Psychological trauma of birth and its further influence on a person’s fate. Psychoanalyst Otto Rank

Finding life or “birth trauma”? Rank's view It is not the dead who should be mourned, but the one who is born for a difficult struggle with the adversities of life. Euripides The concept of “newborn crisis” has long been used in developmental psychology. In this regard, the question arises: is it really

(birth trauma) T. r. - the idea that childbirth is a physically difficult and psychologically terrifying experience for a newborn, the memory of which is stored in the unconscious. This idea is at least as old as the Buddha, who considered childbirth one of the five inevitable sufferings in humans. life. Psychoanalyst O. Rank, one of Freud's students, developed this initial idea in his book "The trauma of birth". He explained that the experience of leaving the mother's womb with an abundance of food, warmth, peace and oxygen to enter the harsh world of hunger, cold, noise and difficulty breathing will certainly be traumatic. According to psychoanalytic theory, any traumatic experience leaves a scar in a person’s soul, interfering with normal, rational thinking. Rank suggested that childbirth is one of these traumatic events. Some psychologists and psychiatrists, among them R. D. Laing, agree with Rank's formulation. As a result, they encourage adult patients to try to relive the experience of their birth in order to return buried memories to consciousness, which may distort further development. Some doctors tried to ease the suffering of a newborn during a sudden transition from the uterus to the external environment. The most prominent of them is F. Lebuyer, who in his book “Birth without violence” describes the “torture of the innocent”, which is what childbirth is like in modern times. hospitals, exclaiming: “How vain it is to think that such a huge cataclysm will not leave its traces!” Lebuyer proposed a number of measures to ensure a “soft birth”, including delaying cutting the umbilical cord, dimming the light and noise in the maternity ward, bathing the newborn in warm water, all in order to slow down the rapid transition from one world to another. Dr. . psychologists and doctors believe T. r. more of a fantasy than a fact. They note that procedures such as circumcision or setting a broken bone (very painful for older children) are accompanied by much less crying in newborns. Additionally, if newborns are placed close to their mother (providing safe skin-to-skin contact) or snuggled in a soft swaddle immediately after birth, they quickly become calm and curious, behaviors not typically seen after a traumatic experience. However, although T. r. remains an unproven assumption, plural. parents and honey staff are trying to make the first moments after birth more pleasant for the newborn. Recently, it is no longer so common to see a newborn being held upside down and spanked, or immediately carried away without allowing the mother to hold him. See also Psychoanalysis, Rankian psychology C. S. Berger

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Philosophical Dictionary

(Greek trauma - damage to the body) is a concept and psychoanalytic concept of Rank, denoting the process and result of the pathogenic emotional impact on the human psyche of the procedure of his birth, acting as a universal traumatic factor that...

The latest philosophical dictionary

BIRTH TRAUMA (Greek trauma - damage to the body) is a concept and psychoanalytic concept of Rank, denoting the process and result of the pathogenic emotional impact on the human psyche of the procedure of his birth, acting as a universal traumatic...

By multiplying I will multiply your sorrow in your pregnancy; you will give birth to children in illness...

Bible. Being

Existential deception

Childbirth is a painful experience for a woman. This is the reality of female physiology. But we forget that giving birth to a child is also painful.

Birth occurs as a result of rough and prolonged expulsion of the baby from the uterus as a result of its spasms. The baby is expelled from the world in which he appeared from oblivion and lived all this time.

The first sensation a baby experiences at birth is suffocation, because it takes some time for the lungs it uses for the first time to expand. The baby's first cry means that he has taken his first breath. The cry symbolizes life.

At the same time, the baby sees a blinding light, so he has to close his eyes tightly.

The child's next sensation is cold.

And the next thing is hunger.

From an ideally comfortable and, most importantly, familiar intrauterine environment, permanent satiety, darkness and a stable temperature of 36.6°C, the baby is pushed into life. In the first cry of a child, we can hear all the horror that he faces at birth. This is the first disappointment in life. Birth into the world can be called existential deception.

The cutting of the umbilical cord symbolizes the end of the physical connection with the mother and the continuous bliss in which he resided. Probably vague memories of this blissful intrauterine comfort and serenity are captured in the legend of Paradise Lost.

Essence of Being

Sigmund Freud was the first to suggest that all fear is basically reduced to the physiological trauma of birth, namely, suffocation (asphyxia). This idea was developed by Otto Rank, emphasizing the paramount importance birth trauma, as the root cause of chronic (basal) anxiety and, accordingly, the basis for the development of depression. This idea was followed by Stanislav Grof, who developed the concept of perinatal matrices.

All people are born into the world in pain, but not everyone suffers from depressive experiences all their lives. Therefore, we will not see the cause of all the suffering of an adult in the trauma of his birth.

