Perinatal Roots of Violence

There is no doubt that “malignant aggression” is connected with traumas and frustrations in childhood and infancy. However, modern consciousness research has revealed additional significant roots of violence in deep recesses of the psyche that lie beyond postnatal biography and are related to the trauma of biological birth. The vital emergency, pain, and suffocation experienced for many hours during biological delivery generate enormous amounts of anxiety and murderous aggression that remain stored in the organism. The reliving of birth in various forms of experiential psychotherapy involves not only concrete replay of the original emotions and sensations, but is typically associated with a variety of experiences from the collective unconscious portraying scenes of unimaginable violence. Among these are often powerful sequences depicting wars, revolutions, racial riots, concentration camps, totalitarianism, and genocide.

The spontaneous emergence of this imagery during the reliving of birth is often associated with convincing insights concerning perinatal origin of such extreme forms of human violence. Naturally, wars and revolutions are extremely complex phenomena that have historical, economic, political, religious, and other dimensions. The intention here is not to offer a reductionistic explanation replacing all the other causes, but to add some new insights concerning the psychological and spiritual dimensions of these forms of social psychopathology that have been neglected or received only superficial treatment in earlier theories.

 

The images of violent sociopolitical events accompanying the reliving of biological birth tend to appear in very specific connection with the four basic perinatal matrices (BPMs), which is my name for complex experiential patterns associated with the consecutive stages of the birth process. While reliving episodes of undisturbed intrauterine existence (BPM I), we typically experience images from human societies with an ideal social structure, from cultures that live in complete harmony with nature, or from future utopian societies where all major conflicts have been resolved. Disturbing intrauterine memories, such as those of a toxic womb, imminent miscarriage, or attempted abortion, are accompanied by images of human groups living in industrial areas where nature is polluted and spoiled, or in societies with insidious social order and all-pervading paranoia.

 

Regressive experiences related to the first clinical stage of birth (BPM II), during which the uterus periodically contracts but the cervix is not yet open, present a diametrically different picture. They portray oppressive and abusive totalitarian societies with closed borders, victimizing their populations, and “choking” personal freedom, such as Czarist or Communist Russia, Hitler's Third Reich, Eastern European Soviet satellites, South American dictatorships, and the African Apartheid, or bring specific images of the inmates in Nazi concentration camps and Stalin's Gulag Archipelago. While experiencing these scenes of living hell, we identify exclusively with the victims and feel deep sympathy for the down-trodden and the underdog.

 

The experiences accompanying reliving of the second clinical stage of delivery (BPM III), when the cervix is dilated and continued contractions propel the fetus through the narrow passage of the birth canal, feature a rich panoply of violent scenes -- bloody wars and revolutions, human or animal slaughter, mutilation, sexual abuse, and murder. These scenes often contain demonic elements and repulsive scatological motifs. Additional frequent concomitants of BPM III are visions of burning cities, launching of rockets, and explosions of nuclear bombs. Here we are not limited to the role of victims, but can participate in three roles - that of the victim, of the aggressor, and of an emotionally involved observer.

 

The events characterizing the third clinical stage of delivery (BPM IV), the actual moment of birth and the separation from the mother, are typically associated with images of victory in wars and revolutions, liberation of prisoners, and success of collective efforts, such as patriotic or nationalistic movements. At this point, we can also experience visions of triumphant celebrations and parades or of exciting postwar reconstruction.

 

In 1975, I described these observations, linking sociopolitical upheavals to stages of biological birth, in my book Realms of the Human Unconscious (Grof 1975). Shortly after its publication, I received an enthusiastic letter from Lloyd de Mause, a New York psychoanalyst and journalist. De Mause is one of the founders of psychohistory, a discipline that applies the findings of depth psychology to the study of history and political science. Psychohistorians explore such issues as the relationship between the childhood of political leaders and their system of values and process of decision-making, or the influence of child-rearing practices on the nature of revolutions of that particular historical period. Lloyd de Mause was very interested in my findings concerning the trauma of birth and its possible sociopolitical implications, because they provided independent support for his own research.

