British
psychiatrist Frank Lake discovered the means to heal the deep wounds inflicted on us before we were even born.
Frank
Lake, a missionary doctor working in India, was commissioned by
his mission society to specialise in psychiatry. During his studies
he adopted the psychodynamic theory, according to which most psychic
problems have their origin in traumatic experiences inflicted in
earliest infancy. In 1954, Lake began treating some of his patients
tentatively by using the psychoactive drug LSD invented by Albert
Hofmann in the Sandoz Laboratories.
Two years later Stanislav Grof, a young psychoanalyst, began similar
experiments in the psychiatric department of the Charles University
School of Medicine in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Grof became himself
one of the early experimental subjects and later wrote: "I was hit
by a radiance that was comparable to the epicenter of an atomic
explosion, or possibly to the light of supernatural brilliance that
according to Oriental scriptures appears to us at the moment of
death. This thunderbolt catapulted me out of my body. I lost first
the awareness of the research assistant and the laboratory, then
the psychiatric clinic, then Prague, and finally the planet. My
consciousness expanded at an inconceivable speed and reached cosmic
dimensions".
In therapeutic use, it was soon found out that LSD did not cause typical drug-specific hallucinations. It just opened up the gates to the subconscious. Carefully measured doses of LSD made the patient undergo a process, during which he relived, very intensively and in great detail, a number of emotional traumas of his childhood. During this phase, the therapy confirmed the general psychodynamic theories of psychoanalysis. However, this therapeutic process surpassed psychoanalysis in speed and vigour.
Deeper into the unconscious
Soon the patients prepared a surprise for both Frank Lake and Stanislav
Grof. They began reliving their actual birth experience in vivid
detail. The therapists did not give credence to these statements,
as their neurologist colleagues had stated that it is impossible
for anyone to remember one's birth, because the nerve sheaths have
not yet been myelinised at this early stage of development. But,
irrespective of what neurologists said, patients went on describing
their sensations of gliding through the birth passage, and sometimes
of being almost strangled by their own umbilical cord, or being
extracted from the channel by means of a forceps.
Frank Lake admitted that he was not prepared for such frequent
abreaction of birth trauma. He wrote later that he resisted for
three years the realization that these were in fact reminiscences
of the actual birth experience of the patients. Finally he decided
to contact people who had been assisting in the delivery. They confirmed
the veracity of the statements. In an international conference,
some psychiatrists working with LSD also reported on cases of abreacted
birth trauma. "This left me free to allow my patients to continue
my education", Lake wrote.
Otto Rank and Nandor Fodor
The Trauma of Birth had originally been postulated by Otto Rank,
a pupil and early follower of Sigmund Freud. In his book Das
Geburtstrauma, 1923, Rank had proposed his hypothesis that
birth experience is often heavily traumatic and that many neuroses
have their origin in birth trauma. Rank assumed, incorrectly, that
the main traumatic factor is the experience of abandonment, the
expulsion from the maternal womb. However, he predicted sagaciously
that it would once be possible to relive and integrate the birth
trauma under the assistance of an experienced 'midwife'. By using
this term instead of 'doctor', Rank wanted to emphasize "the purely
human and practical factor of the process".
Sigmund Freud was at first positively interested in these ideas
of his young protégé and wrote to Ferenczi that Rank's idea was
"the most important progress since the discovery of psychoanalysis."
Unfortunately, Freud yielded to the protests of Abraham and Jones
and rejected Rank's important discovery in 1924, as it threatened
the key position of the oedipus complex and patricidal wishes
as the earliest source of neurosis. These were to become the cornerstones
of psychoanalysis. (Peter Gay: Freud; Ronald W. Clark:
Freud). Finally, Freud began "psychoanalysing" Rank and
interpreted his new theory to be an expression of patricidal motives
against him. Rank fell into disrepute within the psychoanalytic
movement.
Almost all psychiatrists and psychotherapists of conservative
psychoanalytic persuasion are, to this day, convinced of the non-existence
of the birth trauma. This resistance is perhaps understandable as
it is in line with a much older Western cultural tradition. Plato
taught that we bring to this life a wealth of experiences and impressions.
But his pupil Aristotle, who disagreed on many points with his teacher,
taught that at birth, our minds are empty. According to Diogenes
Laërtios, Plato once snapped: "Aristotle is like a foal who, after
sucking me, gives me a kick!" Aristotle got many followers. One
of them was John Locke, the 17th century philosopher, allegedly
an empiricist, who postulated that the human being, at birth, is
tabula rasa, an empty tablet. Mainline psychoanalysis
follows in the footsxteps of Aristotle and Locke. The rather incredible
explanation a prominent orthodox Freudian psychoanalyst once gave
to the foetal experiences, described in a Finnish version of this
paper, was that they are being suggested by the facilitator.
As most psychoanalysts deny the existence of the birth trauma, they
cannot recognise any need for a therapeutic intervention to heal
it.
Respecting neither philosopher Aristotle, John Locke nor psychoanalyst
Sigmund Freud, foetuses and babies went on experiencing and remembering
their ordeals.