The significance of the trauma of birth cannot be underestimated, but when the child is handed over to the mother, if she gently lays him down next to her, if she places the nipple of her breast in his lips, if the breast is full of milk, the baby begins to suckle greedily, returning to the peace and serene bliss of the intrauterine state.

This is a return to Paradise. For a while.

Sooner or later, the mother will leave the baby, he will get hungry again, wet himself or crap himself, he will become cold or hot - and he will wake up with a piercing cry as a result of an unbearable illness for him. frustration. The minutes it takes a mother to meet her baby's needs and soothe him will seem like an eternity. Probably, vague memories of these minutes gave rise to the legend of Hell with eternal torment.

A mother creates happiness for her baby.

Periods of pleasure will be replaced by periods of displeasure - this is how the baby will comprehend existential essence of being.

Formation of the psyche

The trauma of birth would probably be impossible to survive if the child were born with a fully formed psyche. Traumatic experiences would haunt him all his life, as happens in the case of war neuroses.

But the mental birth of a child lags significantly behind its physical birth (Margaret Mahler). If we do not project our adult feelings and thoughts onto the baby, we will see a small, helpless creature that can only differentiate between two states. There are no names for these conditions yet, because the child must still learn give names . But they can be conditionally called sensations Raya And Ada.

The child’s psyche is formed around the “islands” of heavenly happiness that the mother gives him as a result of satisfying his needs (Veikko Tehke). And every time part of the formed psyche is destroyed when the frustration is too long (M. V. Romashkevich).

The development of a baby’s psyche follows the principle: “two steps forward, one step back.”

Deprivation

All people experience birth trauma, but mental disorders are formed not as a result of birth trauma, but in the process of disrupted formation of the psyche.

As a result of frequent or prolonged frustrations, the continuous formation of an integral psyche does not occur. In the worst case, the nascent “islands” of the psyche do not even unite into a single “continent” - then the child will face psychosis in adulthood (schizophrenia, MDP). More often, things are better, the psyche manages to consolidate, but a “hole” remains in it - then a anaclitic depression(Rene Spitz).

As they say: Parents are not chosen .

You can paraphrase this saying: You don't choose birth .

“It takes extraordinary love, tenderness and care for a child to forgive his parents for being born without his knowledge.”
(Sandor Ferenczi. “The Unexpected Child and His Desire for Death”)

But, unfortunately, not all mothers are able to give love to their baby, because they themselves do not have love for life. Often this is precisely why a decision is made to have a child, in the unconscious hope of filling one’s own “hole” in the soul, of giving meaning to one’s own meaningless and little joyful existence.

In anticipation of the birth of a child, fantasies paint a blissful picture of a happy family united by a rosy-cheeked, happy baby. And after a grueling birth, the mother is given a small, shriveled, screaming creature.

The mother hoped to receive love from the baby, not knowing that for this she had to first give love to him herself, receiving in return only screams, urine and feces. In a baby from birth there is only horror and hope. The seed of love must be planted and nurtured by the mother.

A touching smile and melodious hum will appear later. In the meantime, the mother must love this little creature who really needs her, the notorious mother's unconditional love. The joy of communicating with a baby arises only when there is joy of life and love in the mother’s soul.

If a mother has a “hole” in her soul, she does not have the strength to be in constant contact with the baby, to anticipate and satisfy all his continuous needs. A “hungry” baby becomes restless, noisy, begins to sleep poorly and eats poorly. Tired of the constant demands of the baby, the mother, exhausted by sleepless nights, becomes irritable and intolerant.

It’s good if during this difficult period the husband is able to share the burdens of the mother’s care for the baby, then the child will be saved. But more often, husbands run away from noisy babies and irritable wives, stay at work for a long time, find urgent things to do, or even leave their family.

Then such a mother experiences postpartum depression.

In a state of despair, the mother withdraws into herself, leaving her baby. She responds to his cries with a great delay, she cares for him without love, she does not rejoice at him with tenderness.

In her eyes, the child does not see life. She becomes dead mother(Andre Greene). "Hole" begets "hole". The child develops anaclitic depression.

Chronic depression

The situation in the mother's relationship with the baby can change for the better over time if she pays at least a little attention to her baby. Even if belatedly, the baby will begin to smile at his mother, walk, and reach out to her with his hands. AND mother will come back to life. And everything will go as usual, outwardly normal. But the child will have a “hole” in his soul.

If the growing child is not further exposed to serious mental trauma, he will appear almost normal. Well, perhaps, he will only be somewhat less cheerful and active than other children, or, conversely, hyperactive.

Everything can go outwardly normally. Until adolescence, when it hits "unreasonable" depression.

