IDEAS OF BIRTH AND PRE-NATAL LIFE
[Sidenote: Birth and womb phantasies]
[Sidenote: Manifestations of the desire to return to the womb]
We have now reached a point in our discussion at which we may perhaps
profitably pause awhile to consider a group of phantasies, which, on
account of their widespread occurrence and curious character, would
seem to deserve some very special attention at the hands of the
psychologist and anthropologist. The phantasies in question are those
which psycho-analysts have found to cluster round the idea of returning
to the mother's womb and of resuming there the intra-uterine life enjoyed
by the child in the pre-natal stages of its existence,--an idea which
is discoverable (usually of course in a symbolic form) in many myths,
legends, dreams, reveries and symptomatic actions. It is very frequently
associated with the further idea of birth or re-birth, and it is in this
form that the phantasy was first described by Freud[46]. In consciousness
this phantasy of returning to the womb may clothe itself as an idea of
being in an enclosed, dark, solitary or inaccessible place, safe from
outside dangers or disturbances. Its influence can probably be traced in
the pleasure that many persons find in the retirement to small islands,
mountain tops or other places isolated from the rest of the world, in
the "cosiness" of small rooms or closets or in the comfort which may be
experienced in snuggling under the bed-clothes in the presence of real
or imaginary danger[47]. Sleep itself, in its power of withdrawing the
individual from the outer world and in its unmistakable approximation to
the pre-natal condition of body and mind, may, from certain points of
view, be regarded as an exemplification of the same tendency[48] as may
also possibly hypnosis. In certain forms of insanity the tendency may
show itself quite clearly even in waking life, the patient withdrawing
himself as far as possible from all environmental influences and sometimes
adopting a characteristically foetal posture,--a posture which, it
should be noted, is often adopted even by normal persons during sleep.
More moderately and within the bounds of sanity, it may show itself in
a relative degree of retirement from the world, as in the life followed
in Christian monasteries or nunneries, or--more clearly--in the still
more isolated existence of many Buddhist monks and devotees, some of whom
will live for years in caves or other dark and secluded spots, almost
entirely cut off from human intercourse and from the light and bustle of
the outside world. In a more distinctly neurotic form again, its influence
may be traced in agoraphobia--the fear of open spaces--or negatively
(the reaction against the tendency predominating) in its opposite,
claustrophobia--the fear of narrow, confined rooms or places--or in the
morbid dread of being buried alive.
[Sidenote: Meaning of this desire]
In all these manifestations the dominant motive would seem to consist in a
desire to escape from the troubles, labours, anxieties and excitements of
the world, to a place where there is rest and peace with no necessity for
effort. Now there can be no doubt that the intra-uterine life of the child
represents by far the nearest approach to such a blissful state of repose
that is ever enjoyed by us during any period of our earthly existence. In
this pre-natal life the child lives effortlessly, free from danger and
with all its needs provided; in striking contrast to post-natal (and more
especially adult) life, where in general the stern rule holds that "if any
will not work, neither shall he eat", and where the individual constantly
finds his strength all too small to do battle with the formidable
obstacles that so often stand in the way of the fulfilment of his desires.
[Sidenote: Difficulty of the process of adaptation to reality]
It is, as Ferenczi[49] has been at pains to show, only in so far as we
free ourselves from the habits, associations and implications of this
pre-natal life that we can learn to achieve the fulfilment of our wishes
by taking the necessary steps to bring about their accomplishment in the
outer world, instead of endeavouring to make the outer world conform
to our desires by the shorter and easier method of imagination and
delusion. In the earliest stages of our existence we are in a sense indeed
omnipotent, inasmuch as provision is made for all our requirements and
desires as it were automatically and without the necessity for effort on
our own part. In early childhood this state persists in some degree, the
child's wants being, to a large extent, fulfilled by others as soon as he
indicates their nature. This power of automatically bringing about the
satisfaction of our needs is destined to undergo a continually increasing
degree of restriction, as childhood changes through adolescence to
maturity; a greater individual adaptation to reality being achieved at
the cost of greater individual effort and of the loss of the childish
confidence in our ability to achieve our ends by the simple process of
desiring their achievement. Under the stresses and difficulties of life on
this developed plane, it is only too easy to sink back to the earlier and
simpler state where less effort is demanded, and if we retrace our steps
in this direction as far as they will lead us, we return eventually to the
primitive condition of our pre-natal life. It is thus, apparently, that a
return to this earliest stage of our existence has come to stand as the
supreme goal and object of all desire to escape from the turmoil, labour
and conflict which developed life inevitably brings in its train.
