ROOTS OF HUMAN VIOLENCE: PSYCHOSPIRITUAL PERSPECTIVE ON THE CURRENT GLOBAL CRISIS
by Stanislav Grof, M.D., Ph.D.
Following the news from Egypt and still looking for hopeful epiphanies, I have been re-reading the epilogue from —
Beyond the Brain: Birth, Death and Transcendence in Psychotherapy (1985)—wherein Dr. Grof suggests that the current stage of ‘expression’ on the planet is analogous to a stage in the birthprocess, which he refers to as BPM3. (from his schema ‘Basic PerinatalMatrices’) He suggests that one can find correspondences with this stage in the birth process of the individual with the planetary birth process (now) into the next stage of our collective evolution.
He has given me permission to post here a paper which he presented for Eranos in 2008. I know…it’s long for a ‘blog post’…but I find it utterly fascinating. Well worth the read. –bss
Roots of Human Violence
– Psychospiritual Perspective
on the Current Global Crisis
Stanislav Grof
San Francisco, California, USA
June 2008
During the fourteen years when we lived at the EsalenInstitute in Big Sur, California, Joseph Campbell was a regular guest speaker in our seminars and a frequent guest in our house. There was one subject about which he spoke with extraordinary passion and enthusiasm in his lectures
as well as in our private discussions. It was the tradition of the Eranos meetings – gatherings of a stellar group of European thinkers, in which the main guiding force and chief contributor was C.G. Jung himself.As Joseph shared with us his memories of Eranos, the time of these legendary meetings seemed to look increasingly like a golden era sunk irrevocably into a mythic past like the Arthurian legends and their heroes.
But it clearly was not the destiny of Eranos to be relegated to a mythic realm, I would like to express my profound appreciation to John van Praag and to the Fetzer Institute for resurrecting the Eranos tradition and bringing it back to our time. I feel also very grateful for the invitation, which has made it possible for us to participate in this renaissance. It is a great honour and pleasure for me to attend this meeting and to share with you observations and experiences from my research of non-ordinary states of consciousness that I have conducted for more than half a century.
The topic of this meeting could not be more relevant considering the situation we are facing in the world. Since time immemorial, proclivity to unbridled violence – combined with insatiable greed – has been one of the most elemental forces driving human history The number and nature of atrocities that have been committed throughout the ages in various countries of the world, many of them in the name of God, are truly unimaginable and indescribable. Countless millions of soldiers and civilians have been killed in wars and revolutions of all times or in other forms of bloodshed.
In the past, these violent events had tragic consequences
for the individuals, who were directly involved in them, and
for their immediate families. However, they did not threaten
the future of the human species as a whole and certainly did
not represent a danger for the eco system and for the biosphere
of the planet. Even after the most violent wars, nature
was able to recycle all the aftermath and completely recover
within a few decades.
This situation changed very radically in the course of the
twentieth century due to rapid technological progress, exponential
growth of industrial production, massive population
explosion, and particularly the development of atomic and
hydrogen bombs and other weapons of mass destruction.
We are facing a global crisis of unprecedented proportions
and have the dubious privilege of being the first species in
history that has achieved the capacity to eradicate itself and
threaten in the process evolution of life on this planet.
Diplomatic negotiations, administrative and legal measures,
economic and social sanctions, military interventions,
and other similar efforts have had very little success; as a
matter of fact, they have often produced more problems than
they solved. It is becoming increasingly clear why they had
to fail. The strategies used to alleviate this crisis are rooted
in the same ideology that created it in the first place. It
has become increasingly clear that the crisis we are facing
reflects the level of consciousness evolution of the human
species and that its successful resolution or at least alleviation
will have to include a radical inner transformation of
humanity on a large scale.
This morning, I would like to focus in my presentation on
the observations from the study of non-ordinary states of
consciousness that provide new insights into the nature and
roots of human aggression and suggest effective strategies
for working with destructive and self-destructive tendencies
in the human species.
Anatomy of Human Destructiveness
Scientific understanding of human aggression started
with Charles Darwin’s époque-making discoveries in the
field of evolution of species in the middle of the nineteenth
century1. The attempts to explain human aggression from
our animal origin generated such theoretical concepts as
Desmond Morris’s image of the ‘naked ape’2, Robert Ardrey’s
idea of the ‘territorial imperative’3, Paul MacLean’s ‘triune
1 C. Darwin, The Origin of Species and the Descent of Man, Encyclopaedia
Britannica, Chicago, il 1952 (originally published in 1859).
