Piaget and Genetic Epistemology
Jean Piaget was a genetic epistemologist, logician, biologist, philosopher, and psychologist, although he is usually described as a psychologist whose contributions to the field of developmental psychology are invaluable and numerous.
Genetic epistemology, which is considered a discipline that Piaget created, is basically an experimental philosophy that seeks to answer epistemological questions through the developmental study of the child. Elkind (Piaget, 1964/1967) in an introduction to Piaget's work says: "The problems [in genetic epistemology] are to discover the psychological structures that underlie the formation of concepts fundamental to science" (p. v).
This sentence reminds us that most of Piaget's work is concerned with the development of one particular psychological function, namely, that of thinking (although he does discuss the other three functions) whether abstract or concrete, and a belief that conceptual thinking was the end and desired goal in a series of stages, all designed to complete this process.
There is much that I agree with in this statement, even the idea that conceptual thinking is the last in this series to develop. The bias that I detect appears to reflect not only Piaget, but the rationalization of Western humanity in general toward the idea that the psychological function of thinking is superior to the other three functions. I see thinking as the accumulation of the experiences of the other three functions, given form and content.
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that investigates the origins, methods, nature, and limits of human knowledge, and even though Piaget appears to be focused upon one aspect, he did not leave the others out entirely. In a sense, I agree with Elkind (1964/1967, p. vi) who claims that Piaget was unjustly criticized for the book he did not write, rather than the one he did write. Piaget's work contains a significant amount of information relevant to the topic of this research, especially concerning the early stages of cognition in childhood.
Piaget (1947/1950) describes his work in the following way:
Emphasizing the interaction of the organism and the environment leads to the operational theory of intelligence. According to this point of view, intellectual operations, whose highest form is found in logic and mathematics, constitute genuine actions, being at the same time something produced by the subject and a possible experiment on reality. The problem is therefore to understand how operations arise out of material action, and what laws of equilibrium govern their evolution; operations are thus concerned as grouping themselves of necessity into complex systems, comparable to the "configurations" of the Gestalt theory, but these, far from being static and given from the start, are mobile and reversible, and round themselves off only when the limit of the individual and social genetic process that characterizes them is reached. (p. 16)
Piaget (1964/1967) places a great deal of importance on the first few years of life when he states that "this early mental development nonetheless determines the entire course of psychological evolution" (p. 9). This statement makes it abundantly clear that Piaget considered these rudimentary elements in cognition significant to any later developments in cognition and the latter dependent upon the former. Shortly after this statement, he says, "At birth, mental life is limited to the exercise of reflex apparatuses, i.e., of hereditarily determined sensory and motor coordinations that correspond to instinctual needs, such as nutrition" (p. 9). I agree with Piaget's first statement concerning the importance of early mental development, but disagree with him concerning the second: I do not think that mental life is limited in any way at birth, in most cases. Quite the contrary it begins at birth by processes that Piaget adequately describes, but assigns to a later period. I will attempt to defend this assertion as I proceed to examine some of Piaget's general concepts related to my research topic as well as Jung's comparative ideas and current post-Jungians in developmental psychology, mainly Fordham.
Piaget and Inhelder (1966/1969, p. 5) do not consider the exact moment when sensori-motor intelligence appears as important as the problem of understanding the mechanism of this progression. This is because Piaget is more interested in structures which, if they hold true for the individual, also hold true for the species (1964/1967, p. vi). He is primarily concerned with the identification of the structures. Once identified, the successive forms of these structures can be compared to arrive at an explication of their genesis (1964/1967, p. vi).
For the purposes of this research as well as psychology in general, I would consider the exact moment of sensori-motor intelligence extremely important if one is attempting to link it to the previous stage of development. Piaget did not attempt to do this, although he does mention this possibility, which I will later discuss.
Understanding the mechanism of the progression of stages, which Piaget thought to be the real problem, is equally important for my purposes because I am attempting to describe the transition of one stage beginning in the womb to the next stage, which is birth, and the differences in psychological functioning in both stages. I am attempting to link them with cosmological myths, which I believe to be describing this process in symbolic language.
Piaget's stages underlie the hypothesis offered in this research. If the four psychological functions are the basic methods of acquiring knowledge, which was Jung's assertion, it is reasonable to assume that they start in the psyche of each individual, either in the same way, which Piaget would state was true for the species, or not, which would imply a random acquisition. Einstein said that he could not believe that God plays dice with the world; I do not think that this idea is less true of the inner world, the human psyche.
In attempting to understand the mechanism of this progression of states, Piaget and Inhelder (1966/1969) continue to describe their ideas concerning assimilation. Piaget rejects the mechanism of association, which he claims many psychologists accept, and instead gives his views on assimilation:
I also see the shortcomings and therefore question the validity of the SÆR mechanism of association. I consider Piaget's model of assimilation and accommodation much more in keeping with the model that I propose, and "assimilation" a word that describes the process in some respects better than Fordham's description of integration, though they appear to me to be comparable.
It becomes apparent that Piaget is describing something quite similar to Fordham's idea of integration and the idea that the infant acquires what is needed from the object or stimuli. One difference appears to be that the subject in Piaget's system is absorbing knowledge from the world or the object into its own self without changing the basic structure of subject and object. In Fordham's system, the infant is integrating to return to the Self or its original state of wholeness.
Piaget's system is always one of reciprocation based on his idea of equilibrium. Subject and object are always in a state of relationship to one another. Seen in this way, it is the relationship that provides the equilibrium or, in Jungian terms, a return to the Self.
Both Jung and Piaget (Fordham less so) appear to use the dialectic method for their constructions, and it is not difficult to see Jung's idea of a Self as totality or Self in balance or harmony as one in a state of equipoise. Equilibrium, which is conceived as a steady state much like the Self concept, is an indispensable part of Piaget's genetic epistemology system. In speaking of the fundamental interaction between internal and external factors, Piaget (1964/1967) states:
The "prior schemata" in the hypothesis that I propose can be seen as the four psychological functions, existing undifferentiated and contained in the function of intuition, where consciousness and unconsciousness exist as one steady state in the prenatal child. Put in Piagetian terms--the infant exists in a state of equilibrium, a steady state that does not imply inactivity, as Piaget (1964/1967, p. 151) points out--but just the opposite, activity. In other words, the infant in the womb would exist in a state of equilibrium, while at the same time be essentially active.
Piaget's schemes, which he sees as the precursors of symbols or images and innate in the infant, bear a close resemblance to Jung's descriptions of archetypes, which are without content, and filled in by the experience of the person. Ryce-Menuhin (1988) says much the same thing when he discusses Fordham:
That the infant is matching inner with outer from birth appears certain in the ideas of both men, however, Fordham wavered considerably in his ideas concerning the appearance of the ego. It is only when Fordham considered the ego present at birth that his theory links to that of Piaget's theory in an important way. Piaget relates schemes to the body and body functions from the beginning, even though he doesn't use the word "ego."
Other similarities in Piaget's and Jung's thinking, which also influenced Fordham, appear to me to be readily apparent, especially in the method both employ and in the conclusions they arrive at concerning schemes, archetypes, and equilibrium. In speaking of the difficulty in knowing one's own type, Jung (1971/1921) states:
Since these words appear on the first page of Psychological Types, the concept of equilibrium and compensation for biological purposes appears to be significant in Jung's thinking and exceedingly close to ideas later introduced by Piaget. What is apparent in both of their beginning observations is the biological model and the one of equilibrium, which was also used by Freud and many others attesting to the numerous, diverse concepts that come from a theoretical model used in different ways.
Jung's interpretation of that model, however, led him eventually to his major conclusion that the transcendent function was of the utmost importance; the uniting of opposites was achieved by a third, unknown, and irrational factor, which was the symbol that joined the opposites and restored, even if only temporarily, a state of equilibrium. Most of Jung's work and thinking centers on this basic concept--including his work on alchemy, dreams, and his descriptions of introversion, extraversion and the four psychological functions. The problem of opposites or "squaring the circle" is the problem of returning to the state of equilibrium or the Self; in other words, it is a psychological problem. Since much of Jung's later work was centered on the healing of adults, he doesn't comment directly on when the symbolic function or what he called the transcendent function comes into existence, but he does discuss the inborn, preconscious, and unconscious individual structure of the psyche. He (1959/1938) states:
I agree with this statement. What appears at birth has been in motion and experienced for 9 months in utero. The structures for acquiring knowledge as well as the application of the transcendent function, whenever it may appear, all have their root and foundation in the individual structure of the infant psyche. With this idea in mind, one could easily say that the child who is dominated by his parents' psychology or in a state of participation mystique is guided by his own inner principles or individuality as well as his environment. This is probably one reason Jung did not see a contradiction in his ideas concerning the influence of the parents on the unconscious of the child. Some children are individually equipped by their own psychology in the beginning to be influenced by their parents unconscious, other are less so, which explains how two children with the same parents are often very different, without this difference being only the result of the parents' behavior. This subject will be discussed later in the work of Frances Wickes.
Piaget (1964/1967), like Jung before him, considers the "semiotic function" extremely important and states, "It can thus be argued that the source of thought is to be sought in the symbolic function" (p. 91). He saw it as emerging in stage 6 of the sensori-motor period, which is around the age of 2, and corresponds in time with many concepts in psychology concerning the appearance of the developing ego. Before the emergence of the symbolic function the infant is operating by the function of intuition, which is Piaget's term for perception and movement. But intuition or perception and action are not the foundation for thought; thought is derived from the symbolic function.
The following is Piaget and Inhelder's (1966/1969) conclusion on the symbolic function:
Here Piaget speaks almost with reverence of the symbolic function; he makes it clear that this is a milestone in development and a stage of transition; the baby has come to the end of the sensori-motor period and the semiotic function "presents a remarkable unity." I cannot help agreeing that this is a remarkable achievement for the human child; what I cannot agree with is the idea that these functions all begin at the end of the sensori-motor period, as defined by Piaget.
This remarkable unity can also be seen as taking place shortly after birth when the infant has experienced two things: the loss of unity that occurs with the first conscious sensation and the first desire, and the re-establishment of unity when the desire is satisfied.
Piaget, who often states that feeling should not be divided from thought, appears to leave out the possibility that the feeling function contains the thought or the knowledge, which may create the image on an unconscious level in the thinking function. If conscious feeling is derived from conscious sensation, these are the first functions to give knowledge of the separation of the experiencing organism, they are also the first functions that unite them or return them to a previous state. The opposites are reunited by an apparently invisible third thing called relationship. This is the space between subject and object, and it exists on the inner level as well as the outer level when there is, as Piaget or Fordham would say, a match.
The experience of the first relationship may be more significant in the formulation of the symbol than previously recognized. If a 1-year-old child draws a circle, which is one of the first symbols drawn by children (Drachnik, 1985, p. 11), she or he may be expressing a representation that existed in the personal unconscious from a much earlier age and it may be a description of experience that is only remembered through a simple symbol that expresses a dynamic process.
If the archetype, thought, image, representation or concept all exist as potential in the unconscious thinking function that is not separated from the first feeling, conscious feeling would be more significant than previously described also, because it would be connected to the thinking function in an important way from the beginning of life.
It would be a mistake, I think, to believe that the feeling function does not provide an image or representation of the experience that occurs in the relationship. It is simply that the image always comes after the experience. The feeling can unite the opposites without the conscious thought and, indeed, create the thought or image, whether it ever becomes conscious or not. This is why we can identify with the contents of a myth, even after rejecting the literal interpretation as questionable, and recognize that it still contains a psychological truth.
It would appear to me that the age of 2, which Piaget equates with the emergence of the symbolic function, is the age of the child when he or she can be observed by adults to be using all four functions, but in reality the child has been doing so from the beginning, just as the ego comes into play at the first sign of body consciousness. New methods of research and clinical observation of infants appears to support the idea that the infant uses cognitive functions long before the end of the sensori-motor period.
Jackson and Jackson (1979, pp. 104-105) discuss research by Jerome Kagan of the Harvard Center for Cognitive Studies, who believes that infant cognitive activity is apparent around the end of the first year. He bases this on research that showed that infants' fixation on masks of the human face diminishes from 2 to 9 months of age, as if they could be more and more easily assimilated in the infants' maturing schemata for faces and so require less and less attention. However, after the age of 9 months until 36 months of age, the concentration of infants and children on masks increases. Kagan proposes that this shift manifests the emergence of a cognitive process in which infants formulate hypotheses to explain unfamiliar events.
Kagan (quoted in Jackson and Jackson, 1979) also discusses research that suggests that the heart rate of infants and adults increases during cognitive activity. Jackson and Jackson (1979) say, "If heart rate increases in infants signify an increase in cognitive activity, as they do in children and adults, the age of reason has taken a quantum leap backward to age one" (p. 106). I agree with this and suggest it may be much earlier than the age of one.
In more recent research, Wynn (1992) shows that 5-month-old infants are capable of simple arithmetic, a feat that I do not think Piaget would include in the sensori-motor period. Wynn states:
Research such as this and the previous examples indicates several things, one being the importance of what Wynn calls "purely perceptual discriminations" and the other the possibility that this kind of holistic recognition by infants may involve the function of intuition.
Piaget apparently did not regard perception as a source for conceptual knowledge. After giving various reasons, which are presented almost as mathematical equations in much of his writing on perception, he states that "It seems obvious, therefore, that operations, or intelligence in general, do not derive from the perceptual systems" (quoted in Piaget and Inhelder, 1966/1969, p. 50).
Miller (1983), in discussing Piaget's views on perception, states:
It appears to me that Piaget, at this point in his thinking, divides perception from cognition in an arbitrary way that is reminiscent of the philosophy that stated that body and soul are separate and distinct entities and the idea that the so-called highest form of knowing, conceptual thinking, is not based on the so-called lower methods of knowing, which would be conscious sensation that is known through the body, or unconscious sensation or intuition, which is also known through the body. Perception and action, connected with body sensation, cannot achieve reversibility and this is a reason Piaget often gives for the divorce of perception and reason.
