 Re: Social Workers & Dr. Grof
The Intuition Network, A Thinking Allowed Television Underwriter,
presents the following transcript from the series Thinking Allowed,
Conversations On the Leading Edge of Knowledge and Discovery, with Dr.
Jeffrey Mishlove.
THE ADVENTURE OF SELF-DISCOVERY with STANISLAV GROF, M.D.**
JEFFREY MISHLOVE, Ph.D.: Hello and welcome. I'm Jeffrey Mishlove. Our
topic today is the birth trauma. Is it possible that the experiences of
our physical birth have conditioned our attitudes towards life today,
and even our personality? With me is Dr. Stanislav Grof, a former
professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, a former chief of
psychiatric research at the Maryland Psychiatric Institute, and a former
scholar in residence for fourteen years at the Esalen Institute. Dr.
Grof is the author of LSD Psychotherapy, Beyond the Brain, and The
Adventure of Self-Discovery. Welcome, Stan.
STANISLAV GROF, M.D.: Thank you. It's nice to be here.
MISHLOVE: It's a pleasure to have you here. You know, it seems as if the
birth trauma itself might be viewed as the archetype or the epitome of
all subsequent traumas that the human being might ever experience in
life. I think it was viewed that way originally by Otto Rank, the
psychoanalyst.
GROF: Yes. For me some additional dimensions emerged over the years, but
certainly the process of birth seems to be one of the very significant
factors in human life. We have in our work discovered some dimensions
that seem to go even beyond that, which we now call transpersonal.
MISHLOVE: Well, I suppose, if one viewed the human psyche as consisting
of the personal realm, based on one's life experiences, and the
transpersonal, which deals with archetypal patterns and spiritual
sources beyond one's own personal life history, that at least insofar as
we're talking about personal experiences, the birth trauma must be
considered primal.
GROF: Yes, it's an extremely important factor, but at the same time it
functions as a kind of gateway between those two dimensions that you
mentioned.
MISHLOVE: The doorway between the personal and transpersonal.
GROF: The personal and the transpersonal. And it's very interesting that
the experiences that people have as they're dealing with the birth
trauma combine two elements, and that's the experience of being born,
but also the experience of dying. So in some sense it's the beginning of
human life and the end of human life, so it makes a lot of sense that
these experiences are a boundary between the personal and the
transpersonal.
MISHLOVE: As I recall, Freud made a great deal of the notion of
regression back to a womblike experience of oceanic bliss, and many
critics of contemporary mystical, psychic, magical, and shamanistic
traditions often dismiss them by saying, "Oh, this is just a regression
back to the womb." I guess you see that view as somewhat narrow.
GROF: Yes, I think there is also another tendency, represented for
example by Ken Wilber, that puts tremendous emphasis on the difference
-- that we have to differentiate, although there might be some
similarity between just a regression into the infantile stages, whether
they are early postnatal or whether they are prenatal, and the mystical,
the transpersonal dimension.
MISHLOVE: Wilber has called that, I think, the pre-trans fallacy, saying
that we should not confuse prepersonal experiences in the womb with
transpersonal experiences, which I guess might be viewed as more cosmic.
You seem to think that they're more similar than Wilber gives them
credit for.
GROF: Yes, I think that his emphasis is a little too extreme. He
presents it in a way that almost seems linear
-- that you have to first develop full integration of your personality
before some of these other dimensions open up for you, and that they are
somehow fundamentally, qualitatively different. I see it much more that
a person who is going through a transpersonal opening, a spiritual
opening, goes through a process that combines regression and
progression. In some sense you go back and you have to complete the
unfinished things from your history, and at the same time new dimensions
are opening for you.
MISHLOVE: What you seem to be saying is there could be something very
positive about getting in touch with the infantile side of our nature.
GROF: Yes, I think it's very significant, whether it is working through
some of the traumas that have imprinted us, that have programmed us, or
whether it's discovering some of the very useful dimensions of a
childlike experience of the world.
MISHLOVE: I know when I personally think about my own state in the womb,
and try and imagine it -- as I was reading your most recent book, The
Adventure of Self-Discovery, I began asking myself how I relate to the
experience of being in the womb. My sense was that there's a very
blissful quality to it for me -- a sense of oneness, a sense almost of
cosmic unity -- that perhaps in my life colors a lot of the work that I
do and my approach to things today. But you point out that for other
people that same sense of oneness, of merging, can have a negative side.
It can be sort of disoriented, schizophrenic, no boundaries.