2 D. Morris, The Naked Ape, McGraw-Hill, New York, ny 1967.
3 R. Ardrey, African Genesis, Atheneum, New York, ny 1961.
brain’1, and Richard Dawkins’s sociobiological explanations
interpreting aggression in terms of genetic strategies of the
‘selfish gene’2. More refined models of behaviour developed
by pioneers in ethology, such as Konrad Lorenz, Nikolaas
Tinbergen, and others, complemented mechanical emphasis
on instincts by the study of ritualistic and motivational elements3.
However, as Erich Fromm demonstrated in his groundbreaking
book Anatomy of Human Destructiveness4, any
theories asserting that human disposition to violence simply
reflects our animal origin are inadequate and unconvincing.
Animals exhibit aggression when they are hungry, compete
for sex, or defend their territory. With rare exceptions, such
as the occasional violent group raids of the chimpanzees
against neighbouring groups5, animals do not prey on their
own kind. The nature and scope of human violence – Erich
Fromm’s ‘malignant aggression’ – has no parallels in the
animal kingdom.
The realisation that human aggression can not be adequately
explained as a result of phylogenetic evolution led to
the formulation of psychodynamic and psychosocial theories
that consider a significant part of human aggression to be
1 P. MacLean, ‘A Triune Concept of the Brain and Behavior. Lecture i. Man’s
Reptilian and Limbic Inheritance; Lecture ii. Man’s Limbic System and
the Psychoses; Lecture iii. New Trends in Man’s Evolution’, in: T.J Boag &
D. Campbell (Eds.), The Hincks Memorial Lectures, University of Toronto
Press, Toronto, on 1973, pp. 6-66.
2 R. Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, Oxford University Press, New York, ny
1976.
3 K. Lorenz, On Aggression., Harcourt, Brace, & World, Inc., New York, ny
1963; N. Tinbergen, Animal Behavior, Time-Life, New York, ny 1965.
4 E. Fromm, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, Holt, Rinehart
&Winson, New York, ny 1973.
5 R. Wrangham & D. Peterson, Demonic Males – Apes and the Origins of
Human Violence, Houghton Mifflin Company, New York 1996.
learned behaviour. This trend began in the late 1930s and
was initiated by the work of Dollard and Miller1.
Biographical Sources of Aggression
The authors of psychodynamic theories made attempts to
explain the specifically human aggression as a reaction to
various psychotraumatic situations that the human infant
and child experience during the extended period of dependency
– physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, lack of love,
sense of insecurity, inadequate satisfaction of basic biological
needs, emotional deprivation, abandonment, and rejection.
However, explanations of this kind fall painfully short of
accounting for extreme forms of individual violence, such as
serial murders of the Boston Strangler or Geoffrey Dahmer.
They also do not have plausible explanation for ‘running
amok’, indiscriminate multiple killing in public places followed
by suicide (or killing) of the perpetrator. ‘Running
amok’ was long considered to be an exotic culture-bound
syndrome limited to Malaysia. In the last several decades it
has been repeatedly observed in the West, including among
teenagers on school campuses. There also is no plausible
psychodynamic explanation for religiously motivated combination
of violence and suicide, such as the behaviour of the
Japanese kamikaze warriors or of the Moslem fundamentalist
suicide bombers.
Current psychodynamic and psychosocial theories are
even less convincing when it comes to bestial acts committed
by entire groups, like the Sharon Tate murders, the My
Lai massacre, or atrocities that occur during prison uprisings.
They fail completely when it comes to mass societal
1 J. Dollard, L.W. Doob, N.E. Miller, O.H. Mowrer & R.R. Sears, Frustration
and Aggression, Yale University Press, New Haven, ct 1939.
phenomena that involve entire nations, such as Nazism,
Communism, bloody wars, revolutions, genocide, and concentration
camps.