I agree with Piaget that body sensations can be seen as perceptions and actions and that they are intuitions. He is saying very much the same thing that I have stated earlier, that sensation and intuition are two sides of the same coin. And Piaget went beyond Jung in his definition of what intuition is and where it comes from, but not in the value assigned to that particular function, which Jung considered essential for all the higher achievements of humans, whether scientific, artistic, or psychological. I do not agree that perception and cognition serve two different purposes, but that perception is instead the foundation for all future cognitive processes, including conceptual thinking. If the perception contains the knowing, there is no need for it to be reversible, at least in the beginning; intuition may give the concept in its totality before it is ever known rationally, in which case, the knowing would be complete, but the expression of what is known would necessarily have to be expressed in some form to communicate what is known to others. Art and science both serve this purpose quite well.
The bias that Piaget appeared to have concerning perception may have influenced his thinking in several ways, including his thinking concerning the function of intuition and the functions of sensation and especially the feeling function. Piaget was looking for the little scientist in every child, but he failed to find, indeed, did not appear to be looking for, the little artist, which may have been a flaw in his system, for one may necessitate the other.
Koestler (1975, pp. 146-147) states something like this when he says that the greatest of scientists have a basic trust in the intuitive function, and he gives examples that he says could be continued indefinitely, although he cannot think of any explicit statement to the contrary by any eminent mathematician or physicist:
This does not seem quite that paradoxical if one thinks of the intuitive function as containing what Jung called "passive thinking," which in the expression is brought to the level of scientific or conceptual thought which Jung called "active thinking."
Piaget talks about intuition, but thus far I have not determined that he ever gives it the importance that Koestler mentions, at least not in the making of a concept by an adult, whereas Jung thought it was indispensable for the complete realization of the Self. This is a large difference in their thinking and I am inclined to believe that Jung was correct; he gave all four functions equal value and insisted that all four should be developed as far as humanly possible in a conscious way. Overall, I believe that Jung's system was the more reasonable one, and that the inclusion of the intuitive function as essential for creativity and psychological wholeness was an aspect that Piaget missed in his overall theory of knowledge. Epistemology is more than the thinking function, and it is perhaps the complex relationship of the functions to each other that produces the end results.
Jung does not refer to Piaget in his work, which is understandable since Piaget was 21 years younger and was only 25 years old when Jung wrote Psychological Types, but Piaget (Piaget and Inhelder, 1966/1969) does refer to Jung and symbols when he states:
In other words, when psychology discovers the beginning of the symbolic function or the beginning of representations in the individual infant, the solution to the problem of how symbols are formulated will be found. Jung (1956/1912) said something about this in "Two Kinds Of Thinking," a description of directed thinking and passive thinking or what he later called intuition, when he stated:
Apparently, Piaget later (1928/1964) had similar thoughts when he said: "The day will come when child thought will be placed on the same level in relation to adult, normal, and civilized thought, as primitive mentality" (p. 256).
At this point, I agree with both Piaget and Jung; it is in the ontogenesis that the answer to the relationship between the intuitive function and the thinking function and the creation of symbols can be found, and the interpretations of ontological and cosmological myths may contain information that has yet to be discovered, especially the Western myth of Genesis.
It is also possible that child thinking ultimately is no different from adult thinking if what is conscious in one is unconscious in the other and vice versa. This would mean that the ontogenesis and the phylogenesis are not only comparable, as Jung described, but identical. In other words, the beginning contains the end, just as the end contains the beginning. In religious mythology this is expresses as a return to child consciousness.
Before continuing with Piaget's ideas on intuition, however, I would like to look at his views on the feeling function or what he referred to as affect. Piaget (1964/1967) states:
Here I am in complete agreement with Piaget; this describes and supports my earlier statement that there is not a thought that does not have a conscious or unconscious feeling related to it and not a feeling that does not have a conscious or unconscious thought attached to it. But which function comes first or do they originate at the same time? Piaget does not exactly say, although he implies that the functions of feeling and thinking commence simultaneously. But if the child is born into time, and feeling and thinking do not work together at the same time, as Jung describes, and one function is developed and conscious, while the other is unconscious, it would appear more reasonable and perhaps even obvious that the feeling function would precede the thinking function, even if the time involved is only a fraction of a second or a number of years. It also appears obvious that these two functions are contiguous to one another, but can still be described separately and be seen to serve two different purposes, at least in expression, if not always in content. Feeling can be observed in the behavior of a newborn infant, while thought is much more difficult, but not impossible, as recent research has shown. It would seem reasonable to me to assume that thinking and feeling appear simultaneously, but that feeling is conscious whereas the thought takes place in the unconscious.
Since Piaget thought that a close parallel existed between the development of affectivity and the intellectual functions and that they were indissociable aspects of every action, it is difficult to understand how he appears to discount the development of the feeling function in the beginning of life. Perhaps he simply was more interested in the structures of cognitive development in the child and realized the enormous difficulty of the relationship between two distinct, but closely related functions, namely, thinking and feeling. Elsewhere (Piaget and Inhelder, 1966/1969), concerning these two functions, Piaget states:
Translating this into Jungian terms, if we take patterns of behavior to be the archetypes that have not become conscious but are identical with the instincts, which Jung thought possible, the "perceptions or comprehensions which constitute their cognitive structure" would be either conscious sensation or unconscious sensation (intuition) or both and the perceiving functions or instinctual functions can be seen, as Piaget states, as constituting or creating the archetypes, which are only empty forms until they become conscious. In other words, the instincts create the archetypes and they are contained each in the other.
Here I certainly agree with Piaget, and this statement appears to support one of my premises in a meaningful way: If there can be no affective states without the intervention of perceptions or comprehensions which constitute their cognitive structure, the feeling of love or the knowing of love would provide a perception and a comprehension that would be affective and cognitive at the same time. Love and knowledge would be interchangeable! Perception or comprehension, known through the function of feeling, does not require a conscious image or representation when the experience is one of pure feeling. The image may follow, but it does not need to become conscious to be effective or known. Indeed, one feeling may engender numerous images, all representing the same feeling. The symbol itself does not unite the opposites; the symbol only represents an image of the experience. It is the experience that unites the opposites, expressed by the symbol.
If Piaget or, indeed, any other theorist of developmental psychology had seen affect as beginning at birth in the form of an infant demanding to be loved, the energetics of that particular behavior pattern can be seen as a marvelous example of the cognitive structures that underpin them; the human organism would not survive without a means to ensure that his needs and his demands be met in the world. What could be more reasonable?
If feeling starts at the beginning of life, and why dispute the idea that an infant feels, how could the intellectual functions start at a later time if they are indissociable, as Piaget suggests? That an infant feels and makes value judgments from the moment of birth appears so obvious that it has almost been overlooked in the field of psychology, but not in major religions of the world, or in mythological literature. In some Eastern religions, desire is the cause of all pain and suffering in the world, and eliminating desire is the means to end human suffering. In the Western myth of Genesis, the desire of Eve is seen as the downfall of humanity and it is her desire that causes her expulsion from Eden. In Greek mythology, Eros bursts from the golden egg and his name, which means "demanding love," tells us he represents love that desires. And the human newborn experiences the same thing; he or she is born with desire. The first conscious feeling is desire, which comes from the first conscious body sensation that delivers the message that he or she is no longer one with the world, but separate and in the world.
What appears missing in psychology is the possibility that when this first desire is satisfied and the infant is returned to a state where the opposites are united, a feeling that corresponds in intensity accompanies the experience. If Eros shatters the golden egg and desire is born, Psyche or soul (of the mother) returns the infant to a state of no desire, and the accompanying feeling is bliss, pleasure, or joy, all names given to the child of Psyche and Eros. This experience, which is probably the experience of most human infants, probably happens in the first few hours of life. The opposites are first separated by love that demands and then reunited by love that does not desire, the double-edged sword of Christ or two kinds of love and two types of consciousness.
Piaget says that love presupposes comprehension; therefore, to know love is knowledge, and knowledge is knowing love. Desire is the perception of a lack of something; to be without desire is the perception that nothing is lacking; both are knowledge on a feeling level.
The feeling function must follow the function of sensation. If, as Jung stated, feeling is a rational function the human newborn is a rational creature from the beginning and his or her reason begins with the feeling function. The first representation is an image contained in the personal unconscious of the thinking function and this process is repeated, probably until the thinking function gives expression to its contents in a conscious way.
Piaget's (1964/1967) stages begin at birth, yet he states that:
whenever one is dealing with a structure in the psychology of intelligence, its genesis can be traced to other more elementary structures which do not constitute absolute beginnings themselves but have a prior genesis in even more elementary structures, and so on ad infinitum. I say ad infinitum, but the psychologist will stop at birth. He will stop at the sensorimotor level, and at this level there is, of course, the whole biological problem because the neural structures themselves have their genesis, and so it continues. (p. 149)
This appeared to be true in the past, the psychologist did stop at birth, but that is not always the case today, however, as more psychologists are interested in the experience of the infant in utero and the possibilities that the ego may originate shortly before or after birth and that some kind of consciousness begins in utero.
The first 9 months of life in the womb may be more elementary in structure, but certainly would have a structure, according to Piaget's logic. If development occurs in a process of stages, it seems important to start at the beginning, which is not birth, but the developing fetus in the womb. The hypothesis that I suggest here can be seen to be dealing with the genesis of the previous structure, that is, with the experience of the child in the womb and the transition from the womb to the world. Piaget (1964/1967) says that "every structure has a genesis that emanates from a structure and culminates in another structure" (p. 49). If this is so, the myth of Genesis can be seen as a description of the structure previous to birth (Paradise) and as a description of the loss of Paradise or the Fall, which is birth. It also describes the beginning of what is presented in the myths as superconsciousness, which is not at birth, but in the womb, in the form of the psychological function of intuition.
The general hypothesis offered in this research can be seen to link with Piaget's theory if one determines that it attempts to describe the genesis of the previous structure, the womb experience, in the same way that Piaget starts with the description of the structure at birth. If the new structure always contains elements of the old structure, as Piaget claims, it seems reasonable to conclude that the newborn infant repeats the previous structure at the same time he or she is learning a new structure, which would describe integration and deintegration as a process, or assimilation and accommodation, to use Piaget's terms. And if every genesis refers to a previous genesis, what is psychological in the womb has yet to be explored thoroughly.
If we conclude that there is a kind of knowledge or a kind of consciousness innate in living matter, the biological problem, as Piaget calls it, can be overcome. The neural structures appear to arrange themselves in some sort of preconceived plan that constitutes an intelligent choice in most cases, whether we understand it or not.
Most theorists assume that cognition does not begin at birth; so-called "wired-in" responses are not considered real knowledge; yet the experience of sensation is accompanied by the feeling function and the feeling function gives a value to the experience and contains knowledge. Being in the womb is more than a physical experience; it also contains psychological experience in the form of intuitive knowing. Without this stage, which is an important part of the process, no other stage could develop. My thesis states that the infant has consciousness in the womb and that this consciousness is based on the functions of unconscious sensation, feeling, and thinking, which is the psychological function of intuition. In other words, the infant in the womb is in a state (which is also a process because it is in constant change) of conscious intuition. The rational functions of thinking and feeling exist as potential; the function of sensation is constantly active and totally unconscious. Pain and pleasure are not differentiated because the fetus cannot give value judgments (feeling function) and cannot name (thinking function) the experience.
If we concede that the archetype exists in the instinctual behavior of the organism, a connection can be made that unites them; in other words, intuition as an instinct is not different from the function of thinking, which produces the archetype. The archetype exists before, during, and after the instinct.
Piaget's description of thought is especially interesting and can be related to many of the assumptions I have previously made concerning two types of consciousness, the intuitive and ego consciousness; it is also of interest to relate his description of thought to Jung's idea's concerning "Two Types of Thinking" (1956/1912, p. 7) which I have previously described. Piaget (1964/1967) says:
Thought is like all behavior. The child does not adapt himself right away to the new realities he is discovering and gradually constructing for himself. He must start by laboriously incorporating them within himself and into his own activity. This egocentric assimilation characterizes the beginnings of thought just as it characterized the process of socialization. At every stage during the period from two to seven years, one finds all the transitions between two extreme forms of thought, but the second form gradually gains precedence over the first. The first of these forms is thought by means of pure incorporation or assimilation, in which egocentricity excludes all objectivity. The second form is that of thought adapted to others and to reality, (intuition) which is a preparation for logical thought. Most infantile thinking oscillates between these two extremes. (p. 22)
Here Piaget appears to be describing the ego and what I have referred to as soul or intuitive consciousness. Egocentricity is certainly the ego in its most extreme form and he describes the second form as that of intuition, which he sees as the precursor for all later and rational thought. Egocentricity is the first form of conscious thought and intuition is the second. My thesis is that intuition is the first conscious function in the womb, but at birth the emerging ego comes next, with conscious body sensations, conscious feeling or affect, which produces unconscious thinking. By a process of assimilation, the infant's ego is returned to the earlier state of intuitive functioning. The first reintegration would be returning the infant to his or her previous "genesis" to help orient himself or herself to the new state, that is, life in the world as opposed to life in the womb. By defining egocentricity as the first form of thought and a totally subjective form, it can be linked with the first desire or the first need, which contains a thought, were the infant able to express it in words. "I desire or I want the object, which is love," might express this thought, and such a statement would certainly be subjective and egocentric, but not necessarily pejorative.
What is the difference in what I propose than in the above statements by Piaget? It is in his statement that this process occurs in the years between 2 and 7; otherwise there is no difference. What Piaget describes as taking place in the sensori-motor functions, I would say takes place at birth; what he describes as taking place in the intuitive state, I would also describe as happening at birth or, at least one hopes that it does. Piaget states that most infantile thinking oscillates between these two extremes, but I think that one could also say that adult thinking often does the same thing, especially when the ego complex and the soul complex have not been connected in a conscious way.
