Perinatal Imagery in the Star Wars
Trilogy
ABSTRACT: Stanislav Grof’s four perinatal matrices provide
a useful guide to why certain types of imagery appear in the Star Wars
trilogy and to the dynamics of the struggle between Luke Skywalker and
Darth Vader. The human struggle to be born imprints experiences upon
the neonate so strongly that they influence the nature of postnatal imagination
and behavior. That primal struggle tends to be constantly relived
throughout our lives. So when films such as Star Wars project
imagery evocative of that struggle, they mirror and evoke memories powerfully
present in the unconscious. The opportunity to vicariously relive
those experiences is part of the attraction of the trilogy, contributing
to its unparalleled worldwide appeal.
“ . . . . a return to the womb. And we can take the
analogy further: The walls of the room begin to close in on its inhabitants
just before their final release through a small door — rather like the
contractions that push a baby out into the world. So on the one hand
the experience is that of being consumed by the Death Star; on the other,
this is an ordeal of initiation and rebirth.”1
“Star Wars gives birth to a sense of human complicity, as it
involves us in a worthy struggle.”2
— J. P. Telotte, “The Dark Side of the Force”
“One would be naïve indeed to believe that so great a cataclysm
(birth) would not leave its mark. Its traces are everywhere; on the
skin . . . in all our human folly, in our madness, in our tortures, our
prisons, in legends, epics, and our myths.”3
Pervasive Perinatal Elements and Star War’s Popularity
The powerful appeal of the Star Wars trilogy has been explained in various
ways, from the technical and special effects wizardry that eroticises speed
and produces spectacular scenes to the extensive use of universal mythic
themes and archetypes that resonate in the consciousness of the viewer.
George Lucas’s own comments make it clear that the fit between the trajectory
of the trilogy’s narrative and Joseph Campbell’s monomyth of the hero4
is no accident.
However, creators work at an unconscious level too. And it
is important to note that the Campbell monomyth is, according to the evidence
described below, itself shaped by perinatal experiences normally beyond
conscious recall, that is, by experiences the fetus had in the womb, during
birth, and immediately after birth. It then follows that the extent
to which these unconscious powerful forces are tapped can, not only determine
the content of the narrative, but the appeal it has for an audience.
Any film, any narrative, cannot avoid using some perinatal imagery,
for reasons which should also become clear soon. Dreams, like creative
works, are products of the unconscious, and a study of 590 dreams showed
sixty percent of them contained such birth-related imagery. Indeed,
several writers have noted the blatant perinatal imagery of some scenes
in the Star Wars trilogy, but without apparently appreciating what was
involved. Neither were they aware of how those elements relate to
certain kindred material, in particular to the Oedipal struggle between
Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. In this article I will seek to redress
this lack by presenting the pervasively perinatal elements of the Star
Wars tapestry along with an understanding — based on the extensive research
of Stanislav Grof into the perinatal unconscious — of the significance
of that perinatal weave.
Grof’s Birth Stages: Shaping Behavior for
Life
Nearly two decades ago it could be written that “a vast body of psychological
material on birth feelings has accumulated in the past two decades.”5
Of course, the evidence is even more compelling today. Deep regression
of subjects by means of primal therapy, LSD, immersion tanks, holotropic
breathing, and hypnosis has exposed fetal and neonatal experiences to verbalized
recall. The conclusion: Not only is the fetus extremely sensitive
to stimuli, but its experiences just before, during, and after birth embed
themselves so deeply in the unconscious that they shape behavior and thought
for life as the individual tries to bring some congruence between his or
her unconscious preoccupations and the external world.
Birth, in particular, is an experience too overwhelming to be assimilated
and defended against by immature nervous systems or digested by the unconscious.
It has to be controlled by being projected into the imagination or dream
life, or by being acted out in some way. Utilizing an extraordinary
mass of clinical data from his research, Stanislav Grof devised a four-stage
scheme of perinatal experience that provides matrices for arranging and
interpreting fantasy and behavior.6
Furthermore — and this is germane to a major point of this article — if
an individual was particularly impressed and imprinted by one or two of
these perinatal matrices, or stages, his or her postnatal thought, artistic
expression, and behavior tend to reflect this.