Perinatal Roots of Violence
There is no doubt that traumatic experiences and frustration
of basic needs in childhood and infancy represent an
important source of ‘malignant aggression’. However, in the
last several decades, psychedelic research and deep experiential
psychotherapies have revealed additional significant
roots of violence in deep recesses of the psyche that lie
beyond postnatal biography1. Thus feelings of vital threat,
pain, and suffocation experienced for many hours during the
passage through the birth canal generate enormous amounts
of murderous aggression that remains repressed and stored
in the organism. As Sigmund Freud pointed out in his book
Mourning and Melancholia, repressed aggression turns into
depression and self-destructive impulses2. Perinatal energies
and emotions thus by their very nature represent a mixture
of murderous and suicidal drives.
The reliving of birth in various forms of experiential
psychotherapy is not limited to the replay of the emotional
feelings and physical sensations experienced during the passage
through the birth canal; it is typically accompanied by
a variety of experiences from the collective unconscious portraying
scenes of unimaginable violence. Among these are
1 S. Grof, Realms of the Human Unconscious – Observations from lsd
Research, Viking, New York 1975; Id., Beyond the Brain – Birth, Death, and
Transcendence in Psychotherapy, suny, Albany, ny 1985; Id., Psychology of
the Future – Lessons from Modern Consciousness Research, suny, Albany,
ny 2000.
2 S. Freud, Mourning and Melancholia (1917), se 14.
often powerful sequences depicting wars, revolutions, racial
riots, concentration camps, totalitarianism, and genocide.
Spontaneous emergence of this imagery associated with
the reliving of birth suggests that the perinatal level might
actually be an important source of extreme forms of human
violence. Naturally, wars and revolutions are extremely
complex phenomena that have historical, economic, political,
religious, and other dimensions. My intention here is not
to offer a reductionistic explanation replacing all the other
causes, but to add some new insights concerning the psychological
and spiritual dimensions of these forms of social
psychopathology that have been neglected or received only
cursory attention in earlier theories.
The images of violent sociopolitical events accompanying
the reliving of biological birth tend to appear in very
specific connection with the four basic perinatal matrices
(bpm s), which is my name for complex experiential patterns
associated with the reliving of the consecutive stages of the
birth process. While reliving episodes of undisturbed intrauterine
existence (bpm i), we typically experience images
from human societies with an ideal social structure, from
cultures that live in complete harmony with nature, or
from future utopian societies where all major conflicts have
been resolved. Memories of intrauterine disturbances, such
as those of a toxic womb, rh incompatibility between the
maternal organism and the foetus, imminent miscarriage, or
attempted abortion, are accompanied by images of human
groups living in industrial areas where nature is polluted
and spoiled, or in societies with insidious social order and
all-pervading paranoia.
Experiences associated with the first clinical stage of birth
(bpm ii), during which the uterus periodically contracts but
the cervix is not yet open, present a diametrically different
picture. They portray oppressive and abusive totalitarian
societies with closed borders, victimising their populations,
and ‘choking’ personal freedom, such as Czarist or
Communist Russia, Hitler’s Third Reich, Eastern European
Soviet satellites, South American dictatorships, and the
African Apartheid, or bring specific images of the inmates
in Nazi concentration camps and Stalin’s Gulag Archipelago.
While experiencing these scenes of living hell, we identify
exclusively with the victims and feel deep sympathy for the
down-trodden and the underdog.
The experiences accompanying reliving of the second
clinical stage of delivery (bpm iii), when the cervix is dilated
and continued contractions propel the foetus through the
narrow passage of the birth canal, feature a rich panoply
of violent scenes – bloody wars and revolutions, human or
animal slaughter, mutilation, sexual abuse, and murder.
These scenes often contain demonic elements and repulsive
scatological motifs. Additional frequent concomitants of bpm
iii are visions of burning cities, launching of rockets, and
explosions of nuclear bombs. Here we are not limited to the
role of victims, but can participate in three roles – that of
the victim, of the aggressor, and of an emotionally involved
observer.
Reliving of the third clinical stage of delivery (bpm iv), the
actual moment of birth and the separation from the mother,
is typically associated with images of victory in wars and
revolutions, liberation of prisoners, and success of collective
efforts, such as patriotic or nationalistic movements. At this
point, we can also experience visions of triumphant celebrations
and parades or of exciting post-war reconstruction.