[Sidenote: Life before birth and life after death]
If the idea of life within the mother's womb is in this way closely
associated with the desire for cessation of toil and striving, it is not
surprising that we frequently find it brought into connection with the
most striking example of such cessation with which we are acquainted, _i.
e._ the complete stoppage of all vital activities at death. As a matter
of fact, the unconscious identification of the state after death with
the state before birth would seem to be one of frequent and widespread
occurrence, the idea of the mysterious intra-uterine life before birth
furnishing, through this identification, one of the causes of belief in a
continuance of life after death--life of a kind, however, in which, as in
the life before birth, all our desires and needs are fulfilled without the
necessity for toilsome and unpleasant effort.
It is not only in our general attitude towards death that the influence
of this identification may be traced, but also in many of the details
as regards the beliefs and ceremonies connected with the dead. The
parallelism here referred to may be seen for instance in the fact that
we place our dead in coffins and bury them in _graves_ or _vaults_ in
_churches_ (all of which are womb symbols) or under the _earth_ (itself
among the most frequent of mother symbols); or that in many places the
dead have been placed on small islands[50] caves, mountain tops, or other
secluded spots, or deposited (like King Arthur) in boats and pushed
out to sea. In this last practice we may probably trace the influence
of an identification of the _process_ of death with that of birth--the
conception that at death we pass away by the same road that we traversed
when we entered into life at birth[51]. For not only is the sea a frequent
mother symbol, but the idea of water is closely connected with that of
birth, occurring as it does in a great number of symbolic representations
of the latter[52]. A similar identification is chiefly responsible for the
belief that the dead pass across a lake or river on the way to their new
home. (_Cp._ Lethe, Styx and Acheron in classical mythology or the river
across which Christian passes to the Celestial City in Pilgrim's progress).
[Sidenote: Birth phantasies]
The idea of birth or re-birth which we here meet with, plays of itself,
as we have already indicated, a part of very great importance in the
unconscious mental life of many individuals[53], a part indeed sometimes
of even greater significance than that of the idea of returning to the
mother's womb, with which it is so frequently associated. In its indirect
(displaced) representation in consciousness, this idea of birth or
re-birth will find expression as an emergence from any of the places which
serve as symbols for the womb--an island, grave, room, church or other
building, or again--and very typically--in the process of forcing one's
way through a tunnel, narrow passage, staircase or other enclosed space,
out into some relatively open locality. More especially, however, is the
idea connected in one way or another with a passage through or out of
water--a pond, river, canal, lake or the sea. It is thus for instance that
it appears in a typical form of myth relating to the birth of some heroic
personage (_e. g._ Moses, Kama, Perseus, Romulus, Siegfried, Lohengrin) in
which the birth is symbolically represented by the child's floating on the
water in a cradle, boat or basket[54].
[Sidenote: Birth and fear]
Birth phantasies of this kind are frequently accompanied by the idea of
difficulty or danger and by a corresponding emotion of fear. According
to Freud[55], the connection between fear and the act of birth is a very
intimate one; birth with its attendant profound changes of physiological
and environmental conditions and its manifold dangers and discomforts,
having become, as it were, the prototype of all situations of a
threatening or disquieting character or in which life itself appears to
be menaced. Our word Anxiety--like the French Angoisse, the German Angst,
the Latin anxius, angere, angustus, the Greek [Greek: anchô], all of
which appear to be connected with the Sanskrit anhus or anhas, signifying
narrowness or constriction--bears witness to the fundamental association
of fear with pressure and shortness of breath, which--the former owing
to the passage through the narrow vagina, the latter to the interruption
of the foetal circulation--constitute the most menacing and terrifying
aspects of the birth process.