 

For some time, de Mause had been studying the psychodynamics of the periods immediately preceding wars and revolutions. It interested him how military leaders succeed in mobilizing masses of peaceful civilians and transforming them practically overnight into killing machines. His approach to this problem was very original and creative. In addition to analysis of traditional historical sources, he drew data of great psychological importance from caricatures, jokes, dreams, personal imagery, slips of the tongue, side comments of speakers, and even doodles and scribbles on the edge of the rough drafts of political documents. By the time he contacted me, he had analyzed in this way seventeen situations preceding the outbreak of wars and revolutionary upheavals, spanning many centuries since antiquity to most recent times (de Mause 1975).

 

He was struck by the extraordinary abundance of figures of speech, metaphors, and images related to biological birth that he found in this material. Military leaders and politicians of all ages describing a critical situation or declaring war typically used terms that equally applied to perinatal distress. They accused the enemy of choking and strangling their people, squeezing the last breath out of their lungs, or constricting them, and not giving them enough space to live (Hitler's “Lebensraum”).

 

Equally frequent were allusions to dark caves, tunnels, and confusing labyrinths, dangerous abysses into which one might be pushed, and the threat of engulfment by treacherous quicksand or a terrifying whirlpool. Similarly, the offer of the resolution of the crisis had the form of perinatal images. The leader promised to rescue his nation from an ominous labyrinth, to lead it to the light on the other side of the tunnel, and to create a situation where the dangerous aggressor and oppressor will be overcome and everybody will again breathe freely.

 

Lloyd de Mause's historical examples at the time included such famous personages as Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Samuel Adams, Kaiser Wilhelm II., Hitler, Khrushchev, and Kennedy. Samuel Adams talking about the American Revolution referred to "the child of Independence now struggling for birth." In 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm stated that "the Monarchy has been seized by the throat and forced to choose between letting itself be strangled and making a last ditch effort to defend itself against attack."

 

During the Cuban missile crisis Krushchev wrote to Kennedy, pleading that the two nations not "come to a clash, like blind moles battling to death in a tunnel." Even more explicit was the coded message used by Japanese ambassador Kurusu when he phoned Tokyo to signal that negotiations with Roosevelt had broken down and that it was all right to go ahead with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He announced that the "birth of the child was imminent" and asked how things were in Japan: "Does it seem as if the child might be born?" The reply was: "Yes, the birth of the child seems imminent." Interestingly, the American intelligence listening in recognized the meaning of the “war-as-birth” code. The most recent examples can be found in Osama bin Laden’s videotape, where he threatens to turn United States into a “choking hell” and in the speech of US State Secretary Condoleeza Rice, who described the acute crisis in Iraq as “birth pangs of New Middle East.”

 

Particularly chilling was the use of perinatal language in connection with the explosion of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. The airplane was given the name of the pilot's mother, Enola Gay, the atomic bomb itself carried a painted nickname “The Little Boy,” and the agreed-upon message sent to Washington as a signal of successful detonation was "The baby was born.” It would not be too far-fetched to see the image of a newborn also behind the nickname of the Nagasaki bomb, Fat Man. Since the time of our correspondence, Lloyd de Mause collected many additional historical examples and refined his thesis that the memory of the birth trauma plays an important role as a source of motivation for violent social activity.

 

The relationship between nuclear warfare and birth is of such relevance that I would like to explore it further using the material from a fascinating paper by Carol Cohn entitled “Sex and Death in the Rational World of the Defense Intellectuals” (Cohn 1987). The defense intellectuals (DIs) are civilians who move in and out of government, working sometimes as administrative officials or consultants, sometimes at universities and think tanks. They create the theory that informs and legitimates U.S. nuclear strategic practice - how to manage the arms race, how to deter the use of nuclear weapons, how to fight a nuclear war if the deterrence fails, and how to explain why it is not safe to live without nuclear weapons.