Grof’s stages, in brief, are as follows: Stage 1, the matrix
of security and union, relates to the primal union with the mother — an
intrauterine stage of symbiosis when, ideally, security and satisfaction
of all needs are enjoyed and where inner and outer are not differentiated.
Stage 2, persecution and pressure, corresponds to the onset of labor, when
chemical changes and muscular contractions start to occur and the fetus
feels the effect of an alarmingly changed and pressurized environment as
the cervix remains closed. Incipient uterine contractions may be
experienced as an attack, for example, by a huge octopus. Stage 3,
struggle and sensation, relates to the opening of the cervix and propulsion
along the birth canal when a struggle for survival amidst enormous pressures
ensues. Immense energy is absorbed and released; there are feelings
of suffocation and of powerful currents streaming through the body.
Stage 4, triumph and survival, corresponds to exit from the birth canal,
decompression, relief, relaxation, and physical separation from the mother.
Let us now look at how these elements express themselves in the Star
War’s trilogy.
Stage 1 in Star Wars: Harsh, Barren, and
Promising
Imagery in the trilogy evocative of Stage 1 is not plentiful.
If one sees Luke as treading the path of the “hero with a thousand faces,”
he must start from a state of comparatively blissful and primal innocence,
such as life on his uncle’s farm on Tatooine. The surrounding landscape
has a certain rugged beauty and majesty and permits a degree of agriculture
and self-sufficiency.
But it is also dry, harsh, and barren . . . not the bounteous paradise
typical of Stage 1 imagery. Luke is aware enough of the predatory
Sandpeople and the persecutory forces of the empire to feel less than entirely
secure. His emotional needs are not satisfied. Frustrated with
the drudgery of farm life, he longs to join his peers at the space academy
and become a fighter pilot. He feels trapped and confined, and he
chafes at the authority of uncle Owen, who does not want him to follow
his father’s footsteps. Luke by no means sees the world as idyllic,
nor as transcending good and evil. Scenes of natural or palatial
beauty, such as the Endor forest, do occur spasmodically throughout the
trilogy, but they tend not to be concordant with security and bliss — the
frozen wastes of the icy planet Hoth spring to mind.
However, in learning of the Force from Obi Wan Kenobi, Luke is given
an intimation of something that mystically unifies the cosmos and transcends
time and space, a unified field that permits telepathy, telekinesis, hypnosis,
and identification with interstellar space. It registers the annihilation
of the planet Alderaan, so that Obi Wan can sense millions of souls perishing
— “a great disturbance in the Force.” Giving way to intuition and
the Force, as Luke does in the attack on the Death Star in “Star Wars”
(henceforth SW, the first story in the trilogy) is precisely the confident
and serene surrender to a benevolent, protective guidance (“it will be
with you always”) that marks the attitude of this stage. The Universe
is a mystery to be experienced rather than a riddle to be solved.
So although Stage 1 imagery of bounteous security is not abundant, the
abstract notion of “the Force” is a salient Stage 1 characteristic.
Stage 2 in the Trilogy: Predicaments Aplenty!
Stage 2 imagery, on the other hand, is plentiful. The imagery
of this of Grof’s stages revolves around a sense of entrapment, of being
subject to inexplicable and unjustified threat, a sense of being unable
to escape from perpetual suffering, endless terror, or unavoidable doom,
of being a victim. It generates  visions
of imprisonment, torture, mutilation, inquisition, malevolent plotters,
black magicians, demonic forces, the fall of angels, dehumanized and grotesque
automata and robots, labyrinths, dangerous caves, swamps, darkness and
ominous colors, bleak, arid landscapes, descent to the underworld, being
sucked into an abyss, attacks from terrifying monsters, and so on.
The corresponding theme of descent to the underworld — of shifting from
a sense of cosmic unity to the torments of hell — reflect the onset of
labor during birth.
Life experiences and feelings reminiscent of this stage are helplessness,
loneliness, claustrophobia, alienation, rejection, abandonment, falls from
grace, depression, paranoia, oppressive family atmosphere, sense of meaninglessness,
futility, and despair, situations threatening survival and bodily integrity
such as warfare, injury, accidents, incorporation, and near-drowning.
