Pre-natal trauma and its reprecussions in adulthood

[Petyr Baelish]

THE EFFECTS OF EMOTIONAL DISTURBANCES IN THE PREGNANT WOMAN ON THE DEVELOPING FOETUS

[International Congress of Preventive Psychiatry, Athens 1979]

Sixteen cases manifesting neurotic and psychotic-like symptoms and phenomena underwent Autopsychognosia Sessions following administration of psychedelic drugs. These Sessions revealed that some of the sixteen cases had, during their foetal lives, been upset by various emotional disturbances experienced by their mothers. And what were these disturbances? [b]Before this question is dealt with, another should be asked: "Were the foetuses in question conscious of their existence?" [u]The answer to this is affirmative and was given in the following sense: each foetus felt that it constituted a separate entity, that it was enveloped by something huge and that this "something" threatened to obliterate it.[/u][/b]

We return to the question of the emotional disturbances in the pregnant women which upset foetal existence.

1. The unwanted presence of the foetus in the pregnant woman's womb (the rejection of the foetus by the womb)
2. The unwanted sex of the foetus developing in the pregnant woman's womb (rejection of the foetus' sex by the womb)
3. Fear, anxiety or terror of the pregnant woman caused by various factors, e.g. sudden unpleasant news, distress, conflict with persons in her close surroundings, etc.

And now you will hear a taped excerpt from an Autopsychognosia Session during which a young woman relived the terror which accompanied the maternal rejection of her foetal presence in the womb. The patient was a twenty-six-year-old Englishwoman. At the beginning of the taped excerpt, her voice can be heard describing with moderate anxiety a terrible picture comprising sharp shark's teeth, a huge spiderweb and an enormous spider. The anxious voice gradually becomes more intense and is finally transformed into horrifying screams of indescribable anguish and terror at the moment she feels herself to be encircled by flames. (recording)

According to the patient's subjective interpretation, what you have just heard symbolizes her emotional reaction to reliving her rejection by her mother. Noteworthy is the realization that her daily life constitutes a nearly uninterrupted and sorrowful reliving of her intrauterine rejection. Many questions arise from the aforementioned. We shall endeavour to answer some of the them.

What is autopsychognosia? Autopsychognosia is the neuronic process leading to the emotional and intellectual realization of the content of the unconscious and of the motivations underlying behaviour. It cannot be too strongly stressed that the Autopsychognosia Session is a subjective experience the emotional pain of which cannot be perceived by anyone who has not personally experienced it.

What drugs are known as psychedelics? Those drugs which when administered can produce the externalization of the content of the unconscious. The basic pharmacodynamic property of psychedelics is their capacity to reactivate the neuron's "memory fibres".

This results, inter alia, in the extremely vivid re-living of past events synchronized physically and emotionally. The ability to observe one's inner world and to criticize oneself is likewise amazingly enhanced.

To the question, "What is the mechanism by which the pregnant woman's emotional disturbances are conveyed to the foetus?" we would reply with a purely theoretical view requiring neurophysiological experimental proof. We consider the cause of the emotional disturbances to be the production of specific biochemicophysical elements in the nervous system. The elements in question are absorbed by the pregnant woman's blood, enter the foetal circulation through the umbilical cord, reach the foetal nervous system and stimulate it, producing a feeling of terror in the foetus. We would recapitulate the subjective conclusions drawn from certain cases:

1. During their foetal life, their existence was shaken in a threatening way by the emotional disturbances of the pregnant woman in whose womb they were developing.
2. Terror accompanied the threat to their existence.
3. Intra-uterine experiences were the main causes of their mental disturbances.

And one more question: "Through what mechanism did the pregnant women's emotional disturbances cause mental disturbances in the persons who evolved from the foetuses that had developed in their wombs?"

We consider that when the biochemicophysical elements producing the emotional disturbances in the pregnant woman reach the foetal nervous system through the umbilical cord, they not only stimulate it but also leave "memory traces" on the neurons. These "memory traces" are preserved after birth and their reactivation at any age-in childhood, adolescence or adulthood-results in revival of the terrifying existential threat. The way in which the nervous system reacts to this threat to existence constitutes the clinical picture of the mental disturbances of our cases.

We stress, in closing, that we would not generalise the conclusions drawn from our few cases. If, however, other cases presenting mental disturbances lead to the same conclusions, this would suggest that even before pregnancy a woman should be informed with regard to the effects she will convey to the foetus, which could have devastating repercussions on it.