 

Carol Cohn had attended a two-week summer seminar on nuclear weapons, nuclear strategic doctrine, and arms control. She was so fascinated by what had transpired there that she spent the following year immersed in the almost entirely male world of defense intellectuals (except for secretaries). She collected some extremely interesting facts confirming the perinatal dimension in nuclear warfare. In her own terminology, this material confirms the importance of the motif of “male birth” and “male creation” as important psychological forces underlying the psychology of nuclear warfare. She uses the following historical examples to illustrate her point of view:

 

In 1942, Ernest Lawrence sent a telegram to a Chicago group of physicists developing the nuclear bomb that read: "Congratulations to the new parents. Can hardly wait to see the new arrival." At Los Alamos, the atom bomb was referred to as “Oppenheimer’s baby.” Richard Feynman wrote in his article “Los Alamos from Below” that when he was temporarily on leave after his wife's death, he received a telegram that read: "The baby is expected on such and such a day."

 

At Lawrence Livermore laboratories, the hydrogen bomb was referred to as “Teller's baby,” although those who wanted to disparage Edward Teller's contribution claimed he was not the bomb's father, but its mother. They claimed that Stanislaw Ulam was the real father, who had all the important ideas and “conceived it;” Teller only “carried it” after that. Terms related to motherhood were also used to the provision of “nurturance” -- the maintenance of the missiles.

 

General Grove sent a triumphant coded cable to Secretary of War Henry Stimson at the Potsdam conference reporting the success of the first atomic test: "Doctor has just returned most enthusiastic and confident that the little boy is as husky as his big brother. The light in his eyes discernible from here to Highhold Stimson’s country home) and I could have heard his screams from here to my farm." Stimson, in turn, informed Churchill by writing him a note that read: "Babies satisfactorily born."

 

William L. Laurence witnessed the test of the first atomic bomb and wrote: "The big boom came about a hundred seconds after the great flash -- the first cry of a new-born world." Edward Teller's exultant telegram to Los Alamos, announcing the successful test of the hydrogen bomb “Mike” at the Eniwetok atoll in Marshall Islands read "It's a boy." The Enola Gay, “Little Boy,” and "The baby was born" symbolism of the Hiroshima bomb, and the “Fat Man” symbolism of the Nagasaki bomb were already mentioned earlier. According to Carol Cohn, "male scientists gave birth to a progeny with the ultimate power of domination over female Nature."

 

Carol Cohn also mentions in her paper abundance of overtly sexual symbolism in the language of defense intellectuals. The nature of this material, linking sex to aggression, domination, and scatology shows a deep similarity to the imagery occurring in the context of birth experiences (BPM III). Cohn used the following examples: American dependence on nuclear weapons was explained as irresistible, because "you get more bang for the buck." A professor's explanation, why the MX missiles should be placed in the silos of the newest Minutemean missiles, instead of replacing the older, less accurate ones: "You are not going to take the nicest missile you have and put it into a crummy hole." At one point, there was a serious concern that "we have to harden our missiles, because the Russians are a little harder than we are." One military adviser to the National Security Council referred to "releasing 70 to 80 percent of our megatonnage in one orgasmic whump."

 

Lectures were filled with terms like vertical erector launchers, thrust-to-weight ratios, soft lay-downs, deep penetration, and the comparative advantages of protracted versus spasm attacks. Another example was the popular and widespread custom of patting the missiles practiced by the visitors to nuclear submarines, which Carol Cohn saw as an expression of phallic supremacy and also homoerotic tendencies. In view of this material, it clearly is quite appropriate for feminist critics of nuclear policies to refer to “missile envy” and “phallic worship.”

 

Further support for the pivotal role of the perinatal domain of the unconscious in war psychology can be found in Sam Keen's excellent book The Faces of the Enemy (Keen 1988). Keen brought together an outstanding collection of war posters, propaganda cartoons, and caricatures from many historical periods and countries. He demonstrated that the way the enemy is described and portrayed during a war or revolution is a stereotype that shows only minimal variations and has very little to do with the actual characteristics of the country and its inhabitants. This material also typically disregards the diversity and heterogeneity characterizing the population of each country and makes blatant generalization: “This is what the Germans, Americans, Japanese, Russians, etc. are like!”