The angst of existentialism (cf. Sartre’s No Exit) and the nightmarish,
bizarre, and morbid features of the work of Zola, Doestoevsky, Poe, Hieronymous
Bosch, Goya, Dali, and Petronius indicate the legacy of this stage of perinatal
experience.7
The aridness of Luke’s Tatooine environment, the attack upon him
by the Sandpeople who ride mammoth-like steeds, the threat of the Jawas
to R2D2, C3PO losing an arm, Luke’s frustration at life on the farms (he
ends one domestic scene in the farmhouse with the words, “I am going nowhere”)
are Stage 2 elements in the earliest part of SW. Then, after the
destruction of the farmstead and the murder of Luke’s uncle and aunt by
imperial troops, Stage 2 imagery intensifies: There is the “descent”
to the nightmarish, hostile underworld of the Mos Eisley cantina, populated
by a wide range of grotesque creatures, one of whom has an arm cut off
by Obi Wan’s lightsaber.
But even before this are Stage 2 scenes on the imperial command ship:
Vader tortures a rebel officer, interrogates, confines, and agrees to the
torture of Leia, and generally radiates malevolence as he expresses confidence
that fear will hold the empire together. Leia’s sense of despair
at her imprisonment is conveyed by the hologram message, “Help me Obi Wan
Kenobi, only you can save me,” which R2D2 plays for Luke and Obi Wan.
The incorporative, engulfing aspect of Stage 2 imagery is illustrated
first when the Death Star’s tractor beam sucks in the Millennium Falcon
and then when Luke, Han, Leia, and Chewbacca, pursued through the labyrinth,
dive down into the garbage pit and stand knee-deep in liquid and solid
garbage, threatened with mastication and digestion. Luke is pulled
under by a largely unseen, slimy monster that wraps around him and, when
Luke momentarily surfaces, pulls him under again. This “Belly of
the Whale” motif takes on an even more blatant uterine aspect when the
walls close in and threaten to crush the quartet.
The themes of (actual or attempted) swallowing, incorporation, engulfment,
mutilation, dismemberment — the oppressive atmosphere redolent of what
the fetus experiences during the contraction phase in a closed uterus —
is much more pervasive in "The Empire Strikes Back" (henceforth ESB, the
second movie in the trilogy).8
Luke, while patrolling on the ice planet Hoth, is seized by an abominable
snowman, is hung up in a cave for future consumption, cuts off the monster’s
arm, and is put inside a dead wampa by Han, who cuts its belly open to
provide shelter for Luke. Having escaped from Hoth, Han's spaceship,
the Millennium Falcon, with Han, Leia, Chewbacca, and C3PO aboard, flies
into a cavity in the ground which coincides with the mouth of a monster,
down whose gullet the craft flies before settling in its stomach.
In typical perinatal style, the trapped characters manage to fly out through
its mouth in the nick of time before teeth can enclose and trap them.
Luke meanwhile crashes on Dagobah and his craft sinks into an eerie
, swampy, underworld place that gives Luke the creeps (“something out of
a dream . . . I feel cold, like death”), where R2D2 is swallowed by a monster
lurking under the water and is then spat out. Reptilian creatures
and an apparition of a subsequently decapitated Vader add to the horror.
Onboard the imperial command ship, C3PO is comprehensively fragmented and
sent to a junk pile, an enduring fear for this droid. As if in recognition
of the salience of the fragmentation theme, Vader, in announcing a reward
for the capture of the Millennium Falcon and its inmates, declares that
there is to be “no disintegrations.”
On Bespin, “the pattern of capture, rescue, and escape becomes relentless
and oppressive, until finally rescue and escape become impossible.”9
Han is put into a torture chamber by Vader, screams are heard, and then
he is lowered into a pit and prepared for a living death, frozen in carbonite
and destined for  Jabba
the Hutt. The infernal environment for all this is suitably red,
black, and sulfurous. Red, black, and sulfurous fumes are the backdrop
for the duel between Vader and Luke in the bowels of Bespin, full of pits,
tunnels, voids, and grills, where Luke has his right hand cut off and falls
into an abyss and down a chute. To the extent that Leia is a mother
figure, her separation from Luke for much of ESB amounts to an abandonment.