In 1975, I described these observations, linking sociopolitical
phenomena to stages of biological birth, in my book
Realms of the Human Unconscious. Shortly after its publication,
I received an enthusiastic letter from Lloyd de Mause,
a New York psychoanalyst and journalist. De Mause is one
of the founders of psychohistory, a discipline that applies
the findings of depth psychology to the study of history and
political science. Psychohistorians explore such issues as the
relationship between the childhood of political leaders and
their system of values and process of decision-making, or the
influence of child-rearing practices on the nature of revolutions
of that particular historical period. Lloyd de Mause
was very interested in my findings concerning the trauma
of birth and its possible sociopolitical implications, because
they provided independent support for his own research.
For some time, de Mause had been studying the psychodynamics
of the periods immediately preceding wars and
revolutions. It interested him how military leaders succeed
in mobilising masses of peaceful civilians and transforming
them practically overnight into killing machines. His
approach to this problem was very original and creative. In
addition to analysis of traditional historical sources, he drew
data of great psychological importance from caricatures,
jokes, dreams, personal imagery, slips of the tongue, side
comments of speakers, and even doodles and scribbles on
the edge of the rough drafts of political documents. By the
time he contacted me, he had analysed in this way seventeen
situations preceding the outbreak of wars and revolutionary
upheavals, spanning many centuries since antiquity to most
recent times1.
He was struck by the extraordinary abundance of figures
of speech, metaphors, and images related to biological birth
that he found in this material. Military leaders and politicians
of all ages describing a critical situation or declaring
1 L. de. Mause, ‘The Independence of Psychohistory’, in: Id. (Ed.), The New
Psychohistory, The Psychohistory, New York, ny 1975.
war typically used terms that applied equally to perinatal
distress. They accused the enemy of choking and strangling
their people, squeezing the last breath out of their lungs,
constricting them, and not giving them enough space to live
(Hitler’s Lebensraum).
Equally frequent were allusions to dark caves, tunnels,
and confusing labyrinths, dangerous abysses into which one
might be pushed, and the threat of engulfment by treacherous
quicksand or a terrifying whirlpool. Similarly, the
offer of the resolution of the crisis had the form of perinatal
images. The leader promised to rescue his nation from an
ominous labyrinth, to lead it to the light on the other side
of the tunnel, and to create a situation where the dangerous
aggressor and oppressor will be overcome and everybody
will again breathe freely.
Lloyd de Mause’s historical examples at the time included
such famous personages as Alexander the Great, Napoleon,
Samuel Adams, Kaiser Wilhelm ii, Hitler, Khrushchev,
and Kennedy. Samuel Adams talking about the American
Revolution referred to ‘the child of Independence now struggling
for birth’. In 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm stated that ‘the
Monarchy has been seized by the throat and forced to choose
between letting itself be strangled and making a last ditch
effort to defend itself against attack’.
During the Cuban missile crisis Krushchev wrote to
Kennedy, pleading that the two nations not ‘come to a clash,
like blind moles battling to death in a tunnel’. Even more
explicit was the coded message used by Japanese ambassador
Kurusu when he phoned Tokyo to signal that negotiations
with Roosevelt had broken down and that it was
all right to go ahead with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He
announced that the ‘birth of the child was imminent’ and
asked how things were in Japan: ‘Does it seem as if the child
might be born?’ The reply was: ‘Yes, the birth of the child
seems imminent.’ Interestingly, the American intelligence
listening in recognised the meaning of the ‘war-as-birth’
code. The most recent examples can be found in Osama bin
Laden’s videotape, where he threatens to turn United States
into a ‘choking hell’ and in the speech of us State Secretary
Condoleeza Rice, who described the acute crisis in Lebanon
as ‘birth pangs of New Middle East’.
Particularly chilling was the use of perinatal language
in connection with the explosion of the atomic bomb in
Hiroshima. The airplane was given the name of the pilot’s
mother, Enola Gay, the atomic bomb itself carried a painted
nickname, ‘The Little Boy’, and the agreed-upon message
sent to Washington as a signal of successful detonation was
‘The baby was born’. It would not be too far-fetched to see
the image of a newborn also behind the nickname of the
Nagasaki bomb, Fat Man. Since the time of our correspondence,
Lloyd de Mause collected many additional historical
examples and refined his thesis that the memory of the birth
trauma plays an important role as a source of motivation for
violent social activity.