GROF: Yes, if you look at it statistically, if you work with a number of
people, there is certainly a whole spectrum of experiences, and the sort
of psychological dimension of that experience really reflects also the
biological spectrum. I mean, the obstetricians know that there are
pregnancies which are very good, which I would call physiological --
where the mother seems to be in a good biological-physiological
condition, she seems to be in a good emotional condition; her
circumstances -- let's say her marital life, her social life -- are
satisfactory. Under those circumstances the pregnancy could certainly be
a very positive experience for the fetus. But there are also pregnancies
where for a long period of time it's not quite clear whether the fetus
is going to survive. There are states which involve toxicity of the
womb; there are states where the mother can be seriously ill. The mother
could be under some kind of chronic pressure. She could be under
constant stress during pregnancy. She could attempt to abort the child,
so there could be imminent miscarriage, attempted abortion. Some of the
pregnancies can be under very, very bad circumstances. For example, we
have done a lot of work with people in Germany whose prenatal life was
running at the time of the Second World War, when there was bombing,
there were tremendously traumatic things happening. So if your prenatal
life was as good as you think it was, you're certainly very lucky,
because that's not something that has to be that way.
MISHLOVE: You've developed, in your work as a personality theorist, the
term Coex, to refer to condensed experience. It seems like you're
referring to the lens through which we perceive our life, through which
we create our life -- that people tend to focus on some types of
experience and to filter out other types of experience. You tend to
suggest, as I understand your theory, Stan, that these Coex patterns
that each individual has are very much predicated on certain types of
perinatal experiences -- perinatal meaning either before or right after
birth.
GROF: Yes. Let me clarify first what I mean by a Coex system. In
traditional psychotherapies there's the idea that we have experienced a
number of traumatic things in the course of our life, and that it's kind
of a mosaic of trauma, whereas if you work on these past issues using
experiential psychotherapy -- whether it's with psychedelics or some
powerful non-drug techniques -- what you find is that these traumatic
memories seem to form certain kinds of constellations. So for example,
when somebody has problems with the self image, in this kind of work
what can come up is a series of traumas that have damaged that person's
self image, that come from different periods of that person's life, and
they create a kind of psychological constellation where the connecting
factor is the quality of the emotion. Sometimes it could be also a
quality of the accompanying physical feelings. This kind of
constellation functions in the unconscious, and when the individual is
under the influence of that constellation, it colors the
self-perception, self-image of that person, attitudes towards the world,
certain specific forms of behavior, and so on. What is fascinating here
is that each of those Coex systems seems to be anchored in a particular
facet of the birth trauma.
MISHLOVE: And then you suggest that there are four basic perinatal
matrices to which the Coex systems might be anchored.
GROF: Yes. What I found, when people in their own processes, in their
regression, reached the level of birth, I was noticing four very
distinct patterns of experience -- clusters of experience characterized
by specific emotions, by specific psychosomatic manifestations, by a
certain kind of imagery which was very specific for each of these
clusters. It was actually people themselves who started relating them to
the specific stages of the biological birth process, and so I extracted
somehow the experiential patterns from people's accounts, and started
referring to them as basic perinatal matrices.
MISHLOVE: We've already touched on the first of these when I mentioned
the experience of oneness in the womb. How would that, for example, in
your experience, affect later life development?
GROF: That depends very much, as I already mentioned, on what the
experience was like. So if that experience was predominantly positive,
and if, let's say, under the influence of later experiences, the
individual is pretty much in tune with this memory -- in other words,
later experiences confirmed it or reinforced that particular way of
being in the world -- then the individual would have first of all a
sense of unity with the environment, a sense of being a meaningful part
of human society, being a meaningful part of nature, being a meaningful
element in the universe, and having a sense of a certain kind of flow --
so a sense of some basic security in the world. What seems to come with
it is also a very natural sense of spiritual awareness that's behind the
everyday world of separation, which means individual people, objects,
and so on. That individual has a sense of underlying unity, of oneness.
And that, of course, is essential for all the mystical traditions -- to
be aware of the fact that beyond the world of separation there is some
kind of underlying unitive field.
MISHLOVE: It's almost as if you're suggesting it might be easier to
become a mystic if one has had a healthy prenatal experience and a
healthy birth experience.
GROF: Yes, you would in some sense almost have a natural sort of sense
of mystical awareness or mystical being in the world. Then of course if
that was a very bad experience -- if it was a toxic womb, if this was an
unwanted pregnancy, if there were attempted abortions and things of that
kind -- that would create a basically paranoid attitude towards the
world. We have to realize that the mother really represents, first of
all, the first sample of a meaningful relationship; but being in the
womb also represents somehow a sample of the experience with the entire
world. That womb is a prototype of the experience of the world.
MISHLOVE: The amniotic sac becomes like the universe itself for the
fetus.
GROF: Yes. I mean, this is the total experience of existence, is
happening within that particular environment. So in a sense that
experience imprints somehow some basic attitudes toward people, toward
nature, towards the universe in general. You know -- is the universe
friendly? Can people be trusted? Can you be dependent and secure at the
same time?