The opening scenes of "The Return of the Jedi" (henceforth ROJ, the
final story in the trilogy) — in the infernal, nightmarish underworld of
Jabba, a den of black and red horror with a tooth-like entrance door —
are perhaps the clearest expression in the trilogy of visions of Tartarus.
There are a collection of repulsive monsters, notably the wide-mouthed
Jabba, who eats a small creature alive, and the large-toothed Rancor, who
devours two associates of Jabba before having its voracious jaws pried
apart and then being killed by Luke. Han still frozen in carbonite,
a sinister-looking bounty hunter, a disintegrated droid and a tortured
droid, and the threat of a similar fate for C3PO are additional elements
in the theme.
The incorporative theme as well is continued when Jabba calls the
thawed-out Han "Bantha-fodder." The threats to bodily integrity and
the terrors of incorporation are magnified by the fate that is promised
our heroes once they are fed to the Sarlacc, a man-eating pit in the desert,
where they will encounter “a new definition of pain and suffering” as they
are digested over a thousand years. This toothed orifice in the desert
is fed at least five of Jabba’s crew (on one occasion swallowed with an
audible gulp) when a fight started by Luke breaks out. The incorporative
grisliness of the vagina-dentata–like orifice is reinforced by a
tentacle it sends forth to wrap around Lando before he is freed from it
by Han.
In these ways, for sustained horror, the Jabba segment is perhaps
unequaled in the trilogy, as it recaptures the most nightmarish elements
of the second perinatal stage. Jabba — a vile fiend surrounded by
demonic  creatures
and without even the stature of a tyrant — with gleeful, mocking sadism
dispenses capricious, random suffering that seems to have no purpose10
apart from inculcating pervasive terror and reducing to dehumanised monsters
anyone not yet at that level. Keeping with this element, elsewhere
throughout the trilogy the empire exerts its pervasive terrorizing power
through robotic stormtroopers, who are the servant automata of a dehumanizing
technology.
In another scene expressing Stage 2 imagery, Han, Luke, and Chewbacca
are slung on a spit in preparation for roasting and consumption by the
Ewoks. This occurs in another of those red and black, suggestive-of-the-infernal
environments common in ESB and ROJ and indicative of the hellish second
matrix. And as the story unfolds in ROJ, the Stage 2 theme of the
fallen angel is kept before us. Nonetheless, the frequency and intensity
of that stage’s horrid imagery declines for the remainder of ROJ as the
narrative moves more into Stage 3 and 4 imagery, i.e., engagement/struggle
and, eventually, triumph. In these scenes the hellish red and black
colors are offset with blue in creating the backdrop. These colors
dominate when Vader and Luke meet the emperor on the Death Star and then
do battle with each other. Significantly, indicating a movement out
of Stage 2 helplessness, this time it is Vader’s hand that is cut off.
As for the emperor, he is hurled down a deep chute of the reactor core
and consumed by fire.11
Finally, Stage 3 . . . At Least There's Hope!
Despite the abundance of Stage 2 plot developments, as described above
— and despite what one might think considering these seemingly impossible
situations — Stage 2 experience in the trilogy is not marked by the sense
of futility that it usually engenders. That this is so may be due
to the equally abundant Stage 3 imagery.
This imagery revolves around titanic battles, volcanic ecstasy, oscillation
between intense pain and pleasure, massive explosions, launching missiles
and spaceships, flash discharges and high-voltage currents, powerful currents
streaming through the body, diabolic war machines, cataclysms, massacres,
orgies, carnivals, sensual dancing, crusades, conquests, destruction of
cities and civilizations. Postnatal life experiences that relive
the third perinatal stage include struggles, fights, choking, suffocation,
strangulation, adventurous activities such as participation in battles
and revolutions, court power struggles, infliction of pain, dangerous driving
and flying, betrayal and intergenerational conflict, amusement park rides,
wild parties, seduction, rape, willingness to endure great hardships to
secure victory, and enormous discharges of destructive impulses and energies.
Though gruesome like Stage 2, Stage 3 is the stage of purgatory rather
than hell. Although some of the elements are not easily distinguishable
from Stage 2 (death, or the threat of death, looms large in both), here
there is engagement and fighting back, rather than helpless suffering from
persecution. Suffering in Stage 3 has a clear and definite purpose.
