Treating psychosomatic disorders related to birth trauma

Abstract

This paper summarises the experience of the author from 1954 to 1970 in facilitating the reliving of peri-natal experience principally using LSD 25 as abreactive agent. From 1970–1977 the method has been simplified utilizing the group context, simulating the peri-natal situation and by the use of deep breathing within certain limits. The psychosomatic symptoms which yield to, or may be modified by the reliving of peri-natal distress are those which occur in relation to certain depressive syndromes, phobias (especially claustrophobia and agoraphobia) the obsessional neuroses and certain of the roots of paranoid, schizoid, hysterical, homosexual and psychopathic personality disorders. The course of migraine, and, in the experience of some workers, asthma and epilepsy is modified by peri-natal recall. Atopic dermatitis can remit dramatically. Peri-natal recall points to the origins of unilateral facial and bodily pains, chronic sinusitis and otitis, and some rarer conditions such as ‘foot-tapping’ and Gilles de la Tourette's syndrome. Interesting connections between birth trauma and the rheumatic diatheses should be pursued - as should those between severe birth compression and subsequent chorea and disseminated lupus erythematosus. Birth ‘primalling’ (i.e. reliving peri-natal experience) may have a hypotensive effect. Stress at birth affects the alimentary tract; gastric duodenal and intestinal syndromes can be beneficially modified by connecting up the sensations, emotions and relationships of the original distress, before, during and after birth.