 

Keen was able to divide these images into several archetypal categories according to the prevailing characteristics (e.g., Stranger, Aggressor, Worthy Opponent, Faceless, Enemy of God, Barbarian, Greedy, Criminal, Torturer, Rapist, Death). According to him, the alleged images of the enemy are essentially projections of the repressed and unacknowledged shadow aspects of our own unconscious. Although we would certainly find in human history instances of just wars, those who initiate war activities are typically substituting external targets for elements in their own psyches that should be properly faced in personal self-exploration.

 

Sam Keen's theoretical framework does not specifically include the perinatal domain of the unconscious. However, the analysis of his picture material reveals preponderance of symbolic images that are characteristic of BPM II and BPM III. The enemy is typically depicted as a dangerous octopus, a vicious dragon, a multiheaded hydra, a giant venomous tarantula, or an engulfing Leviathan. Other frequently used symbols include vicious predatory felines or birds, monstrous sharks, and ominous snakes, particularly vipers and boa constrictors. Scenes depicting strangulation or crushing, ominous whirlpools, and treacherous quicksands also abound in pictures from the time of wars, revolutions, and political crises. Juxtaposition of pictures from holotropic states of consciousness that focus on reliving of birth with the historical pictorial documentation collected by Lloyd de Mause and Sam Keen represents strong evidence for the perinatal roots of human violence.

 

According to the new insights, provided jointly by observations from consciousness research and by the findings of psychohistory, we all carry in our deep unconscious powerful energies and emotions associated with the trauma of birth that we have not adequately processed and assimilated. For some of us, this aspect of our psyche can be completely unconscious, until and unless we embark on some in-depth self-exploration with the use of psychedelics or some powerful experiential techniques of psychotherapy, such as the holotropic breathwork or rebirthing. Others can have varying degrees of awareness of the emotions and physical sensations stored on the perinatal level of the unconscious.

 

Activation of this material can lead to serious individual psychopathology, including unmotivated violence. Lloyd de Mause suggests that, for unknown reasons, the awareness of the perinatal elements can increase simultaneously in a large number of people. This creates an atmosphere of general tension, anxiety, and anticipation. The leader is an individual who is under a stronger influence of the perinatal energies than the average person. He also has the ability to disown his unacceptable feelings (the Shadow in Jung's terminology) and to project them on the external situation. The collective discomfort is blamed on the enemy and a military intervention is offered as a solution. Richard Tarnas’ extraordinary book Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of A New Worldview added an interesting dimension to de Mause’s thesis. In this meticulously researched study, Tarnas was able to show that throughout history the times of wars and revolutions have been correlated with specific astrological transits (Tarnas 2006) suggesting participation of archetypal forces in these phenomena.

 

War and revolution provide an opportunity to disregard the psychological defenses that ordinarily keep the dangerous perinatal forces in check. Freud's superego, a psychological force that demands restraint and civilized behavior, is replaced by the “war superego.” We receive praise and medals for murder, indiscriminate destruction, and pillaging, the same behaviors that in peacetime are unacceptable and would land us in prison or worse. Similarly, sexual violence has been a common practice during wartime and has been generally tolerated. As a matter of fact, military leaders have often promised their soldiers unlimited access to women in the conquered territory to motivate them for battle.

 

Once the war erupts, the destructive and self-destructive perinatal impulses are freely acted out. The themes that we normally encounter in a certain stage of the process of inner exploration and transformation (BPM II and III) now become parts of our everyday life, either directly or in the form of TV news. Various no exit situations, sadomasochistic orgies, sexual violence, bestial and demonic behavior, unleashing of enormous explosive energies, and scatology, which belong to standard perinatal imagery, are all enacted in wars and revolutions with extraordinary vividness and power.

 

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 externalized 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 represents 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.