The second form that Piaget calls thought adapted to others and to reality and a preparation for logical thought is intuition. I have described intuition as beginning in the womb and the ego as beginning at birth, and then returning to the intuitive state, which is the same order that Piaget gives, at least after birth. One can see that this describes what Jung (1956/1912) called "two kinds of thinking." One is active thinking and connected to the ego; one is passive and connected to the soul or intuition. It is also not difficult to see in mythology that most stories are describing an excess of ego or soul: A character, such as Oedipus, is in a state of egocentricity, or an archetype like Psyche, is in a state of excessive soul unconsciousness and looking for (Eros) ego development. Usually, the dilemma to be solved is the reuniting of these two extreme, infantile positions.
Piaget (1964/1967) describes the second form of thought, intuition, in this way:
At the other extreme there is the form of thought that is the most reality-oriented of any to be found in early childhood. This we have called intuitive thought. In a sense, it is sensori-motor experience and coordination that can be reconstituted or anticipated thanks to the ability to use representation. We shall return to this form of thought later because intuition is in some measure the logic of early childhood. (p. 24)
Since Piaget (1964/1967, glossary) defined intuition as "a form of thought in which judgments regarding physical reality are made on the basis of perception rather than reason," this definition can still be seen as being applicable to the experience of the child in the womb, especially since I am defining intuition as unconscious sensation, feeling, and thinking. It is not difficult to imagine that the human infant in utero starts life with a psychological function that will continue after birth and be the foundation for all future sensing, feeling and thinking in a state of consciousness. In this respect, I believe that intuition is more important than Piaget thought, as is perception; neither can be divided from conceptual thought. The structure of the mental system of the child in utero is different from the parts that make it up, simply because the child lives primarily in a state of intuition or soul that is only in existence when the other three functions are unconscious. The parts that comprise intuition, however, separate and become conscious after birth, only to reorganize in unity during states of a lowered ego consciousness, such as sleep or mutual love, or a conscious awareness that one is not only ego, but also soul and both in equal measure comprise the Self. One could call this idea an epigenesis, not only in a biological sense, but in a psychological way, because the mental development of the infant in utero is seen to develop from the successive differentiation of an originally undifferentiated structure, which I am calling the psychological function of intuition. Intuition is the instinct; soul is the archetype that expresses the original undifferentiated structure.
After stating four major factors in the development of the child, Piaget (Piaget and Inhelder, 1966/1969) states:
This statement confirms Piaget's final analysis concerning the cognitive and affective functions. They are not seen as separate entities, but forces meant to function in harmony.
Perhaps ego consciousness alone and even soul consciousness alone can be seen as afflicted infantile states of being, regardless of age, if both are not flowing back and forth in a rhythmic process designed to function as the Self.
Piaget's last statement appears to be both simple and profound; it echoes the words of Emily Dickinson (1960), "That Love is all there is, Is all we know of Love; It is enough, the freight should be Proportioned to the groove" (p. 714).
(Meister Eckhart, R. B. Blakney, trans.)
1941, p. 120.
Erich Neumann and the Primary Relationship
Neumann (1973/1976) sees the human child as going through
This argument does not say much about human development. One month in the life of a mammal could be compared to one year in the life of a human. The comparison of the human child to "other mammals at birth," then, does not support the idea that the child is in an embryonic stage for the first year of her or his life.
The kind of symbiosis that Neumann suggests implies that an infant has no individual experience or perceptions, save the one experience with mother. The psychological experience of the child before the age of 1 is difficult to discuss from this viewpoint because there does not appear to be any psychic experience beyond symbiosis.
From a classical Jungian perspective, Neumann (1973/1976) theorizes about the early, uroboric phase of child development, seeing that early experience as being symbolized by the myth of Paradise:
In the last sentence of this statement, Neumann describes quite beautifully what I would call the reintegration or assimilation of the infant, returning him to that primal state of unity that existed in the womb but is now experienced in the world. But a reintegration or assimilation would not be necessary unless there was first a deintegration, and what comes apart is the primal unity that was shattered by the experience of birth and ego consciousness, which is also the experience of the opposites. Although Neumann sees the infant after birth as in a state of Paradise that appears to be a replica of the child in the womb, he never describes the important differences between these two experiences or the complex transition that takes place as the infant leaves the womb and comes into the world.
"What distinguishes the child's experience from the adult's is its unique intensity: impressions falling fresh and sudden upon the sensibility are overpowering" (Goodenough, 1989, p. 144). The child that Neumann describes appears to have endured the profound and intense occurrence of being born without a disturbance in his primal unity! Where is the infant psyche when it is not in a state of unity or participation mystique with the mother after birth? Neumann does not say. Neither does he distinguish between the original, embryonic form of pre-ego existence of the prenatal child, and the same experience of the neonate in the world, recreated by the mother when she meets the infant's needs, which is always a reproduction of the original experience.
Neumann sees the primal relationship as nonpersonal, cosmic, and transpersonal because he believes the ego to be undeveloped, and it is this belief that appears to me to be problematic. An undeveloped ego is not the same as an absent ego, yet he often appears to confuse these differences. I think it is the presence of a beginning ego that does give the first experience of integration, deintegration, and reintegration significance and that includes the personal experience with the cosmic and with the transpersonal. What could be more personal than the beginning of a conscious relationship that will, as Neumann so adequately describes, influence all further relationships?
If what was experienced in the womb as unity is reproduced in the world and experienced as unity, inner and outer worlds have matched, that is, have been experienced as the same. The beginning ego would be experienced as almost identical with the soul complex if this is true, but the "oneness" would be in the world, and it would certainly depend upon relationship. It is the demanding ego (Eros) that needs to be appeased, thereby returning the infant to the original state of unity.
I agree with Neumann that the Paradise myth symbolizes the womb experience. I would not, however, agree with his idea that the total experience of the child after birth is almost identical with the fetus in the womb. This is true when the infant is in a state of reintegration, but leaves out the experience of deintegration and the possibility that it is the ego that deintegrates. If one sees the birth of the child as the first deintegration, in the sense that Fordham (1970, p.103) describes, the "wholeness" of the womb experience has been shattered by the experience of birth. Fordham (1970) states:
Fordham later says that this process can be observed at birth. The primary self deintegrates, that is, it comes apart from its original integration or state of wholeness. This coming apart is not acknowledged by Neumann as a shattering of the original unity. Fordham diverges here from Neumann (1973/1976), who sees the infant in the post-uterine phase of existence in the following way:
But how would this unity be possible after birth, when the infant experiences the opposites in the form of body sensations that tell her that she is hot or cold, hungry or filled, loved or ignored? It simply cannot be true that an infant does not experience the opposites in conscious functions, namely, sensation and feeling, and that when these functions are conscious, intuition and thinking are equally unconscious because they do not work consciously at the same time, as Jung described in Psychological Types. All the functions are working; half appear to be working on a conscious level and the other half appear to be working on an unconscious level.
If an infant is born in an extremely hot room, he or she would experience the conscious body sensation of being hot and the opposite experience of being cold would not be conscious, but it would certainly be a potential experience in the unconscious. And one could have unconscious intuitive knowledge of what cold body sensations (the opposite of what one is experiencing) are like even if one has never experienced them consciously. I think it quite possible that all the functions, in a healthy infant, even thinking, if it is considered an unconscious function, begin to work immediately after birth. The problem is that this is difficult to observe, but apparently not impossible, since research shows that infants are capable of mathematical calculations shortly after birth. They must be using some kind of thinking, and intuition appears to me to be the more likely function. Stern (1985) describes what might be the function of intuition:
Obviously, the division of the functions into four makes them very broad categories. Perhaps the unknown aspects (which are many) of the function of intuition contributes to the difficulty of understanding its purpose in early development. At any rate, the "unknown supra-modal form" that Stern describes appears to me to be a description of the psychological function of intuition. What is not registered in the conscious body sensations may be experienced and registered in unconscious body sensations (intuition), creating a "whole" experience that would be different (one would now be two) from the primary unity experience in the womb. It would, however, give the infant immediate access to two modes of being or two forms of consciousness, intuitive knowing or what Jung called unconscious perception and sensate knowing or what Jung called conscious perception (1971/1921, p. 463). This would explain how the baby appears to know (Stern, 1985, p. 51) so many things innately or without learning them. Conscious and unconscious interaction would be present from the beginning to the end of life and the end would be a natural return to the beginning.
Neumann's description sounds more like what Fordham calls reintegration. Because he does not allow for the flowing experience of ego to soul, or soul to ego, his description appears static and denies the possibility of infant consciousness.
Psychologically speaking, Paradise, or what Neumann calls "dual union," is "lost" at birth and "found" when the first deintegration flows back into reintegration, when the infant experiences the opposites eventually, that is, in succession rather than merged together as they previously were experienced. In mythology, this would be the transition from eternity to time. The cycle is then repeated, as Fordham (1970) suggests, "over and over" (p. 103).
Neumann (1973/1976) describes a similar process when he says that "whereas dual union is guaranteed by nature in the uterine embryonic phase, it emerges after birth as the first need of the mammal and especially of the human child" (p. 17). I would certainly agree that a duplicate of the original experience is the essential and first need of the human child, but Neumann apparently does not see the contradiction in his logic, because if the postnatal infant exists in a total state of participation mystique or unity, how can it have a need? To be needy is certainly not Paradisical; rather, it is more akin to being human than divine, and expresses that something is perceived as lacking by the body (sensations) or by the emotions (feeling) of the infant, or both. If there were no ego consciousness attached to these two functions, what purpose would they serve?
Neumann, the Circle (Mandala), the Uroboros, and the Self-Ego Axis
Perhaps no one before or since Erich Neumann has described the symbol of the uroboros with the same elegance, luminosity, and depth. Neumann uses this symbol as a representative of creation mythology, relying on other specific and varied myths to describe what he calls stages in the evolution of consciousness. Neumann (1949/1954) describes the uroboros in the following:
This is the ancient Egyptian symbol of which it is said: It slays, weds, and impregnates itself. It is man and woman, begetting and conceiving, devouring and giving birth, active and passive, above and below, at once.
As the Heavenly Serpent, the uroboros was known in ancient Babylon; in later times, in the same area, it was often depicted by the Mandaeans; its origin is ascribed by Macrobius to the Phoenicians. It is the archetype of the All One, appearing as Leviathan and as Aion, as Oceanus and also as the Primal Being that says; "I am Alpha and Omega." As the Kneph of antiquity it is the Primal Snake, the "most ancient deity of the prehistoric world. (p. 10)
Undoubtedly, Neumann has picked an important primary archetype to describe the fundamental experiences described in cosmological mythology. I see the Serpent as an archetype that is perhaps the most significant animal in most major and many minor mythologies, when seen as a representation of a deity, with or without the symbolism of the circle.
Neumann sees both the womb experience and the experience of the infant after birth, as phases that can be symbolized by the image of the uroboros, a symbol he equates to the experience of Paradise. Neumann (1973/1976) describes what he calls the pre-ego phase of existence (after birth) as, "Best symbolized by the 'uroboros,' the circular snake, touching its tail with its mouth and so 'eating' it, is characteristic of the oppositionless unity of this psychic reality" (p. 10). He (1973/1976) also describes this as "characteristic of the uterine embryonic situation, which is largely, though not fully, preserved after birth" (p. 10). Here I would agree that this is a good symbol to describe the child in the womb, because it can symbolize unity and the opposites undifferentiated and merged. What is missing in Neumann's explication is the expansion of the sentence "not fully preserved after birth," and this difficulty appears to be because of the lack of an ego in the newborn infant; Neumann cannot explain the state of deintegration because he does not acknowledge that there is an ego to deintegrate. Since we are never told of the experience of the infant when he or she is not in dual-union with the mother, or the possibility of any other relatedness during the first year, we would have to assume that the infant could not distinguish between his mother and father, or anyone else. This does not seem likely.
From the Genesis model that I propose, the symbol of the uroboros can also be seen as an image of two kinds of consciousness: When the dragon or serpent eats its own flesh, one can see that the subject and object are made of the same substance and what appears to be opposites are united and one in substance. Ego consciousness and soul consciousness, which appear to be opposite, are two (extreme) sides that make up the whole.
In The Golden Bough, Frazer (1981) discusses the symbolism of the sacrifice and eating of the flesh of the gods:
Thus we have the strange spectacle of a god sacrificed to himself on the ground that he is his own enemy. And as the god is supposed to partake of the victim offered to him, it follows that, when the victim is the god's old self, the god eats of his own flesh. Hence the goat-god Dionysus is represented as eating raw goat's blood; and the bull-god Dionysus is called "eater of bulls." On the analogy of these instances we may conjecture that wherever a god is described as the eater of a particular animal, the animal in question was originally nothing but the god himself. (p. 328)
This idea can also be seen in Christianity, where a "Father God" sacrifices his "Son" or "Child" for the love of humanity; the uroboros image is reenacted when the old God destroys the new God, who is also Himself.
Sometimes, Frazer tells us, a human child was the sacrifice that represented the god; whether child or animal, the god is partaking of his own flesh. Frazer never mentions this symbolism as similar to the Catholic mass (he was mainly describing "pagan" rites) which it certainly appears to be. I suggest that the symbolism represents psychological knowledge and experience that can be interpreted in the same way, whether the myth is from the alchemists in the form of the uroboros, or Greek in the description of the god Dionysus who devours himself, or Christian, where one eats the Body of Christ. In Christianity, the same idea holds true; at the last supper, which was the first communion, Christ shares the bread and the wine with his disciples, and says that they are his blood and his body, sacrificed for all humanity. The "old" God has sacrificed his son or child and the faithful are to participate by eating the sacrifice.
The eating of the flesh or the child or animal part of the god can be seen as the sacrifice of the ego or ego consciousness (the first birth) in order to gain soul consciousness (the second birth or rebirth); it is the ego that appears to be the enemy of the soul. Put in terms of psychic energy, the intuitive function or the instinctive function that contains the united opposites, that is., life and death united, is only gained when the ego functions, all or in part, are sacrificed. In Christianity, Christ did this for the world; faith negates the necessity of each human doing the same thing, at least in the death of the body, and so it is done symbolically in the partaking of the blood and body of Christ in the mass.
