Journals

Some psychoanalytic researches are reviewed here to give an overview of how ideas on prenatal life and psychoanalytic ideas on ego-formation got tentatively together during the last century and the first years of the new century. There is a large bow to Ferenczi who published his long paper Thalassa in 1924 after about ten years of thoughts on it that were shared by Maiello, Hidas and Raffai, and Wilheim. Certainly this bow is incomplete. However, we can see how prenatal life becomes more relevant in psychoanalytic research, too.

This article addresses the question, “What are the waterside hypotheses of human evolution”? The environments our Homo Sapiens ancestors adapted to through the evolutionary process remain to a certain extent unknown and open to theoretical investigation. When we do such investigation, it is revealed that there are obstetrical implications of the waterside hypotheses that also bear investigation. This article begins to make the important connections.

This paper will explore the effects on the unborn and newborn child of psychological stress, depression, and other relevant maternal factors in the pre and perinatal period. Particular attention will be paid to the effects of stress on the organization and function of the fetal brain, on neurohormones, the immune system, personality evolution, as well as on the development of many childhood and adult diseases.

Historically, the practice of treating adults for prenatal and perinatal trauma has consisted of individual practitioners’ modalities that lacked empirical validation around treatment specificity or efficacy. Yet, their commitment to understanding the origins of behaviors has provided hope for clients challenged with life-long problems. This paper describes, based on a review of the literature, a first step towards integrating prenatal and perinatal psychology theory and practice knowledge with current case formulation and evidence-based practice models.

We investigated maternal personality characteristics and coping style as potential risk factors for breech presentation in this case-control study. Mothers of cephalic presentation babies (n=72) and mothers of breech presentation babies (n=42) participated in a socio-demographic survey, the State Trait Personality Inventory (STPI), and an in-depth interview. In-depth interview results suggested mothers of breech presentation were more likely to be idealistic, analytical, overextended, and fearful; also less likely to be flexible.

Research which studies family grief in response to perinatal loss (the loss of a child before birth, during birth, or immediately after birth) generally has focused on parental grief and rarely included sibling grief. The emotional burdens from unresolved grief that surviving siblings experience can be carried into adulthood and are insufficiently understood. Siblings in families bereaved as a result of perinatal loss suffer in two ways: they mourn the loss of their expected sibling and they mourn the loss of the parents as they knew them prior to the loss.

It takes much neglect, rejection, humiliation, physical maltreatment and sexual abuse to transform a tiny, trusting, innocent human being into a callous, cruel, and vicious person. This paper examines some of the factors that lead to the development of the violent personality from conception on. It is suggested that the answer to violence is not state violence. The answer is conscious pre and postnatal parenting supported by social institutions, laws, and practices which attend to the needs of pregnant parents, particularly, the disadvantaged.

Four essays of unique importance in the field of prenatal and perinatal psychology and health are reprinted here with the permission of Michel Odent, Director of the Primal Health Research Center in London and editor of the newsletter Primal Health Research. Essay No. 1 focuses on the use of sytnthetic oxytocin, called

Shame is a powerful emotion born of implicit mind and with lasting implications. This brief essay explores the source of this experience, including its possible role as an instrument of survival, its relationship to the processes of bonding and attachment, and its developmental aspects.
Key Words: Shame, Attachment, Dysregulation, Mother