Later, another study of the birth trauma was published by Otto
Rank's pupil Nandor Fodor in 1949. In his book The Search for
the Beloved Fodor postulated that various kinds of emotional
problems such as anxiety experienced in close human relations, feelings
of abandonment, dependency, phobias, and fears of death, falling,
and being crushed, have their origin in the birth experience. Fodor
hoped that it would once be possible to integrate and exhaust this
buried pain by simulating the birth experience. He wrote: "An intelligent
recreation of the conditions of birth and a reliving of the ordeal
by simulation are techniques which the growing generation desperately
needs".
Both Otto Rank and Nandor Fodor thus discovered primal by inference, mainly on the basis of dream analysis. After the publication of Fodor's work, only a few years elapsed until both Frank Lake and Stanislav Grof discovered, initially by using LSD, the practical methods to integrate not only the trauma of birth, but also the earlier negative foetal experiences.
Deep breathing, the royal road
Soon the emotional and legal reaction against the wild and unrestrained
use of LSD rendered even the medical use of this agent impossible.
In 1969, Frank Lake began using hyperventilation, deep,
intensive breathing, adopted from the bioenergetic therapy of Wilhelm
Reich and Alexander Lowen. He also gave a verbal induction in the
form of a fantasy journey. Using this new method gave the
steering wheel into the hands of the experiencer, who was now able
to regulate the depth of his experience himself.
Also Stanislav Grof, who had moved to the United States, had to
relinquish LSD and to develop another method, in which hyperventilation,
music, and focused bodywork were used. This new method he called
holonomic integration, later holotropic breathwork
(Grof: Beyond the Brain, 1985, The Adventure of Self-Discovery,
1987, Psychology of the Future, 2000).
Also the pioneering work of William Swartley must be mentioned.
He founded the International Primal Association in 1962,
and the term Primal Integration was coined by him. Swartley had
been influenced by the Encounter Group Movement, by Gestalt Therapy,
Roberto Assagiolis's Psychosynthesis, and Carl Gustav Jung. He worked
in Britain from 1976 until his death in 1979.
Since the adoption of hyperventilation instead of LSD, these integrative
methods have been open for lay people to use, that is, for people
who do not have professional psychiatric training, just as Rank
had predicted. Frank Lake hoped that primal integration would be
accepted in local churches as a method of mutual pastoral care in
depth. The Clinical Theology Association, originally founded
by Lake in 1962, which had trained thousands of parish workers and
lay members in methods of clinical pastoral care, became in the
late 1970's a centre of deep healing. CTA established contacts to
various groups, among them several Protestant and Catholic charismatic
groups. From the Nottingham headquarters of CTA, primal integration
began spreading to a number of countries, to Scotland, Ireland,
Germany, France, the United States, Brazil, Hong Kong, Finland,
and Sweden.
Research reveals prenatal life
Frank Lake died in 1982, and after his death CTA succumbed to the
pressure of frightened local churches and the psychiatric institution,
and decided to discontinue primal integration. The medical and psychiatric
convictions based on materialistic scientific paradigm and view
of the human being are still obstructing the use of the important
discoveries by Frank Lake, Stanislav Grof and other prenatal therapists.
Mentioning primal integration seems to evoke in some people keen
interest and willingness to participate, but in others, even in
some analytically oriented psychotherapists, strong emotional reluctance.
Stanislav Grof assumes that this, and the denial of the possibility
of foetal memory, is very likely the result of a profound emotional
repression to which the memory of birth is subjected (Psychology
of the Future, p. 31).
The foetus is, on the level of foetal trance, an aware and feeling
little being, who receives from his mother, and through her, strong
positive and negative influences. This notion has been gaining confirmation
from new research carried out by Dr. Monica Lukesch in Frankfurt,
Gerhard Rottmann in Salzburg, Dennis Stott in Glasgow, Gustav Hans
Graber in Switzerland, and Donald W. Winnicott in London. Obstetrician
Donald Winnicott found that after a difficult and protracted birth
experience, some babies were distressed and paranoid. Winnicott
devised a method to let newborns crawl several times through the
narrow channel between his legs and his doctor's coat to wear out
their birth traumas. He published his findings in his book Birth
Memories, Birth Trauma, and Anxiety.
Since the 1970's, this research has produced convincing results
which suggest that foetal experiences exert a strong influence on
the personality and later life of the individual. An interesting
account of this research is given by Dr. Thomas Verny in his book
The Secret Life of the Unborn Child (1981), which has been
translated into 25 languages.
Verny, together with some of his colleagues, founded in 1983 in Toronto the
Association of Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Health (APPPAH)
after having met with difficulties when trying to publish their
scientific articles in scientific journals. APPPAH is working to
further the study of this early period of human development and
to disseminate information. Through its Internet pages, APPPAH is
contacting daily some 4500 people in about 50 countries. Its past
President Professor David Chamberlain, PhD, is still working as
the Editor of its Internet pages www.birthpsychology.com,
which contain a wealth of information on this vitally important
formative phase of our psychological development.