The animal or child part of the psyche is the enemy within, the ego who desires, the ego who believes itself to be separate from God and the world, the "I" that seeks perfection, for to seek is to be without the object. The animal or child is also the innocent ego, consciousness that believes itself to be superior, the child who knows the opposites, but is innocent of their unity, the Eros of desire who first cracked the cosmic egg.
The symbol of the uroboros is also related to time; like alpha and omega, it signifies the beginning and the end, which are both contained in the eternal "now." The uroboros seen thus would not be "sheltering the ego-germ" as Neumann (1973/1976, p. 10) describes it, but would represent the ego and its relationship with itself. Eating would represent the last stage, that of reunion, which would not describe the child in utero, but better describe the newborn in the process of becoming reintegrated.
Neumann (1973/1976) states:
Because the early, uroboric phase of child development is characterized by a minimum of discomfort and tension, and a maximum of well-being and security, as well as by the unity of I and thou, Self and world, it is known to myth as paradisiacal. (p. 14)
This description is one that appears ideal; we might wish all children to have this experience in the first year of life, but it does not seem likely that one can apply this condition to all children after birth, for many of them do not have this "maximum of well-being." Even the child who has a "good-enough" mother cannot be provided with the constant state of bliss that Neumann proposes. Every time the baby wakes hungry and crying, Paradise is lost.
In the womb, if the fetus has no ego consciousness, and the functions of active thinking, feeling, and sensation exist as unconscious and undifferentiated potential merged in the psychological state of intuition, one could compare this state with Paradise. If good or bad sensations can be experienced but not differentiated because there is no ego to make a value judgment, pain and pleasure would not exist or, rather, they would exist as the same experience. Neumann (1949/1954)describes this in part when he states:
This autarchy holds absolute sway in the womb, where unconscious existence is combined with absence of suffering. Everything is supplied of its own accord; there is not need of the slightest exertion, not even an instinctive reaction, let alone a regulating ego consciousness. One's own being and the surrounding world--in this case, the mother's body--exist in a participation mystique, never more to be attained in any environmental relationship. (p. 33)
Undifferentiated existence is not, however, identical with unconscious existence, and the word undifferentiated implies that consciousness and unconsciousness exist side by side or merged. In addition, it is difficult to imagine that a fetus has no instinctive reactions in the womb when all of its movements appear to be motivated by instinctual knowledge.
There would, in the womb, exist a state closer to the description of Paradise than the infant after birth, who would be more likely to experience both consciousness and the unconscious, which would necessarily occur simultaneously. When he experiences the object of his desire, he returns to the unity and Paradisical experience that Neumann describes; when he experiences needs not yet met (in other words, when he is crying)--and this is certainly a common experience of babies--he has lost Paradise.
Neumann's description of the appearance and development of the ego appear to reflect the mainstream world view of his time and time past; more recent research, although not always in agreement, generally asserts that the ego begins much earlier than Freud, Jung, and Neumann thought possible.
Neumann (1973/1976) believes that "any discussion from the standpoint of analytical psychology of the development of the personality--and especially of the child personality--must start from the assumption that the unconscious comes first and that consciousness follows" (p. 9). This appears to be a reasonable statement from a Jungian standpoint and a commonly held view, but I would disagree for the following reason: If intuition, defined as energy that contains all the other functions, is the first psychological function to appear in a human, it would necessarily exist in the unconscious, along with what Neumann calls its directing center, the Self. It would, in fact, be identical with the Self. But in that sea of unconsciousness, everything would have to exist and that would include a spark of consciousness. It is this spark that I am calling conscious intuition and unconscious sensation. It is the merging of the four functions in unconsciousness that creates one function that is the opposite, that is, consciousness that is not differentiated from what is unconscious.
The child in utero, then, could be seen as being contained in opposites that are not divided, which is a description of the Self. Ego and soul comprise the Self and they exist as one. If this is so, consciousness does not follow unconsciousness, as Neumann believes, but both become differentiated at the same time--at birth. The psyche of the neonate would be conscious and unconscious, as it was in the womb, but different because it is now separated into two forms of consciousness that have become differentiated. Thus, the soul complex and the ego complex could be seen to be born at the same time. Unconsciousness would not precede consciousness, as Neumann describes, in the womb or in the first experience of the newborn. The first experience of the infant, consciousness of one side of the opposites would create the personal unconscious, which would necessarily be a repository for the other side of the opposites that cannot be held in consciousness at the same time by the neonate. In other words, the infant would no longer experience hot and cold, good or bad, or any of the opposites as the same experience.
If we assume that the fetus exists in a state of consciousness and a state of unconsciousness, then birth would be the same experience, only reversed; ego consciousness would be equally present with soul consciousness, which is usually described as unconsciousness. The intuitive function becomes unconscious at birth because the opposites are experienced by the function of conscious sensation, which does not work at the same time because they are opposite to one another. Thus, the personal unconscious comes into being at birth when the functions of conscious sensation and conscious feeling begin. The function of intuition becomes one of the four psychological functions and is unconscious, and the thinking function, which is opposed to the feeling function, is also unconscious.
Jung (1971/1921) said the following concerning psychic energy:
Identification with one particular function at once produces a tension of opposites. The more compulsive the one-sidedness, and the more untamed the libido which streams off to one side, the more daemonic it becomes. When a man is carried away by his uncontrolled, undomesticated libido, he speaks of daemonic possession or of magical influences. In this sense manas and vac are indeed mighty demons, since they work mightily upon men. All things that produced powerful effects were once regarded as gods or demons. Thus, among the Gnostics, the mind was personified as the serpent-like Nous, and speech as Logos. (emphasis Jung's, p. 207)
It must be remembered that I am attempting to describe psychic energy as it begins at birth. I am often discussing what might occur in split seconds and minutes, but this is the experience of the infant in time. I do not think it unreasonable to assume that a newborn infant might have an identification with the function of sensation as he enters the world and becomes conscious of the opposites or that it might be one-sided in the first few moments of life. I can image birth as a profound experience, if nothing else and creation myths appear to be an expression of that experience. According to von Franz (1972),
Creation myths are of a different class from other myths--hero myths, or fairy tales for instance--for when they are told there is always a certain solemnity that gives them a central importance; they convey a mood which implies that what is said will concern the basic things of existence, something more than is contained in other myths. Therefore, one may say that as far as the feeling and emotional mood which accompanies them is concerned, creation myths are the deepest and most important of all myths. (emphasis mine, p. 5)
The experience of human birth may be important enough to parallel the "deepest and most important of all myths," as von Franz describes. And Jung (1971/1921) was also correct that
the idea of a creative world-principle is a projected perception of the living essence in man himself. In order to avoid all vitalistic misunderstandings, one would do well to regard this essence in the abstract, as simply energy. On the other hand, the hypostatizing of the energy concept after the fashion of modern physicists must be rigorously rejected. The concept of energy implies that of polarity, since a current of energy necessarily presupposes two different states, or poles, without which there can be no current. Every energic phenomenon (and there is no phenomenon that is not energic) consists of pairs of opposites: beginning and end, above and below, hot and cold, earlier and later, cause and effect, etc. The inseparability of the energy concept from that of polarity also applies to the concept of libido. Hence libido symbols, whether mythological or speculative in origin, either present themselves directly as opposites or can be broken down into opposites. (p. 202)
It is not essential for one function to be up when the other is down. They can both be present at the same time. "In these cases there is also no question of a differentiated type, but merely of relatively undeveloped thinking and feeling" (Jung, 1971/1921, p. 406). If we speak of the differentiation of one function to its fullest capacity, however, we must speak of the subordination of the opposing function if it has remained more or less unconscious. If a process for the differentiation of the functions exists, there is no reason to believe that it might not start at birth and function in the same way it does in later life, and this would certainly be an involvement with the polar opposites.
All four functions can be seen to begin at birth; the two that are conscious are sensation and feeling, and the two that are unconscious are thinking and intuition. Sensation necessarily delegates intuition to the unconscious, but it remains the bridge to consciousness. Only later, after the first experiences of the newborn, can consciousness be said to be divided from the unconscious because there would be no unconsciousness without a conscious attitude at the same time. In other words, consciousness is necessary not only as a way of communication, but also as a method that allows for division and separation of the opposites that would otherwise exist undifferentiated, which was their status in the womb or the collective unconscious or the Self (see Figures 2, and 3). For these reasons, I would not agree with Neumann that the unconscious comes first, followed by consciousness. Consciousness disrupts the collective unconscious or the Self and creates consciousness and unconsciousness simultaneously.
Soul consciousness needs to be differentiated from the Self. This is a distinction that Jung himself makes when he describes the soul archetype as being the bridge to the Self. Symbolically speaking, it is the marriage of the soul with the ego that leads to the birth of the Divine Child, archetype of the Self. But this marriage describes a return to the original Self, a reintegration, whereas what I have just described is the division of the original Self or a deintegration into psychological functions or energy that can be identified separately.
We cannot assume, however, with Neumann and possibly Jung before him, that soul consciousness is always given up for ego consciousness. (This may be true in infancy at the moment of birth, but thereafter they work or malfunction together.) It may happen that the reverse is just as possible; Psyche or soul needs Eros or ego consciousness in the same way that Eros or the ego needs Psyche or soul consciousness. In the psyche, both are transformed in the relationship and the marriage. It is possibly a mistake to assume that these two archetypes are not active and related from the beginning of life because they represent psychological experience that exists from the beginning and continues throughout life. In other words, the split in human consciousness, which produces two kinds of consciousness, attempts to heal itself in every phenomenological experience where it feels divided. Attempt is an apt word because sometimes there is a marriage of the two types of consciousness and sometimes there is not. In this case, the attempt continues. This process is what Fordham describes as integration and deintegration.
The primary difficulty contained in Neumann's description of the child in the primal relationship appears to be a one-sidedness that allows only for the soul consciousness of the child for 1 year, an exceedingly long period, where the child appears in a rather static limbo awaiting its second birth, the birth of consciousness. But if we consider that this oneness originates in the womb and is disturbed by the act of birth, where one becomes two, it is ego consciousness that returns to soul consciousness that is the second birth because this is a return to the original unity. Birth creates two forms of consciousness; re-birth returns ego and soul to the Self or a state of oneness. This implies we are born again into the world at birth when and if we are met with unconditional love from other in the beginning, symbolized by the archetypes of the Divine Virgin and Divine Child. This second birth experience can happen at any age, but it begins at birth. It is also "the eternal return" which Eliade (1991) describes as
the death of the individual and the death of humanity are alike necessary for their regeneration. Any form whatever, by the mere fact that it exists as such and endures, necessarily loses vigor and becomes worn; to recover vigor, it must be reabsorbed into the formless if only for an instant; it must be restored to the primordial unity from which it issued; in other words, it must return to "chaos" (on the cosmic plane) to "orgy" (on the social plane), to "darkness" (for seed), to "water" (baptism on the human plane, Atlantis on the plane of history, and so on). (p. 88)
It is the needy ego, the individual ego, that is the "form" that Eliade describes, and it is the same ego that is "reabsorbed into the formless if only for an instant" and restored to the primordial unity from which it issued. It is this instant that enables the ego to change and the repetition of the act that allows for growth in individual development. Beebe (1987) describes this process when he states of Jung:
In the quest for consciousness, he saw, in Symbols of Transformation, the reaching back toward the mother--not as Freud had imagined it--as the reawakening of the enormous infantile longing for the first love of one's life--but rather as an initiation drama in which the hero goes back into the mother's womb to wrest back from her--something precious she's hoarding under her self and that precious thing is consciousness. (lecture, tape 1)
Thus, obtaining the "precious thing" of consciousness may always necessitate a return to the mother/soul archetype to create anything new.
In speaking of Neumann and Fordham and their respective theories, Samuels (1987) states:
It is possible to say that each theory is half of a whole. Viewed together, Fordham's and Neumann's models enable us to speak of a "Jungian" approach to early development with important differences of opinion expressing themselves in the Schools. (p. 160)
With respect particularly to the early beginnings of human development, this appears to be true; Neumann's ideas on the first year of life make it relatively easy to dismiss what actually occurs besides symbiosis with the mother. Fordham, on the other hand, takes on the more difficult job of attempting to describe what happens to the infant shortly after birth. Neumann's description of the child appears to revolve around the soul (undifferentiation and unconsciousness) function, whereas Fordham is concerned with the child as a separate person, which is primarily a description of the ego complex. Fordham, however, attempts to unite these two states of consciousness and describe how they work together shortly after birth. Obviously, Neumann cannot do this because of his original premise that a child is not psychologically born until the age of 1 year.
Besides the uroboros as the first stage, Neumann names the archetypes of the Great Mother, the World Parents, the Hero, and Osiris, among others. I will focus primarily on Neumann's descriptions of the beginning of life. Many of the archetypes and symbols that Neumann uses can be seen immediately before and after birth, if they are presented as archetypal energy related to the four functions. If this is so, consciousness would not occur in stages as depicted by Neumann, but the archetypes would describe primary experiences that take many shapes and forms, depending upon the culture and creature who experiences and describes them. The hero, for instance, can be imagined as being present and representing the early ego/body experiences as well as any life experience, at any age, that requires that particular psychological energy. The separation of the world parents by the hero can just as easily represent the newborn infant who has split or destroyed his own original unity (contained in the World Parents). Consciousness (Divine Father archetype) and unconsciousness (Divine Mother archetype) can be seen as the undifferentiated Self (Divine Child archetype), who by being born into the world of opposites, separates the World Parents, who represent the first opposites.
Neumann (1949/1954) combines two primary symbols in his explication of the evolution of consciousness, the circle or mandala and the uroboros, or the serpent who bites his tail, creating the magic circle. Neumann describes the circle:
One symbol of original perfection is the circle. Allied to it are the sphere, the egg, and the rotundum--the "round" of alchemy. It is Plato's round that was there in the beginning: Therefore the demiurge made the world in the shape of a sphere, giving it that figure which of all is the most perfect and the most equal to itself.
