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  The rich and comprehensive nature of emotions and sensations involved in these experiences suggest that they are not individually fabricated from sources such as adventure books, movies, and television shows. After witnessing thousands of therapy sessions in which material of this kind was involved I am thoroughly convinced that it originates in the collective unconscious. When, in our inner exploration, we reach the memory of the trauma of birth, this seems to open the gates into the collective unconscious where we access experiences of people who underwent similar predicaments in real life.

  Following the publication of my first book,
Realms of the Human Uncon
scious,
I received a 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 history and political science. Psychohistorians study such issues as the relationship between the childhood history of political leaders and their system of values and decision-making processes. They also try to establish links between childrearing practices of a particular time and the nature of wars and revolutions. Lloyd de Mause was very interested in my findings concerning the trauma of birth and its possible sociopolitical implications, because they supported his own research.

  For many years, de Mause had been studying the psychological aspects of the periods preceding wars and revolutions; it interested him how military leaders can successfully mobilize masses of peaceful civilians and transform them into killing machines. His approach was very original and creative—in addition to the analysis of historical sources, he drew data of great psychological importance from popular 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 analyzed in this way seventeen situations preceding the outbreak of wars and revolutionary upheavals, spanning many centuries—from antiquity to most recent times.

  He was struck by the extraordinary abundance of figures of speech, metaphors, and images related to biological birth that he found in this historical material. Military leaders and politicians describing critical situations and making declarations of war typically use terms that apply equally well to perinatal distress. They accuse the enemy as "choking and strangling us," of "squeezing the last breath out of our lungs," of "confining" us, and "not giving us enough space to live" (Hitler's
Lebensraum
). Equally frequent are allusions to dark caves, tunnels, and confusing labyrinths, dangerous abysses into which we might be pushed, and the threat of engulfment or drowning. Similarly, the promise of resolution comes in the form of perinatal images: leaders promise to guide us to the "light on the other end of the tunnel," to "lead us out of the labyrinth," and guarantee that after the oppressor is overcome, everybody will again "breathe freely."

  The subjects of Lloyd de Mause's research included Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Adolph Hitler, Khrushchev, and Kennedy. He also found birth symbolism in the statements of Admiral Shimada and Ambassador Kurassa before the attack on Pearl Harbor. 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 Bay; the bomb had been nicknamed "The Little Boy," which was painted on its side; and the code sent to Washington to signal its successful detonation was "The baby was born." Since the time of our correspondence, Lloyd de Mause has collected many additional historical examples and refined his thesis that our memories of perinatal trauma play an important role in violent social activity.

  Further support for these ideas can be found in Sam Keen's excellent book
The Faces of the Enemy.
Keen brought together an outstanding collection of war posters, cartoons, and caricatures from many different historical periods and cultures. He demonstrated that the way the enemy is described and portrayed during a war or revolution is a stereotype that shows very little variation and has very little to do with the actual characteristics of the culture involved. According to Keen, the alleged images of the enemy are essentially
projections of the repressed and unacknowledged shadow aspects of
our own unconscious minds.
Although we would certainly find in human history instances of "just wars," those who initiate warring activities are typically substituting external targets for elements in their own psyches that should be properly faced in personal self-exploration.

  Sam Keen's theoretical framework does not specifically include the perinatal domain of the unconscious. However, the analysis of his material reveals a preponderance of symbolic images that are characteristic for 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. The juxtaposition of paintings from non-ordinary states of consciousness that depict perinatal experiences with the historical pictorial documentation collected by Lloyd de Mause and Sam Keen offer strong evidence for the perinatal roots of human violence.

  According to the insights provided jointly by observations from nonordinary states of consciousness and the findings of psychohistorians, we all carry in our deep unconscious powerful energies and emotions associated with the trauma of birth that we have not adequately mastered and assimilated. For some of us, these aspects of our psyches can be completely unconscious, while others can have varying degrees of awareness about their influence. When material of this kind is activated from within, or by real events in the external world, it can lead to bizarre individual psychopathology, including violence for which there seems to be no visible cause. It seems that, for unknown reasons, the awareness of the perinatal elements can increase simultaneously in a large number of people; this creates an atmosphere of tension, anxiety, and anticipation. A leader such as Hitler is perhaps more strongly influenced by perinatal energies than others in his culture while at the same time having the power to manipulate the collective behavior of an entire nation. With these two factors aligned it is easy for him to disown his unacceptable (and unconscious) feelings (the "Shadow self" in Jung's terminology) and project them onto an external situation. The collective discomfort is blamed on the enemy and military intervention is offered as a solution.