 

After the initial intoxicating feelings of triumph comes at first a sober awakening and later bitter disappointment. And it usually does not take a long time and a facsimile of the old oppressive system starts emerging from the ruins of the dead dream, since the same unconscious forces continue to operate in the deep unconscious of everybody involved. This seems to happen again and again in human history, whether the event involved is the French Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, the Communist revolution in China, or any of the other violent upheavals associated with great hopes and expectations.

 

Since I conducted for many years deep experiential work in Prague at the time when Czechoslovakia had a Marxist regime, I was able to collect some fascinating material concerning the psychological dynamics of Communism. The issues related to Communist ideology typically emerged in the treatment of my clients at the time when these were struggling with perinatal energies and emotions. It soon became obvious that the passion the revolutionaries feel toward the oppressors and their regimes receives a powerful reinforcement from their revolt against the inner prison of their perinatal memories. And, conversely, the need to coerce and dominate others is an external displacement of the need to overcome the fear of being overwhelmed by one's own unconscious. The murderous entanglement of the oppressor and the revolutionary is thus an externalized replica of the situation experienced in the birth canal.

 

The Communist vision contains an element of psychological truth that has made it appealing to large numbers of people. The basic notion that a violent experience of a revolutionary nature is necessary to terminate suffering and oppression and institute a situation of greater harmony is correct when understood as related to the process of inner transformation. However, it is dangerously false when it is projected on the external world as a political ideology of violent revolutions. The fallacy lies in the fact that what on a deeper level is essentially an archetypal pattern of spiritual death and rebirth takes the form of an atheistic and antispiritual program. Paradoxically, Communism has many features in common with organized religion and exploits people’s spiritual needs, while not only failing to satisfy them, but actively suppressing any genuine spiritual search. The parallel of Communism with organized religion goes so far that Stalin at the height of his power was declared infallible.

 

Communist revolutions have been extremely successful in their destructive phase but, instead of the promised brotherhood and harmony, their victories have bred regimes where oppression, cruelty, and injustice ruled supreme. Today, when the economically ruined and politically corrupt Soviet Union has collapsed and the Communist world has fallen apart, it is obvious to all people with sane judgment that this gigantic historical experiment, conducted at the cost of millions of human lives and unimaginable human suffering, has been a colossal failure. If the above observations are correct, no external interventions have a chance to create a better world, unless they are associated with a profound transformation of human consciousness.

 

The observations from the study of holotropic states also throw some important light on the psychology of concentration camps. Over a number of years, professor Bastians in Leyden, Holland, conducted LSD therapy with people suffering from the “concentration camp syndrome,” a condition that develops in former inmates of these camps many years after the incarceration. Bastians has also worked with former kapos on their issues of profound guilt. An artistic description of this work can be found in the book Shivitti written by a former inmate, Ka-Tzetnik 135633, who underwent a series of therapeutic sessions with Bastians (Ka-Tzetnik 135633 1989).

Bastians himself wrote a paper describing his work, entitled “Man in the Concentration Camp and Concentration Camp in Man.” There he pointed out, without specifying it, that the concentration camps are a projection of a certain domain, which exists in the human unconscious: "Before there was a man in the concentration camp, there was a concentration camp in man"(Bastians 1955).Study of holotropic states of consciousness makes it possible to identify the realm of the psyche Bastians was talking about. Closer examination of the general and specific conditions in the Nazi concentration camps reveals that they are a diabolical and realistic enactment of the nightmarish atmosphere that characterizes the reliving of biological birth.

 

The barbed-wire barriers, high-voltage fences, watch towers with submachine guns, minefields, and packs of trained dogs certainly created a hellish and almost archetypal image of an utterly hopeless and oppressive no exit situation that is so characteristic of the first clinical stage of birth (BPM II). At the same time, the elements of violence, bestiality, scatology, and sexual abuse of women and men, including rape and sadistic practices, all belong to the phenomenology of the second stage of birth (BPM III), familiar to people who have relived their birth. In the concentration camps, the sexual abuse existed on a random individual level, as well as in the context of the “houses of dolls,” institutions providing “entertainment” for the officers. The only escape out of this hell was death - by a bullet, by hunger, disease, or suffocation in the gas chambers. The books by Ka-Tzetnik 135633, House of Dolls and Sunrise Over Hell (Ka-Tzetnik 1955 and 1977), offer a shattering description of the life in concentration camps.

