to process prenatal memories.  He was the first to mention actual relivings of birth, in which veridical memories were recovered.  He agreed with Rank on many points, but he stressed the origins of consciousness and of trauma being in the prenatal period.

Lietaert Peerbolte

Peerbolte (1954) was one of the earliest theorists to relate spirituality to conception and sperm/egg dynamics.  In addition to claiming that a regression to conception is the inevitable result of all prenatal states, he traced the sense of "I"—the "I-function"—back to the egg, existing even in the mother's ovaries.  He further postulated that the spiritual self was invisibly present within the field of attraction between the egg and the sperm.  Correspondingly, he was the first to point out that the existence of conception, preconception, and even ovulation symbolism in dreams indicates the existence of a soul.  For, he asked, what mind records these events otherwise? 

Donald W. Winnicott

Another psychoanalyst, and pediatrician as well, Winnicott (1958) also held that birth is remembered and is important.  He insisted that the birth trauma is real, but he disagreed with Rank and Fodor that it is always traumatic.  He suggested that a normal, nontraumatic, birth has many positive benefits, particularly for ego development.  Still, he contended that traumatic birth is permanently etched in memory and leaves a lifetime psychological scar.  Winnicott (1958) also suggested the possibility of prenatal trauma.  He has been called the first primal therapist in that he described the first "birth primals"—actual observable relivings of birth—spontaneously occurring by some of his patients during their sessions with him.  Thus he was beginning the trend beyond mere talking association or dream analysis as ways of accessing and integrating this material.

Francis Mott 

Francis Mott's work is less well known even by this field's standards, yet it is undeniably impressive.  Mott's (1960, 1964) major contribution lies in his focusing on basic patterns of mind and cosmos that correlate with prenatal feelings and states.  He traced consciousness back to events around conception and saw these events as instituting patterns affecting all later experience and conceptual constructions.  Through dream analysis he elicited these "configurations," and he demonstrated their manifestation as seemingly universal archetypes in myths and universal human assumptions about the nature of reality.  In fact, through his study of womb and conception patterns he claimed to have discovered patterns that underlie and unite all of reality at all levels of manifestation—astronomical, social, personal, cellular, and even nuclear.  While this may seem rather grandiose, his work was highly regarded  and admired by Carl Jung.

            Mott also carried forward the intimations of earlier prenatal theoreticians, notably Rank and Fodor, on the gestational basis of archetypes.  While he does not address or seek to discredit the range of, supposedly genetic, archetypes postulated by Jung, his work is highly suggestive of an experiential, viz., pre- and perinatal, as opposed to genetic basis for many of these.

            Mott (1960) also helped us to understand why if these prenatal memories are possible they are not more prevalent by suggesting denial is necessary in order to protect against incestuous feelings that might arise around feelings remembered from being inside one's mother.  Finally, he made the postulation—hugely relevant to the theme of this work—that our original expanded capacity to feel is diminished, as he says, "divided," by experience not increased by it.  The idea is that there is a reduction in awareness as a result of early traumatic events, beginning around conception and then on, and not the buildup of consciousness and feeling that we assume from the mechanistic paradigm that sees consciousness as a byproduct of increasing physical, specifically brain, activity during our early years.

David Cheek and Leslie LeCron 

Cheek and LeCron (1968) used hypnosis to retrieve early memories in their patients.  They discovered that memories earlier than what they expected, going back to birth, were possible.  Importantly, a relief of symptoms seemed to follow from the re-experience of these birth memories.  They came to the conclusion that a birth imprint occurs, which is induced by the extreme stress of that time and is resistant to fading from later experience.  Further they asserted that this imprint could be the cause of a wide spectrum of psychiatric and psychosomatic disorders.

Leslie Feher 

Feher (1980) sought to extend the Freudian tradition farther back into areas that, she asserts, were until only recently unknowable.  Thus, she describes a natal theory and therapy that includes experiences of cutting the umbilical cord, birth, and even prebirth.  In fact, she considers the cutting of the umbilical cord to be central in her theory of trauma, calling it the "crisis umbilicus," and echoes Fodor in claiming that it is the true origin of the castration fears made so much of in psychoanalysis.  This is so because, according to Feher, the cord and placenta is an object of security and is considered by the fetus to be part of him- or herself.  Thus, this cutting represents a supreme threat in being a separation from a total life support system, a major organ, a part of oneself.  In these ways, she also brings forward for renewed appreciation Rank's speculations on the element of separation trauma as a crucial element of the birth trauma.