The sensuous, volcanic nature of the output of Rubens and Van Gogh, the
intense upward striving of Gothic architecture and El Greco’s paintings,
the exploits of Don Juan and the basic themes of Wagner operas are illustrative
of how such imagery appears in creative work.
The most important themes of the trilogy fit fairly obviously into
this stage. There is a heroic struggle of  good
versus galactic tyranny and evil taking place in space, on the ground,
and within structures; rebel characters and pilots are involved in frequent
chase and battle scenes; and characters are portrayed who have some emotional
life. These characters stand starkly in contrast to the dehumanised,
faceless, sterile, Fascist, regimented, droid-like, mechanical forces of
the octopoid empire (Vader is described by Yoda as “more a machine now
than a man”), who enforce martial law and maintain roadblocks at colonial
outposts such as Mos Eisley and who devise two Death Stars.
To support the violent upheaval of Stage 3, there are numerous fiery
explosions,12 including
that of a whole planet, Alderaan, which Tarkin sadistically forces Leia
to watch. Fiery explosions also take place in the battle for the
rebels’ generator on Hoth near the beginning of ESB.13
Vader strangles several subordinates in the course of events and himself
breathes in a labored, constricted way with the aid of a respirator.
The Millennium Falcon can accelerate to light speed via its hyperdrive,
and in ESB it and its pursuers have to negotiate a dangerous meteor field.
The attacking missions that lead to the destruction of the Death Stars
withstand ferocious pursuit and resistance from defending spacecraft and
steer at high speed through a long and dangerous channel. The thrills
and spills of the speeder-bikes through the forest of Endor are further
obvious examples of this stage’s imagery.
The oscillation between pain and pleasure, also characteristic of
Stage 3, is conveyed not only by the varying fortunes of the protagonists
but also in the struggle within the Force between its light and dark sides.
This is expressed, for example, by the temptations offered to Luke’s self-control,
especially that of giving in to hate and being consumed by it when he is
being zapped by the emperor’s bolts of electricity. If  applied
to others and not the self, the power to control leads to the dark side,
as Yoda warned. Likewise, Luke struggles between two poles over whether
he must kill or redeem his father (“there is still good in him”).
A struggle goes on within Vader, too, notably in the final scene on the
Death Star when he turns on the emperor and finally redeems himself.
Individual combats include Han and Greedo at Mos Eisley, Obi Wan
and Vader on the Death Star in SW, Luke and Vader in their spacecraft in
the attack on the Death Star in SW, Luke and Vader in ESB and ROJ, Luke
and the Rancor. Vader’s betrayal of Lando on Bespin, who is then forced
to betray Han, and Tarkin’s betrayal of Leia when she supplies some information
on the rebels and then has her home planet blown up, also fit this stage.
The dyadic interlock of the third perinatal stage, when mother and
child cause so much pain to each other  and
are bound together in a situation both have to face, leads to situations
in postnatal life where, figuratively and literally, blood spilt on both
sides can mix and fuse, so that the partners of dyads are bound to each
other in unsuspecting ways. They are motivated by the same forces.
Examples of bound dyads are sadists and masochists, prisoners and guards,
policemen and criminals, ultrarightists and ultraleftists, revolutionaries
and tyrants.
The nature and danger (for Luke) of this dyad is brought out by the
additional internecine fact that tyrant and rebel are father and son, by
the way this is brought home to Luke by his seeing his own features appear
in the mask of the decapitated Vader under the tree on Dagobah, and by
the emperor’s recognition that the rebel could, if turned, become an effective
co-tyrant, channeling his destructive impulses into oppression.
