Reliving Womb-Life

We do know that each level of brain function can incorporate the previous lower level and represent its sense or meaning to higher levels which then code it in terms of the specific function/structure of that level. As the imprint is registered, it will take on a new coloring as it moves upward. Hypoxia as a choking, suffocating sensation on the brainstem level becomes being suffocated by one’s husband on the emotional level; and then there is the last level rationalization for the lack of freedom in a given situation. The patient starts with the latter (She suffocates me), and then over time moves downward until she arrives at the Primal event that started it all.

So early memories become elaborated on higher levels of brain function and are incorporated into those levels and interpreted differently depending on the level of brain tissue. But they are not separate entities. It is all an ensemble of levels that produces a complete memory. When we relive a non-verbal pain or trauma in infancy we are at the same time reliving the residue from earlier in womb-life. The events are united under a resonance factor that makes a higher level of brain function trigger off a deeper and more remote feeling. To put it differently, each early preverbal imprint is ramified on higher levels so that feeling fully on the higher level automatically has us feeling the earlier aspects of the feeling. Because of this we can over-react (or under-react) to events in adult life. As we see in our therapy, it may be one cause of erectile dysfunction—the feeling of being overwhelmed because of even slight pressure to function in the present. Or the inability to get going at work.

To summarize: There seems to be a time in gestation when pain or noxious stimuli impinge, but we are not yet able to produce our own gating chemicals, such as serotonin and endorphin, resulting in un-gated pain. When I refer to gating, I refer to electrochemical process that blocks the transmission of the pain message across the synapse.This residue will continue and may lead to bouts of anxiety later on in life. It becomes free-floating, unbound fear or terror. It can then be focused on elevators and a phobia is born. This is not due to heredity but rather to experience in the womb. Part of our in-uterolife, therefore, takes on hurt at a time when the system can do nothing about it; nevertheless, it affects all later development. At 30, we may suffer from panic attacks that began its life in the very early months of our mother’s pregnancy. It is pristine, ready to spring forth whenever we are vulnerable. No talk therapy can affect it because it involves a vegetative, primitive nervous system which was only adequate to register pain and terror during womb-life. This is a nervous system impervious to words; so insights leave it absolutely indifferent. That is why new experience does not change the neurotic. She goes on having the same experience, the imprint, over and again. It is a sealed-off feeling that remains as part of a survival function.

The womb experience leaves us fragile for a lifetime so that any insult or lack of love in infancy and childhood weakens us all the more. And the imprint can dictate chronically low levels of serotonin. That is why we need drugs that work on lower brain centers below the intellectual in order to suppress these imprints for a time.

On the Corrective Emotional Experience

In the era of Freud and psychoanalysis the linchpin of the therapy was the analysis of transference: how the patient responds to the doctor and (counter transference) how the doctor reacts to the patient. The whole idea was to change the patient through a corrective emotional relationship. Helping her to be more independent, not rely for advice or love and guidance from the doctor. Now decades later, that notion of the corrective emotional experience has gained many adherents. It is still in essence the analysis of transference.

Their theory is the following: it is not enough to relive early trauma, you must follow it with a corrective experience that will allow the patient to make progress and change. They believe that allowing the patient to wallow in pain only reinforces neurosis.