[Sidenote: The meaning of the birth phantasy]
If, and in so far as, the phantasy of re-entering the mother's womb
represents a desire to escape from the difficulties and trials of life
into the condition of peace and protection which the pre-natal period
of life afforded, the idea of re-birth would naturally seem to give
expression to the tendency to emerge once more into the conflict of life
and to emancipate oneself from the protecting influence of the mother.
Such a meaning is indeed, as Jung[56] and others[57] have shown, actually
associated with the phantasy in very many cases. In this sense, then, the
desire to attain to individual independence and freedom from the parents
finds symbolical representation as a repetition of that process whereby we
first acquired the status of an independent organism distinct from that of
the mother who bore us.
[Sidenote: Spiritual regeneration]
In other cases however the symbolism is of a rather more remote kind,
the idea symbolised being that of moral or spiritual regeneration[58].
The reality of this significance of the re-birth phantasy cannot well
be doubted, being vouched for as it is not only by the results of
psycho-analytic enquiry but also by the stereotyped phraseology of many
religious formulae and by the nature of many of the ceremonies connected
with moral or religious conversion. Thus the rite of baptism, as is pretty
generally recognised, consists, in one of its principal aspects, in a
symbolic representation of the act of birth, and the same is true of many
of the initiation ceremonies performed at puberty in all parts of the
world[59].
[Sidenote: Physical regeneration]
The association--so often found in this connection--of re-birth with
a previous return to, and brief sojourn in, the mother's womb, may be
due perhaps to some extent to the needs of logical consistency for, as
Nicodemus said, a man cannot literally "be born again" unless he has
previously "entered the second time into his mother's womb"; but probably
it has itself a further and deeper significance. As the result of his
researches upon this point, Jung[60] considers that the association in
question expresses the necessity of gathering fresh sources of psychic
energy from the deepest strata of our mental life in the Unconscious, if
the moral or spiritual conversion is to be successful. Starting from the
consideration of the products of the collective mind as exemplified in
cult and legend rather than from the phantasies of the individual, other
investigators, such as Sir J. G. Frazer[61], have come to the conclusion
that it is primarily a physical rather than a moral regeneration that
is symbolised by the ideas of re-birth. Thus the histories of such
divine personages as Attis, Adonis or Osiris, whose death and subsequent
return to life are plainly analogous to the phantasy of the return to
the mother's womb (burial in the earth) and re-birth from it, have been
interpreted as expressions of the desire for rejuvenation on the part of
the individual or the race, or again as representations (probably magical
in intention) of the periodical decay and revival of vegetation or of the
periodical changes of the seasons upon which these depend. This view would
seem to be supported by the fact that such a significance (often however
associated with that of moral regeneration in Jung's sense) is inherent
in many of the mysteries and superstitions of all ages, as in the ideas
of the philosopher's stone or the elixir of life, and in the symbolic
practices, legends and traditions characteristic of secret societies and
of mysticism generally[62].
[Sidenote: The literal interpretation of the womb and birth phantasies]
[Sidenote: Sexual significance of the phantasies]
All these interpretations are probably correct, so far as they go and
as regards certain cases. Certainly the desire for the preservation
or recovery of youth, the attainment of immortality, the ensuring of
a good harvest or even the felt need of spiritual regeneration are
sufficiently strong and recurrent motives of the human mind to justify
their frequent appearance in symbolic form. Nevertheless, from what we
know of the conditions governing the most deeply rooted and widespread
human phantasies and from the general laws which underlie the use of
symbolism[63], it would seem likely that in a considerable number of
cases the meaning of the ideas of re-entering the womb and of re-birth
is not exhausted by these interpretations. The frequency and relative
uniformity of these womb and birth phantasies make it probable that, in
one of their aspects at least, they are no mere symbols but represent
things actually desired on their own account. The actual return to the
womb does, as we have seen, represent the extreme expression of the
tendency to escape from the troubles of the outer world to a condition in
which there is complete immunity from effort, responsibility, difficulty
and danger. Further, psychoanalytic investigation of the womb and birth
phantasies as they occur in individuals seems to show that they often have
a _sexual_ or quasi-sexual significance, being the expression of sexual
tendencies and arousing sexual feeling[64]. Through the extreme intimacy
which a child establishes with its mother by the processes of gestation
and birth, it may find in imagination by means of these processes a not
unsuitable method of gratifying the sexual inclinations which it feels
towards its mother; and the phantasies of entering or emerging from the
womb or of being carried in it may thus come to take on a directly sexual
character, in the same way as any other of the numerous activities or
processes associated with erotic feeling. It is probable too that in men
and boys, the process of passing to or from the womb through the vagina is
treated, on the principle of _totum pro parte_, as a substitute for the
more directly sexual act appropriate to later life--the individual having
enjoyed, on the occasion of his birth, the privilege of being in that
place, whence his incestuous desires impel him to return. In this sense
then, the womb and birth phantasies express the incestuous tendencies in a
milder and less objectionable form[65].