  War provides the opportunity to abandon psychological defenses that ordinarily keep the dangerous perinatal tendencies in check. Freud's superego, a psychological force that demands restraint and civilized behavior, is replaced by the "war superego": we now receive praise for the same behaviors that are unacceptable or even criminal in peacetime—murder, indiscriminate destruction, and pillaging. Once war erupts, the destructive and self-destructive impulses can be given free rein. The perinatal elements that we normally encounter in a certain stage of the process of inner exploration and transformation (BPM II and BPM III) are now manifest in real situations outside us, either in hand-to-hand combat on the battlefield or in the form of television news. Various no exit situations, sadomasochistic orgies, sexual violence, bestial and demonic behavior, explosive energy releases, and scatology—which we ordinarily associate with perinatal imagery—are all enacted in wars and revolutions with extraordinary vividness and power.

  Acting out unconscious impulses—whether these occur individually, in self-destructive behavior or interpersonal conflict, or collectively, through wars and revolutions—does not result in transformation, as would occur by bringing the same material to full consciousness, since insight and therapeutic intention are missing. Even when violent behavior results in victory, the goal of the unconscious birth memory—which was the driving force behind such events—is not achieved. The most triumphant external victory does not deliver what the unconscious expected or hoped for: an inner sense of emotional liberation and spiritual rebirth. Immediately following the initial intoxication of triumph comes a sober awakening followed by bitter disappointment. And it usually does not take long before a carbon copy of the previous oppressive system emerges from the ruins, since the same unconscious forces continue to operate in the individual and collective unconscious of the people. When we look carefully at history, we see this same cycle occurring again and again, whether the events involved are called the French Revolution, the Bolshevik Revolution, or World War II.

  For many years, at the time when Czechoslovakia had a Marxist regime, I conducted deep experiential work in Prague. During this period, I collected a great deal of fascinating material concerning the psychological dynamics of Communism. Issues related to Communist ideology typically emerged while my clients were struggling with perinatal energies and emotions. It became obvious that the passion revolutionaries feel toward their oppressors receives powerful psychological reinforcement from their revolt against the inner prisons of their perinatal experiences. And, conversely, the need to coerce and dominate others was expressed time and time again as an effort to overcome the fear of being overwhelmed by one's own unconscious. The murderous entanglement of oppressor and revolutionary thus seems to be an externalized expression of the turmoil experienced in the birth canal. This is not to say that there existed no external political problems to overcome; the point is that perinatal themes, felt with incredible intensity, dictated the ways in which these conflicts were perceived and acted out.

  The Communist vision contains elements of psychological truth that make it appealing to large numbers of people. The basic notion that a dramatic experience of revolutionary proportions must occur before suffering and oppression will end, and that this upheaval will bring greater harmony, is correct in terms of the process of psychological death and rebirth and inner transformation. However, it is dangerously false when projected to the external world as a political ideology. The basic fallacy lies in the fact that what is essentially an archetypal pattern of spiritual death and rebirth is being given the form of an atheistic and antispiritual program.

  It is interesting to note that while Communist revolutions have been extremely successful in their destructive phase, the promised brotherhood and harmony their victories promised have not come. Instead, the new orders have bred regimes where oppression, cruelty, and injustice ruled supreme. If the above observations are correct, no external interventions have a chance to create a better world, unless they are associated with a profound transformation of human consciousness.

The perinatal dynamics can also help us understand otherwise incomprehensible phenomena, such as the Nazi concentration camps. Professor Bastians from Leyden, Holland, who has had extensive experience in the treatment of the so-called concentration camp syndrome—emotional problems that develop decades after incarceration—pointed out that the concentration camp is in the last analysis a product of the human mind. The fact that the mental image of such an institution must have preceded its material existence suggests that there is a corresponding area in the unconscious psyche. Bastians expressed this quite succinctly: "Before there was man in the concentration camp, there was the concentration camp in man." I have described earlier that the imagery involving Nazi concentration camps, Stalin's labor camps, and other similar themes spontaneously emerge in the experiences of people confronting the perinatal level of their unconscious. Closer examination of the general and specific conditions in the Nazi concentration camps reveal that they are a realistic enactment of the nightmarish atmosphere of BPM II and BPM III.

  Consider the barbed wire barriers, high-voltage fences, watch towers with machine guns, mine fields, and packs of trained dogs. All these certainly helped to created a hellish, archetypal image of the no exit situation so characteristic of BPM II. The elements of violence, bestiality, and sadism contributed to the atmosphere of insanity and horror that is so familiar to people who have relived their births. The sexual abuse of women and men, including rape and sadistic practices, existed on the individual level, as well as in the "houses of dolls," the institutions that provided "entertainment" for the officers and offered an outlet for their most violent unconscious perinatal impulses.

  One of the most astonishing aspects of the concentration camp practices was the violation of the basic hygienic precautions and the indulgence in scatology. Since this was in sharp contrast with the meticulous German sense of cleanliness and involved a disregard for the danger of mass epidemics, this clearly indicates that irrational unconscious forces were involved. Among the favorite jokes of the Nazi officers was to throw the eating bowls of the prisoners into the latrines and order them to retrieve them. At other times, they kicked inmates into the excrement as they squatted down to relieve themselves. As a result, many prisoners actually drowned in human waste.