Birth trauma and its effects

The first to talk about birth trauma was the Austrian psychoanalyst Otto Rank. Its central postulate is that the mere fact of being born implies the first trauma that a human being experiences.. This means an abrupt separation from the mother and the sudden transition from a totally protective environment to a more hostile environment.

Otto Rank considered birth trauma to be the first chapter of neurosis. and that installed us in the human field, that is, in the realm of the impossible. This gives rise to an essential anguish that will accompany us for life.

It is a fact that the baby suffers at birth. Birth trauma is also a concept that medicine addresses, although it does so from an anatomical and physiological point of view. Otto Rank’s theory goes much further and proposes that initial trauma as the main factor that defines our psychic life. His approaches, to this day, are a source of controversy.

Fetal psychic life

One of the sources of controversy surrounding birth trauma is the idea that brain of the newborn is not developed enough to register its experiences as a trauma, in the strict sense of the term. Of course he suffers at birth, but for many this does not give rise to the determination of psychic life.

However, there are studies that report highly complex psychic phenomena in fetal life. One of them is the one carried out by Nilsson, Rottmann and Lukesch. These researchers studied the intrauterine life of fetuses whose mothers did not want to become pregnant. Thus found an evident relationship between this type of mothers and babies who at birth presented the following behaviors:

apathy syndrome. Desire to sleep all the time and poor mobility.Hyperactive syndrome. The opposite case. It corresponds to children who get excited easily and cry a lot.Anomalies in eating habits.Children with excessive vomiting.

These researchers concluded that the womb is not a neutral paradise. The fetus is physiologically stimulated by the mother, as it perceives the physiological changes in her. All of this then affects their behavior.. Therefore, it would not be unreasonable to think that later behaviors are also developed within the womb.

The trauma of birth

Otto Rank locates the origin of anxiety in the trauma of birth. It must be remembered that the word “angst” itself comes from the root “narrow.”. The first difficulty that human beings face at birth is precisely that of crossing the birth canal, whose main characteristic is precisely its narrowness.

There are researchers who postulate that when the birth trauma is very severe, the person experiences sensations during their adult life similar to those they had at the time of birth. This is the case of those who feel unexplained tachycardia, headaches that are perceived as strong pressure in the skull and sensations of suffocation, among others. All of them are sensations typical of panic attacks.

On the other hand, Otto Rank also sees a strong emotional component in the separation of the child and his mother. Therefore, The trauma of birth would not be limited only to the physical sensations experienced, but also to the loss of an ideal state. According to Rank, this marks us and makes us particularly sensitive to all losses in general.

The controversy

The trauma of birth produced one of the great ruptures in the history of psychoanalysis. Although Otto Rank was one of Freud’s favorite disciples, Rank’s theses challenged his central concept that the Oedipus complex was the founding fact of psychic life. Ultimately this distanced them irreparably.

Otto Rank’s birth trauma theses have not been sufficiently disseminated. Even so, they enjoy acceptance among a significant number of psychoanalysts, psychologists and doctors. In fact, Many followers of Rank’s work consider that therapeutic work is like a rebirth, overcoming the initial trauma..

Clearly Freud’s thesis is more solid. However, we also now know that during prenatal life and the first months of life, Even though the nervous system has not fully developed, experiences leave lasting traces that mark the way of being and doing in human beings.

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