MISHLOVE: So I suppose in a sense if one perceives the universe as
somehow unfriendly, it might be healthier or better for the person at
some stage of their development to be able to feel separate from it,
rather than joined to it.
GROF: Well, that's something that develops later, that people
differentiate from this kind of unitive experience. They develop a sense
of differentiation, but at the same time it is as if this basic unitive
matrix remains with them, so there is that sense of awareness, of
separateness, but at the same time a sense of connectedness with
everything.
MISHLOVE: The second basic perinatal matrix that you describe is one of
being trapped in the womb -- I guess at the time right prior to birth
when there's pressure to escape from the womb, but yet the possibility
of doing that is not yet available.
GROF: Yes, what I call the second matrix really reflects the situation
when suddenly this environment, which when there was a good womb was
nourishing, was secure, suddenly becomes hostile. There come first
chemical changes, suggesting there is some kind of change happening, and
then they are translated into actual mechanical contractions of the
uterus. So suddenly that environment becomes oppressive, becomes
threatening. We know that with the contractions of the uterus there are
also constrictions of the vessels that bring blood to the fetus, so it
also involves periods of suffocation, because oxygen comes through
blood. So there is an element of emotional threat and also real
biological threat, depending on how difficult the delivery.
MISHLOVE: And the concomitant attitudes towards life, if someone becomes
sort of fixated or anchored to that stage of perinatal development,
might be one of helplessness, I suppose.
GROF: Yes, it's a prototype of a victimized position -- being totally
alone, being cut off from meaningful contact with people, with nature,
having a sense of alienation, a sense of loneliness, and also the
feeling that the universe is basically hostile.
MISHLOVE: Why do you suppose someone would become anchored at that level
of development as opposed to the first stage?
GROF: It's a very good question, because obviously, unless we were
Caesarean born, we have been through all the stages, and we see that
certain people seem to be under selective influence of one particular
matrix. I believe that one of the very significant factors here is the
predominant quality of the postnatal experience. In other words, let's
say a person was brought up in a situation that was victimizing -- let's
say in a family that was kind of a closed system, where there was a lot
of emotional, physical abuse, and at the same time the individual
couldn't fight back -- this seems to reinforce or perpetuate the victim
role that was first experienced to an extreme degree in the perinatal
process.
MISHLOVE: In other words, a very traumatic experience in one's later
development will then cause someone to emotionally reach back to the
source experience that was similar to that.
GROF: In some sense a kind of mechanical model for that. The postnatal
experiences create kind of bridges between the contemporary conscious
experience and the memory of birth. If the postnatal experience was
good, then there again is something that we can describe in terms of a
mechanical metaphor, something like a buffering system. There's this
overlay of good experiences. That material is still there, but it's not
as relevant, it's not as available. This would be also the situation
that I described earlier -- somebody who had a good womb, and then a
series of positive experiences, starting with good bonding, a good
symbiotic relationship with the mother during nursing, a childhood that
was secure, and so on -- that person would be living in such a way that
the predominant quality of life systematically reinforces the original
experience of the good womb, whereas somebody who is living in a
situation where in childhood there is loneliness, there is deprivation,
there is cold, there is hunger, there is pain, and so on -- that person
would be as if constantly reminded of the experience of the second
matrix.
MISHLOVE: I suppose it might be possible then, say, for a person who has
had a healthy childhood, a healthy prenatal development, lived a
positive, normal life, if that person were thrust into a terrifying
situation -- a catastrophe or a war, for example -- that might
reactivate or reopen the early memories of being trapped in the womb.
GROF: Yes, it's very important, you see; you can see all kinds of
combinations. Somebody can have, for example, a very good womb and a
very bad delivery. There could be a very loving mother who wants the
child, but the pelvic diameters are very narrow, and for reasons that
are totally beyond the mother, the delivery becomes a very difficult
experience. Possibly in the extremes the child might almost die. Or
there could be an easy birth and terrible postnatal experience. So we
are talking here always about certain basic foundations which are laid
in the early perinatal period, and then postnatal events that will
selectively reinforce or cover up the different aspects of the perinatal
experience.
MISHLOVE: Your third basic perinatal matrix involves the actual process
of birth -- the fighting or struggle to emerge from the womb.
GROF: Yes, the most important distinction here is that in the second
matrix there are contractions of the uterus, but the cervix is closed.
So the child is sort of caught as if in a no-exit situation, in a kind
of claustrophobic world where there doesn't seem to be any solution.
Each of the contractions of the uterus opens up the cervix to a certain
extent, until the dilation reaches such a degree that the continued
contractions then actually propel the child. So suddenly there is a
movement, or a certain perspective opens up. So the second matrix, to
make it very succinct, is suffering without perspective; the third
matrix is suffering with perspective.