Stanislav Grof

A pioneer in this prenatal area is Stanislav Grof (1976, 1980, 1985, 1990, to name a few).  His many works, providing a framework for conceptualizing perinatal and transpersonal experiences, are a profound and useful starting point for an investigation into this area. 

            In his use of LSD beginning in 1956 for psychotherapy, called psycholytic therapy, he discovered four levels of experience of the unconscious: the sensory, the biographical, the perinatal, and the transpersonal.  He noted a tendency for growth and healing to occur in a progressive way through these levels.  The sensory band is the level of expanded sensory awareness and is usually initially encountered by participants.  The biographical band is the realm of the personal unconscious wherein unintegrated and traumatic memories and material from childhood and one's personal history are retrieved, often relived, and integrated.  The perinatal level of experience usually follows after dealing with the biographical material and involves the remembering, re-experiencing, and integrating of material that is related to the time prior to and surrounding birth.  The transpersonal band, the level of spiritual experience, is usually reached after dealing with the other three levels.

            Grof has also delineated four matrices of experience, four general experiential constructs, which he called basic perinatal matrices (BPMs).  He discovered that experiences at all levels of the unconscious often group themselves in four general ways that are roughly related to the four stages of birth.  Thus, Basic Perinatal Matrix I (BPM I) is related to the generally blissful or "oceanic" feelings that often characterize the fetus's state in the womb in early and middle pregnancy.  BPM II is characterized by "no exit," hellish feelings that are related to the situation of the fetus in late pregnancy when the confines of the womb become ever more apparent but there is as yet no indication of any possibility of relief.  BPM III relates to the birth process itself, the birth struggle, which is still characterized by feelings of compression and suffering but in which there is movement and change and thus hope of relief through struggle.  If BPM II can be compared to hell, where there is no hope, BPM III is more like purgatory.  Finally, BPM IV relates to the actual entry into the world, the termination of the birthing process, and is characterized by feelings of triumph, relief, and high, even manic, elation.

            In these ways, Grof has provided useful maps of the unconscious and experience in nonordinary states, which have incredible heuristic value in our understanding of cross-cultural religious and spiritual experience, psychopathology, personal growth, and consciousness and personality in general.  And they have been utilized successfully in providing a context and guide for many tens of thousands of participants in his psycholytic and holotropic therapies.

            However, while Grof is exhaustive in his descriptions of fetal and perinatal experience, he says less about the earlier experiences in the womb—the first trimester—and even less about conception and the experiences of sperm and egg.  Still, this area is beginning to be discussed among his followers.  And through his current nondrug modality, called holotropic breathwork, people are accessing these areas and beginning to give word to them (e.g., Carter, 1993).

Arthur Janov

Perhaps the major theorist and popularizer of the phenomenon of re-experience (which he termed primaling), Janov was reluctant to acknowledge the pervasiveness of pre- and perinatal re-experience and trauma.  Yet when he did, it was in a major work on birth trauma, which remains as a touchstone in the field in its depth and detail.  Imprints: The Lifelong Effects of the Birth Experience, published in 1983, among other things places birth as the determining factor in creating basic personality constructs, called sympathetic and parasympathetic, which roughly coincide with the more common terms introversion and extroversion.

            This work is more empirical and neurophysiologically rooted than most in the field.  While the book is recognized in the field, Janov and his work have not gotten anywhere near the respect and attention that they deserve.  He remains the unfortunate kicking-boy of a movement that is itself scapegoated by the academy and the larger scientific community.  This is so for reasons unrelated to the purpose and intent of this work and so will remain unaddressed here.

Frank Lake

Frank Lake, though less well-known again, has probably been the premier theoretician on the topic of prenatal events during the first three months of gestation.  Just prior to his death in the early eighties, he wrote a culmination of his thirty-year investigation into pre- and perinatal influence in two works titled Tight Corners in Pastoral Counselling and The First Trimester.  In these works he goes beyond his other works (e.g., 1966/1986) in placing the roots of all later experience, and in particular, distress, at the first three months of physical existence. 

            Lake began his investigation of re-experience in 1954.  Like Stanislav Grof, he did this using LSD, initially, in the psycholytic therapy that was being developed at that time to facilitate therapeutic abreaction.  Later he, again like Grof, developed a nondrug modality to accomplish the same thing.  His method of "primal therapy" employed a type of fast breathing—again, like Grof's later technique—to access theta-wave brain levels, which are levels of consciousness that he saw as crucial to accessing and integrating these memories.