 

The bestiality of the SS seemed to be focused particularly on pregnant women and little children, which brings further support for the perinatal hypothesis. The most powerful passage from Terence des Près’s book The Survivor is, without a doubt, the description of a truck full of babies dumped into fire, followed by a scene, in which pregnant women are beaten with clubs and whips, torn by dogs, dragged around by the hair, kicked into the stomach, and then thrown into the crematorium while still alive (des Près 1976).

 

The perinatal nature of the irrational impulses manifesting in the camps is evident also in the scatological behavior of the kapos. Throwing eating bowls into the latrines and asking the inmates for their retrieval and forcing the inmates to urinate into each other's mouth were practices that besides their bestiality brought the danger of epidemics. Had the concentration camps been simply institutions providing isolation of political enemies and cheap slave labor, maintenance of hygienic rules would have been a primary concern of the organizers, as it is the case in any facility accommodating large numbers of people. In Buchenwald alone, as a result of these perverted practices, twenty-seven inmates drowned in feces in the course of a single month.

 

The intensity, depth, and convincing nature of all the experiences of collective violence associated with the perinatal process suggests that they are not individually fabricated from such sources as adventure books, movies, and TV shows, but originate in the deep unconscious. When our experiential self-exploration reaches the memory of the birth trauma, we also connect to an immense pool of painful memories of the human species and gain access to experiences of other people who once were in a similar predicament. It is not hard to imagine that the perinatal level of our unconscious that “knows” so intimately the history of human violence is actually partially responsible for wars, revolutions, and similar atrocities.

 

The intensity and quantity of the perinatal experiences portraying various brutalities of human history is truly astonishing. Christopher Bache, after having carefully analyzed various aspects of this phenomenon, made an interesting conclusion. He suggested that the memories of the violence perpetrated throughout ages in human history contaminated the collective unconscious in the same way in which the traumas from our infancy and childhood polluted our individual unconscious. According to Bache, it might then be possible that when we start experiencing these collective memories, our inner process transcends the framework of personal therapy and we participate in the healing of the field of species consciousness (Bache 1999).

 

The role of the birth trauma as a source of violence and self-destructive tendencies has been confirmed by clinical studies. For example, there seems to be an important correlation between difficult birth and criminality (Litt 1974, Kandel and Mednick 1991, Raine, Brennan, and Mednick 1995). In a similar way, aggression directed inward, particularly suicide, seems to be psychogenetically linked to difficult birth (Appelby 1998). The Scandinavian researcher Bertil Jacobson found a close correlation between the form of self-destructive behavior and the nature of birth. Suicides involving asphyxiation were associated with suffocation at birth, violent suicides with mechanical birth trauma, and drug addiction leading to suicide with opiate and/or barbiturate administration during labor (Jacobsen et al. 1987).

 

The circumstances of birth play an important role in creating a disposition to violence and self-destructive tendencies or, conversely, to loving behavior and healthy interpersonal relationships. French obstetrician Michel Odent has shown how the hormones involved in the birth process and in nursing and maternal behavior participate in this imprinting. The catecholamines (adrenaline and noradrenaline) play an important role in evolution as mediators of the aggressive/protective instinct of the mother at the time when birth was occurring in unprotected natural environments. Oxytocine, prolactine, and endorphins are known to induce maternal behavior in animals and foster dependency and attachment. The busy, noisy, and chaotic milieu of many hospitals induces anxiety, engages unnecessarily the adrenaline system, and imprints the picture of a world that is potentially dangerous and requires aggressive responses. This interferes with the hormones that mediate positive interpersonal imprinting. It is, therefore, essential to provide for birthing a quiet, safe, and private environment (Odent 1995).