In girls (or in boys, in so far as they possess homosexual inclinations)
the return to the mother may be used as a means of attaining sexual
intimacy with the father, indirectly through fusion, or identification,
with the mother[66].
[Sidenote: Sexual curiosity]
The directly Sexual feeling thus attaching to these phantasies is in
many cases powerfully reinforced by the curiosity which is experienced
by children in relation to the processes of conception, gestation and
birth. Most children would seem to possess at an early age a very lively
interest in all matters directly or indirectly connected with the
reproductive function. The question "Where do babies come from?" is one
of the most absorbing of all the problems of our early years; one which,
in its more sublimated forms, may lay the foundation of that restless
desire to know the causes and origins of things, which is the driving
force of much that is best in science and philosophy; and one for which,
in infancy and childhood, a solution is sought in many of the childish
theories of reproduction which have recently attracted the attention of
psycho-analysts[67].
[Sidenote: Children's questions]
[Sidenote: The forbidden question in myth and legend]
Curiosity of this kind is also found to underlie much of that desire for
knowledge which manifests itself in the incessant asking of questions
so characteristic of children at a certain age. Where this is the case,
the actual questions asked are often only substitutes for the real
problem which so insistently demands solution--the problem of the origin
of men--and are shown to be of little importance in themselves by the
listless and uninterested way in which the child frequently receives the
answers that are given him, making them, as he does only too often, the
starting point for fresh questions, the answers to which prove in their
turn to be equally unsatisfying. In all such questioning the true nature
of the real problem is for the most part kept below the threshold of
consciousness, through the operation of repressive influences, originating
perhaps to some extent in the natural course of development of the child's
own mind, but probably to a greater degree due to the attitude of his
adult environment, which, directly or by implication, has taught the child
to regard such questions as taboo. This notion of the question which is
forbidden but which nevertheless imperiously demands an answer is one that
is of frequent occurrence in myth and legend, the forbidden question often
disclosing itself as one which has reference to the birthplace, parentage
or birth of the hero (as for instance in the Lohengrin legend) or the
origin and nature of man in general (as in the case of Œdipus)[68].
Under these circumstances, it may well seem to the child that his
curiosity concerning the process by which he and other children came into
the world could be most satisfactorily gratified by the experience in his
own person of those events concerning which information is required. The
motive thus aroused will then in many cases add very considerably to the
fascination which the ideas of gestation and birth may already possess in
virtue of their purely sexual significance. The desire thus satisfied may
again in some cases be still further reinforced by the notion that the
position of the child within the womb is a favourable one for finding out
many things about the life of the mother and her relations to the father
which may be otherwise difficult to discover; as in the not infrequent
phantasy of observing the sexual act between the parents from this point
of vantage.
[Sidenote: Summary]
Summarising our discussion as to the significance of the womb and birth
phantasies, we have seen that they may have any or all of the following
meanings:--
_As to the return to the womb_:--
(1) An expression of the tendency to withdraw from the labours and
difficulties of life to the place where the greatest possible freedom from
such troubles may be found; in which the emphasis may be laid upon:--
(a) the desire for the effortless gratification of all needs and
wishes,
(b) the desire for protection from the dangers of the outer world,
(c) the equation of life after death with life before birth, the
former being invested with all the supposed advantages of the latter.
(2) A sexual significance, as representing:--
(a) the closest possible intimacy with the mother,
(b) a means of attaining sexual intimacy with the father through
fusion with the mother,
(c) a means of satisfying sexual curiosity.