Grof has found that many subjects who could recover Stage 3 experience,
especially the final phases of the birth journey, easily identified with
famous tyrants such as Nero, Genghis Khan, Hitler, Stalin. This gave
them an insight into the mentality of the tyrant and its kinship with that
of a child struggling in the birth canal and responding with fury to the
infliction of suffocation, pain, and anxiety, and how they might (strive
to) become tyrannical if the appropriate level of the unconscious were
sufficiently stimulated by the circumstances of their lives.14
Among the characteristics of tyrants uncovered by Grof's work were
extreme loneliness and paranoia. The loneliness of Vader and the
emperor is strongly implicit in their portrayal in the films. It
is impossible to imagine either of them in a domestic or convivial situation,
chatting and relaxing with relatives and friends. That Vader is the
favorite character with many children may have something to do with their
greater proximity to being in the birth canal.15
It may be a response to the invitation to be the rebel part of the revolutionary-tyrant
dyad (preferring Vader to Luke is a rebellious perversity common
in children), but it may also be an empathetic response to two other characteristics
of dictators, a feeling of inferiority, and a hunger for recognition and
respect.
Luke becomes more like Vader when he acquires a bionic hand.
Unlike many revolutionaries, Luke manages to resist the sadomasochistic,
other-destructive and simultaneously self-destructive position this would
entail. Still, the issue and the temptation to betray all is clearly
presented. On Vader's part, he actually switches to the role of rebel
and betrayer to the emperor. In ESB he apparently determines to save
Luke’s life and offers him the chance to rule the empire with him (“We
will rule the galaxy together as father and son”) if he will join the dark
side of the Force and help him overthrow the emperor, which Vader himself,
in fact, does at the end of the trilogy.
Stage 4: Deliverance and Triumph
According to Grof, imagery associated with Stage 4 involves expansiveness,
expansions of space, visions of gigantic marble halls, radiant light and
beautiful colors, entry into heaven or the Elysian fields, the final overthrow
of a tyrant, triumphal scenes and processions, victory over monsters, majestic
mountains and starry skies. Relevant postnatal life experiences include
fortuitous escape from or termination of dangerous situations, survival
of an accident or natural disaster, the end of a long and exhausting war,
and the overcoming of severe obstacles by active effort to achieve signal
success. The mood of this stage is one of liberation, salvation,
redemption, love, forgiveness, humility, a sense of having been unburdened
and purged, exhilaration, and warmth and desire to serve humanity.
The sense of cosmic unity here has much in common with Stage 1 but is experienced
in the aftermath of a life-altering struggle and a sense of rebirth.
Hercules completing his labors, St. George returning from slaying the dragon,
Theseus the Minotaur, and Perseus the Gorgon, are illustrative.
In the Star Wars trilogy, the starlit panoramas of much of the action
in space obviously fall into this category, as do the numerous escapes
from tight corners by our heroes, though celebrations of escapes are mostly
fairly muted. The cloud city of Bespin has some of the relevant characteristics
— graceful, lofty, light-filled chambers. The triumphal scene in
the great hall, with its huge vertical beams of light, when Luke and Han
are given medals by Leia at the end of SW, the street celebrations near
the end of ROJ in the 1997 Director’s Cut version and the rejoicing in
the Ewoks’ settlement clearly qualify.
The redemptive theme that runs through the second half of the trilogy
(this includes Lando making up for his “betrayal”) and blends with resistance
to the emperor and the dark side of the Force reaches its climax when Vader
casts down the emperor and finally responds to the good that is in him.
Luke has successfully emerged from the struggle to learn to use the Force
constructively for a greater good, in contrast to Vader’s customary destructive
use of it. The ultimate reconciliation of Luke and Vader is pivotal
to the success of the whole rebellion.
As Han realizes he is free to develop his relationship with Leia,
and the spirits of Obi Wan, Yoda, and Vader stand side by side, exalted
and smiling upon Luke and perhaps representing healing of cleavages in
his psyche, the mood is indeed one of “liberation, salvation, redemption,
love, forgiveness, humility.” The most appropriate word is, perhaps,
deliverance. The qualities required for successful resistance to
tyranny — such as strength, courage, and commitment — are the very qualities
that can serve a tyrant well. And not the least of Luke’s triumphs
is, for now at least, successful resistance to the temptation that many
revolutionaries succumb to, becoming tyrants themselves.
The war and revolution themes of Stages 2 and 3, experienced from
the perspectives of victim/vanquished or oppressor/victim, need a Stage
4 resolution that restrains the triumphal mood which can, unless great
care is taken, slide back into Stage 3 oppression by the victors.