[b]Men, and society as a whole, must learn that absolute, uninterrupted respect for the pregnant woman and the foetus developing in her womb is the most sacred obligation. [/b]

[url]http://kafkalides.com.hosting.domaindirect.com/athanasios/congr4.html[/url]

[Petyr Baelish]

INTRA - UTERINE SECURITY : THE CAUSE OF THE OEDIPUS & ELECTRA COMPLEXES IN TWO CASES TREATED WITH LSD-25

[Communique at the VI International Congress of Psychotherapy, Wisbaden, Germany 1967]

Does the Freudian of infantile sexuality (A) explain the cause of the Oedipus and Electra complexes? A great deal of water has passed under the bridges of the Danube since Freud first propounded his views on this subject, and without any new basic evidence for, or against the theory the Freudian proposition has been accepted or rejected by various authorities. The question has, in fact, remained largely at the mercy of personal taste.

There is now new evidence, that strongly clashes with the idea of infantile sexuality and which modifies the whole spirit of Freud's pansexualism; evidence, indeed, for sexual behaviour motivated by a desire to regain the security of the womb; i.e. the ideal security for a human being.

Freud discovered the unconscious maternal fixation of the male, which he called the Oedipus complex. He used his theory of infantile sexuality to explain its cause. There was, he said, the male wish for sexual gratification with the mother.

On the other hand, the Electra complex, that is the paternal fixation of the female, he explained as being the wish for sexual gratification with the Father.

The question why the sexual drive should be directed towards the Mother of Father, remained unanswered by the Freudian school.

Two patients, one male and one female, who underwent deep LSD psychotherapy and who were clinically cured of their neuroses, gave a deeper emotional aetiology of their fixations, which, in both cases originated exclusively from the Mother, the Father was of secondary importance, not only for the male but also for the female.

Case No1: male, 35 years old. He asked to be treated for his obsessive homosexual activities which started at the age of 23. He was treated with LSD.

During the 4th LSD session he regressed to the womb, and fully re-experienced his birth and the very earliest days of his life. He described his sensations : "There is liquid all round me, a soothing delicately warm liquid that bathes me... it is so peaceful here ... I don't have to make any effort, not even breathe ... " Suddenly he felt himself to be upside down, a terrifying feeling of cold penetrating through every pore. He was born. Fear gripped him. He wanted to return to the womb, but he could not, so he wished to sleep on his face with his knees drawn up to his chest in the foetal position, but he had been forced by his Mother to sleep on his back. This had been done by wrapping his legs in cloth and tucking him firmly down in the bed under a sheet which came up to his neck, making it impossible for him to move at all, except to wriggle his toes, and giving him a feeling of paralysis. He had strained every muscle to change his position. He screamed endlessly for someone to pick him up simply so as to change his position. But they ignored his cries. He had consciously tried to urinate and defecate, so that in changing his clothes they would change his position in bed. He was only changed every time he was fed, however, and grew to be able to withstand a tremendous amount of discomfort, even to like discomfort.

Case No2: female, 23 years old, married for three years, has a son six months old. She complained of anxiety, depression, severe aggressiveness towards her husband, over-emotionally and vague symptoms from the digestive tract with vomiting and severe periodic backache.She was treated with LSD.

Here is the patient's report of her emotions and experiences during the first LSD session :

I was cold. I was freezing. The nurse heaped blankets on top of me... still Siberia. She covered me in a mound of cushions. I felt better. I felt wonderful ... I felt as though I was floating on a pool of quick silver upside down inside a warm cocoon, utterly comfortable, safe, secure. I made little snuffling noises and snuggled deeper into the warm depths. My knees and elbows flexed, my hands came up under my chin. I grew smaller, so did my body and my face.
My hands were pulled inwards and I felt that I could not control my muscles. I was completely relaxed. My lids closed. I wanted nothing but to enjoy the supreme comfort in which I found myself.

"Then I felt as though I were about to be thrown into ice-cold water. I shrank in fear of the contact.

I felt a constriction round my head, and it seemed as though I were going to hurtle into a chasm of nothingness.

I was terrified. I was born.

Then I felt my bottom being slapped.

