The Prenatal Psyche: Evidence for a New Perspective
Published Jul 1, 2014 · D. Chamberlain
Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health
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Abstract: Through most of the 20th Century, neither medicine nor psychology provided an accurate understanding of the nature of babies in the womb or babies at birth. Perhaps the most fundamental misconception was that brains were the only measure of mind, self and soul. The prevailing view for a hundred years held that brains of prenates and neonates were insufficient to support cognitive, emotional, or perceptual activity. Yet, contemporary research reveals a prenate unlike any previously described-well equipped with senses, reactive to environmental conditions, expressive of feelings, and social in relation to twins and parents. These findings suggest that prenates do possess a "psyche" in the original sense of the word-mind, self, and soul.Keywords: prenatal psyche, prenates, neonatesThrough most of the 20th Century, neither medicine nor psychology provided an accurate understanding of the nature of babies in the womb or babies at birth. Among the serious errors were these: babies are passive and helpless; babies don't learn or remember; babies are not capable of emotion; and babies do not feel pain. These views misled parents and misdirected professionals in their work with babies.Physicians failed to recognize the great vulnerability of neonates to all forms of pain trauma: the trauma of surgery without anesthesia, repeated pain trauma in neonatal intensive care, obstetrician-caused pain at birth, and (especially in the United St ates) the practice of genital mutilation of newborn males. Surgeons of the 20th century expressed the fear that babies might be harmed by pain-killing anesthesia but had no such fear they would be harmed by surgery without anesthesia (Pernick, 1985). Experts considered babies incapable of either experiencing or putting any meaning into pain. Birth pain reached new heights in the 1940s when medical specialists began to dominate childbirth in America (Chamberlain, 1998a; Denniston & Milos, 1997).In retrospect, we can now appreciate that scientific attitudes and methods were too crude to reveal the actual quality of infant life in the womb or at birth. Perhaps the greatest single handicap of professionals was the idea that brains were the complete measure of mind, self, and psyche. The prevailing view was that brains of prenates and neonates were not sufficient to support cognitive, emotional, or perceptual activity, including perception of pleasure or perception of parents. Neuroanatomy did not support a "psyche" in prenatal or perinatal life.During recent decades, with advances in ultrasound observation and more creative experimental designs, life in the womb has been progressively illuminated, overturning traditional assumptions in developmental psychology and in medicine. Research now reveals a prenate unlike anything previously described-richly equipped with senses, reactive to environmental conditions, expressive of feelings, and attentive to both love and danger. (For reviews see Chamberlain, 1994 and 1998b). Social interaction between twins in utero, including hitting, kicking, and playing have been observed via ultrasound from 20 weeks gestational age (Piontelli, 1992). Arabin and colleagues (1996) have catalogued first touching between twins as it develops from nine to thirteen weeks gestational age.Parents have seen fetal aggression against needles entering the womb during amniocentesis at 16 weeks. Their babies have sometimes retreated and sometimes repeatedly attacked the barrel of a needle-this at an age when eyes are undeveloped and lids are fused. Such demonstrations of "eyeless" vision and perfect coordination to reach the target, convey urgency, will, and purpose that defies conventional explanation.Many experiments have shown how the intimate involvement of prenates with parents results in discriminative and preferential learning of music, stories, rhymes, and the sounds of the mother's native language (DeCasper & Spence 1986; DeCasper et al. …