Primal integration and holotropic breathwork are being practised
in a number of countries. The Primal Integration Programme,
London, is directed by Juliana Brown and Richard Mowbray, who recognise
both Lake and Swartley as their teachers. Their net pages www.primalintegration.com
contain interesting articles on their work. Another important centre
using and developing Frank Lake's brand of primal integration is
Amethyst Resource in Ireland, run by Alison Hunter and
Sheila Ward: www.holistic.ie/amethyst.
Christ is the Bearer of Pain
In his book Tight Corners in Pastoral Counselling (1981)
Frank Lake establishes a christological connection between Primal
Integration and the incarnation and passion of Jesus Christ. Because
Christ had suffered in Gethsemane and on Golgotha, he is at our
side in all our suffering, especially in the abyss of innocent suffering
felt by the foetus, which, as a tiny embryo, arrives in the maternal
womb and expects to receive love — but may be met with hate. Similarly,
Jesus Christ came into the womb of His people, which rejected Him
and forced Him to wear a crown of thorns around His bloodstained
head. Frank Lake tells that many people have, in fact, made a connection
between this event and their primal experience. Christ is the bearer
of pain. Hence, He is willing to accept our inner, abandoned Child,
to bear its pain, to listen to its distress and to give it a voice.
Permission is given by the group
The primal experience is an active, deliberate regression assisted
by the "midwife" or facilitator, and the group. Our weekend groups
in Finland, 43 in number so far, usually gather for a preparatory
session beginning at 6 p.m. on Friday. The new participants have
most often heard of this opportunity from their friends who have
primalled in our workshops. Every novice must have read the Finnish
version of this paper to have a clear idea of what to expect. Attending
a primal weekend after reading the paper will then factually establish
a therapeutic contract.
After tea, some of the main theoretical and practical points are reiterated, and those who have primalled in earlier weekends explain to newcomers what to expect. A condensed teaching recording from an actual primal session is listened to, and questions are asked and answered. Later in the evening, the first remigrant will primal, and this first workout may then process the participant's subconscious during sleep. On Saturday, they experience their primals, usually in two groups simultaneously.
The facilitator's task is to maintain verbal contact with the primalist, remind him of deep breathing, of expressing feelings and somatic sensations, and of integrating them. An assistant simulates the umbilical contact by keeping a couple of fingers in the navel of the primalist. Another helper operates the cassette recorder; others pass paper towels and a plastic bowl according to need, as vomiting is one of the commonest somatic reactions. Blankets and pillows shall always be at hand to be used during the final expulsion experience.
The facilitator and other members of the group are positioned
around the primalist who is lying on a mattress, each giving him
silent attention and empathy. The primalist may, if he so wishes,
express what kind of alleviation to some emotional problem he expects
from the workout. This is just to direct his attention to this problem.
Then the group unites in prayer.
The primalist reaches the state of prenatal regression by hyperventilation
and by receiving, from the facilitator, a verbal induction. This
is usually a fantasy journey, an imaginary dive into the lake or
sea of one's own past. Near the bottom, the diver finds a small
cave, enters it, and has re-entered his maternal womb. The preparatory
discussion has already communicated to the primalist permission
to go into this experience. As we know, in almost every social situation
we are subjected to the norm Behave yourself as a grownup!
This norm is changed during the group discussion to: Behave
yourself as a foetus! The primalist receives permission to
enter those realms within his personality which he, under normal
circumstances, hardly ever visits. Almost all participants, who
attend a primal workshop intending to experience a primal, find
that they are able to enter primal regression quite easily.
Tune your rate of vibration in to time travel
Regression therapies and the research have made considerable progress during the last years. When monitoring the remigrant by means of an electroencephalograph (EEG) it is possible to see how hyperventilation changes the dominant brain rhythm from the wakeful but relaxed alpha (a) rhythm (12 vibrations per second) to the slow theta (q) rhythm (8 vibrations per second) or even to delta (d) rhythm (2-4 vibrations per second). In this state, regions of experience normally closed to the memory of a human being are opened up for him. We are like radio receivers which, when the station selector knob is being turned, are able to tune in to new transmitters.
By induction and hyperventilation it is possible for the remigrant
to regress to the event of his conception. This was the method used
by Frank Lake in the 1970's. He postulated that the foetus receives
the worst traumas during the first trimester of the gestation period.
Probably he used to regress his patients to this early event also
to research this important phase of development. Amethyst Resource
in Ireland, following Lake, lays much emphasis to these earliest
experiences. Primal therapist William Swartley and others have in
fact discovered a number of traumas inflicted in various phases
of development: conception traumas, fallopian tube traumas,
implantation traumas, embryological traumas, uterine traumas, birth
traumas, and bonding traumas (see: webpages. http://www.primal-page.com/bills-1.htm)
However, such an induction often results in a long regression
of about three hours or more, and the primalist may encounter very
much painful material at one go and might get scared. It would also
put our weekend timetable out of joint. This is why we have adopted
the practice of giving a more open induction, leaving the landing
point unspecified, but sometimes including the emotional problem
the primalist had mentioned. A more open induction also allows the
dominant traumatic gestalt to emerge first. Often the first foetal
experience encountered is found relatively close to the actual birth.