The relationship between nuclear warfare and birth
is of such relevance that I would like to explore it further
using the material from a fascinating paper by Carol Cohn
entitled ‘Sex and Death in the Rational World of the Defense
Intellectuals’1. The defence intellectuals (dis) are civilians
who move in and out of government, working sometimes as
administrative officials or consultants, sometimes at universities
and think tanks. They create the theory that informs
and legitimates us nuclear strategic practice – how to manage
the arms race, how to deter the use of nuclear weapons,
1 C. Cohn, ‘Sex and Death in the Rational World of the Defense Intellectuals’,
in: ‘Journal of Women in Culture and Society’, N. 12, 1987. pp. 687-718.
how to fight a nuclear war if the deterrence fails, and how
to explain why it is not safe to live without nuclear weapons.
Carol Cohn had attended a two-week summer seminar on
nuclear weapons, nuclear strategic doctrine, and arms control.
She was so fascinated by what had transpired there that
she spent the following year immersed in the almost entirely
male world of defence intellectuals (except for secretaries).
She collected some extremely interesting facts confirming
the perinatal dimension in nuclear warfare. In her own
terminology, this material confirms the importance of the
motif of ‘male birth’ and ‘male creation’ as important psychological
forces underlying the psychology of nuclear warfare.
She uses the following historical examples to illustrate her
point of view.
In 1942, Ernest Lawrence sent a telegram to a Chicago
group of physicists developing the nuclear bomb that read:
‘Congratulations to the new parents. Can hardly wait to see
the new arrival.’ At Los Alamos, the atom bomb was referred
to as ‘Oppenheimer’s baby’. Richard Feynman wrote in his
article ‘Los Alamos from Below’ that when he was temporarily
on leave after his wife’s death, he received a telegram that
read: ‘The baby is expected on such and such a day.’
At Lawrence Livermore laboratories, the hydrogen bomb
was referred to as ‘Teller’s baby’, although those who wanted
to disparage Edward Teller’s contribution claimed he was
not the bomb’s father, but its mother. They claimed that
Stanislaw Ulam was the real father, who had all the important
ideas and ‘conceived it’; Teller only ‘carried it’ after that.
Terms related to motherhood were also used to the provision
of ‘nurturance’ – the maintenance of the missiles.
General Grove sent a triumphant coded cable to Secretary
of War Henry Stimson at the Potsdam conference reporting
the success of the first atomic test: ‘Doctor has just returned
most enthusiastic and confident that the little boy is as husky
as his big brother. The light in his eyes discernible from
here to Highhold (Stimson’s country home) and I could have
heard his screams from here to my farm.’ Stimson, in turn,
informed Churchill by writing him a note that read: ‘Babies
satisfactorily born.’
William L. Laurence witnessed the test of the first atomic
bomb and wrote: ‘The big boom came about a hundred
seconds after the great flash – the first cry of a new-born
world.’ Edward Teller’s exultant telegram to Los Alamos,
announcing the successful test of the hydrogen bomb ‘Mike’
at the Eniwetok atoll in Marshall Islands read, ‘It’s a boy.’ The
Enola Gay, ‘Little Boy’, and ‘The baby was born’ symbolism
of the Hiroshima bomb, and the ‘Fat Man’ symbolism of the
Nagasaki bomb were already mentioned earlier. According
to Carol Cohn, ‘male scientists gave birth to a progeny with
the ultimate power of domination over female Nature’.
Further support for the pivotal role of the perinatal
domain of the unconscious in war psychology can be found
in Sam Keen’s excellent book The Faces of the Enemy1. Keen
brought together an outstanding collection of war posters,
propaganda cartoons, and caricatures from many historical
periods and countries. He demonstrated that the way the
enemy is described and portrayed during a war or revolution
is a stereotype that shows only minimal variations and has
very little to do with the actual characteristics of the country
and its inhabitants. This material also typically disregards
the diversity and heterogeneity characterising the population
of each country and makes blatant generalisation: ‘This
is what the Germans, Americans, Japanese, Russians, etc.
are like!’
1 S. Keen, Faces of the Enemy – Reflections of the Hostile Imagination,
Harper & Row, San Francisco, ca 1988.
Keen was able to divide these images into several archetypal
categories. Sam Keen’s theoretical framework does
not specifically include the perinatal domain of the unconscious.
