Prenatal psychology can be seen as a part of
developmental psychology
Developmental psychology is the science, scientific study of how and why humans grow, change, and adapt across the course of their lives. Originally concerned with infants and children, the field has expanded to include adolescence, adult deve ...
, although historically it was developed in the heterogenous field of
psychoanalysis
PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might b ...
. Its scope is the description and explanation of experience and behaviour of the individual before
birth and postnatal consequences as well. In so far as the actual birth process is involved one can consider this perinatal psychology. Pre- and perinatal aspects are often discussed together.
Prenatal and perinatal psychology explores the
psychological
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between t ...
and
psychophysiological
Psychophysiology (from Greek , ''psȳkhē'', "breath, life, soul"; , ''physis'', "nature, origin"; and , '' -logia'') is the branch of psychology that is concerned with the physiological bases of psychological processes. While psychophysiology w ...
effects and implications of the earliest experiences of the individual, before birth (prenatal), as well as during and immediately after childbirth (perinatal). Although there are various perspectives on the topic, a common thread is the importance of prenatal and perinatal experiences in the shaping the future psychological development. There is a debate among scientists regarding the extent to which newborn infants are capable of forming
memories, the effects of any such memories on their personality, and the possibility of recovering them from an
unconscious mind
The unconscious mind (or the unconscious) consists of the processes in the mind which occur automatically and are not available to introspection and include thought processes, memories, interests, and motivations.
Even though these processes exis ...
, which itself is the subject of argument in the field. A widespread assumption concerning the prenatal phase was that the fetus is almost completely shielded from outside stimuli. Thus, perception and consciousness would develop after birth. Meanwhile, there is a great number of scientific studies which show clearly that behaviour, perception and learning is already developed before birth. This also holds for nonhuman species, as for rat fetuses acoustic conditioning can be demonstrated.
Psycho-physiological aspects of the prenatal phase
![Placenta](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/Placenta.svg)
The physiological development while in the prenatal phase – especially that of the
brain
A brain is an organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. It is located in the head, usually close to the sensory organs for senses such as vision. It is the most complex organ in a v ...
– is of particular importance for prenatal psychology. In the first eight weeks after insemination, the developing child is called an
embryo
An embryo is an initial stage of development of a multicellular organism. In organisms that reproduce sexually, embryonic development is the part of the life cycle that begins just after fertilization of the female egg cell by the male spe ...
. After the inner organs have developed (from the ninth week on) it is called a
fetus
A fetus or foetus (; plural fetuses, feti, foetuses, or foeti) is the unborn offspring that develops from an animal embryo. Following embryonic development the fetal stage of development takes place. In human prenatal development, fetal deve ...
.
Prenatal development of the brain
The basis of perception, experience, and behaviour is the brain. While in gestation, a giant neuronal net is developing, delivering the condition for any mental process. About half of the developing neurons become destroyed again while the development of the brain because of the "programmed cell death" (
apoptosis
Apoptosis (from grc, ἀπόπτωσις, apóptōsis, 'falling off') is a form of programmed cell death that occurs in multicellular organisms. Biochemical events lead to characteristic cell changes (morphology) and death. These changes incl ...
).
At birth the infantile brain contains 100 billion neurons – as many as in the brain of an adult.
At birth, every cortical neuron is connected with about 2500 neurons; after a year, with about 15 000. Synapses develop, and are destroyed, over the whole life span – a process called
neuroplasticity.
Motor development
In the 1930s the physiologist
Davenport Hooker
Davenport may refer to:
Places Australia
*Davenport, Northern Territory, a locality
*Hundred of Davenport, cadastral unit in South Australia
**Davenport, South Australia, suburb of Port Augusta
**District Council of Davenport, former local governm ...
examined reflexes or reactions, respectively of aborted fetuses extrauterine. Nowadays, the
motor skills
A motor skill is a function that involves specific movements of the body's muscles to perform a certain task. These tasks could include walking, running, or riding a bike. In order to perform this skill, the body's nervous system, muscles, and br ...
of embryo and fetus can be examined with ultrasound techniques quite easily. From the eighth week on the embryo moves the rump, shortly after that his extremities. With the means of sonography one could demonstrate that these were not simple reflexes, but also endogenously provoked movements. According to Alessandra Piontelli the fetus shows all patterns of movement, which later can be found in the newborn.
Breath movements can be seen from the 19th week on, with the fetus taking amniotic fluid into his lungs.
Eye movements are shown to exist from the 18th week on, from the 23rd week on there are rapid-eye-movements (REM-phases). These are connected with sleeping patterns and dreaming. Fetuses drink amniotic fluid and urinate into it.