Circle, sphere, and round are all aspects of the Self-contained, which is without beginning and end; in its preworldly perfection it is prior to any process, eternal, for in its roundness there is no before and no after, no time; and there is no above and no below, no space. All this can only come with the coming of light, of consciousness, which is not yet present; now all is under sway of the unmanifest godhead, whose symbol is therefore the circle.
The round is the egg, the philosophical World Egg, the nucleus of the beginning, and the germ from which, as humanity teaches everywhere, the world arises. It is also the perfect state in which the opposites are united--the perfect beginning because the opposites have not yet flown apart and the world had not yet begun, the perfect end because in it the opposites have come together again in a synthesis and the world is once more at rest. (p. 8)
If no light or consciousness were present, how could unity that contains the opposites of darkness and light be possible? Neumann's description appears to equate the circle, and therefore the Self, with a sort of total unconsciousness rather than undifferentiated energy, and this is an important distinction. Consciousness and the ego emerge from the Self, leaving the Self as the opposing factor, which is unconsciousness. The Self, in other words, divides into the ego and Self or consciousness and unconsciousness. Neumann calls this the separation of the world parents and equates it with the principle of opposites (1949/1954, p. 102). Heaven and earth, among other symbols, represent the original parents.
This idea appears to be the basis for the ego-self axis that is traditionally described in analytical psychology (see Figure 13). Edinger (1974), who later amplifies Neumann's concept, states the following:
Neumann, on the basis of mythological and ethnographical material, has depicted symbolically the original psychic state prior to the birth of ego consciousness as the uroboros, using the circular image of the tail-eater to represent the primordial Self, the original mandala-state of totality out of which the individual ego is born. (p. 4)
I find Neumann's description and Edinger's adherence to that description of the circle or the Self as a symbol of perfection and wholeness, problematic. Undifferentiation is not the same thing as unconsciousness, yet the Self is scribed as the unconscious. If the Self contains the All, it necessarily contains both consciousness and unconsciousness in their undifferentiated form; one form would not outweigh the other. Can one assume that consciousness depletes itself totally, leaving the Self in a total state of unconsciousness? Apparently Edinger (1974) is aware of what appears to be a logical discrepancy in this idea when he later states:
According to these diagrams [see Figure 13 for diagram of Edinger's Self-ego axis], and to the method of this presentation, it would seem as though ego and Self became two separate entities, the ego being the smaller lump and the Self the larger lump of the totality. This difficulty is inherent in the subject matter. If we speak rationally, we must inevitably make a distinction between ego and Self which contradicts our definition of Self. The fact is, the conception of the Self is a paradox. It is simultaneously the center and the circumference of the circle of totality. Considering ego and Self as two separate entities is merely a necessary rational device for discussing these things. (p. 6)
I agree that there is "difficulty inherent in the subject matter." I also believe, however, that the paradox can be seen in a different way. According to the ego-self model, the Self, as a symbol of totality, could just as easily be seen as consciousness (usually symbolized as the masculine principle) which would reverse the whole idea, suggesting that unconsciousness (usually symbolized as the feminine principle) is the ego and flows out from consciousness, which would be the Self. This is an interesting idea, though I doubt that Neumann would have adhered to it, even though Jung (1959/1938) said:
The conflict between the two dimensions of consciousness is simply an expression of the polaristic structure of the psyche, which like any other energic system is dependent on the tension of opposites. That is also why there are no general psychological propositions which could not just as well be reversed; indeed, their reversibility proves their validity. (p. 269)
The reverse of the ego-self axis reveals an attitude close to Eastern psychology, where ordinary ego consciousness is the illusion and Self consciousness the goal. It is possible that this reversibility gives a certain amount of validity to both positions or at least shows a connection between opposed archetypal constructions. The word "consciousness" as Edinger (1984, p. 35) tells us, means "to know, to be cognizant of." Edinger also explains the etymology of the word, with the conclusion that consciousness means "knowing with" or "seeing with an other" (p. 36.) I think that most therapists would agree, however, that there can be an "unconscious knowing" (dreams and the information contained in art are examples) which appears to be a contradiction in terms. If we translate this as "knowing with not knowing," we can say that we know without knowing that we know. This level of knowing appears to be rooted in the body. Stern (1985) describes something similar when he asks about infants:
It must be asked, what kind of a sense of self might exist in a preverbal infant? By "sense" I mean simple (non-self-reflexive) awareness. We are speaking at the level of direct experience, not concept. By "of self" I mean an invariant pattern of awareness that arises only on the occasion of the infant's actions or mental processes. An invariant pattern of awareness is a form of organization. It is the organizing subjective experience of whatever it is that will later be verbally referenced as the "self." This organizing subjective experience is the preverbal, existential counterpart of the objectifiable, self-reflective, verbalizable self. (p. 7)
What Stern is calling sense or non-self-reflexive awareness I would describe as body awareness and the beginning of ego and consciousness that is rooted in the body. There is a subjective (introverted) "I" (body) that knows by direct experience which is "the preverbal, existential counterpart of the objectifiable, self-reflective, verbalizable self." I think that it may even be possible that this organizing subjective experience precedes and determines the form and content (the archetype) that registers in the psyche/body /memory of the infant, as an unconscious thought.
Concerning Eastern philosophy, Jung (1959/1938) states:
There are dreams and visions of such an impressive character that some people refuse to admit that they could have originated in an unconscious psyche. They prefer to assume that such phenomena derive from a sort of "superconsciousness." Such people make a distinction between a quasi-physiological or instinctive unconscious and a psychic sphere or layer "above" consciousness, which they style the "superconscious." As a matter of fact, this psyche, which in Indian philosophy is called the "higher" consciousness, corresponds to what we in the West call the "unconscious." Certain dreams, visions, and mystical experiences do, however, suggest the existence of a consciousness in the unconscious. But, if we assume a consciousness in the unconscious, we are at once faced with the difficulty that no consciousness can exist without a subject, that is, an ego to which the contents are related. Consciousness needs a centre, an ego to which something is conscious. We know of no other kind of consciousness, nor can we imagine a consciousness without an ego. There can be no consciousness when there is no one to say "I am conscious." (pp. 282-283)
Here I disagree with Jung. Whenever there is a conscious thought, feeling, sensation or intuition, the opposite is present in the unconscious and they "exist" side by side. What is not present in the unconscious is the full fledged, reflecting ego and it is this very lack that gives unconsciousness its own peculiar form. If the Self is seen as unconsciousness and at the same time "a transpersonal center of latent consciousness and obscure intentionality" that is "at first a defeat for the ego" but leads to "light born from darkness" (Edinger, 1986b, p. 9) and an encounter with the Self, why not call it superconsciousness? The "light born from darkness" is not necessarily the identical light of ordinary ego consciousness. If it were the same, why would a journey through the unconscious or the defeat of the ego be necessary in the first place? If the Self is the place of wholeness and unity, the light that it sheds is on what was unconscious and conscious at the same time, showing the unity of opposites.
Perhaps this position can only be maintained in ordinary ego consciousness by paradox. It seems to me that what ego consciousness can know is that the "not knowing" of unconsciousness, the soul, the entering into the darkness, the "death" or sacrifice of ego consciousness is the route that leads back to the Self. Here ego and soul, light and darkness, consciousness and unconsciousness exist as one, in a state of undifferentiation that is a reproduction of the original experience. Consciousness and unconsciousness are two extremes of one spectrum that converge and at the midpoint where they cross is the energy of superconsciousness, represented in many myths as the Divine Child.
Jung (1959/1938) goes on to state the following:
One hopes to control the unconscious, but the past masters in the art of self-control, the yogis, attain perfection in samadhi, a state of ecstasy, which so far as we know is equivalent to a state of unconsciousness. It makes no difference whether they call our unconscious a "universal consciousness"; the fact remains that in their case the unconscious has swallowed up ego-consciousness. They do not realize that a "universal consciousness" is a contradiction in terms, since exclusion, selection, and discrimination are the root and essence of everything that lays claim to the name "consciousness." "Universal consciousness" is logically identical with "unconsciousness." (p. 287)
I do not believe samadhi (enlightenment) is equivalent to only the state of unconsciousness. Jung does not appear to make a distinction here between the soul and the Self and samadhi is more akin to an experience of the Self, which would contain both consciousness and unconsciousness. This is why it is called "universal consciousness" or "superconsciousness." This appears to be the same problem that Neumann has when he divides the Self into consciousness and unconsciousness and then arbitrarily assigns the ego to consciousness and the Self to unconsciousness. There is no reason to believe that the Self is identical with a state of total unconsciousness. Certainly the ego is "swallowed," as Jung describes it by unconsciousness, but this is the necessary process by which the soul can be experienced and the reason that mystics (Eastern or Western) attempt to rid themselves of ego. When the ego is withdrawn or lowered, one sees and "knows" with soul consciousness (knowing with not knowing), which "gives birth" to the Divine Child or what Jung called the Self.
Thus, when Jung says that there can be no consciousness when there is no one to say "I am conscious," he appears to be describing only the function of conceptual thinking and not the possibility of direct experience or what Stern above describes as "simple (non-self-reflexive) awareness." Jung, in his early struggle to define intuition and distinguish it from active, conceptual thinking, called it "passive thinking." Both terms, it seems to me, describe a state of being or type of energy where consciousness and unconsciousness exist without division.
I have refrained throughout this work from using Jung's description of the archetypes of anima and animus, using instead the word "soul" or "spirit" to include either the masculine or feminine. This is primarily because I believe that what can be defined as masculine in a woman, or feminine in a man, other than an archetypal reference, is a subjective value judgment subject to change depending upon the culture or individual who describes it. Obviously, there are physiological differences between male and female (and sometimes between male and male or female and female). I do not believe that this distinction can be made in the realm of psychology, other than the superficial differences described in pop psychology, which are mostly based on mythological symbols and archetypes that are taken as literal truths and projected onto real people, usually to the detriment of the female. Neither do I believe there is a male ego and a female ego, nor a female spirit and male soul.
I do not think that "it can be established at once as a basic law: even in woman, consciousness has a masculine character" (Neumann, 1949/1954, p. 42). A masculine character is the archetypal description of consciousness, not present in all mythology as an absolute and not to be confused with a living female. At times, Neumann insists he is describing archetypes that are present in both sexes; at other times, he makes no distinction whatever and appears to confuse the archetype with the living male or female. Neumann also asserts that: "man experiences the masculine structure of his conscious as peculiarly his own, and the feminine unconscious as something alien to him, whereas woman feels at home in her unconscious and out of her element in consciousness" (1949/1954, p. 125). That is Neumann's perception; it certainly is not my perception or my experience. I perceive this as a blatant sexist statement, the undercurrent of which permeates a great deal of Neumann's interpretations of mythology, as well as his description of what he calls feminine psychology. Sexism (in the work of Neumann or Jung, who is also guilty of it at times) is not the topic of this work. However, it appears necessary to state that I can feel "at home" (or the reverse) in my unconscious, but no less "at home" (or the reverse) in the state of consciousness. I value consciousness. I do not, however, value one state of being more than the other, which I think Jung and Neumann often do. If we call ego consciousness "male" and unconsciousness "female" and insist this is more than a symbolic use (Neumann, 1949/1954, p. 42), that it applies to living men and women, and then choose consciousness as the supreme value, we are simply reinforcing the sexism and prejudices of the historical past that insist upon the superiority of the male and the inferiority of the female.
I consider consciousness and unconsciousness to be mutually valuable and mutually dependent upon one another. What some women and some men may value more or less is ego consciousness (associated symbolically with the male) or soul consciousness (associated symbolically with the female). The individual human psyche appears to contain and need both positions in equal measure.
I think that the soul archetype is more than the unconscious side of the masculine sex or what Jung called "anima" and that the spirit or animus archetype is more than the unconscious masculine side of the feminine sex. This is not to say that these terms cannot be used or applied, or that they sometimes fit. I am simply choosing not to use them in this work. I see ego, soul, and Self as archetypes that represent psychic energy; psychic energy does not have gender, only people have gender. Newborn infants, in my experience and to my knowledge, do not appear to display a pull toward consciousness or the unconscious, based upon their anatomical differences.
Much of modern developmental research does not appear to support Neumann's ideas concerning the newborn infant and ego consciousness. Stern (1985), for instance, assumes that a sense of the self exists long before self-awareness and language:
If we assume that some preverbal senses of the self start to form at birth (if not before), while others require the maturation of later-appearing capacities before they can emerge, then we are freed from the partially semantic task of choosing criteria to decide, a priori, when a sense of self really begins. (p. 6)
Additional recent research from the field of neurobiology may have significant applications in developmental psychology. This research can also be seen as a meaning of the ancient uroboros archetype, in a completely different way than previously described by Neumann. I think it could be named "The Uroboros Update."
University of California at Berkeley neurobiologist, Dr. Walter J. Freeman (1995), has just published his book, Societies of Brains, the results of which appear to address some of the issues that von Franz (1972, p. 42) discusses in her book Creation Myths, concerning the requirement of additional investigation of physical and psychic interaction. Dr. Freeman states:
This appears to support (from a scientific and experimental perspective--data based on observed facts) von Franz's definition (and Jung's) concerning objective reality. Von Franz (1972) correctly states that
the only reality we can talk about, or with which we are really concerned, is the image of reality in our field of consciousness. The spontaneous argument of the extravert, who is by temperament terribly object bound, will be to say: "yes, but there is a reality, only we cannot talk about it." There we can only say that if he likes to assume it, he may, but it is a sheer subjective assumption. (p.11)
An "objective reality" seems unconvincing, unless it is seen as the collective view of the majority, which usually "rules," but it is not necessarily objective truth. Another possibility is that the only objective reality is the reflective view of all possible subjective realities.
Von Franz's statement appears to me to be in keeping with Jung's (1971/1921) statement: "Human reason, accordingly, is nothing other than the expression of man's adaptability to average occurrences, which have gradually become deposited in firmly established complexes of ideas that constitute our objective values" (pp. 458-459).