However, the analysis of his picture material reveals
preponderance of symbolic images that are characteristic
of bpm ii and bpm iii. The enemy is typically depicted as a
dangerous octopus, a vicious dragon, a multiheaded hydra, a
giant venomous tarantula, or an engulfing Leviathan. Other
frequently used symbols include vicious predatory felines or
birds, monstrous sharks, and ominous snakes, particularly
vipers and boa constrictors. Scenes depicting strangulation
or crushing, ominous whirlpools, and treacherous quicksands
also abound in pictures from the time of wars, revolutions,
and political crises. As we will see, juxtaposition of
pictures from holotropic states of consciousness that focus
on reliving of birth with the historical pictorial documentation
collected by Lloyd de Mause and Sam Keen represents
strong evidence for the perinatal roots of human violence.
According to the new insights, provided jointly by observations
from consciousness research and by the findings of
psychohistory, we all carry in our deep unconscious powerful
energies and emotions associated with the trauma of
birth that we have not adequately processed and assimilated.
For some of us, this aspect of our psyche can be completely
unconscious, until and unless we embark on some in-depth
self-exploration with the use of psychedelics or some powerful
experiential techniques of psychotherapy, such as the
holotropic breathwork, primal therapy, or rebirthing. Others
can have varying degrees of awareness of the emotions
and physical sensations stored on the perinatal level of the
unconscious.
Activation of this material can lead to serious individual
psychopathology, including unmotivated violence. Lloyd de
Mause suggests that, for unknown reasons, the awareness of
the perinatal elements can increase simultaneously in a large
number of people. This creates an atmosphere of general tension,
anxiety, and anticipation. The leader is an individual
who is under a stronger influence of the perinatal energies
than the average person. He also has the ability to disown
his unacceptable feelings (the Shadow in Jung’s terminology)
and to project them on the external situation. The collective
discomfort is blamed on the enemy and a military intervention
is offered as a solution.
Richard Tarnas’ extraordinary book Cosmos and Psyche –
Intimations of A New Worldview added an interesting dimension
to de Mause’s thesis. In this meticulously researched
study, Tarnas was able to show that throughout history
the times of wars and revolutions showed correlation with
specific astrological transits1; his findings strongly suggest
that archetypal forces play a critical role in shaping human
history.
War and revolution provide an opportunity to disregard
the psychological defences that ordinarily keep the dangerous
unconscious forces in check. Freud’s superego, a psychological
force that demands restraint and civilised behaviour,
is replaced by ‘war superego’. We receive praise and medals
for murder, indiscriminate destruction, and pillaging, the
same behaviours that in peacetime are unacceptable and
would land us in prison or worse. Similarly, sexual violence
has been a common practice during wartime and has been
generally tolerated. As a matter of fact, military leaders have
often promised their soldiers unlimited access to women in
the conquered territory to motivate them for battle.
1 R. Tarnas, Cosmos and Psyche – Intimations of a New World View, Viking,
New York, ny 2006.
Once the war erupts, the destructive and self-destructive
perinatal impulses are freely acted out. The themes that we
normally encounter in a certain stage of the process of inner
exploration and transformation (bpm ii and iii) now become
parts of our everyday life, either directly or in the form of
tv news. Various no exit situations, sadomasochistic orgies,
sexual violence, bestial and demonic behaviour, unleashing
of enormous explosive energies, and scatology, which belong
to standard perinatal imagery, are all enacted in wars and
revolutions with extraordinary vividness and power.
Witnessing scenes of destruction and acting out of violent
unconscious impulses, whether it occurs on the individual
scale or collectively in wars and revolutions, does not result
in healing and transformation as would an inner confrontation
with these elements in a therapeutic context. The experience
is not generated by our own unconscious, lacks the
element of deep introspection, and does not lead to insights.
The situation is fully externalised and connection with the
deep dynamics of the psyche is missing. And, naturally,
there is no therapeutic intention and motivation for change
and transformation. Thus the goal of the underlying birth
fantasy, which represents the deepest driving force of such
violent events, is not achieved, even if the war or revolution
has been brought to a successful closure. The most triumphant
external victory does not deliver what was expected
and hoped for – an inner sense of emotional liberation and
psychospiritual rebirth.
Since most of the clients with whom I worked in Prague had
experienced the Nazi occupation and the Stalinist regime,
the work with them generated some fascinating insights
into the relationship between the perinatal dynamics and
the institution of concentration camps and into perinatal
roots of Communism. Time consideration does not allow me
to explore this fascinating material; those readers who are
interested can find the full discussion of these subjects in my
book Psychology of the Future1.