The average time of the actual regression is about 1,5 hours, and
every participant is able to primal within the planned time. Only
rarely does a primalist rush headlong to his or her conception experience.
In one such case, however, my wife had to facilitate role reversal
between the primalist's ovum and sperm, in psychodrama fashion.
You, dear reader, might find this difficult to believe until you
experience it yourself.
Experiences from the depths of the unconscious
After the induction, the facilitator asks the primalist to go on
breathing deeply and to add a neutral tone to his exhalation: aaaaaaa...
This sound will usually soon serve as a kind of carrier wave for
the expression of emotions surfacing from the depths of the unconscious.
This emotion may be sadness, exhaustion, anger, fear, or anxiety,
but sometimes joy, at times even great happiness. The primalist
may feel gloomy desolation and burst into tears, or he may express
furious rage, and roar, pounding a pillow with his fists. The facilitator,
who maintains contact with the Adult ego state of the primalist,
advises him to exhaust all these encapsulated, surfacing emotions
and to give them free expression.
In addition to emotions, various somatic sensations are activated
in the body, such as pains, coldness, numbness, tremors, tensions,
cramps, nausea, and sensations of heaviness. The facilitator encourages
the primalist to let them intensify, to open himself up to all these
sensations, to dive into them. When this deliberate, integrative
exercise proceeds, nausea, for instance, often develops into vomiting,
a most concrete expression of rejection. It is also possible to
drive a sensation, such as pain or numbness, by imagination and
will power, from its location towards the navel and into expulsion.
When this integrative work proceeds, the helper simulating the umbilical
contact feels, in his arm and sometimes in his body, a kind of high
frequency energy current. It is advisable to ground it by an act
of will and by touching the floor with one's free hand, to prevent
it from staying in one's organism, or energy field, for hours. Frank
Lake suggested that this negative energy was once well known in
the medical tradition until the 18th century. It was called melancholy.
From somatic sensations to feelings and traumatic situations
When integrating a somatic sensation, the primalist often receives
a visual perception of an event in which he, as a foetus inside
the maternal womb, was involved. Quite often he also receives an
insight in what way this feeling or sensation had been his reaction,
as foetus, to this experience. Numbness in the hands, or around
the mouth, when it is being integrated, sometimes opens up a situation
in which he feels strong aggression against somebody, e.g. his father
who is treating his wife violently. At times the visual perception
of the primalist is so detailed that he would be able, after the
workout, to draw a sketch of the surroundings. The observations
made during primal workouts suggest that the foetus is not only
able to perceive the feelings of his mother, but participates telepathically
in the visual perception and thoughts of his mother. The primalist
may even receive an insight during the primal regression, sometimes
later, into the origin of the negative feeling which may have been
troubling him all his life. After the workout, he may experience
that his old inclination to fall prey to this specific negative
emotion in certain situations has diminished, or vanished altogether.
He receives a convincing subjective proof of this connection and
of the effect of the integrative exercise.
Some of the experiences found in one's subconscious are positive. A few of the situations which open up in primal work are even ravishingly happy. The foetus feels that he is swinging in the belly of his happy mother in rhythm of her rocking chair, listening to her singing, and rejoicing in her love. The foetus may also feel anxiety when noticing that his mother is about to ski downhill, get frightened when she tumbles down, and feel mischievous delight when she is laboriously crawling up on her feet from the deep snow.
Mother is of course in constant interaction with her social environment,
which always influences the foetus. He may be traumatised by the
emotional deadlocks between his mother and father. The reactions
of the foetus to their lovemaking are varied. Sometimes he is morose,
but at other times he may participate in the joyous event as best
he can. He may also be dissatisfied with the performance and feel
urge to give sexual counselling!
Connecting situations of negative experience is particularly
valuable because the primalist is then able to direct his emotional
discharge towards the internalised origin and to integrate this
unfinished business thoroughly. For instance, when the primalist
is connecting a situation which had caused permanent subconscious
father hate, the facilitator shows him a pillow and says: Father
is here! Give him a good beating! It is outright enrapturing to
experience, after such an explosive eruption of one's subconscious
anger against one's father, to feel love towards that very same
person. A primalist who once happened to meet me later in a Helsinki
pedestrian street reported me such a joyous change in herself. This
feeling of love had probably been there all along, but it had been
buried under her prenatal anger.
Connecting situations thus enables the primalist to change his
subconscious life script, which may have been distorting
his emotional life and human relations all his life. This script
consists of parental instructions, and early decisions made by the
subject himself (Transational Analysis).
One element in this recovery is sometimes disowning another
person's emotion. Frank Lake describes the primal regression
experience of a man in a group in Sweden: "An intelligent, handsome
and highly talented man had no reason at all to feel a sort of grey
sadness pervading everything, coming at him from the walls of his
home or office, reflecting from groups that he could otherwise have
enjoyed. His actual life situation, happily married and professionally
successful, could hardly be better."