This was followed by a sensation of emptiness, the yawning gap left when something is torn from its roots. My abdominal muscles were sore. It was as though I had just given birth to my son. I was at once a baby, and a mother.

After the first LSD session, I remembered the words which I had felt, and repeated over the years to my mother; I never asked to be born. I hate you.

She had pushed me out of my haven of absolute security, and I was resentful. Yet she was the nearest thing to that security. I clung to her possessively.

To begin with, my mother was my world. I was happy in her presence, her absence made me hysterical.

When I was one and a half years old, my brother had an accident and cut his chin. He had to have it stitched. I was so jealous of the attention my mother gave him, that I climbed onto a chair and tried to cut my chin in the same way on the window-sill. I was unsuccessful.

Outside it was raining. There was lightening and hail. I was frightened. I was cold. I jumped into bed with Mummy and luxuriated in the infinite warmth and comfort of her body. I came to like winter. When the weather was chilly I had a good excuse to run to my mother's arms, to bury my head in her breast. Once within that charmed circle, nothing mattered to me, I was safe.

I was hostile to, and jealous of, anything which took my mother's attention away from me. My father, though a shadowy figure, persistently did so. To make matters worse, my mother seemed to be more interested in him than in me. I felt she had betrayed me with my father.

Then I decided : If you can't beat'em, join'em.

Like my mother, I paid attention to my Father. If she could betray me, I could do the same to her. I began to imitate her as much as possible. I put a handbag on my arm, oranges in the front of my dress, and teetered about precariously, my feet encased in the toes of Mummy's high-heeled shoes. I powdered my face into a ghost-like mask, daubed a gash of lipstick on my mouth, and drew owlish circles round my eyes.

I even played a game with my mother: we pretended our roles were reversed, I played Mummy, and she was my daughter.

When I was six, my mother went abroad. I made her promise to bring me a doll which said "Mama". My mother's absence threw me into an anxiety state as usual. The doll symbolised that she was thinking of me and that I was with her, in the shape of a baby-doll.

My mother brought the dolly finally. When she went out and left me, I comforted myself to some extent by mothering my doll, as if to say : "Don't worry, Mummy is still here". I had become Mummy and the doll was myself.

When I grew up, I wanted to have babies like Mummy.

The man I married reminds me of my mother as well as my father, in character and in looks. My yen for security drove me towards a person who resembled the original source of that security; my mother.

I could never get back inside my mother's womb, but I could recreate my feeling of safety through identification.

First, I identified with my mother, and married a father substitute.

When I became pregnant, I identified, not only with my mother, but also with the baby inside my uterus. I relived, at least in some measure, my feeling of security within the womb. (This explains why, when I returned to the womb under LSD, I also felt like a mother).

While pregnant, I felt that if my baby were a boy, he would be a possible ideal husband - father. If my baby were a girl I felt she would be myself and my mother.

DISCUSSION

The 4th LSD session of our male patient was a revelation and obliged us to reconsider the Freudian theory from two points of view:

* The Freudian doctrine concerning the development of psychic phenomena such as the Oedipus complex, the castration complex etc.
* The Freudian aetiological interpretation of the Freudian doctrine e.g. Freud explained the cause of the maternal fixation of the males on the basis of infantile sexuality.

The clinical findings of our male patient were in favour of the Freudian doctrine but modified radically its Freudian aetological interpretation. During his 4th LSD session the patient realised that he was fixated to his mother and that his fixation was not due to his infantile sexuality but to the feeling of intra-uterine security experienced during his foetal life. An additional realisation was that, the practical means to return to the womb was through coitus. Castration meant for him losing intra-uterine security for ever.

This simple interpretation was striking, but until the answer was given by our female patient (Case No.2) the question remained as to how to interpret the strongly manifested paternal fixation of the female on the basis of intra-uterine security.

The case No.2 re-experienced also the ideal security of the intra-uterine life. Her Father fixation turned out to be secondary. The Father symbolised the means through which she could re-experience intra-uterine security. Becoming pregnant through a father substitute she could identify herself with the mother and at the same time with foetus within her womb.