So why not have a new ending to a feeling/memory? Because it is not real. It is a concocted scenario that defies the patient’s reality. It is not our job to rewrite history. It is enough to help patients learn about themselves and their history. But is it true that patients who relive without rewriting the ending continue to suffer and be neurotic? One could only come to that conclusion in the absence of clinical experience. What we have seen year after year is that reliving in and of itself leads to profound changes in the neurologic, psychologic and physiological systems. Over and over in double blind studies there have been changes in brain functioning, hormone secretion and, above all, changes how the patient feels about himself and his world. There is a systematic alteration in body temperature and blood pressure, (lower) which does not happen in those who abreact. That is, there is practically no change in those who fail to connect their feeling to conscious/awareness. I call that abreaction, a discharge of the energy of the feeling on a different level of consciousness—in symbolic channels. It is a random event that does not follow neurologic/evolutionary functioning. The problem is that so many clinics and mental health professionals claim to be doing Primal therapy yet the results seem to be that the patient continues to suffer; hence, the notion that patients after a reliving wallow in pain. If only the higher level is addressed and even resolved on that level it does look like the patient is wallowing in pain. Without having the theory and techniques to go deeper it can lead to misinterpretation of what is happening. Providing a different ending depends on the unconscious of the doctor who needs to supply it. Clearly this is not an organic affair, emanating out the patient and her unconscious. And what about if each doctor provides the corrective emotional experience in a different way? Are there several different scenarios for the patient? Implicit in this is that the doctor knows best; whereas it is the patient and her unconscious who knows best. If there were no connection we would not see systematic changes in cortisol levels in our patients. Clearly, reliving is sufficient. But it must be a true reliving; and it is clear that when we provide the script for the patient reliving is not really reliving. It is rewriting history. It is the fulfillment of need on the part of the therapist who is supplying a good script with a happy ending. Is that our job? To cheerlead the patient away from reality? To help him lead a symbolic life? It is perforce a happy ending because why else would we want to channel the patient away from imprinted reality? It is that reality that has been driving the patient to act-out, develop migraines and high blood pressure and remain unable to relax. He, in his constant behavior is doing exactly that: trying to produce a happy ending for himself so he can get out of pain. It is that reality that makes a patient exhibits himself in public time and again, or bedeviled by an inability to orgasm or to shy away from all human contact. We have all heard by now of erectile dysfunction. The penis is not the problem; the brain is. It is history that largely determines all this. And responding to that history instead of repressing it is what leads to liberation. How do we do that? Penetrating the deeper levels in a slow methodical manner.

After all, when a doctor prescribes Zoloft for a patient he is producing a happy ending. Instead of feeling pain the patient has become, “à la Candide”, egregiously sanguine. He is happy now, or is he? His stress hormone level is still very high. Unconsciously he is not happy but he has convinced himself that he is. But that delusion will kill him or make him prey to serious disease too early in life. Repression to me is the number one killer in our population. When we supply a happy ending we are aiding repression. We are aiding delusions by the patient. We as therapists have become cheerleaders, trying to find a happy ending for our role as doctor. It is a mutually shared delusion that fits into the zeitgeist where we all want to put on a happy face. So we do; and then try to develop a rationale for our choice. We don’t have to redo history. The patient, after having made his unconscious conscious will rewrite his own scenario as time goes on. He will lead a different life; the exhibitionist will stop showing himself. This, with simply reliving his pain. Don’t forget that the deep experience of a feeling leads to the cortical understanding of it automatically. In my jargon it is the third-line component of the feeling.

There are so many levels to pain that a person can relive higher representations of it and still have enough pain to continue to be driven by it. It is not that the therapy is faulty; it is because the road is longer than we thought. It may be because a therapist has not acknowledged the depth of pain nor has she produced the techniques necessary to probe down deep that she can believe in the happy ending. It took many years for us to develop those deep-probing techniques so I am not judging therapists, but I do know what it takes to go to the antipodes of the unconscious. It is not a trip taken lightly because meddling in the deep unconscious requires precision in one’s therapy. It is not that everyone does what they feel comfortable with. It means adhering to very specific clues and following them back into history in an ordered manner. When one of my students shows a tape of his therapy on other students, (which we do systematically) we know immediately when a mistake has taken place. There will not be integration. So there are two different ways to go amiss. 1. To believe what is not there. 2. To refuse to believe what is there.

It is when the doctor forces the patient into too much pain that he must supply a new ending. If therapists have not seen what connection can do, then they forcibly choose a happy ending script. If the doctor does not force the issue and drive up out-of-sequence pain, there is no need for a different ending. Connection says and does it all.