_As to re-birth_:--
(1) A more or less symbolic significance; in which the emphasis may be
laid upon:--
(a) the desire for a more vigorous and independent mode of life,
involving greater freedom from the protecting and guarding influence
of the parents and especially of the mother,
(b) the desire for physical rejuvenation (of the individual, of the
race, or of the means of subsistence),
(c) the desire for moral or religious improvement or conversion.
(2) A more literal significance, in which the emphasis may be laid upon:--
(a) a directly sexual pleasure in the contemplation of the act,
the process of birth being treated as a substitute for sexual
intercourse,
(b) the possibility of satisfying sexual curiosity[69].
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 46: "The Interpretation of Dreams," 243 ff.]
[Footnote 47: To the same cause is probably due the use of four-poster
beds in which the sleeper is completely enclosed by curtains and of those
oldfashioned beds (still to be seen in some parts of the world) which
could be entirely shut off from the rest of the room by a wooden partition
or sliding door containing only one very small circular aperture for the
admission of air.]
[Footnote 48: Ferenczi, "Contributions to Psycho-Analysis," 189. Freud,
"Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse," 486.]
[Footnote 49: _Op. cit._, 181 ff.]
[Footnote 50: _Cp._ the striking emotional effect of Böcklin's well known
picture "The Island of the Dead." In Sir J. M. Barrie's remarkable play
"Mary Rose" (which is full of interest in connection with our present
subject) this piece of symbolism is duplicated--the "island that likes to
be visited" being situated in a lake on a larger island.]
[Footnote 51: Rank, "Die Lohengrinsage," 46 ff.]
[Footnote 52: Freud, "Interpretations of Dreams," 243. Rank, _op. cit._,
27 ff.]
[Footnote 53: Freud, _op. cit._ 243 ff. C. G. Jung, "Psychology of the
Unconscious," 233 ff.]
[Footnote 54: O. Rank, "The Myth of the Birth of the Hero."]
[Footnote 55: "Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die Psychoanalyse," 461.]
[Footnote 56: "Psychology of the Unconscious," 297.]
[Footnote 57: Especially Silberer, "Problems of Mysticism and its
Symbolism," 307 ff.]
[Footnote 58: _Cp_. Jung and Silberer as above.]
[Footnote 59: For an important discussion of certain further aspects of
baptism from the psycho-analytical point of view, see Ernest Jones, "Die
Bedeutung des Salzes in Sitte und Brauch der Völker", _Imago_. 1912, I.
463 ff.]
[Footnote 60: "Psychology of the Unconscious," 233 ff.]
[Footnote 61: "Spirits of the Corn and of the Wild."]
[Footnote 62: Silberer, _op. cit._]
[Footnote 63: _Cp._ Ernest Jones, "Papers on Psycho-Analysis," 129 ff.]
[Footnote 64: Thus in a case known to the present writer a boy frequently
indulged in phantasies of entering into the bodies of women and girls whom
he admired, the ideas of effecting an entrance into the body, of being
carried therein and of re-emerging therefrom, being all accompanied by
voluptuous feelings of a sexual character.]
[Footnote 65: A striking example of this is to be found in Sir J. M.
Barrie's "Mary Rose", in which a grown up son, on returning after many
years to the home of his childhood, is earnestly warned and entreated by
the housekeeper in charge of the (now empty) house not to enter his former
nursery (womb symbol), a small room which is approached by a short passage
(vagina symbol). He eventually overcomes his fears and boldly enters the
forbidden apartment with a lighted candle (phallic symbol) in his hand. At
that moment the ghost of his mother appears!
The identification of the processes of birth and coitus is well shown in
the following dream of a patient. "I was with difficulty crawling through
a very narrow tunnel under a mountain which, I thought, was called the
Aalberg. I was a good deal frightened but saw the end of the tunnel a
long way off. In trying to get out, I seemed to force my way forward by
continually butting with my head against some kind of soft wall". The
movement here described is a clear coitus symbol (head = penis), while
the mountain would appear to have derived its name from the phallic
significance of the eel.