Inter-uterine security as a first promise suggests the following :

* Firstly, that the basic human motivation is the desire for security and that the lifetime of man, from the moment of birth, is concerned with the search for ideal security - the intra-uterine. Unable to obtain it, fear is engendered in the individual. Fear leads to hostility and aggressive behaviour, the degree of which depends on individual circumstances. The greater the fear the greater the aggressiveness.
* Secondly, the universality of the maternal fixation for both sexes - male and female - because the mother had once provided the ultimate in security, the infra-uterine.
* Thirdly, pansexualism is motivated by the deeplying emotional need for security; the sole aim of pansexualism, indeed, is to provide the ideal security by coitus which is the practical means to return to the womb.

Of course, before generalising the clinical findings of only two cases and accepting the idea, a great many clinical and psychological investigations and experiments must be carried out.

In favour of the findings, however, the following evidence is worth noting :

1. The emotional attachment of males and females to their mothers regardless of ethnic origin, social class and educational level.
2. The general feeling of insecurity of all humans.
3. The burial customs of many primitive societies. For example, the Bronze Age European, Pre-Dynastic Egyptian, and Aboriginal Australian, provide evidence of the desire to return to the womb. Their dead were placed in the grave, crouching in the foetal posture. The grave was a pit and not a trench.
4. The clinical cure of the two cases cited in this paper proves that their interpretations corresponded to reality despite the fact that they were the product of hallucination.

The last argument makes necessary the interpretation of the pharmacodynamic activity of LSD on a neurophysiological basis.

LSD is known as a hallucinogen, i.e. it generates hallucinations, which according to the definition given by classical textbooks of psychiatry, are impressions of sensory vividness occurring without external stimuli.

The spontaneous occurrence of hallucinations leads the layman to metaphysical interpretations. The medical man lacking concrete knowledge of their nature and mechanism also feels more or less confused. However, hallucinations are undoubtedly caused by so far unknown metabolic processes taking place in the brain and for that particular brain they are real.

There is neurophysiological evidence that :

1. A stimulus acting upon the nervous system leaves on it a trace which is retained and can be reactivated by unknown biochemical processes resulting in the same effect as the original stimulus. For example, the mechanism of memory is based on the reactivation of traces left by stimuli which acted upon certain brain areas.
2. Traces of stimuli of vital importance - to do with the preservation of the individual and perpetuation of the species - are transmitted through heredity to the descendants. For example, the function of inborn reflexes starts from the very first moment of birth.
3. From the above, one may deduce that the individual nervous system contains not only the traces of stimuli which acted upon it during its life, but also the traces of stimuli which acted upon the nervous system of ancestors down the zoological scale. Of course, the ability of the nervous system to retain traces of stimuli, is limited by its material possibilities.

LSD by reactivating these traces, causes the known mental phenomena which correspond to past experiences, old and new emotions and fantasies, or the combination of these. It can be said that under LSD one is reliving his "near" and "far" past.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
(1) Sigmund Freud. "Complete Psychological Works"
(London The Hogarth Press)
(2) A. Kafkalides "A case of homosexuality treated with LSD 25"
(Proceedings of the IV World Congress of Psychiatry).

[url]http://kafkalides.com.hosting.domaindirect.com/athanasios/congr2.html[/url]

[Petyr Baelish]

CAUSES OF SEXUAL CONFLICTS-EFFECTS ON BEHAVIOUR

[Open communication at the VII Panhellenic Congress of Neurologists and Psychiatrists, Athens 1975]

Since 1950, LSD, in minute doses, has been used as a helpful means of Psychotherapy as this psychedelic drug increases the dimensions of consciousness of every-day life. The capacity of self-observation, introspection and self-criticism expands remarkably and makes it possible to lead to Autopsychognosia.

The pharmacodynamic properties of the psychedelic drugs encourages us to use them with 49 neurotic and 4 "normal" persons. The present communique is concerned with the self-observation of 16 neurotics, suffering mainly from sexual conflicts.

Thirteen of the patients, nine women and four men, aged between 21 and 33, were treated at the Greek Hospital of Cairo from October l960 - 1970 with 50-100 micrograms of LSD.

The three remaining patients, 2 women and 1 man, aged 23 and 28, were treated at the Psychiatric Institutions of Nicosia from December 1970 to March 1972 with 3-9 milligrams of Psilocybine Sandoz. (Special permission granted by the Ministry of Health of the Cypriot Government).

During the Autopsychognosia sessions, the 16 patients relived their foetal life and various psychologically traumatic events which occurred during and after their birth.