            His thirty-year research led him to the realization of the importance of ever earlier experience.  Thus his earlier stress on the importance of birth gave way to his later emphasis on the first trimester in 1981 (Tight Corners in Pastoral Counselling) and in 1982 (The First Trimester).

            He stressed the maternal-fetal distress syndrome, beginning at around implantation, as a major time of trauma.  He also described a blastocystic stage of relative bliss just prior to that.

            His one other major disagreement with Grof was his belief that the mythological and symbolical elements described by Grof were a product of LSD and that the first trimester events were the actual roots of much of such symbolism and supposed transpersonal/mythological scenarios (1981, p. 35).

Thomas Verny

The actual stimulus for a new field of pre- and perinatal psychology and the Pre- and Perinatal Psychology Association of North America—PPPANA (recently renamed the Association for Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Health—APPPAH) was Thomas Verny's (1981) The Secret Life of the Unborn Child.  His work brought together a good deal of the new empirical research that had opened the doors to us on the events in the womb.  While himself a practitioner of "holistic primal therapy," he integrated the accumulating data from the phenomenon of re-experience with the new information from the more traditional, "objective," scientific research into the prenatal—made possible by the latest advances in technology.

            One of his conclusions from this combination of lines of inquiry was that "birth and prenatal experiences form the foundations of human personality" (1981, p. 118).  His other conclusions center around the importance of intrauterine bonding in that his research strongly suggests that the prenate, via pathways hormonal and unknown, picks up on the thoughts, feelings, and attitudes of the mother.  More importantly, he asserted, the imprint of these factors on the fetus predetermines the later mother-child relationship.  He emphasized that positive thoughts and feelings toward the fetus—"maternal love"—acts to cushion the new individual against the normal stresses and unavoidable harshness inherent in birth and early infancy.  Yet all of this can not be completely avoided.  "Birth is like death to the newborn," writes Verny (1984, p. 48).

David Chamberlain

David Chamberlain (1988), the current president of APPPAH, has further substantiated the claim of consciousness at birth and the accuracy of pre- and perinatal memory in the phenomenon of re-experience.  He reported one study he did in which he compared hypnotically retrieved memories of birth from mother and child and found an astonishing degree of conformity in their responses.  Of note was the degree of inner consistency and originality in these memories as reported by the former neonate.  They often contained technical details of the delivery and labor unlike what would be expected of the medically unsophisticated, a perceptive critique of the way the birth was handled, and other details of the event that could not have been known through normal conscious channels.

Michael Irving

Michael Irving is a primal therapist whose contribution lies in his relation of these earliest events from sperm and egg through the birth experience to fundamental mythological motifs and images across cultures.  The originator of a way of interpretation that he calls natalism, he has brought together a host of artistic and artifactual images from a wide range of time periods and cultures which relate, with an astonishing degree of accuracy, to actual pre- and perinatal events.  In particular, he has traced the universal serpent/dragon motifs and mythology to birth and sperm experience, noting, among other things, that the serpent/dragon shape represents the birth canal or tunnel, that the fire-spewing characteristics of dragons relate to consuming pain, and that the constricting characteristics of snakes correspond to the constriction of the birth canal.  Of great interest is his deduction that the widely prevalent snake and dragon cults, which were especially popular in prehistory, indicate an attempt to deal with such unfinished birth trauma material as we are only now rediscovering the importance of in modern times.

Lloyd deMause

Lloyd deMause (1982, 1987) was instrumental in establishing the new interdisciplinary field of psychohistory.  In his study of historical happenings he discovered that stages in the progression of events related to stages in the progression of gestation and birth (which stages happened to correspond, by the way, remarkably well with Grof's four stages of birth, his Basic Perinatal Matrices).

            He found that natal imagery especially predominates in societies during times of crisis and war, when national purpose and state of affairs are construed as a need to escape or break free from an enclosing and constricting force.  He also noted the suffering fetus and the poisonous placenta as sources of these later metaphors and imagery.  In fact, in studying the imagery in the national media of various countries he

has been able to predict political, social, and economic events such as wars and invasions, recessions, and political downfalls.

Graham Farrant

Graham Farrant (1987; Buchheimer 1987), a psychiatrist and primal therapist from Australia, is probably the most influential and well-known of those discussing the phenomena that occur at the earliest times of our lives.  In addition to echoing Lake in describing fetal, implantation, and blastocyst feelings, he has been able to elicit and describe sperm and egg imprints.  He has found trauma from these earliest events to influence lifelong patterns of personality and behavior.  He has produced a notable video in which segments from the widely acclaimed movie "The Miracle of Life," which shows actual footage of gamete and zygote events, are juxtaposed via a split-screen with actual footage of a person reliving the exact same events in primal therapy.  The effect is astounding in the detail in which the relivings replicate the cellular events.