Both of these statements are in keeping with one of the major premises in this research, namely, that the child, called human and/or divine, subjectively creates (or co-creates with God, if seen in that way) the universe or creates her or his reality.
Freeman's research data also appear to support what I have been describing from an entirely different approach (using the psychological functions as described by Jung), namely, that the human child creates her/his world. Freeman (1995) continues:
Freeman is right to say that "phenomenology will take a bath in these data" or that phenomenology should do so! The "initial position of every mind must be solipsistic," including that of the infant at birth. I came to separate but similar conclusions in various ways, one from tracing information in the mythology and attempting to connect it with Jung's terminology and the psychological functions. I have from the beginning of my research suggested that ego consciousness has its beginnings in the function of conscious and subjective (introverted) body sensations. The first "object" is the infant's (subject) own body. The move toward the object in the world (extraversion) is the move toward the created (by the infant) image of the object, which is always subjective, even though, as von Franz (1972, p. 11) described, the temperament of the "object bound extravert" would like to believe otherwise. It could be that modern empirical neuroscience (for example, Dr. Freeman's research) has succeeded in demonstrating ideas that Jung previously described.
Freeman (1995) states:
From my analysis of EEG patterns, I speculate that consciousness reflects operations by which the entire knowledge store in an intentional structure is brought instantly into play each moment of the waking life of an animal, putting into immediate service all that an animal has learned in order to solve its problems, without the need for look-up tables and random access memory systems. (p. 136)
Could this description possibly apply to the newborn, who might be doing something quite similar? It is possible. Is it possible that this describes what Neumann (1966) attributed to
What Neumann refers to as "matriarchal consciousness" (and he here identifies two types of consciousness) is what I am suggesting is the result of the intuitive function. The substance that von Franz compares with matter is what I perceive to be just that--matter--or the living body of the human infant (from cell to fetus to newborn) who first experiences life by the mysterious instinct of conscious, subjective intuition, which, like a god, provides knowledge and direction to the living organism.
This function, however, would not only belong to what Neumann describes as "matriarchal consciousness," but would be the primary method for obtaining any new knowledge at any age. It is not that this type of consciousness gives less significance to ego-centered patriarchal consciousness, but that it would be the very foundation for ego consciousness, which I see as only symbolically related to patriarchal consciousness. The psyche of the beasts and the children along with women, pagans and men would create consciousness in the same way.
"There is no objective world independent of the observer" (Chopra, 1993, p. 11). We are the uroboros that bites its own tail, for we must eat (sacrifice, destroy, kill) the conscious ego and the old image we have created (may love and cling to) before we are given a view of the other images we have also created in the darkness of unknowing. We create both. We are the eater and we are that which is eaten. We are the creator and the destroyer, the subject and the object. The uroboros archetype, therefore describes exactly that--we are the beginning and the end. Our perceptions, whether conscious (sensation) or unconscious (intuition) are what is known of the object.
Dr. Freeman (1995) asks the question: "How can knowledge be based on the experience of each individual separately, through the sensory systems that form the windows of minds onto the world"? (p. 3). Perhaps if it were not so, there would be no need whatsoever for human relationship. He goes on to ask:
Above all, how do they [brains] communicate with other brains? This problem is not translating or mapping knowledge from one brain onto another. It is the prior establishment of mutual understanding through shared actions, during which brains create the channels, codes, agreement and protocols that precede that reciprocal mappings of information in dialogues. (p. 3)
It appears essential to first understand the concept that we create, from our experience, our bodies and our brains, what we call knowledge. If all knowledge is self-referential, to whom would I refer, other than another person to inquire what her or his brain has created and share the similarities or differences in our individual experiences?
R. Buckminster Fuller (1972) put it thus: "All we have ever seen is and always will be in the scopes of our brain's TV station. All that humanity has ever seen and will ever see is his own image-ination" (p. 122). If that is so, then the uroboros archetype is describing more than the original experience of undifferentiated containment in the womb of the mother. It is also describing the experience of any age, the end as well as the beginning. It is describing the eternal now. The "prize" to be had, is consciousness that the ego (Serpent) is none other than the Serpent tail he eats, which is also the ego in its primary form, the soul or what I would call the absence of ordinary ego consciousness.
It is not my purpose to deny the numerous important insights of Jung, Neumann, Edinger, or others, generated by the ego-self axis, but simply to say that other views are possible. Exploring the development of the four psychological functions as they might occur in infancy is a different approach and difficult to compare with previous concepts. It is like opening a previously locked door to get to the same room. I will describe what I believe to be an important door that has thus far never been entirely opened.
Samuels (1987) states that Jung "contradicts himself" when asking if the child is an extension of the psychology of the parents or can be recognized as an individual in his or her own right. Samuels sees this as a weakness in Jung and "Jung at his most ambivalent" (pp. 139, 140). He goes on to assert that a strength can be found in this weakness insofar as the child must relate to the real parents and the parents must accept the child's individuality.
Jung apparently embraced both positions in this seeming dichotomy; however, failing to choose one position over the other does not mean that Jung is what Samuels calls "ambivalent and weak," if we conclude that the child as an extension of his parents and the child as an individual can be equally operative. This appears to be Jung's conclusion by the year 1931, when he wrote his introduction to Wickes' book, The Inner World of Childhood. Jung (Wickes, 1988) states that "it would be a very grave omission for parents and educators to ignore psychic causality, just as it would be a fatal mistake to attribute all the blame to this factor alone. In every case both factors have a part to play, without the one excluding the other" (p. xx).
Later Jung (Wickes, 1988) repeats his position, which takes into account both sides of this controversy:
The psychology of "identity," which precedes ego-consciousness, indicates what the child is by virtue of his parents. But what he is as an individuality distinct from his parents can hardly be explained by the causal relationship to the parents. We ought rather to say that it is not so much the parents as their ancestors--the grandparents and great-grandparents--who are the true progenitors, and that these explain the individuality of the children far more than the immediate and, so to speak, accidental parents. In the same way the true psychic individuality of the child is something new in respect of the parents and cannot be derived from their psyche. It is a combination of collective factors which are only potentially present in the parental psyche, and are sometimes wholly invisible. (p. xxii)
These statements make it clear that Jung did not choose identity with the parents over individuality, but thought that both were combined in one complex and human psyche. What Jung refers to as the pre-ego consciousness of the child soul, I am in this research calling soul consciousness; what is seen as individuality, I would refer to as the beginning of ego consciousness. There is no reason to believe that Jung neglected the importance of either type of consciousness. It is soul consciousness that connects ego consciousness to the Self, the archetype for wholeness that includes individuality. What Jung apparently did not conclude was the possibility that the unconscious soul has its own form of consciousness.
Frances Wickes, along with Erich Neumann, represents the classical school of Jungian thought, and one emphasis in her work appears to be primarily concerned with the state of participation mystique, where the unconsciousness of parent and child are merged. Wickes (1988) explains that "a compendium of child psychology would present both sides of the picture; here we deal with only one: the inner side" (p. 35). By this statement I understand that Wickes is talking primarily of what I would describe as soul consciousness. But it is difficult to imagine that she, or anyone, can present only one side of the picture, to do so would deny the relationship of the inner world with that of the outward world, which I think is constant from the beginning.
In a statement concerned with beginnings, Wickes (1988) states:
From the time of its conception the child is moving toward the attainment of an individual life. As in the womb his body is being prepared for an individual and separate existence, so during the necessary identifications of infancy his psyche is being prepared for separate and individual life. At each tiny step forward he is beset by two great currents which from his birth to his death he must meet whenever he is confronted with a new situation: the surge toward the new, and the pull backward toward the safety of the old. (p. 78)
I believe this statement contains a subtle truth that neither Wickes nor Jung followed to its logical conclusion. The "two great currents" that appear to be opposed begin at birth and end with death and can be seen as two forms of consciousness. But this idea negates the possibility that an infant only lives in a state of participation mystique, because if that were the case there would not be two great currents that begin at birth. What is present besides identity with the mother, which is identity with the All if the mother is in soul, is individuality, which must be seen as related to ego consciousness. In other words, soul consciousness always contains the ego, just as birth divides soul from ego and causes two kinds of consciousness, one of soul and one of ego.
If participation mystique is an unconscious identity of subject with object, it would be almost identical with the original state of oneness where differences are undifferentiated and the infant in or out of the womb is in an integrated state of being. But the experience would be different in both cases. If, for instance, in the first deintegration of the infant, the functions of feeling and sensation are conscious and desire is experienced, the opposite sensations and feelings would exist in the thinking and intuitive functions, which would be unconscious. In other words, after birth, a conscious attitude of need would always be experienced at the same time as the unconscious attitude, where there is no need, but this experience would have to be unconscious.
Participation mystique should not be confused with soul consciousness, they are related but not identical. Participation mystique describes a state of unconscious identity that may be with the human mother or an object, but if the mother is not in soul herself, she will not return the infant to his or her original state of oneness or soul consciousness; the infant may feel what she feels, but if that is sorrow, sorrow is what the infant will feel. Ideally, the mother who loves her child and who is in soul consciousness herself will return the child to an assimilation of the original experience, but participation mystique will always be a duplicate of that experience. In that way, the inner world becomes identical with the outer world or the soul and the ego are reunited.
Like Neumann and the mainstream thinkers of the time in which she wrote, Wickes (1988), appears to underestimate the appearance of the ego in time and considers the infant until birth to be "part of the mother" (p. 36). At birth, the child becomes a separate physical entity, but the psychic cord still remains, thus paving the way for psychic identity, which is a normal condition of early childhood, but considered pathological when the unconscious of the parent intrudes upon the unconscious of the child.
Although Wickes and Jung stressed the importance of the parents unconscious and how it might affect the child, it should be remembered that this was not the mainstream thought of the day. In many ways, Jung's ideas of the unconscious influences of parents on their children paved the way for ideas existent today in family therapy. Often when the parent or parents' relationship is treated or altered, the child is relieved of his particular neurosis. That this is possible does not negate the possibility that a child might suffer from psychic experiences that do not belong to the parents, but are caused by the child's individual constitution. Both experiences can exist at the same time, and probably often do.
Wickes (1988) describes Jung's interpretation of the Oedipus complex:
But it is possible to take Oedipus even more symbolically than Jung does and see him as representing ego consciousness that desires to return to the state of bliss where all things are given or soul consciousness that was experienced in the womb. If the human mother successfully assimilates this experience for the infant, he will be in soul and in the world. The desire for a return to mother is the desire to return to the oneness that was experienced in the womb and to experience this in the world. This is soul consciousness and ego consciousness, no longer divided. The ego is strengthened by having a soul experience, which I believe is Jung's interpretation of a return to mother. What Jung did not recognize, perhaps, is the possibility that this process is present and continuous in early childhood and describes the developing ego.
Wickes (1988) states:
Psychologically, man seeks to return to the mother for a renewal of life, a rebirth into a higher attitude. He explores the unconscious, not that he may remain in a state of infantile unconsciousness, but that he may understand the forces that lie within himself and from contact with them may obtain a new way of life, a spiritual rebirth. (p. 30)
Here it appears obvious that Wickes and Jung are referring to the mother as the unconscious; to return to the mother is to go into the unconscious, but what is there, in that experience, that brings "spiritual rebirth"? Perhaps it is the knowledge of connectedness; what appears to be severed by ego consciousness is seen as united in soul consciousness. This cycle or flow of the ego to soul and back again appears to be what is essential in the construction of a healthy ego, and a possibility that Wickes did not consider in her work concerning early childhood.
Wickes (1988) makes use of Jung's typology in her work with children, apparently with his approval, since he does not contradict her statements concerning psychological functions. Of especial interest are her observations concerning the functions of sensation and intuition. Concerning intuition, Wickes says:
To the rationally minded the mental processes of the intuitive appear to work backward. His conclusions are reached before his premises. This is not because the steps which connect the two have been omitted but because those steps are taken by the unconscious. (p. 149)
This is a suitable description of the intuitive function. What I would add is that it is the unconsciousness of sensation, feeling, and thinking, which are merged and exist as one, that creates the function of intuition. Intuition is the one that contains all four functions. If this is the case, the premise that Wickes describes is contained in the intuitive function along with the conclusion.
Wickes (1988) describes identification as "another form of infantile adaptation. Identification is an unconscious process in which the attitudes of another are taken over as if they were one's own" (p. 31). Jung also (1971/1921) speaks of projection as the result of "archaic identity of subject and object" and active projection as "an essential component of the act of empathy" (p. 457). He describes (1971/1921) introjection as "an indrawing of the object into the subjective sphere of interest, while projection is an expulsion of subjective contents into the object" (p. 452).
Neither Wickes nor Jung describes the more positive aspects of these terms in relationship to the early aspects of the mother-infant bond. Identity, projection, and introjection are all essential ingredients of the first contact between mother and child. The mother knows her child by identity. She actively projects herself onto the baby, she imagines, often with his or her help, what her child needs. By empathy she brings the object, the infant, into intimate relationship with the subject, herself. She introjects the infant; she takes the infant into herself. Jung (1971/1921) defines introjection as "an assimilation of object to subject," and projection is "a dissimulation of object from subject through the expulsion of a subjective content into the object" (p. 452). The mother projects herself onto the object, the infant, when she says "I think you need this or that." She introjects or assimilates the infant when she is in empathy, when she imagines what she might need if she were the infant or how she might feel if she were in the infant's place.
Jung (1971/1921, p. 452) mentions how these terms are related to the transference phenomena. That they are equally active in infancy, especially by the mother, is seldom, if ever, mentioned. Yet it is this very important process, the ability of the human mother or primary caretaker to identify with her child by means of projection and introjection, that allows the child to become human; he or she learns by experience how to project, introject, and identify with other human beings. What has been "done unto him" so to speak, the child learns to "do unto others."