The trilogy ends with no suggestion that this is about to occur.16
Luke had resisted the Satanic temptations of Vader and the emperor.
The Struggle to Be Reborn
In conclusion, Grof’s thesis that much human fantasy and behavior can
be explained by perinatal imprinting is clinically evident and has been
fruitfully employed by many in attempts to understand human behavior, notable
among whom are astronomer Carl Sagan, philosopher of religion Huston Smith,
and mythologist Joseph Campbell.17
“Current transpersonal research shows surprising similarities between birth,
death, shamanic initiation, the mythological hero’s journey, certain aspects
of schizophrenia, and psychedelic experiences.”18
While the physical struggle to be born is a symbiotic conflict between
mother and child, the emotional and  spiritual
struggle to mature is often played out as a conflict between father and
child that leads to a different kind of deliverance. Indeed, as in
virtually all other stories in this genre, real mothers are wholly absent
from the Star Wars story. When material from the perinatal level
of the unconscious emerges into consciousness, the individual can begin
"the hero's journey." And in the course of it, he or she becomes
intensely preoccupied with death and a dramatic struggle to be born (reborn)
and to free the self from whatever it is that confines it — which at its
base is the post-traumatic baggage we all carry from our childhoods and
especially that first, biological, birth.
Some USA viewers of the Star Wars films have enjoyed a perceived
analogy with America's War of Independence to explain the phenomenal grasp
the Star Wars saga has upon the consciousness of so many. But in
actuality the Star Wars trilogy owes much of its cross-cultural appeal
to the way that its overall theme, its individual scenes, and the pace
and manner of its projection recapitulates the experience of our births,
in general, and in particular the way it validates the struggle we all
experience in our lives as a result of that early imprint.
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1. Mary Henderson, Star
Wars: The Magic of Myth  (New
York: Bantam, 1997), p. 53, speaking of the garbage masher in the belly
of the Death Star in "Star Wars" (henceforth SW, and referring to the first
part of the trilogy) that threatens to masticate and digest Luke, Han,
Leia, and Chewbacca. [return to text]
2. J. P. Telotte, “The Dark Side of the
Force: Star Wars and the Science Fiction Tradition.” Extrapolation
24, pp. 216-226, Fall 1983, p. 226. [return
to text]
4. Joseph Campbell's monomyth of the hero is
presented in his classic work,  The
Hero With a Thousand Faces (1990, reprint, Princeton University
Press). He describes a universally depicted mythic cycle which begins
with the hero (representing the average person) leaving the sameness of
everyday reality to be drawn into an adventurous encounter with dark forces
(representing the average person's call to encounter her or his inner darkness
on the path of self-realization), to do righteous and eventually victorious
battle with these forces, in the process to become transformed, and then
to return again to the everyday world, a renewed person with a "torch"
to bring to the world. [return to text]
5. Loyd DeMause, “The Fetal Origins of History.”
Journal
of Psychoanalytic Anthropology, 4, pp. 1-92, 1981, p. 8. Cf.  Christina
and Stanislav Grof, The
Stormy Search for the Self (Los Angeles: Tarcher, 1990),
p. 145: “Recent research has repeatedly confirmed and further developed
the original ideas of Freud’s disciple Otto Rank about the permanent role
that the birth trauma and even perinatal influences play in human life.
These findings have inspired an entire new field: prenatal and perinatal
psychology.” The likelihood of perinatal imprinting and the undoubted
ability of some people to recall fetal experience even without the aid
of special techniques is discussed by R. D. Laing, The
Voice of Experience (London: Penguin, 1982). Laing
refers to the work of Otto Rank, Arthur Janov, Francis Mott, M. Peerbolte,
Frank Lake, Stanislav Grof, Donald Winnicott, and Frederick Leboyer.