            In addition to his emphasis on cellular consciousness, Farrant has stressed the spiritual aspects of these earliest events.  He relates incidents of spiritual trauma at the cellular level in which the individual splits off from Divinity—thus setting up a lifelong feeling of loss and yearning and a desire to return to Unity and the Divine.

Paul Brenner

Paul Brenner (1991), a biologist and obstetrician, has been presenting at conferences and in workshops on the idea of the biological foundations of myth.  For example, he relates basic biological, cellular events to biblical events described in Genesis.

            He also relates male and female adult behavior to basic patterns of sperm and egg behavior and to events prior to and surrounding conception.  He has said that male and female behavior are just sperm and egg activity grown up!

Elizabeth Noble

Elizabeth Noble (1993) is an educator in the field of pregnancy and childbirth and is a student of Farrant's.  She has written a recent and comprehensive overview of this new field, titled Primal Connections, in which she doesn't hesitate to stress the issues of cellular consciousness and the spirituality that appears to coincide with the re-experience of these earliest events.  She provides empirical and theoretical avenues for understanding how memory can occur at such early times.  Some of these are consistent with mainstream physicalist science while others coincide with the cutting-edge, new-paradigm discoveries in fields such as biology, physics, and neuroscience.

David Wasdell

One of the most recent theoreticians in this area is David Wasdell.  Wasdell's (1979, 1985a, 1985b, 1990) major contribution lies in his relating these earliest events to social and cultural patterns.  He describes a process of devolution of consciousness beginning at around conception and proceeding through other reductions caused by traumas at implantation, in the womb, and at birth.  Most importantly, he delineates how the result of this diminution of potentiality is projected outwards into the problems and crises of violence, wars, and the mediocrity of modern personality on the scale of the masses and the macrocosms of the group, society, and global events.  In describing the problems of "normality" as rooted in a deprivational and deformational series of traumas from our earliest biological history, he emphasizes that this gives us the possibility to change that tragic social and personality outcome by focusing on the prevention and healing of such traumas.  Thus, he holds out the vision of a new person and new society as an outcome of the efforts directed at the earliest laying down of human experience.

S. Giora Shoham

While not strictly a pre- and perinatal psychologist, I include this too little-known theoretician and criminologist because of the close relationship and influence his work has had upon the present one.  While I initially constructed and wrote down the theory to be presented in this work without the benefit of Shoham's work, upon discovering it I could not help but be both confirmed and reinspired by the astounding resonance his conception has with my own.  Shoham (1979, 1990) starts his devolutional model in the womb and carries it through birth, weaning, and the oedipal periods of development.  Though, as I delineate in Part 2, I disagree with his model by beginning mine at the creation of sperm and egg, in virtually all major instances his model corresponds to my own if one simply (in keeping with a normal trend in child development in general as it begins to integrate the new pre- and perinatal evidence) places everything back a little farther in time—in this case, specifically, one stage back.

The Importance of the Intrauterine and the Goal of This Book

Despite this long legacy of work and thought in this pre- and perinatal area, much of it, especially the prenatal, remains ignored by mainstream psychology and is largely unavailable to the public.  Within the field itself, in addition, the prenatal information, in relation to the more widely accepted and circulated perinatal evidence, seems to be analogous to Otto Rank's (1929/1952) ideas of birth trauma were to Sigmund Freud's concerning early infancy in their being cast under an extra cloud of suspicion and disbelief and disregarded accordingly.  Yet, like Rank's findings also, their main problem may lie with unfamiliarity and prejudice rather than validity or scientific viability; and these findings, like his were, may end up harkening the outlines of future endeavors and being confirmed by subsequent research.  Thus, I believe that this prenatal area in particular is ripe for reaping what it can teach us about what is human, about human nature. 

            Therefore, this book will put forth the possible relationship between our earliest ontogenetic experiences as humans and the structure of human consciousness and stages of human "development." 

            I build a model that seeks an initial formulation of this information, teasing out its implications, and integrating it with relevant thinking and theoretical perspectives in anthropology, philosophy, psychology, and others.

            However, before proceeding, it seems important to establish this pursuit within the logical-empirical framework that validates it.  To do this, let us now turn to the re-experience movement I am most familiar with and feel to be the most important, primal therapy, and discuss its relation to the phenomenon of prenatal re-experience and spirituality.

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Go Forward to Chapter Two:  The Case for the Legitimacy of Prenatal Spirituality

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