Development of perception and prenatal learning
The sense modalities of the fetus develop prenatally and are functioning very well at birth. The examination of such abilities is connected with experimental examination of behaviour, provoked by stimuli. Ray examined vibro-acoustic conditioning of human fetuses. According to Hepper it rested uncertain, if such conditioning was successful. Hepper claims to have repeat such conditioning experiments successfully, with the earliest vibro-acoustic conditioning in the 32nd week of gestation.
Prenatal learning often is examined by using the habituation paradigm. The fetus gets exposed to a stimulus, e.g. an acoustic one. Afterwards the experimenter watches the extinction of the reaction while repeating the same stimulus again and again. This procedure becomes completed by the use of a new stimulus and the recording of the according reaction. When the new stimulus is identified by the fetus as different from the old one, it releases a new pattern of reaction, e.g. accelerated frequency of the heart. If this does not happen, the new stimulus cannot be distinguished from the old focal stimulus. In 1991 a study demonstrated the acoustic habituation by recording the heart frequency of foetuses in the 29th week of gestation.
Such studies can be used for examining memory. Fetuses older than 34 weeks of gestation can reproduce learned content over a period of 4 weeks.
The earliest vibro-acoustic conditioning is successful at 22-week-old fetuses. Maybe habituation to taste is possible even earlier. Such habituation was also demonstrated in fetal rats.
Babies remember musical patterns they once heard in the womb, as
W. Ernest Freud W. may refer to:
* SoHo (Australian TV channel) (previously W.), an Australian pay television channel
* W. (film), ''W.'' (film), a 2008 American biographical drama film based on the life of George W. Bush
* "W.", the fifth track from Codeine's 199 ...
– a grandson of Sigmund Freud – could demonstrate. The empirical proof used the registration of heart frequency and motorical activity.
Also the development of speech is based on prenatal learning, as the study of DeCasper and Fifer from 1980 seems to demonstrate. This study used operant conditioning as a paradigm.
Several empirical studies demonstrated that prenatal learning exists.
Historical development of psychoanalytical and depth psychological theories concerning prenatal life
![Freud and other psychoanalysts 1922](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Freud_and_other_psychoanalysts_1922.jpg)
Most psychoanalytical theories assume that the development of objects, the self and even consciousness begins after birth. Nevertheless, some psychoanalysts explicitly write that pre- and perinatal aspects are responsible for certain symptom formations, among them
Otto Rank,
Nandor Fodor
Nandor Fodor (May 13, 1895 in Beregszász, Hungary – May 17, 1964 in New York City, New York) was a British and American parapsychologist, psychoanalyst, author and journalist of Hungarian origin.
Biography
Fodor was born in Beregszász, Hun ...
,
Francis J. Mott,
Donald Winnicott
Donald Woods Winnicott (7 April 1896 – 25 January 1971) was an English paediatrician and psychoanalyst who was especially influential in the field of object relations theory and developmental psychology. He was a leading member of the Br ...
,
Gustav Hans Graber und Ludwig Janus. They think that the structuring of the unconscious psyche starts in the prenatal phase. The fetus already has early, emotionally relevant experiences. They assume the existence of perception in several sense modaliaties, states of asphyxia, fears and stress, which are stored and can be remembered after birth under certain circumstances. In psychoanalysis pre- and perinatal topics usually are seen as fantasies. The manifest prenatal content of dreaming or fantasizing of swimming under water while breathing, being inside of a cave, fighting with underwater monsters – are interpreted as re-projections in time onto the early phase. Janus assumes that in many psychoanalytical approaches there can be found contentual and phenomenological aspects close to prenatal psychology – but without explicit references. Janus wrote of the "hidden attendance of the prenatal existence" in the works of psychoanalysts such as
Sandor Ferenczi,
Carl Gustav Jung,
Melanie Klein,
Bela Grunberger
Bela may refer to:
Places Asia
*Bela Pratapgarh, a town in Pratapgarh District, Uttar Pradesh, India
*Bela, a small village near Bhandara, Maharashtra, India
*Bela, another name for the biblical city Zoara
* Bela, Dang, in Nepal
* Bela, Janakpur, ...
,
Françoise Dolto and others.
In 1924
Otto Rank (1884–1939), one of
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...
's disciples, published his book ''
The Trauma of Birth
''The Trauma of Birth'' (german: Das Trauma der Geburt) is a 1924 book by the psychoanalyst Otto Rank. It was first published in English translation in 1929. Especially with its focus on the connection between microcosm and macrocosm, it foreshado ...