Their subjective conclusions, based on emotional and intellectual realizations, are summarised as follows:
# Not only their sexual behaviour but their behaviour as a whole was mobilized by the unconscious recollection of the conditions of their intra-uterine life which left indelible traces on their nervous system.
# The orgasm during the sexual act symbolised the return to the uterus for all the 16 patients.
# The various kinds of psychological traumas before, during and after birth combined and formed a compact system which mobilized the patients in a stereotyped fashion in their daily life.


CONDITIONS OF FOETAL LIFE

The conditions of foetal life were not alike for the 16 patients and accordingly, we have classified them into 4 categories:
# "The fully welcome" i.e. those whose existence within the womb was fully welcomed by the mother.
# "The totally undesirable" i.e. those whose existence within the womb was totally undesired by the mother.
# "The undesirable as regards sex" i.e. those whose existence as such within the womb was welcomed but whose sex was not. The mother wanted the foetus in her womb, but wished it to be of the opposite sex to what it actually was.
# "Those who were welcomed but who suffered periodic shock" i.e. those whose existence as a foetus and whose sex were welcomed but who suffered shock due to sudden disturbances in the pregnant mother's emotional state.


THE FULLY WELCOME

During the Autopsychognosia sessions, 3 of the patients, 2 women and l man, aged between 24 and 33 felt their bodies gradually decreasing in size and finally assuming the proportions and pose of the foetus within the womb. A feeling of oceanic serenity filled their whole being. Continuing they relived the cruel trial of their birth and the terrifying fear caused by their first contact with the external environment which they perceived as deadly dangerous. Ousted from the intra-uterine paradise, feeling defenceless and abandoned, they were dominated by the desire to return to that ideal secure place from which they had been unwillingly expelled. The inability to satisfy this desire provoked simultaneously two opposing and powerful feelings:

# A feeling of rejection. They regarded the expulsion from the womb as rejection by the mother. The preservation of this bitter recollection, combining with a feeling of hostility towards this unjust situation, manifested itself there after in covert or overt aggression. The slightest event could reactivate the rejection, something which occurred frequently in every-day life.
# Absolute fixation to the mother as she symbolized the ideal security she had provided them during foetal life. Her presence on their infantile and childhood horizon was crucial. Just as she had protected them in her womb from the dangers of the external environment, so she would protect them from the present dangers by taking them in her arms. They wanted her continuously by them and to be exclusively theirs, her attention to be concentrated on them alone. Various persons in the environment i.e. father, siblings, friends, who occupied the mother and absorbed her attention became objects of hatred.

For the two female patients of this category, the father symbolised the means of returning to the womb and thus their interest was transposed from the mother to him.

For the male patient of this category, the father constituted enemy number one. He conquered the mother dictatorially whenever he wished. This symbolized for the patient the loss of the place of total security. The presence of the odious father was always perceptible, even if he were thousands of miles away from the patient.

Any event whatever during their life which caused rejection-insecurity, reactivated in chain-like sequence:

* The expulsion-rejection from the womb.
* The agonizing insecurity of the first contact with the dangerous external environment.
* The first wish to return to the uterus.

Depending on the intensity of this chain-like reactions the behaviour which characterized them mobilized by covert or overt aggression, neurotic phenomena and/or the desire for the sexual act.

THE TOTALLY UNDESIRABLE

The reliving of the intra-uterine life by the totally undesirable foetus during the Autopsychognosia sessions is the most dramatic and tragic scene we have witnessed in our professional career. The anxiety, the anguish, the patients' terror, their bodies racked by periodical painful convulsive movements, all these are literally indescribable.

Two female patients, aged 22 and 23, relived the intra-uterine rejection by their mother. Their expulsion from the womb passed almost unnoticed because she could wound them no more. During their infancy they were sickly. In their early childhood they were frequently overwhelmed by a feeling of chaotic anxiety. Alienated from their mothers and the external environment, they felt that they belonged nowhere. Their contact with other people aroused only terror and shame. They doubted everything around them. Their body was not theirs. They felt incompetent to undertake any responsibility because the failure of their attempts was a foregone certainty. Everything and everyone rejected them. Their fate had been predetermined from the moment their mother didn't want them in her womb.

The rejection was perceived by the patients as the irrevocable decision of a superpower which dominated their mind and body and deprived them permanently of the right to exist. Thus, they had no identity, no will of their own, no desires of their own, their body was not their own.

The attempt to express exactly what they felt was futile... they used confused symbolism to describe the most changeable feelings.