MISHLOVE: So instead of feeling lost in helplessness, one becomes
instead locked in a struggle.
GROF: Yes. You see, the basic pattern which is imprinted here is, "The
world is extremely dangerous, and you better be strong, you better be
tough. This is the law of the jungle; you have to fight for your
existence." But you don't feel victimized anymore. It's not completely
hopeless; you're just simply in a very dangerous situation.
MISHLOVE: There are some negative sides to this. As I recall you
mentioned that this phase might also be an anchoring for such things as
sadomasochism.
GROF: Yes, there's another dimension which is not very easy to explain
-- it would take a while -- but this experience in the third matrix has
also a very, very powerful sexual type of component. And we know, even
from postnatal life, that there seems to be a built-in mechanism in the
human organism that translates extreme suffering, extreme pain, and
particularly suffering that's associated with suffocation -- that would
translate it or transform it into a powerful sexual type of arousal. So
we know, for example, that people who tried to hang themselves and were
rescued in the last moment, they would describe that they suffered at
first, they choked; and then suddenly there came very powerful sexual
arousal, and if it lasts longer, that sexual arousal can even transcene
into mystical, spiritual opening, which we see, for example, in martyr
deaths -- people who are put through incredible tortures and suddenly
they transcend and they experience rapture, ecstasy.
MISHLOVE: Well, this seems very much related, in a sense, then, to the
fourth basic perinatal matrix which you mention, which is the actual
process of birth itself -- sort of like a death and rebirth experience.
GROF: Yes, when it's completed. But the third matrix itself is just the
element of struggle.
MISHLOVE: It's not quite complete; there's not resolution yet. The
person is still locked in this unresolved conflict.
GROF: Yes, it's very interesting because this experience can become
ecstatic, but it's a very peculiar kind of ecstasy, which I call
volcanic. It's a Dionysian kind of ecstasy.
MISHLOVE: It sort of reminds me of the religious martyrs, for example,
in the Islamic and Christian faith, who whip themselves and torture
themselves to achieve ecstatic states.
GROF: You find it in the history of religion as the so-called
flagellants -- people who torture each other, torture themselves, in
order to transcend. Also clinically you find, as you mentioned already,
sadomasochism. You see, there are people who have to suffer in order to
experience certain ecstatic sexual feelings. So it's this peculiar kind
of mixture of pleasure and pain. And then when birth comes, when we
start talking about the fourth matrix, then there is also a sense of
ecstasy, but it's a very different kind of ecstasy. I call it oceanic
ecstasy that can come, and that's an experience where you feel ecstatic,
but at the same time you feel extremely relaxed, you feel serene, you
feel tranquil. There's not this sense of a sort of volcanic storm or
rapture.
MISHLOVE: It sounds almost like a return to the basic blissful aspects
of your first matrix.
GROF: Yes. You see, when an adult relives birth, then what typically
follows is a return into the womb. So the fourth matrix gradually
changes into the first matrix, and biologically there also seems to be a
deep connection between, let's say, the peace that the child experienced
on the breast of a good mother, and experience in the womb. So it's as
if after birth you can reach the state of the symbiotic union with the
mother, which is postnatal, which is during nursing, and then suddenly
it deepens and it starts having the qualities of being back in the womb.
MISHLOVE: I suppose the difference, then, between the fourth matrix and
the first is that the fourth is somehow more integrating. It would
encompass the notion of helplessness and the notion of struggle and
contain it within a blissful state, rather than just pure bliss without
any concept of struggle.
GROF: Yes. What comes often, you see, is a redefinition of our basic
experience of life. That means you remember, of course, all the
suffering, all the pain, but at the same time you get some kind of
meta-perspective. In some sense there is a deeper reality which you can
build on or which you can trust. In other words, being in the body,
being incarnate, means that you're going to have some tough times. It's
not always going to be easy, but somehow there's a predominantly
positive attitude -- I mean, life is worth it; consciousness, being
conscious, is a fascinating experience.
MISHLOVE: I gather what you're suggesting, as we look at these four
basic stages or matrices associated with perinatal experiences, is that
that each of us is in some way perhaps anchored to one of these four
stages, and that we could understand ourselves better if we were able to
see those dynamics in our own life.
GROF: Yes, and it's a little more complex than that, because, as you
mentioned before, we all have been through the four stages.
MISHLOVE: All four.
GROF: Yes, and we have also been through all kinds of things
postnatally.
MISHLOVE: Stanislav Grof, we're out of time now, so we'll have to cut
the program short. Thank you so much for being with me.
GROF: It was a pleasure to be here. Thank you.
END*
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