'' (German: ''Das Trauma der Geburt und seine Bedeutung für die Psychoanalyse''). There he stated that the emotional shock of being born is an individual's first source of anxiety. Because of this book the friendship between Freud and Rank came to an end. Rank was of the opinion that birth is connected with an overwhelming experience of fear of the fetus. He also presumed that this trauma was the cause of later anxieties. He also claimed that aspects of the later prenatal phase can be remembered. So already Rank himself had developed the outlines of a true prenatal psychology. In the light of such assumptions he interpreted cultural aspects, e.g. he understood Christian fantasies of the hell as being based on aversive intrauterine situations. In his book, he treated the interpretation of symbols, art and myths by using pre- and perinatal assumptions. Rank believed that a "primal fixation" with the prenatal state is the root of all
neuroses
Neurosis is a class of functional mental disorders involving chronic distress, but neither delusions nor hallucinations. The term is no longer used by the professional psychiatric community in the United States, having been eliminated from th ...
and character disorders
and developed a process of
psychoanalysis
PsychoanalysisFrom Greek: + . is a set of theories and therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a body of knowledge. In what might b ...
based on birth experiences.
Donald Winnicott
Donald Woods Winnicott (7 April 1896 – 25 January 1971) was an English paediatrician and psychoanalyst who was especially influential in the field of object relations theory and developmental psychology. He was a leading member of the Br ...
(1896–1971) tried to understand very early forms of symbol formation. He described in several case studies the reenactment of perinatal experiences in psychotherapies, especially of children. A five-year-old boy climbed into Winnicott's jacket and then slit down the pants onto the ground. He repeated this again and again. Winnicott interpreted this game as a regression and a repeating of birth. He presumed that some babies developed a paranoid attitude by having problems at birth, e.g. in the case of asphyxia. Also psychosomatic symptoms (headaches, breast- and breathing problems and feelings of getting choked) were interpreted as possible consequences of birth experiences by Winnicott. Nevertheless, he rejected the assumption of a universal birth trauma.
In his book ''The Search for the Beloved: A Clinical Investigation of the Trauma of Birth and Prenatal Condition'' of 1949 the British-American psychoanalyst
Nandor Fodor
Nandor Fodor (May 13, 1895 in Beregszász, Hungary – May 17, 1964 in New York City, New York) was a British and American parapsychologist, psychoanalyst, author and journalist of Hungarian origin.
Biography
Fodor was born in Beregszász, Hun ...
(1895–1964) traced certain forms of anxiety back to unprocessed and repressed birth experiences following Rank's assumptions, who had been his psychoanalyst. Fodor interpreted dreams, experiencing the lack of oxygen, claustrophobia and sexual disorders and their etiology, which he explained by assuming specific pre- and perinatal experiences.
Francis John Mott (1901–1980) was a disciple of Fodor and the first author who concentrated on the
placenta
The placenta is a temporary embryonic and later fetal organ that begins developing from the blastocyst shortly after implantation. It plays critical roles in facilitating nutrient, gas and waste exchange between the physically separate mater ...
as the first object of the fetus. He wrote, that the fetus fears his placenta as a "blood sucker" or experience it as a "feeder" or "life-giver". His work an prenatal aspects is connected with his speculative assumptions on a quasi-religious design of the universe.
Material emerging from sessions of
psychedelic psychotherapy
Psychedelic therapy (or psychedelic-assisted therapy) refers to the proposed use of psychedelic drugs, such as psilocybin, MDMA, LSD, and ayahuasca, to treat mental disorders. As of 2021, psychedelic drugs are controlled substances in most countri ...
using
LSD and other
hallucinogenic drugs
Hallucinogens are a large, diverse class of psychoactive drugs that can produce altered states of consciousness characterized by major alterations in thought, mood, and perception as well as other changes. Most hallucinogens can be categorize ...
was the foundation for research into the enduring effects of pre- and perinatal experiences in adult life conducted by
Frank Lake
Frank Lake (6 June 1914 – 10 May 1982) was a British psychiatrist and one of the pioneers of pastoral counseling, pastoral counselling in the United Kingdom. In 1962, he founded the Clinical Theology Association with the primary aim to make cl ...
,
Athanasios Kafkalides (1919–1989) and
Stanislav Grof
Stanislav "Stan" Grof is a Czech-born psychiatrist who has been living in the United States since the 1960s. Grof is one of the principal developers of transpersonal psychology and research into the use of non-ordinary states of consciousness ...
. Grof went on to formulate an extensive theoretical framework for the analysis of pre- and perinatal experiences, based on the four constructs he called
Basic Perinatal Matrices. Lake and Grof independently developed breathing techniques, following
Wilhelm Reich
Wilhelm Reich ( , ; 24 March 1897 – 3 November 1957) was an Austrian Doctor of Medicine, doctor of medicine and a psychoanalysis, psychoanalyst, along with being a member of the second generation of analysts after Sigmund Freud. The author ...
(1897–1957) as an alternative to the use of psychedelic drugs, which was subject to considerable legal difficulty from the mid-1960s onwards. A related technique called
Rebirthing was developed by psychotherapist Leonard Orr in the 1970s, and Core Process psychotherapy trainees relive presumed birth trauma as part of their training.