Of course, depression cannot be causeless. During adolescence, the child experiences stress due to a hormonal boom, finding himself in a conflict between growing sexual desire and the inability to fully satisfy it. Being less active, more closed and not cheerful enough than his peers, he will inevitably lose the competition for attention and love. The martyrology of his defeats will grow, depriving the teenager of self-confidence, giving rise to pessimism and apathy.

From the outside it will look “normal”: some teenage isolation, some teenage indecision, maybe “unhappy love”, so common at this age.

That this is chronic depression will not become clear soon, because he lived with his anaclitic depression all his life. Unless, of course, dark thoughts thicken so much that he decides to end his painful existence once and for all. All suicide attempts among teenagers, made for no apparent reason, are a consequence of chronic depression, the cause of which lies in early infancy.

Having experienced the passions of the teenage crisis, such a person will live half-heartedly, often and for a long time experiencing apathy and powerlessness - unless depression is diagnosed and he is not “hooked” on antidepressants.

Such people often choose the professions of doctors, psychologists and philosophers. Behind this choice is the desire to understand oneself. If such a person manages to obtain an appropriate education, then he becomes a good doctor or psychotherapist ( wounded healer according to Jung). The desire to help yourself often leads to a desire to help others.

But more often, low vitality does not allow completing such a complex education. Then the work of “normal” people becomes a curse for them from Monday to Friday, from vacation to vacation.

But some manage to “dive” into the hustle and bustle of life ( throw yourself into existence according to Heidegger). The main task of such people is not to stop for a minute, so as not to feel depressive feelings. This can be expressed both in hectic professional activity and in continuous “parties”; to maintain tone, you often have to resort to alcohol or drugs. Depression becomes agitated. If this state of manic excitement cannot be maintained constantly, such a person falls into severe depression. When such states of manic agitation and depression regularly alternate, a diagnosis is made manic-depressive syndrome(cyclothymia).

Postpartum depression

Having a child is a serious challenge for people with chronic depression.

In the case of a depressed mother, the baby is perceived as a vampire sucking blood.

In the case of a manic type of mother, the baby is perceived as an obstacle to the previous “active” way of life.

Either way, most of the time it ends postpartum depression and as a consequence, anaclitic depression child.

The circle closes.

In conclusion, I would like to emphasize that the cause of anaclitic depression as a result of maternal depression is not that the mother “infects” the baby with her depression. It's all about deprivation: a depressed mother cannot create the necessary conditions of love and care for the baby, and thereby does not provide him with continuous and uniform development of the psyche.

A baby "abandoned" by his depressed mother, who has no vitality for him, is left alone in horror ongoing trauma of birth http://www.site, as well as the name and surname of the author (authors) of the article.
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Birth trauma is the concept that childbirth is a physiologically difficult and psychologically terrifying experience for the newborn. This idea is at least as old as the Buddha himself, who considered childbirth to be one of the five inevitable pains in a person's life..

Rank's opinion on traumatic birth

Psychoanalyst O. Rank, one of Freud's students, formed this initial idea in his own book, The Trauma of Birth. He explained that the experience of leaving the mother's womb with food, warmth, peace and oxygen to enter the harsh world of hunger, cold and difficulty breathing would certainly be traumatic. According to psychoanalytic theory, any traumatic experience leaves a scar in the human soul, preventing ordinary, rational thinking. Rank expressed the idea that childbirth is considered one of these traumatic events.

What others think about birth trauma

Some psychologists and psychiatrists agree with Rank's formulation. As a result, they encourage adult patients to try to re-experience the experience of their own birth in order to return buried memories to consciousness, which may distort subsequent development.

Some doctors tried to ease the torment of a newborn during an unexpected transition from the mother’s womb to the external environment. The most prominent of all is F. Lebuyer, the book describes the torment of a person that he experiences at birth. Lebuyer recommended a number of measures to provide a “soft birth”, including delaying cutting the umbilical cord, reducing light and noise in the maternity ward, swimming the newborn in warm water, all in order to stop the rapid transition from one world to another.

Other psychologists and doctors find the trauma of being born more a fiction than a fact. They focus on the fact that operations such as circumcision or setting a broken bone (very painful for older children) are accompanied by significantly less roaring in newborns. In addition, if newborns are placed close to mom (providing safe physical contact) or snuggled in a soft swaddle immediately after birth, they will soon calm down and show interest—actions not typically noted after a traumatic experience.

And even though the trauma of birth still remains an assumption, many, including medical professionals, strive to make the first time after childbirth the most pleasant for the newborn. It is no longer often possible to see a newborn being spanked immediately after birth, held upside down, or immediately taken away from the mother for a medical examination without allowing her to hold her child.

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