Regressed into his period in the womb, the primalist began to
weep bitterly, feeling helplessly invaded by an intense grief. For
two hours he was reliving his primal reactions to this painful intrusion
of distress. His cries rose to a long, high pitched moan. He recognised
this distress to be not his own but his mother's, having
left her own mother and everything else behind when escaping with
his husband from Estonia occupied by the Soviet Union. (Frank Lake,
Tight Corners in Pastoral Counselling, p. 22-23).
Reliving experiences of maternal hate and of attempts of abortion are among the most painful and difficult traumas encountered in primal work. Supported by the loving empathy of the facilitator and the group, the primalist is able to encounter and to integrate even such terrible ordeals which hide deep in his subconscious. To integrate an abortion attempt, one probably has to do several primals. I have once facilitated a courageous person four times, until she finally felt having integrated an abortion attempt and was able to feel at home in her home. Primal work can be likened to a sharp plane, which cuts only a thin shaving at one push but sometimes you have to push a number of times. It seems that we are endowed with some kind of an inner shock absorber, which guarantees that we need not experience all the pain residing in our subconscious at once. We can take it by small teaspoonfuls, as it is advisable to do when imbibing a strong medicine.
Reliving the birth experience
The event of birth is relived in most primal workouts, probably because it often contains much pain, as already Rank and Fodor discovered.
After encountering a number of intrauterine experiences, the primalist
usually feels that he has been growing and the uterus is becoming
tighter. He feels the need to experience simulated pressure on him.
The assistants gather blankets and pillows on him and give him gradually
more pressure by their hands and bodies. Finally, following his
inner program, he is forcefully projected out of this makeshift
womb.
According to Stanislav Grof, discoveries from therapeutic work
have shown that the roots of many kinds of pathologies are to be
found in the most difficult forms of the no-exit phase (BPM II)
or the propulsion of the foetus through the birth canal (BPM III).
Among these states are manic-depressive states, sexual deviations,
impotence, frigidity, hypersexuality, some forms of homosexuality,
sadistic violence, rapes and murders, suicidal tendencies, and drug
abuse. When treating drug and alcohol addicts Grof has noticed that
at the time of their birth their mothers were under severe general
anesthesia. "As a result, their memory of birth is not that of an
explosive liberation but of a slow awakening from drug intoxication.
They then tend to escape from the painful grip of BPM III, and intense
stress in general, into chemically induced anesthesia, following
the route shown to them by the obstetrician attending their birth"
(Grof: Beyond the Brain, 1985, p. 268).
People born by caesarean section have received birth traumas typical for
this method of delivery. They sometimes feel the need to experience
normal birth through the birth passage (www.eheart.com/cesarean).
A new human being is born
Primal work is then continued to the postnatal phase. It is a common observation that the newborn is keenly aware of the situation, the condition of his mother, and the interchange of the staff members. It is very important that the newborn is welcomed tactfully into the cold outside world. It is a grave mistake to make rude remarks, e.g. to say that he is ugly, a "blue baby", or similar things. The newborn understands and may be deeply hurt. The obstetrician may think that the baby does not understand Finnish or English. He does not know that the newborn is a master in telepathic communication. Of course, the baby must not be suspended by his feet or be slapped on his buttocks. Such a treatment is a violation of his human dignity. He should be received kindly and cordially, as a welcome new member to the human family.
The primalist may relive strong and important experiences of the postnatal period. Very common is the painful experience of abandonment, especially when mother is in a critical condition, needs the attention of the staff, and the baby is just left unattended on a table for a long time. It is very important to relive this abandonment, as every other experiential gestalt, to the full. Only when the primalist says that somebody is picking him up and caring for him, it is time to simulate this positive experience. A group member, whom he appoints, may come and cuddle him.
One primalist I was facilitating relived a rich series of events,
the drive home from the hospital, even his baptism and his early
efforts in the woodshed in learning to read. Another primalist relived
an incident of being humiliated by his schoolmates in the schoolyard.
Occasionally, the primalist may experience even a change of personality
and relive a traumatic situation in another historical period. The
facilitator should remain unperturbed and encourage him to integrate
even such surprising experiential gestalts (see e.g. www.spinninglobe.net/pastlives.html).
When the primalist feels there are no more experiences to relive,
and he feels peaceful and serene, he is invited by the facilitator
to return to the usual state of consciousness. Primal work
should never, never! be interrupted before an experiential gestalt
has reached closure.
Insight and reorientation
Primal work consists of several successive phases, which can also
be described as concentric layers:
repetition,
integration,
insight,
reorientation.
The practical arrangement, which sustains the age regression and
reliving, is a kind of repetition of the original foetal situation.
However, there is a very important difference. The foetus, in his
original situation in the womb, is receiving painful emotional and
physical experiences and feels desperately lonely and helpless.
The primalist, on the contrary, is supported by the facilitator
and the group and the knowledge, strength, and determination of
his own Adult personality.
In primal regression, the primalist's consciousness is elliptical.