Just as the mother identifies by projection and introjection, so also does the infant in the opposite way. He or she does so with the ego and the body, in the form of physical sensations. The infant desires a previous state of existence, characterized by being one with the mother, and it is the body sensations, the instinct to suck and take nourishment, that will assist the child in returning to this state of being. The infant sees, touches, tastes, smells, and hears the milk, the breast, and the body of the mother. The child "introjects" the mother in an almost literal way, taking her or part of her back into the self. The infant is communicating or attempting to communicate with the mother from the very beginning; the nuances of the infant's attempts at language are in the body and the expressions of the body, which the mother interprets by projection, introjection, and identity.
If we look at the mother and child as a pair of opposites, we can see the newborn child as the best representative of ego consciousness or desire and the human mother as the best representative of soul consciousness without desire. The mother would be in a state of conscious extraversion, where all energy would be directed toward the child and her own ego would be unconscious. This can be seen as a state of identification. Just as the mother is in a conscious extraverted state, the opposite would be true for the human infant, who would be in a state of conscious introversion, where the ego energy is flowing backwards toward the subject or the Self. In the infant, extraverted energy would be unconscious. In this way, the mother contains the infant in her unconscious, just as the infant contains the mother in his or her unconscious. This would be a positive view of beginning consciousness, however, rather than the pejorative view Eve represents. This positive view is often symbolized by the ancient archetype of Virgin Mother and her Divine Child. Her child is divine because he or she exists as her unconscious ego. (See Figures 14, and 15.)
This experience, then, is not new to the human race; it has been recorded in various myths down through time. The virgin birth symbol connects the Jewish religion to Christianity, but the experience does not need to be years apart; whenever soul love sacrifices its own ego for the sake of other or the ego in need, which is ego love, a "virgin" birth has occurred. The experience is eternal even when it takes place in time. It is because the ego of the mother is unconscious that it is also divine. Put in other terms, the momentary death of the ego creates soul or soul consciousness.
In many cases, the mother may not be in soul consciousness, but this is the match that is essential for her to return the infant to that state of bliss, where two exist as one. In returning the infant to original bliss, his or her ego is reinforced by the experience.
It would be a mistake, however, to assume that the human mother is only and always in soul consciousness; she has ego consciousness and uses it from the beginning with her ability to choose how to approach her infant--that is, she chooses which form of consciousness she will use. The main point here is the idea that both mother and child use identity, projection, and introjection in the beginning of the mother/child relationship (the first transference), and this is seldom mentioned by Wickes or Jung.
Wickes (1988) writes:
The child, like the primitive, is primarily a creature of sensation and intuition. Thought and feeling develop slowly. (I do not speak here of the first instinctive emotions but of feeling as a judging function.) Through sensation he comes into contact with the outer world of objects; through intuition he becomes aware of the inner forces at work in himself and in those about him. In his own inner world lie embryonic the fantasy-building powers of the collective unconscious. (p. 38)
Certainly the child is primarily a creature of sensation and intuition; however, I would not agree that "thought and feeling develop slowly." Sensation is the instinct that creates feeling, and the infant makes feeling judgments from the beginning. The infant cries when he or she does not like something or is in need of something and it is quite possible that the infant's psyche produces a symbol of the "what" or the desired object, with the first sensation and the first feeling, which is registered in the unconscious thinking function. If sensation and feeling are conscious, which I do not doubt, the experience would create the symbol, which would lie dormant in the thinking function. The idea might exist in the infant's mind, a reflection of the experience, and repetition of the experience would eventually evolve into a conscious thought or a rudimentary one in the form of a symbol that represents the experience.
Why should we assume that "the first instinctive emotions" are not really emotions as we know them to be, as Wickes suggests? If an adult could not speak and was injured with painful body sensations, and instead started to cry, we would not assume that this was only an instinctual reaction to painful stimuli and that crying was not a real value judgment. We would be more accurate in thinking that crying was the adult's only means of communication, expressing feeling, which would also be a value judgment, of discomfort. The bias that Wickes appears to have is that babies don't express genuine feeling or that somehow instinctual feeling is not real or not a value judgment. But if the instinct contains the archetype and the archetype represents the instinct, instinctual feeling is certainly genuine.
Later, Wickes (1988) correctly goes on to explain that "sensation is the first means of contact with the outside world. It is the basic material from which thought and feeling are molded. In children as well as in primitives we find sensation and intuition strongly dominant" (p. 151).
Sensation is the function that introduces ego consciousness; intuition is the function that connects the infant to soul consciousness. Both of these functions are indeed "strongly dominant" from the beginning. But both functions are the "basic material" from which thought and feeling are molded; intuition is connected to the inner world of soul consciousness and sensation is connected to the outer world of ego consciousness. Here Wickes, influenced by Jung, places sensation where it belongs as one of the dominant psychological functions in the human child, along with intuition. What she did not grasp is the possibility that intuition is unconscious sensation that also contains unconscious feeling and thinking, and that conscious sensation is like an "on" switch that separates and differentiates the four functions and brings them to consciousness. Her words echo those of Jung (1971/1921) who explained that
like sensation, intuition is a characteristic of infantile and primitive psychology. It counterbalances the powerful sense impressions of the child and the primitive by mediating perceptions of mythological images, the precursors of ideas. It stands in a compensatory relationship to sensation and like it, is the matrix out of which thinking and feeling develop as rational functions. (my emphasis, p. 454)
Wickes also discounted the feeling function as one that makes value judgments from the beginning of life and is just as dominant and important as intuition and sensation in childhood.
It is the complexity of how the four functions work together as psychic energy that needs to be questioned and explored further. Wickes sometimes attempts to answer these questions, but often leaves them dangling. Speaking of the child Wickes (1988) states that "he has influences both from without and from within which at an early period brings his sensations and intuitions under the influence of reason and of feeling judgment. These latter functions, however, develop more slowly" (p. 152). Perhaps it appears "more slowly" to us simply because we cannot see what is taking place, and because the process may be more structured than we have previously imagined it to be; the healthy infant may be wired in his ability to use all four psychological functions from the beginning of life.
Figure 14: Jung's Attitudinal Types of Introversion and Extraversion Von Franz & Hillman (1979) give the following definition of extraversion and introversion: In the extravert the conscious libido habitually flows towards the object, but there is an unconscious secret counter-action back towards the subject. In the case of the introvert, the opposite occurs: he feels as if an overwhelming object wants constantly to affect him, from which he has continually to retire; everything is falling upon him, he is constantly overwhelmed by impressions, but he is unaware that he is secretly borrowing psychic energy from and lending it to the object through his unconscious extraversion (p.1).
Von Franz and Hillman (1979, p. 1) Jung's Typology
Figure 15: The First Transference - The "Match" of Soul with Ego and Ego with Soul
Extraversion of Mother's ego embraces the object, in this case, the child. The Mother's ego goes into the unconscious. Without ego consciousness, Mother is in "Soul Love." She contains the "child," that is, her own ego in the unconscious and her ego is identical with the child's conscious ego. In other words, Mother and Child are One. The image or archetype that represents this experience is the Virgin Mother and Divine Child, an ancient archetype that was prevalent before Christianity. The Virgin Mary replaced Eve as an archetype for Divine Love, that is, Love that is from Soul, not ego. She "crushed the serpents head," that is, she destroyed the negative sensation of desire and replaced it with no desire or Soul.
Here, the reverse is true. The child's conscious ego desires and fears the object, moves away from object toward itself, while unconscious and extraverted energy moves toward the object or mother. Mother (Soul Love) is contained in the child's unconscious. When ego Love is satisfied by the object, that is, the Soul Love of the mother, the child is returned to "Paradise," which is now a place in the world, rather than in the womb. This is the "match" that occurs between mother and child and the first experience of the "transference." This is "primary Love" or Love that is desire seen in its positive aspect, rather than its negative aspect, which is represented in the myths as Eve and in psychology as "narcissistic." The human child can be seen as both human and divine; psychology is only beginning to describe the divine aspects of ego.
Figure 16: Mother and Child - Squaring the circle
Who shows a child
as he really is?
Who sets him among the stars
and puts the measure of distance
in his hand?
Who makes the child's death
out of gray bread
that gets hard
who leaves it there
in his round mouth
like the core
of a lovely apple?
Murderers aren't hard
to comprehend.
But this:
to contain death
the whole of death
even before life has begun
to contain it so gently
and not to be angry--
this is indescribable.
(Rainer Maria Rilke, Duino Elegies,
1978, p. 48)
Figure 17: Mandala of a three year old
Frances G. Wickes, David L. Kay and Foetal Psychology
David Kay is a physician who practices general medicine; he is also a Jungian analyst. According to Kay (1984), "the greatest opportunity for linking medical and analytical concepts, lies in the area of mother/infant observation and interaction" (p. 317). Kay gives a case history concerning a mother and her 6-week old infant (she was not in therapy or analysis) who would not eat and who screamed and vomited with painful attacks of colic. After frequent and apparently unnecessary visits, Dr. Kay finally told Mrs. J. that nothing was wrong with her child and that it was she who felt ill and troubled inside. She then collapsed and began to cry in an uncontrolled and hysterical manner.
Mrs. J. then began to relate her own experiences in childhood, which included the divorce of her parents and the loss of her mother and brother when she went to live with her father. After years of intense depression, the patient's mother committed suicide, 4 years before the birth of the patient's baby. She felt that she had never had a mother and, according to Kay, had repressed any positive early experiences. Kay (1984) states that the "birth of her baby daughter at this point in her life confronted her directly with the intense pain of her maternal deprivation" (p. 319).
Mrs. J. appeared to be terrified of the experience of motherhood and resented her husband because the infant seemed to relate to him in a much more positive way. Near the end of this session, both Dr. Kay and his patient noticed that something had changed; the baby was looking directly into her mother's eyes for the first time and seemed totally relaxed. Dr. Kay describes how deeply his patient was affected by the baby's response to her and how they appeared then as "lovers who are sharing feelings of mutual adoration." It was his feeling that Mrs. J.'s intense negative feelings had been sensed by her baby, who had been too frightened to look at her and had consequently lost contact with the person she most needed. "her case had so profound an effect on me that it initiated an investigative psychological journey on my part whose aim was to achieve a deeper understanding of the nature of neonatal and prenatal psychic life" (Kay, 1984, p. 317).
After this incident, Kay considered how and when communication between the two of them first became established, and the possibility that it might have started before 6 (extra-uterine) weeks. He began to question other issues that might affect the fetus by a loss of contact due to deprivation of external stimuli or other reasons, and possible interventions that might provide comfort to the fetus who might have a "less than good enough environment."
The foetus is undoubtedly sensitive to pain and (while still free enough to move around) will repeatedly and purposefully seek to avoid sustained pressure from a microphone or a knuckle on a prominence, by moving around and trying to find a new position of comfort. (Kay, 1984, p. 323)
Along with avoiding painful stimuli, Kay goes on to describe other fairly well-known facts concerning the fetus in the womb: The fetus prefers sweet to bitter substances, thumb-sucking occurs in the womb, and the fetus is capable of visual, auditory, and tactile perceptions. His descriptions, which I have only described in part, all suggest that the infant is active and responsive to his first environment, the womb. His major conclusion at this point is that "a facilitating environment for infantile development is best provided by contact with external stimuli which are familiar and rooted in early experience. My paper proposes that the statement should be enlarged to include early foetal experiences" (Kay, 1984, p. 323).
I have included this brief summary of Kay's case study and several of his reflections concerning the child in utero to compare my hypothesis concerning issues he raises about the unborn child, as well as about the child after birth. Kay's explication of his patient and her infant is quite convincing. The infant was obviously responding to the mother's anxiety, which was having a negative effect upon their relationship. There is nothing revolutionary about this; it has long been known, if not by scientists, then by caretakers of children, that infants are affected by their mother's state of mind and her feelings. I think that this can be explained by what Jung called participation mystique, and this is a very good example for describing this experience as one that neither returns the infant to a state of oceanic bliss or oneness nor reinforces her ego. Because of the block or what Kay refers to as a loss of contact, the baby does not experience a oneness with her mother that provides her with unconditional love. To be one with her mother is a painful experience, and she expresses this discontent in her crying, refusal to eat, and not looking at her mother.
The very fact that she responds to her father in a different way shows that she is also in participation mystique with him. Because he does not have a secret agenda, so to speak, but provides her with unconditional love, she responds in a positive manner. He is the one providing soul (unconditional) love in this case, which proves that soul and ego are not gender-specific, but two different ways to respond, which, in the best of circumstances, both parents are capable of providing. When some of the mother's anger, doubts, and frustrations, all ego defenses, have been expressed in the presence of another, something different happens; the baby looks at her mother and smiles. Without the block in her mother, she responds to a mother who obviously has good intentions toward her child. The infant is still in participation mystique, but what she feels now are the feelings of her mother with the block removed. Perhaps it is just as easy to say that the child mirrors its mother, just as much as the mother mirrors for the child. Participation mystique is a double-edged sword that allows for the shared experience, whether of heaven or of hell.
Does the child begin to communicate, as Kay suggests, with her mother while in the womb? I do not see how one could argue that the baby does not communicate, if one takes all the actions, reactions, and movements of the fetus as a form of communication. The fetus responds to the mother's body. How the mother feels and what she eats all affect her body, which in turn affects the infant. This might appear to be a very basic form of communication, but it is body-to-body, and information is being exchanged. Concerning this, Kay (1984) states:
The single-celled amoeba cannot see or hear, but it is sensitive to touch. Its reflex-arc primitive nervous system permits it to move by altering its shape and forming a pseudopodium. When this meets an obstruction it withdraws and changes direction. As the human foetus has, by comparison, achieved an infinitely more complex state of development, it is not unreasonable to ascribe to it some dimly perceived and rudimentary form of consciousness in utero. (emphasis mine, p. 323)
Kay's description of a single-cell amoeba appears similar to my earlier suggestion that the cell or fetus moves toward the object or moves away from the object, and knows, almost by osmosis, one could say, which direction to take. Here I would also repeat that this appears to be the lowest form of instinctual life, whether in a cell or in a human being. But it is just this instinct that I am calling the intuitive function, and the first psychological function to develop in humans. Perhaps, the word "develop" is not adequate, because the egg and the sperm might also contain this knowledge in their solo journey toward each other and what develops is the body of the fetus, not the instinct.