Transpersonal Origins of Violence
The research of holotropic states has revealed that the
roots of human violence reach even deeper than to the perinatal
level of the psyche. Significant additional sources of
aggression can be found in the transpersonal domain, such
as archetypal figures of wrathful deities and demonic entities,
complex destructive mythological themes (such as that
of Ragnarok, the Doom of the Gods, or of the Apocalypse),
and past-life memories of violent nature.
C.G. Jung believed that the archetypes of the collective
unconscious have a powerful influence not only on the behaviour
of individuals but also on the events of human history2.
From his point of view, entire nations and cultural groups
might be enacting in their behaviour important mythological
themes. Jung believed that many aspects of the German
Nazi movement could be understood as possession of the
German nation by the archetype of Wotan, ‘an ancient god
of storm and frenzy’. James Hillman amassed in his brilliant
book A Terrible Love of War convincing evidence that war is a
formidable archetypal force that has irresistible power over
individuals and nations3.
In many instances, leaders of nations specifically use not
only perinatal, but also archetypal images and spiritual symbolism
to achieve their political goals. The medieval crusaders
were asked to sacrifice their lives for Jesus in a war that
1 S. Grof, Psychology of the Future, cit.
2 C.G. Jung, Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious (1935/1954), cw 9i.
3 J. Hillman , A Terrible Love of War, Penguin, New York, ny 2004.
would recover the Holy Land from the Mohammedans. Adolf
Hitler exploited the mythological motifs of the supremacy of
the Nordic race and of the millennial empire, as well as the
ancient Vedic symbols of the swastika and the solar eagle.
Ayatollah Khomeini and Osama bin Laden ignited the imagination
of their Moslem followers by references to jihad, the
holy war against the infidels. American presidents Ronald
Reagan referred to the Soviet Union as the Evil Empire and
George W. Bush used in his political speeches references to
the Axis of Evil and Armaggedon.
Carol Cohn discussed in her paper not only the perinatal
but also the spiritual symbolism associated with the language
used in relation to nuclear weaponry and doctrine.
The authors of the strategic doctrine refer to members
of their community as the ‘nuclear priesthood’. The first
atomic test was called Trinity – the unity of Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost, the male forces of creation. From her feminist
perspective, Cohn saw this as an effort of male scientists
to appropriate and claim ultimate creative power1. The scientists
who worked on the atomic bomb and witnessed the
test described it in the following way: ‘It was as though we
stood at the first day of creation.’ And Robert Oppenheimer
thought of Krishna’s words to Arjuna in the Bhagavad GÄ«tÄ�: ‘I
am become Death, the Shatterer of Worlds.’
Psychology of Survival
Let us now explore how the concepts that have emerged
from consciousness research and from transpersonal
psychology could be put to practical use in alleviating the
crisis we are facing in modern world. This work has thus
shown that the roots of human violence are much deeper and
1 C. Cohn, op. cit.
more formidable than traditional psychology ever imagined.
However, this work has also discovered extremely effective
therapeutic strategies that have the potential to assuage and
transform human proclivity to violence.
Efforts to change humanity would have to start with
psychological prevention at a very early age. The data from
prenatal and perinatal psychology indicate that much could
be achieved by changing the conditions of pregnancy, delivery,
and early postnatal care. This would include improving
the emotional preparation of the mother during pregnancy,
practicing natural childbirth, creating a psychospiritually
informed birth environment, and cultivating emotionally
nourishing contact between the mother and the child in the
postpartum period.
The circumstances of birth play an important role in creating
a disposition to violence and self-destructive tendencies
or, conversely, to loving behaviour and healthy interpersonal
relationships. French obstetrician Michel Odent has shown
how the hormones involved in the birth process and in nursing
and maternal behaviour participate in this imprinting.
The catecholamines (adrenaline and noradrenaline) function
in evolution as mediators of the aggressive/protective
instinct of the mother at the time when birth was occurring
in unprotected natural environments. Oxytocine, prolactine,
and endorphins are known to induce maternal behaviour
in animals and foster dependency and attachment. The
busy, noisy, and chaotic milieu of many hospitals induces
anxiety, engages unnecessarily the adrenaline system, and
imprints the picture of a world that is potentially dangerous
and requires aggressive responses. This interferes with the
hormones that mediate positive interpersonal imprinting. It
is, therefore, essential to provide for birthing a quiet, safe,
and private environment1.