By this term, regression therapists mean that the consciousness
is divided into foetal consciousness, which experiences,
and adult consciousness, which is aware of the objective
of the workout and is directing it. In close mutual cooperation,
these two centres of consciousness are able to discharge the painful
contents of old traumas encountered, to integrate them, and to undo
the negative influences on the emotional life and human relations
of the primalist. Deep capsules of pain are opened and emptied;
the positive experiences are freed and activated.
The facilitator is important, too. But his function is very different
from the role of the psychoanalyst, for instance. His task is to
encourage the primalist, and to intensify his experiencing by asking
questions. The task of the primal facilitator differs radically
from that in the traditional verbal psychotherapies: ...in non-ordinary
states, the material with the strongest emotional charge is automatically
selected and brought into consciousness. These non-ordinary states
also provide necessary insights and mobilize our inner healing forces
with all their inherent wisdom and power (Stanislav Grof, The
Holotropic Mind, pp. 209-211).
When the integrative work opens up a visual reminiscence of a
situation, the primalist is often able to make a connection, to
receive an insight into the original cause of the negative emotion
which has been tormenting him all his life. Most often the mother
is involved, sometimes the father. When the primalist is frustrated
because of lack of mother's attention or love, the facilitator can
resort to role reversal, which is one of the most potent tools of
psychodrama. He encourages the primalist to address his mother
as if she would be able to hear his voice from her womb. After the
primalist has addressed his mother animatedly, the facilitator
goes on: Now change roles with your mother! You are now your mother
Mary! Mary, you are expecting that little one who is still in your
womb. You heard his voice! He just spoke to you and said, (repeats
his words). Answer him! Identified with his mother, the primalist
answers. The role reversal exercise sometimes gives the primalist
new and important information e.g. the difficult life situation
of his mother. Sometimes he is able to realise that mother, in spite
of her worries, loves him.
When the primalist connects situations, the facilitator is able
to deepen the experience of the primalist by asking questions. The
situation which opens up often enables the primalist to realize
in what way the original negative experience had conditioned him
to adopt unhappy modes of behaviour in his life. This immensely
valuable insight enables him now to decide differently, to change
his life script.
Changing the Life Script
Life Script is one of the key terms of Transactional Analysis. Eric
Berne writes: "Nearly all human activity is programed by an ongoing
script dating from early childhood, so that the feeling of autonomy
is nearly always an illusion - an illusion which is the greatest
affliction of the human race because it makes awareness, honesty,
creativity, and intimacy possible for only a few fortunate individuals.
For the rest of humanity, other people are seen mainly as objects
to be manipulated. They must be invited, persuaded, seduced, bribed,
or forced into playing the proper roles to reinforce the protagonist's
position and fulfil his script, and his preoccupation with these
efforts keeps him from torquing in with the real world and his own
possibilities in it" (Eric Berne: Principles of Group Treatment,
1966, p. 310).
The life script consists partly of the models and injunctions
given to the child by his parents, partly of the child's own decisions,
forgotten from the conscious memory and sunk into the unconscious.
From there, they exert a strong influence on us. They are probably
identical with the posthypnotic suggestions. Transactional Analysis
aims to undo these scripts by means of therapeutic discussion.
Script analysis is thought to be a difficult and demanding therapeutic
exercise. In some regression therapies, script injunctions and script
decisions are called postulates. As long as our adult daytime
consciousness does not reach them, they exert a governing influence
on us, however stupid they may be.
Also in primal work we stumble across these tragic and grotesque
script injunctions and decisions. It is obvious that the life script
is formed earlier than Berne suggested. In primal regression, we
are able to perceive the foolish script injunctions we have received,
and the stupid foetal decisions we have made. This gives us the
opportunity to decide differently to undo the script injunction
or the foetal decision.
For instance, when experiencing a violent clash between one's parents, the
male foetus may have decided: "I am male, and to be male is wrong
and disgusting!" A female foetus may have decided: "I shall never
approach any man! I shall never be married!" Sometimes mother hopes
that her baby girl be a boy, or that her baby boy be a girl. The
foetus perceives mother's wish telepathically, is desperate, realising
his or her inability to fulfil her wish, and may even want to die.
The poor little thing then tries to do his best, to perform what
is impossible. Obeying subconsciously the maternal wish only injures
his or her sexual identity. Such a life script injunction and foetal
decision remains in force until it is undone by conscious decision
during a primal.
The primalist is thus able to heal the injury inflicted to his sexual identity, or to undo his father hate or mother hate. From under the hate, he discovers, to his astonishment, a warm love towards the very same father, or mother. As our basic feelings towards our father and mother are transferred to the entire gender they represent, primal experiences may heal our pathological projections, that is, our emotional attitude towards ourselves and everybody else, both men and women.
This may well have surprising effects which will exert a strong influence on the life of the primalist. His strange, diffuse emotional block, which has prevented him, or her, from approaching members of the other sex, may have disappeared, and he marries. If he is married, the marital bond might undergo a crisis when old transactional games are disrupted, and emerge from it deeper and more sincere than it was in the past. But in case the marriage has been firmly based on sinister pathological games, the outcome may be a divorce.