The US-American social scientist
Lloyd deMause
Lloyd deMause (pronounced ''de-Moss''; September 19, 1931 – April 23, 2020) was an American lay psychoanalyst and social historian, best known for his pioneering work in the field of psychohistory. He did graduate work in political science at ...
(born 1931) compiled in his essay from 1981 the psychoanalytic approaches to prenatal mental life as well as the physiological findings of the human ontogenesis concerning fetal development. He took several assumptions from the works of Grof and Mott, but left away their metaphysical implications completely. In his own approach he assumes, that the placenta becomes the first object of the fetus, namely in two split versions: a positive and a negative one, he called the "nurturing" and the "poisonous placenta". DeMause presumed that in every gestation – especially at the end of this period – there are problems of supply with oxygen for the fetus. Because of physiological conditions the placenta would not be able anymore to supply the growing fetus with enough oxygen. This would give rise to states of pain and deprivation. Pre- and perinatal experiences lead to a mental script, a kind of pattern, to which later experiences would be connected with and internalized. He calls the experience of successive good and painful states the "fetal drama", long precursing the well known "oedipal drama" sensu Freud. Besides these theories about prenatal psychology deMause also developed approaches in the field of
psychohistory
Psychohistory is an amalgam of psychology, history, and related social sciences and the humanities. Its proponents claim to examine the "why" of history, especially the difference between stated intention and actual behavior. Psychobiography, chil ...
– a system of cultural psychological assumptions, which explain historical processes and phenomenons by using psychological theories. Especially aspects of childhood history and prenatal psychology play an important role.
In 1992 the Italian child neuropsychiatrist Alessandra Piontelli (born 1945) published a study in her book ''From Fetus to Child: An Observational and Psychoanalytic Study'' (1992). Using sonography she examined the behaviour of 11 fetuses. The fetuses showed a very complex behavioural repertoire and were quite different concerning their forms of activities.
[Alessandra Piontelli, ''From Fetus to Child: An Observational and Psychoanalytic Study'', Routledge, London, 1992. See also: Alessandra Piontelli, Luisa Bocconi, Chiara Boschetto, Alessandra Kustermann, Umberto Nicolini, ''Differences and similarities in the intra-uterine behaviour of monozygotic and dizygotic twins'', ''Twin Research'', 1999, 2, S. 264–273 (S. 270 ff.)] They reacted to stimuli in complex ways. Piontelli's study suggested that certain prenatal experiences determined later mental life. Psychological traits, e.g. enhanced oral activity, were recognizable in the prenatal phase, and also after birth. Piontelli interpreted her observations in psychoanalytical terms. Piontelli saw a remarkable continuity between pre- and postnatal mental development. Her study is important, because it combines the assessment of empirical data with the observation of single case studies in the postnatal phase and also in infancy. Her study use equally the methods of academic psychology together with the hermeneutics of psychoanalysis, what makes it unique in the scientific landscape.
See also
*
Prenatal development
Prenatal development () includes the development of the embryo and of the fetus during a viviparous animal's gestation. Prenatal development starts with fertilization, in the germinal stage of embryonic development, and continues in fetal devel ...
*
Prenatal memory
Prenatal memory, also called fetal memory, is important for the development of memory in humans. Many factors can impair fetal memory and its functions, primarily maternal actions. There are multiple techniques available not only to demonstrate th ...
References
Further reading
* DeMause, Lloyd (1982). The fetal origins of history, (p. 244–332). In:
* Fodor, Nandor (1949). ''The Search for the Beloved: A Clinical Investigation of the Trauma of Birth and Prenatal Condition'', New Hyde Park, NY: University Books
* Hepper, P. G. (1991). An examination of fetal learning before and after birth. In: ''Irish Journal of Psychology'', 12, S. 95–107
* Hepper, P. G. (1994). The beginnings of the mind: evidence from the behaviour of the fetus. In: ''Journal of Reproductive and Infant Psychology'', 12, S. 143–154.
* Janus, Ludwig (1997). ''The Enduring Effects of Prenatal Experience''. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, Inc., 1997, 277 pages. (Originally published in German in 1991 by Hoffmann und Campe, Verlag, Hamburg.) .
* Kafkalides, Athanassios MD (2005). ''The Knowledge of the womb – Autopsychognosia with psychedelic drugs'', Authorhouse, USA
* Kafkalides, Zephyros and Kafkalides, Constantine MD (2017). ''Studies on Prenatal Psychology & Psychedelic Science'', TRP
* Piontelli, Alessandra (1992). ''From Fetus to Child: An Observational and Psychoanalytic Study'', London 1992
* Rank, Otto (1952). ''The Trauma of Birth'', New York: Richard Brunner
* Verny, Thomas (1981). ''The Secret Life of the Unborn Child'', Dell 1982 reprint: , see also the professional organization founded by Verny to train professionals, the Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health, APPPAH, at www.birthpsychology.com.
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Developmental psychology
Child development