Much has been written about the importance of child rearing,
as well as disastrous emotional consequences of traumatic
conditions in infancy and childhood. Certainly this is
an area where continued education and guidance is necessary.
However, to apply the theoretically known principles,
parents themselves must reach sufficient emotional stability
and maturity. It is well known that emotional problems are
passed like a curse from generation to generation; it is not
unlike the well-known problem of the chicken and the egg.
Humanistic and transpersonal psychologies have developed
effective experiential methods of self-exploration,
healing, and personality transformation. Some of these
come from Western therapeutic traditions, others represent
modern adaptations of ancient and native spiritual practices.
Besides offering emotional healing, these approaches have
the potential to return genuine experiential spirituality
into Western culture and remedy the alienation of modern
humanity. There exist approaches with a very favourable
ratio between professional helpers and clients and others
that can be practiced in the context of self-help groups.
Systematic work with them leads to an inner transformation
of humanity that is sorely needed for survival of our species.
As the content of the perinatal level of the unconscious
emerges into consciousness and is integrated, it results in
radical personality changes. The level of aggression typically
decreases considerably and the individuals involved become
more peaceful, comfortable with themselves, and tolerant of
others. The experience of psychospiritual death and rebirth
1 M. Odent, ‘Prevention of Violence or Genesis of Love? Which Perspective?’,
presentation at the Fourteenth International Transpersonal Conference
in Santa Clara, California, June 1995.
and conscious connection with positive postnatal or prenatal
memories reduce irrational drives and ambitions. It causes a
shift of focus from the past and future to the present moment
and enhances the ability to enjoy simple circumstances of
life, such as everyday activities, food, love-making, nature,
and music. Another important result of this process is emergence
of spirituality of a non-denominational, universal,
all-encompassing, and mystical nature that is very authentic
and convincing, because it is based on deep personal experience.
The process of spiritual opening and transformation
typically deepens further as a result of transpersonal experiences,
such as identification with other people, entire human
groups, animals, plants, and even inorganic materials and
processes in nature. Other experiences provide conscious
access to events occurring in other countries, cultures, and
historical periods and even to the mythological realms and
archetypal beings of the collective unconscious. Experiences
of cosmic unity and one’s own divinity lead to increasing
identification with all of creation and bring the sense of wonder,
love, compassion, and inner peace.
What began as psychological probing of the unconscious
psyche automatically becomes a philosophical quest for the
meaning of life and a journey of spiritual discovery. People
who connect to the transpersonal domain of their psyche
tend to develop a new appreciation for existence and reverence
for all life. One of the most striking consequences of
various forms of transpersonal experiences is spontaneous
emergence and development of deep humanitarian and
ecological concerns and need to get involved in service for
some common purpose. This is based on an almost cellular
awareness that the boundaries in the universe are arbitrary
and that each of us is ultimately identical with the entire web
of existence.
It is suddenly clear that we cannot do anything to nature
without simultaneously doing it to ourselves. Differences
among people appear to be interesting and enriching rather
than threatening, whether they are related to sex, race,
colour, language, political conviction, or religious belief. It
is obvious that a transformation of this kind would increase
our chances for survival if it could occur on a sufficiently
large scale.
Many of the people with whom we have worked saw
humanity at a critical crossroad facing either collective
annihilation or an evolutionary jump in consciousness of
unprecedented proportions. Terence McKenna put it very
succinctly: ‘The history of the silly monkey is over, one way
or another.’1 We seem to be involved in a dramatic race for
time that has no precedent in the entire history of humanity.
What is at stake is nothing less than the future of life on
this planet. If we continue the old strategies, which in their
consequences are clearly extremely destructive and selfdestructive,
it is unlikely that the human species will survive.
However, if a sufficient number of people could undergoes
the process of deep inner transformation, we might reach a
level of consciousness evolution where we would deserve the
name we have so proudly given to our species: Homo sapiens
sapiens.
1 T. Mc Kenna, Food of the Gods – The Search for the Original Tree of
Knowledge, Bantam, New York, ny 1992.
[Stanislav Grof presented this paper at Eranos, in Switzerland, in 2008.]