In a certain number of cases the idea of returning to the mother's womb
or of being born is coloured by the infantile "cloacal theory" of birth,
according to which the child imagines birth to take place through the
rectum. This is shown with exceptional clearness in the following dream.
"I was walking down a long and narrow flight of stairs. They seemed to
be the _back_ stairs of a large house or hotel and were very dirty and
ill-lit, and every now and then I would tread in a pool of dirty water.
The stairs suddenly (note the words in italics) opened out towards the
_bottom_ and I emerged into a _back_ yard. I found I was covered with soot
and dust and my boots were filthy." (_Cp._ the well known passage from St.
Augustine, "Inter urinas et faeces nascimur").]
[Footnote 66: Freud, "Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre." IV,
693, 694. Further evidence has recently been brought together by Mrs. S.
C. Porter in a (not yet published) paper on Brontephobia.]
[Footnote 67: Freud, "Sammlung kleiner Schriften zur Neurosenlehre," II,
169. Jung, "Collected Papers on Analytical Psychology," 132.]
[Footnote 68: Rank, "Die Lohengrinsage," 107 ff. "Das Inzestmotiv in
Dichtung und Sage," 261 ff. This however does not exhaust the significance
of the forbidden question motive, another important aspect of which is
referred to later.]
[Footnote 69: It is a question of considerable psychological interest,
as to how the ideas of birth and intra-uterine life come to acquire
the significance which we have found them to possess. In what way for
instance do we come to associate life within the womb with freedom from
effort, difficulty or danger? In the majority of cases, not from conscious
thinking on the subject; on the contrary, the connotation of safety and
effortlessness would seem in some way to belong inherently to the idea
of pre-natal existence from the very beginning, or at any rate to have
become attached to it through a purely unconscious process of association.
Again, how do we come into possession of the ideas of birth and pre-natal
life themselves? Is the knowledge which has gone to the formation of these
ideas entirely acquired after birth, or is there retained in the mind
anything in the nature of impression or memory of that early period of
existence in which gestation and birth were actually experienced? From
the fact of the very general obliviscence which attends the first years
of infancy, as well perhaps as from the relatively undeveloped state
of the cerebrum in the newly born child, we might, with considerable
show of reason, be inclined to disbelieve that any memory traces can be
operative. On the other hand, the surprising fact of the sudden recovery
in hypnosis, during psycho-analysis or otherwise, of early memories which
had been entirely lost for many years, or again the fact that phantasies
of birth or intra-uterine life seem sometimes to refer to details (_e.
g._ the amniotic fluid or the different stages of labour) of which there
is little opportunity to learn in ordinary life and which play but a
small part, if any, in the average adult's conscious notions on these
subjects, have made some writers hesitate to affirm too strongly the
absolute impossibility of such operation. Again some may suggest that the
knowledge which is mysteriously revealed in these phantasies may compel us
to assume the existence of some such innate ideas as are perhaps involved
in Jung's conception of the impersonal or racial Unconscious, according
to which there are present in the unconscious mind certain materials
(capable, apparently, of crystallisation into ideas of a certain degree
of definiteness) which in their origin are assumed to be independent
of personal experience, being, like our more fundamental instincts and
tendencies, derived and inherited from a long line of ancestors.
It is perhaps possible that more exact information on this important
subject might be forthcoming as the result of careful investigations into
such questions as the following:
(1) To what extent (if at all) do children display--in dreams, phantasies
or otherwise--knowledge as to the circumstances of their birth and
pre-natal life which they could not possibly have obtained except from
memory of their own past experience?
(2) Do the phantasies of prematurely born children differ in any way from
those of children born at the end of the normal term? If, for instance,
there really exist any memory traces of the later period of gestation or
of the process of birth, it might be expected that they would be less
vivid than usual in prematurely born children, owing to the less developed
condition of their brain at the time of birth.
(3) Are the phantasies concerning birth in any way more vivid or frequent
or of greater emotional intensity in those whose birth has been a process
of difficulty and long duration than in those who have enjoyed an easy
delivery?
(4) Do the womb phantasies of twins indicate any knowledge of the unusual
conditions of their pre-natal life?
(5) Do the phantasies of children who have been removed from the womb by
Caesarian section reveal any peculiarities corresponding to the absence of
the usual birth process?]