Chains of Traumas
One primalist, to whom I had given the induction to regress into
his foetal period, did not show any signs of that state. Finally
I told him: Now, start puffing very deeply! After breathing heavily
for some time, he soon connected a situation in which he, as a young
man standing in a crowd of people, was approached aggressively by
somebody demanding something of him. Embarrassed, he ran away. After
this, he connected several situations of social embarrassment: at
school trying to deliver a lecture to his classmates, as a small
boy trying to drive a tractor which capsized into a ditch. Experiences
of embarrassment formed a chain of traumas. Although he did not
regress into his foetal period at all, he was satisfied with his
experience.
I have discovered a trauma chain in myself. Without this experience I would never have found the possibilities of primal integration. In 1978, I attended a psychodrama marathon of five days. The continuing storm of emotions evoked in me a deep distress of my relationship with my family, and I started to cry. My psychodrama was staged as an imaginary family counselling session. I changed roles with my daughters, represented by group members. I realised I was a despicable sissy, and I was thrown into a state of strange stupefaction. In the bus home, early situations of being subjected to ridicule by my peers emerged from the depths of my being. Then I had a symbolic vision: I was diving submerged through a filthy ditch behind the railroad yard of the small town of my childhood. Sensations of nausea emerged in waves and lasted for the following fortnight. Only later I realised that my psychodrama had brought me into contact with my birth trauma. My psyche had expressed this in a symbolic vision.
In about one year I was able to attend a primal integration seminar
conducted by Frank Lake in Helsinki, and later one in Nottingham.
My primal experience was somewhat more detailed and, of course,
still coloured by disgust. I asked my mother - for the first time
in my life! - about the particulars of my birth on September 20,
1930. Mother answered that I had been born three weeks prematurely,
weighing only 2,8 kg. I knew that happened because I was frightened
by that right wing political activist who came late in the evening
to our door trying to instigate your father to something, but he
was away, fetching potatoes! Mother had also wanted to give birth
to a girl and had prepared pink clothes for me. She had planned
to call me Raili, a girl's name. I understood that a telepathic
pulse from her had hit me and damaged my masculine self-esteem and
also my capacity of normal defensive aggression.
Stanislav Grof writes: ...the relevant memories and other biographical
memories do not emerge separately, but form distinct dynamic constellations,
for which I have coined the term COEX-systems, or systems
of condensed experience. A COEX-system is a dynamic constellation
of memories (and associated fantasy material) from different periods
of the individual's life, with the common denominator of a strong
emotional charge of the same quality, intense physical sensation
of the same kind, or the fact that they share some other important
elements. Most biographical COEX systems are dynamically connected
with specific facets of the birth process. (Stanislav Grof, Beyond
the Brain, p. 97). This is very important because it means
that the traumatic chain established by negative experiences can
be extracted from the being of a suffering person just as a trotline
from the depths of a lake.
Already in our earliest beginnings, as tiny blastocysts, we receive powerful impressions of the attitude of Mom and Pop to our arrival. Loving expectation is a red carpet spread out to welcome a distinguished guest. Sometimes, however, the parents are unwilling to receive the newcomer at all. The reasons are varied. I have heard of a child who was to be born out of wedlock and must have sensed the stern condemnation his mother was subjected by the people of the village. He grew up, studied and worked for a number of years in an office of public esteem and committed suicide at the age of 40. Murder by a delayed detonator.
Some are rejected in a more moderate manner. Mother and father perhaps do not want to marry, but feel that the newcomer compels them. Or perhaps the baby frustrates the career or study plans of either. The new arrival receives a telepathic message: you ought not to exist! He is subjected to some kind of psychological abortion which damages his self-esteem and establishes a lasting relationship of overt and subconscious victimization between his parents and himself.
Marja, my wife, gave the primal induction to a first timer who
regressed without difficulty to an early phase of her development.
There she perceived telepathically rejection which caused her to
move suddenly forward in time to various difficult childhood events
coloured by the same basic rejection and victimization experience.
The early experience formed a trauma chain which extended several
years into her childhood and probably also into her adult years.
It was obvious that the primalist, working successfully in a helping profession, had repressed her reactions very deep, behind strong bolts and bars. Marja noticed this, and tried to encourage the primalist to breath deeply, to cry without restraint, and to kick a pillow all to no avail. Then the primalist moved her fingers slightly. Marja gave her a tightly taped newspaper baton I had brought from the adjacent room. The primalist grabbed it, raised herself, and started to bang furiously a small stool for about eight minutes, until the baton disintegrated completely. The pieces were strewn all over the mattresses and the floor. The woman was totally limp and spent. She had found deep in herself, behind bolts and bars, a large container of anger and managed to empty it.
Later, after the weekend, she telephoned Marja and told her the
primal had given her a deep feeling of release and happiness. She
was thankful for Marja's intuition and the encouragement she had
received from the group. By banging furiously with that newspaper
baton, she had effected a deep reconciliation with her parents.