[return to text] {Editor's Note: For others of Grof's
and deMause's works, including articles by them on this site, click on
Grof's
Books and/or "Planetary Survival
and Consciousness Evolution: Psychological Roots of Human Violence and
Greed" and/or deMause's
Books and/or "The History of Childhood
As the History of Child Abuse" and/or "Restaging
Prenatal and Birth Traumas in War and Social Violence."}
6. Stanislav Grof, Realms
of the Human Unconscious (New York: Viking, 1975); Stanislav
Grof, “Perinatal Roots of  Wars,
Totalitarianism, and Revolutions: Observations from LSD Research,” Journal
of Psychohistory 4(3) Winter 1997, pp. 269-308; Stanislav Grof,
Beyond
the Brain (New York: State University Press, 1985). [return
to text] {Editor's Note: For others of Grof's many works, including
an article of his on this site, click on Grof's
Books and/or "Planetary Survival
and Consciousness Evolution: Psychological Roots of Human Violence and
Greed."}
7. On Petronius, see Ron F. Newbold, “Feelings
of Entrapment, Persecution, and Depression in the Satyricon: A Perinatal
Explanation,” Classicum 16(1) April 1990, pp. 14-15. See too, idem,
“Perinatal Imagery in Claudian,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library
73(1) Spring 199, pp. 7-15. [return to text]
8. For the darkness of this film, see especially
A. Gordon, “The Empire Strikes Back: Monsters from the Id,” SFS 7
November 1980, pp. 313-318. [return to text]
9. Mary Henderson, 1997,
op. cit., p. 60. [return to text]
10. Aside from punishing the disobedient dancing
girl, Oola, and settling a score with Han. [return
to text]
12. “The Death Star goes up in an orgasmic explosion
of fireworks.” A. Gordon, “Star Wars: A Myth for our Time,” Literature/Film
Quarterly 6(4) Fall 1978, pp. 314-326, at p. 324. [return
to text]
13. The alternation between ice/cold and fire
in this part of the film is typical of the sensory oscillation that can
characterize Stage 3 experience. [return to text]
14. The insight that tyrants could lead pitiable
lives and that they were as much victims as aggressors has a long history.
Plato, for one, made such observations. As Henderson
(1997, op. cit., p. 156) points out, tyrants are often those who used
strength and fury to master what they saw as evil but then are mastered
by those qualities to become evil themselves. [return
to text]
15. For children’s identification with Vader,
see L. Scicaj, “Bettelheim, Castaneda, and Zen: The Powers Behind the Force
in Star Wars,” Extrapolation 22(3), 1981, pp. 213-230, at p. 215.
[return to text]
16. But David Ansen is right to ask, “What kind
of government do the Rebels stand for anyway?” in “How the Force Conquers
All,” Newsweek 101(23), June 6, 1983, pp. 44-45, at p. 45.
And the Nazi-style triumphal gathering at the end of SW may be a flirting
with the possibility of future tyranny. [return to
text]
17. See
Henderson (1997, op. cit.) in particular on Campbell’s monomyth of
the hero. For religion in the trilogy, see P. Vardy, “The Theology
of Star Wars,” The Month 20(1), January 1987, pp. 14-18; R. Short,
“Closer Still to Christ: The Star Wars Saga," or "The Gospel According
to Saint Lucas,” The
Gospel from Outer Space (London: Collins, 1983), pp. 45-96.
[return to text]
18. T. Roberts, “Brainstorm: A Psychological
Odyssey,” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 26, 1986, pp. 126-136,
with many references. The quotation comes from page 131. [return
to text]
Copyright © 1999 by Ron F. Newbold
Biographical Note
RON NEWBOLD has
been in the Classics department (now part of the Centre for European Studies
and General Linguistics) at the University of Adelaide, South Australia,
since 1969. For the past twenty years he has taught courses
in Classical Mythology (of which the Star Wars trilogy forms a popular
part), and for the past ten years courses in ancient and modern media.
Acquaintance with the work of Stanislav Grof some time ago suggested new
ways of approaching film and literature. But whether it can be melded
with current work on forgiveness and revenge in some works of ancient historiography
remains to be seen. Ron can be contacted on ron.newbold@adelaide.edu.au.
Star Wars Trilogy Resources and Access
 Star
Wars Trilogy. George Lucas, et al. Videotape.
[Surprisingly, the studio is currently no longer producing this video edition.
The link, however, does bring you to a wealth of information and reviews
on the trilogy, and Amazon.com recommends you try checking back again in
case the studio releases it again.]
 Star
Wars Trilogy. George Lucas, et al. Book. [At
least you can still get the book of all three stories in the trilogy.]
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