But within the basic instinct of intuition lies the fallow contents of sensation, feeling, and thinking. This is the "stone that is not a stone," as the alchemists referred to it; three are contained in the fourth, which is also the "one" symbolized by the stone. What I am suggesting is that the thinking function, which is the function that produces the archetype and often equated to the Spirit, is contained in the instinct, as are the other two functions. Instinct and archetype have never been separated. Jung (1959/1938) describes instincts and archetypes:
The instincts are not vague and indefinite by nature, but are specifically formed motive forces which, long before there is any consciousness, and in spite of any degree of consciousness later on, pursue their inherent goals. Consequently they form very close analogies to the archetypes, so close, in fact, that there is good reason for supposing that the archetypes are the unconscious images of the instincts themselves, in other words, that they are patterns of instinctual behaviour. (emphasis mine, pp. 43- 44)
Here Jung constructively links instinct to archetype. Although he named intuition as one of the basic psychological, irrational, and instinctive functions, he did not describe intuition as originating in the infant in utero, as I believe it does.
Kay's suggestion that it is not unreasonable to ascribe to the fetus some dimly perceived and rudimentary form of consciousness in utero parallels my idea of the instinctual function of intuition as being the primal form of consciousness. If intuition is unconscious perception as Jung (1971/1921, p. 463) suggests, it seems likely that it is the function that would be conscious in the womb, where sensation and intuition are undifferentiated, containing both consciousness and unconsciousness. Kay does not state what kind of consciousness he believes this to be, but what he describes is what I am calling intuitive, non-ego consciousness or soul consciousness. To live in this state of consciousness constitutes a (psychological) return to the Garden of Eden or state of original innocence, where conscious sensing, feeling, and thinking would not be necessary because it would be provided without effort, just as it was in the womb.
Whether or not this is the actual case regarding the infant in the womb, mythology often assumes that this is so and the myth of Genesis represents that position. If mythology contains a psychological truth, perhaps an archetype so universally significant contains a truth about the actual experience of the infant in the womb. One would certainly like for this to be the case because it would mean that the infant in utero does not suffer, regardless of what the experience might be. To experience the opposites but not experience the pain or conflict of the splitting of opposites would be a neutral and undifferentiated state, and this could certainly be described as Paradise.
Kay (1984) goes on to describe and agree with the research of Dr. Thomas Verny, who wrote The Secret Life of the Unborn Child. He states:
The unborn child is an aware, reacting human being who from the sixth month onwards (and perhaps even earlier) leads an active emotional life. Not only can he see, hear, experience, taste, and on a primitive level even learn in utero, he can also feel--not with an adult's sophistication, but feel none the less. (p. 324)
It is possible that he "feels" with a child ego that is different from an adult ego and unconscious, as sensation, feeling, and thinking are unconscious. Kay and Verny are correct in recognizing that the infant in utero is leading an active emotional life, that is, acting and reacting in an emotional manner, but neither Kay nor Verny appear to consider whether this behavior is conscious or unconscious or both. Recent research supports many of these findings, but there is really nothing new in this idea, except perhaps to the scientist; many pregnant women and experienced mothers have long believed that their feelings affect their unborn child and that the unborn child experiences what they feel.
If we return to Jung's description of the conscious feeling function as one that makes value judgments, that is, evaluates by feeling if the object perceived is something good or bad, we cannot assume the infant in utero is capable of this, since consciousness, as we define it, needs an ego to perceive. If, however, we concede that the infant feels but that this feeling and the value judgment made is unconscious on the infant's part, then it appears possible. Unconsciousness, however, doesn't mean that feeling is not present, which we know quite well from adult life, it means that feeling lives, as Jung suggests, an autonomous life, when it is not connected to conscious awareness. The feeling function is in operation, but it is unconscious, as are the functions of sensation and thinking. It is the unconsciousness (or repression in an adult) of these three functions that allows the fantasy image, the product of the intuitive function, to break through and this may be the function that Kay describes as that which "dimly perceives."
Jung (1971/1921) calls intuition the function that "mediates perceptions in an unconscious way" (p. 453). This is what the unborn child is doing while in the womb, but a child is no more consciously aware of what he or she is feeling than the adult who is not aware of an unconscious feeling. This is a rudimentary form of consciousness, as Kay describes it, because it is the first psychological function that is conscious. I consider this soul consciousness and a way of knowing that is not dependent on the ego; if fact, it is dependent upon there not being an ego, at least in the beginning or in utero. This consciousness can best be described as a middle position that is connected to both consciousness and unconsciousness, it contains both but is neither.
Kay (1984, p. 326) goes on to focus on the importance of tactile sensory contact. He says that the fetus and neonate cannot defend themselves when deprived of their freedom to touch and conceptualize the boundaries of their environment, as adults do, by drawing upon their life's experience to fill the psychic void. He says that "I consider that the ability and freedom to use one's tactile sensory system by touching is vital to both human development and to the maintenance of psychic health" (p. 326). Tactile sensory contact is vitally important, but the fetus has been doing that all along; body sensations, which appear to be unconscious if there is no ego present, have been the means for communication with the mother from the beginning. The mother's body has, in ideal cases, provided the fetus with the necessary stimulus and environment and the baby has responded to the mother in the same way with his body. If no words were ever uttered by the mother, this would still be true; one could call this a communication of silence. Kay describes this interpsychic communication: "as the developmental processes proceed, interpsychic communication probably does occur, and it is important to remember that this link can (as in the postnatal state) be two-way" (p. 331).
I am not sure that the unborn child needs to defend itself because he or she is not deprived of tactile sensory contact in the womb; he or she is always "touching" itself, the wall of the maternal womb, or the umbilical cord. The fetus is always being touched by the amniotic fluids that surround him or her. The neonate might have the experience of sensory deprivation, because after birth this is not ensured, but the experience of being in the womb appears to guarantee adequate tactile sensory contact, if there is nothing wrong with the infant's body. Kay correctly concludes that if the mother's feeling can affect her body, negative feelings, such as not wanting the child, might adversely affect the mother's body, which in turn would affect the fetus as he or she responds to the mother's body.
I question that a psychic void exists in the fetus; if fetal "knowing" is derived from the function of intuition, which I am defining as unconscious sense perceptions and unconscious thinking and feeling, there would not be a psychic void, the fetus would always be acting or reacting to the object or be in a neutral state, such as sleep. It is possible to see the infant as experiencing everything that happens in utero on two levels, one unconscious and the other relating to body consciousness that tells the fetus how to act and react intuitively.
Kay makes the excellent observation that the umbilical cord or the placenta might be the first transitional object of the child in utero. The cord would represent what is "me" and that which is "not me." He says, "the holding of one's own umbilical cord can be seen as the precursor of the transitional object, which is also held" (pp. 327-328). Other symbols that might represent the umbilical cord will be discussed later in this paper, specifically in the creation myth of Genesis, where the twin trees, the tree of Life and the tree of Knowledge, (which also is death and the loss of innocence), exist side by side. The tree of Life might represent the umbilical cord, which provides all things with no effort by the infant; it might also represent the tree of Knowledge, for when it is severed, when the infant is born, knowledge of the opposites comes into being.
The cord, like the symbol of twin (same but different) trees, is (1) "me" and (2) "other." It is also (3) "not me" and (4) "not other." It is the archetype. The tree symbol or archetype can be seen as representing an object that is specific, concrete, and composed of substance, the umbilical cord. I would suggest that the infant in the womb knows all four of the above positions intuitively; after birth, he or she will come to know them also by the psychological functions of conscious sensation, conscious feeling, conscious thinking, and conscious intuition. One can substitute any archetype for what I am attempting to describe; mother, for instance, could be seen as "me" and "other" and "not me" and "not other." The same would be true in therapy; with the withdrawal of the projection onto the therapist and the withdrawal of the introjection on one's self, the archetype can be seen, which is "you" and "me" and "not me" and "not you." In other words, ideally, four points of view will be conscious and perceived; and as Jung (1971/1921) states, all will function "in an equal manner" (p. 21). Perception would be expanded to encompass all four possibilities, which would include the archetype and its concrete manifestation in the world.
Returning to Kay, (1984) he states:
In studying the world of sub-atomic particles, it has become apparent that there are no clear-cut boundaries between one particle and another. Instead, there exists a rapid and continuous interchange of matter, which destroys the illusion of "solid bodies" and moves towards a concept of universal wholeness. Ironically, this shift helps to bring modern science more into line with certain eastern religions, whose origins lie in antiquity. The foetal/maternal unit and the processes operating therein could probably be studied from that modified viewpoint. It seems reasonable and appropriate to accept that there exists a continuum of psychic activity from conception to death and that parturition is a significant incident along the pathway rather than a firm boundary. Furthermore, it is probably valid to speculate that there exists both intrapsychic and interpsychic activity during the prenatal months. (emphasis mine, p. 330)
Psychic life can be seen more readily if we consider that the psychological function of intuition is basic or primary and has its beginning in the womb. It continues after birth and throughout life, either consciously or unconsciously, and is also the function necessary for a "return to Paradise" experience that is represented in mythology. Intuition, as the function of the soul archetype symbolizes a psychological experience of wholeness, and is a reflection of what Jung refers to as the Self.
Alessandra Piontelli and Observations of the Child in Utero
Piontelli describes her analysis of a 2 year old psychotic girl who had an exceedingly difficult birth, born with the umbilical cord around her neck. After birth, one of her many peculiar obsessions was wearing a heavy chain knotted around her neck, or the cord of a curtain, which she also would wind around her neck. Piontelli relates this behavior, and many other strange behaviors of this child, to her original experience in the womb and her near fatal experience at birth. Her inability to live in the world and relate to those around her, and her constant regressions and attempts to get back inside the womb, appear to be an attempt to alleviate the pain of being a separate person in the world. For the first month of her life she was kept in the hospital where she underwent intravenous feedings, was kept in an oxygen tent, and was subjected to three lumbar punctures. Piontelli (1988) states that "even the most organically-minded doctors found no apparent or obvious organic cause" (p. 75).
With this type of history, along with the fact that she was not adequately mothered for that month and that her eventual relationship with her mother was not ideal, it does not seem inconceivable that this child would want to return to a place without pain. If there is no mother or primary caretaker to help a child duplicate the womb experience while in the world by meeting her needs, there would be no reason for a child to stay in the world, and a regression would serve the purpose of not needing a mother in the world. If the fantasy of the womb experience is universal and is seen as a method for eliminating pain, it seems likely that the explication given previously, which is that pain and pleasure in the womb are experienced as neutral, because there is no ego to make a value judgment, would be justified. Who would choose ego consciousness if the primary sensation was pain? A retreat to a state of being where pain was obliterated could be called an act of instinctual and intuitive intelligence by the child. Nature intends a "match" in the world, but if it does not exist, alternatives that assist in survival appear to be reasonable. If it were ego consciousness that existed in the womb and the infant experienced pain, why would a regression be necessary; what biological or psychological purpose could it possibly serve?
When does psychological life begin? In later and more detailed research, Piontelli (1992) states:
One could also add that there is very little mention of the possibility of mental life in the fetus, not only in psychoanalytical literature, but also in analytical psychology and indeed any other psychology. In the world of mythological literature, however, the womb and Paradise appear to be related symbols, expressing something psychological and universal in human experience.
Dr. Piontelli used ultrasonic scans to observe the fetus in the womb, and she then observed each child's development from birth to the age of 4 years. The major conclusion of her research is that "there is a remarkable continuity of behavior before and after birth and many small children show signs after birth of being influenced by experiences they had before birth" (1992, p. 23). She continues:
Recent research has proved all human senses to be "operative" at least by some time during the second trimester of pregnancy (Chamberlain, l983, her reference) and therefore by that time the fetus responds to tactile, pressory, kinaesthetic, thermic, vestibular, gustatory, and painful stimuli. (p. 34)
The question to be asked is whether or not those sensory functions are conscious, unconscious, or both. Providing that it is the unconscious sensory experience (intuition) of the fetus that gives it the information of how to act and react toward its environment and that this happens because the functions of active thinking, feeling and sensation are unconscious potential, one could surmise that conscious intuition is the first psychological function. If this is so, the fetus could be said to "think" in the womb, only the thinking would be passive or what Jung called intuition. This would be soul consciousness, and unconscious sensory experiences of the body would be the original source of "knowledge" in the human infant.
Piontelli, like other psychoanalytic theorists who discuss ego splitting after birth, questions whether there is ego functioning in the womb, but the fetus does not need an "I" to act or react. This action in the womb could better be described as a soul reaction. This idea connects it to matter in a fundamental way and mother, or matter reacting to matter. Mother and child both appear "wired" to communicate with each other. The soul complex would be different from the ego complex from the beginning, insofar as the choices made are not from an ego viewpoint, but given by unconscious body sensations. Piontelli (1992) continues:
As my experience developed, I was more and more struck by the individuality of movement of each fetus and by their preferred postures and reactions. I could no longer regard the fetuses I was watching as non-persons, as each of them seemed already to be an individual with its own personality, preferences, and reactions. (p. 9)
If intuition is seen as unconscious body sensations that react to the environment of the womb, the question is whether there is some form of consciousness inherent in the fetus, as he or she acts and reacts. Piontelli (1992) concludes her results with a question: "In view of my findings that characteristic individual behaviors develop well before birth, can one assume that some rudimentary self-awareness is present before birth?" (emphasis mine, p. 238). I would answer yes to this question, but the self-awareness would not be the ego, as Dr. Piontelli suggests; it would be intuitive consciousness that contains the unconscious ego.
Piontelli's research conclusions indicate that what was once considered only basic instincts may contain something that is psychological. Certainly she has paved the way for further research by directly observing the fetus using ultrasound scans and by simply asking, "When does psychological life begin?"
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