By discharging a traumatic experience regressed to the original
situation may cleanse the soul as a general house cleaning.
It is important to understand, however, that raging and ravaging
in the grips of negative transference feelings on which newspapers
report almost every day is no discharge, but an event of a totally
different kind. It is of no help.
Roots of Violence
Most or probably all of our repositories of malignant aggression
and violence are unconscious and originally caused by very early
painful experiences of violence, abandonment, and neglect. The early
repository of these horrible experiences are our gestation period
and our birth experience. Later similar experiences just increase
their painful and vicious strength, because traumatic experiences
interact. This means that early traumas predispose the growing prenate
and infant to interpret many experiences as violent and traumatising,
and negative expectations and modes of behaviour multiply by transference.
In his article The Vulnerable Prenate, William R. Emerson,
Ph.D, writes: The majority of adults with problems in aggression
learn that they were unwanted at the time of discovery, but many
of them also learn that they were exposed to other forms of aggression
during the pre-and perinatal period. Some common forms of aggression
are warfare, gang fights, domestic violence, conception through
rape, physical or sexual abuse of parents or siblings, annihilative
energies, intrauterine toxicities, and/or abortion attempts. Prenates
who experience one or more of these aggressive conditions are at
risk for manifesting aggression and violence, and the greater the
number of conditions, the greater the likelihood of aggression and
violence (
www.birthpsychology.com/healing/point2.html).
These negative influences also impede the development of bonding,
the emotional attachment which is first formed during the gestation
period and in infancy between the child and his mother. This early
attachment will normally soon include his father and, by transference,
other people, perhaps the entire humanity. (see: David B. Chamberlain,
Ph.D., Bonding, A Simple Wonder, www.birthpsychology.com/birthscene/bonding2.html).
If this emotional development towards empathy is destroyed,
the result is psychopathic personality. For most of us, these
developments are outside our conscious recall, but they exert a
mighty influence on our emotional life, our emotional interpretation
of various situations, our modes of behaviour, and the whole personality.
"...postnatal psychological traumas, in and of themselves, are not
sufficient to account for the development of emotional disorders.
This is also true, even to a much greater extent, for psychosomatic
symptoms and disorders... A considerable portion of this energetic
charge is perinatal in origin and reflects the fact that the memory
of birth has not been adequately processed and continues to exist
in the unconscious as an emotionally and physically incomplete gestalt
of major importance" (Stanislav Grof, Psychology of the Future).
David Chamberlain PhD, one of the founding members of the Association
of Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Health, writes: "We have
acquired the conviction that any violence which greets a baby in
the womb and around the time of birth is a deep form of conditioning
which acts like a template for relationships. This conditioning
may well affect a person's physical and mental health for decades
to come" (see www.birthpsychology.com/violence/chamberlain1.html,
and birthpsychology.com/violence/verny.html).
Because a violent person has no conscious recall of these experiences,
he is unable to react against the original perpetrator. Instead,
his acting out, his negative behaviour, is a transference phenomenon.
Various social situations, cultural factors, and political movements
of like-minded, developing their various hate ideologies, provide
him with suitable vicarious targets to direct his aggression
and violence. Such vicarious targets were, for the German Nazi movement,
the Jews, for the Russian Communists of the thirties, the "Kulaks"
or the prosperous farmers, for certain youth groups, the fur merchants
or the WTO, and for Robert Steinhäuser of Erfurt, thirteen of his
teachers he shot dead. This is why the expressions and targets of
violence present such an unbelievably varied kaleidoscopic, perplexing
and deceptive mirror world.
Stanislav Grof explains succinctly the important difference between
such acting out and a therapeutic, liberating discharge: "Witnessing
scenes of destruction and acting out of violent unconscious impulses,
whether it occurs on the individual scale or collectively in wars
and revolutions, does not result in healing and transformation as
would an inner confrontation with these elements in a therapeutic
context. The experience is not generated by our own unconscious,
lacks the element of deep introspection, and does not lead to insights.
The situation is fully externalised and connection with the deep
dynamics of the psyche is missing. And naturally, there is no therapeutic
intention and motivation for change and transformation. Thus the
goal of the underlying birth fantasy, which represent the deepest
driving force of such violent events, is not achieved, even if the
war or revolution has been brought to a successful closure. The
most triumphant external victory does not deliver what was expected
and hoped for - an inner sense of emotional liberation and psychospiritual
rebirth (Psychology of the Future, p. 309).
If we succeed, in primal regressions, to bring our life script
into our consciousness and make constructive decisions to change
it, the inner enemy which most of us harbout deep in our being,
will shrivel. We experience harmony and equanimity. And we shall,
in a variety of situations, send unconscious script signals which
are different from the past. The result may be that we attract people
who are different from those whom we used to meet in the past. Our
world will be different.
Esko Rintala can be contated at rkeavuorenkatu 17 D 17, 00130
Helsinki, Finland.
Tel: 09-611184, 040-7795533 esko.rintala@pp.inet.fi