Both female patients completely rejected the sexual act as something disgusting and dangerous.

THE UNDESIRABLE AS REGARDS SEX

Seven female and three male neurotics, aged between 21 and 28, relived the undesirable painful conditions of intra-uterine life caused by the mother's rejection of their sex i.e. the male foetus or the female foetus felt that the mother wanted them to be different to what they were, with the result that they were dominated by agonizing fear, not only through the pregnancy but also through their post-natal life.

This wish of the mother's womb was perceived by the foetus as the command of a superpower which he was obliged to obey blindly. Only thus would be ensured her protection. In having the opposite sex to that which the superpower commanded, the fate of this post-natal life had been predetermined. He was obliged to deny his sex for two basic reasons:(a) This was what the superpower demanded, and (b) The orgasm during the sexual act symbolized the return tothe womb i.e. the reliving of the intra-uterine hell. The outcome of all these conflicts was that they felt their bodies rotten, unnatural, monstrous and not dominated by them. A perplexing aggression characterized their feelings and behaviour in their every-day life.

Those who where welcome but who suffered periodic shock due to sudden disturbances in the emotional condition of the pregnant mother e.g. mental stress resulting from discord with the husband or other persons in the environment, sudden unpleasant news, etc.

The only patient of this category, male, 28 years old relived the conditions of his intra-uterine life. It is worth noting that the feeling of oceanic serenity was periodically interrupted by painful spasms throughout the whole body.

In speaking to the patient's mother, we were informed that during her pregnancy she underwent great mental conflicts with her entourage causing her nervous tension and hysterical fits.

THE SYMBOLIC MEANING OF THE ORGASM

For all the 16 patients, the sexual activity which terminated in the orgasm, symbolized the practical means or returning to the uterus.

During his youth sessions of Autopsychognosia, the "welcome" male patient, aged 33, realized that his sexual activity symbolized the practical means of satisfying the unconscious but inextinguishable desire to return to the ideal and secure intra-uterine environment.

Specifically, the patient emphasized:
# The ejaculation into a mother substitute during sexual activity symbolized the return to the womb. Certain cells of the body, spermatozoa, entered the womb.
# If the external conditions created feelings of rejection-insecurity, instantly were reactivated:
# The expulsion-rejection from the womb.
# The insecurity of the contact with the external environment.
# The desire to return to the womb which aroused the desire for sexual activity.

The emotional symbolism of sex made him feel that if he lost his sexual capacity, all in life would be lost. Impotence meant loosing the possibility of taking refuge in the secure intra-uterine environment which, having once protected him from the dangers of the external environment, would safeguard him from any new danger.

He realized that the authoritarian behaviour of his mother and her rejection of sex had castrated him psychologically. And the mere idea that he would have sexual contact with a female mother substitute was sufficient to reactivate the terror of castration and to render him impotent. Of this he had painful experience. Each attempt at the heterosexual act terminated not only in the terror of castration but in the ridicule of his manhood. Thus, he denied women. The hostile environment, however, was ever present and continued to reactivate within him insecurity and sexual desire. There was no other choice but to turn to homosexuality. The male sexual companion, simply in not being a woman, could not castrate the patient.

The two female patients of the "fully welcome" category, realized emotionally that during their pregnancy they identified not only with their mother, but also with the foetus inside their womb, i.e. they were themselves within their mother's womb. Both patients added that the orgasm was a state of the uterus closely resembling (for few seconds) that of the pregnant uterus and that the same double identification took place during their orgasm.

The two women under the category of the "totally undesirable" rejected all sexual activity. They regarded the sexual act as something disgusting and terrifyingly dangerous. During the Autopsychognosia sessions they realized that the sexual act could lead them back to the womb i.e. to the hell of the intra-uterine rejection. The return to the conditions of intra-uterine life was emotionally unthinkable.
For those who were "undesired because of their sex", sex was a constant source of conflict. Without sexual identity they felt revulsion towards the sexual act because, as they realized through autopsychognosia, this would lead them to the agonizing intra-uterine environment.

The patient in the category "welcome but suffered shock through the emotional stress of the pregnant mother" realized that the heterosexual act which culminated in the orgasm reactivated his painful intra-uterine experience and the means by which he avoided this were:

Either by becoming impotent -something which happened often- or by having sexual contacts with whores i.e. with women who did not constitute a mother substitute, or by humiliating his female sex companion during the act with vulgarities and orgies so that she ceased to be a mother substitute, or by conjuring up fantasies of homosexual content while penetrating the prostrate woman, or by having homosexual contact.

PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAUMAS AFTER BIRTH

If the conditions of the external environment at any given moment provoked feelings of rejection-insecurity, instantly the terror of expulsion from the womb (for the "welcome") or the intra-uterine rejection (for the "undesirables") was reactivated. The first psychologically traumatic conditions after birth were created by the behaviour of the mother and/or the father. In post-natal life, through the mechanism of identification and projection. The various persons in the environment at any given moment synthesized with the emotional image of the mother and/or father, the former symbolizing the latter and thus arousing in the patients the same reaction which the parents aroused. Thus, everyday life from the emotional point of view was a stereotyped repetition of the past.

DISCUSSION

Nature endowed all living beings with fear to keep them from exposure to extreme dangers. Without fear all living beings would have disappeared from the face of the earth. Fear is transmitted through heredity.

If these three syllogisms form objective truth, we are obliged to accept that fear is not a metaphysical phenomenon, but a result of the functioning of the nervous system.

The hypothesis that fear is a result of the functioning of definite circuit of the nervous of the D-Diencephalon and R-Rhinencephalon must be proved experimentally. Taking this hypothesis as an axiom, we accept that the human nervous system is equipped with a circuit of neurones of fear. Also the question is asked: "Has the circuit of neurones of fear the ability to function during birth and the foetal life?" The answer to the question would constitute the answer to another question: "Did the subjective conclusions of our 16 patients correspond to reality or not?"

We had the opportunity of speaking to the mothers of all the 16 patients. All confirmed the realizations of their children with respect to the "welcoming" or "undesirability" of their presence or of their sex during pregnancy.

We do not overestimate the confirmation of the mothers or the satisfactory improvement in the sexual behaviour of the 14 of the 16 patients after Autopsychognosia sessions. We believe, however, that our cases form experimental clinical data which must be studied on a large scale without bias. Until our data is proved, right or wrong, it would be wise if, before assuming parenthood, women and men were aware that the psychological health of their children most probably depends to a large extent on whether the mother welcomes the foetus in her womb from the first moment without wanting a priori a particular sex.

Another reasonable question: Why didn't the patients of colleagues of western countries, who underwent therapy with the same psychedelics, arrive at the same conclusion as our patients?

To answer this question we must describe the process of the Autopsychognosia sessions: The latter revealed that all the psychological traumas before, during and after birth, form a synthesis. The reliving of any psychological trauma reactivates the fear of the intra-uterine life or the fear or the expulsion from the womb, i.e. the most unbearable experience of the patient's life which he refuses to live through again. This refusal is the cause of the unconscious resistance of the patient to realize the content of his unconscious.

It is worth noting that the reliving of any psychological trauma is preceded by a lengthy inexplicable (for the patient) anxiety whose intensity crescendoes to an unbearable point where the patient feels he is on the point of death: This point of the session is the most crucial. The Psychiatrist who attends the patient in his agony must encourage him not to neutralize the anxiety. If the patient, despite his terror, follows the exhortations of the doctor he finally reaches the emotional and mental interpretation of the cause of his anxiety. Here we must add yet another factor regarding fear. The social code cultivates in people and in the man particularly, the ethical obligation that he must not be afraid.

Before leading to "the light", the Autopsychognosia sessions arouse much fear which the patients prefer to neutralize. This way, however, they deprive themselves of the knowledge.

Despite the outcry against LSD, a few teams of Psychiatrists continue experimental research in all western countries with special governmental permission. This fact shows that LSD does not lack scientific interest.

We are convinced that LSD has opened a new and hopeful road in Psychotherapy, Neurophysiology and Neurobiology..

There are indications that the pharmacodynamic activity of LSD is due to the reactivation of the memory, not only of the neurones, but also of matter from which the neurones are composed. The reactivation of the memory of matter which man preserves in his body leads him millions and millions of years back and creates in him levels of consciousness of matter for corresponding eras. The fantastic trips into the past with LSD have a material base.

If research scientists can be freed from their conservative stance, if they can be liberated from their philosophical and social restraints and if they devote themselves whole-heartedly to research, they will learn much about scientific truth with the aid of LSD.

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