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T H E C R U C I B L E C E N T R E
Lawsons Long Alley, Hartley Vale 2790 tel. 6355 2223 or 4567 0044 admin @cruciblecentre.com
Diploma in Wholistic Psychotherapy + Certificate in Active Sandplay and Facilitation
Incorporating material used in the Graduate Diploma in Transpersonal Psychotherapy
Vanishing Twin Syndrome - Who Remembers ?
For the other six articles: Medical - Symptoms - True stories - Therapy - One example - Bibiography
Can the fœtus have consciousness?
Theory and research from the last 20 years indicates that prenatal experiences can be remembered, and have lifelong impact.
David Chamberlain describes a pregnant woman who was undergoing amniocentesis. Videotapes showed that when the needle was inserted into the uterus, the baby turned toward the needle and batted it away. Thinking they had seen an aberration, medical staff repeated the insertion, and again the baby batted it away. Other reports state that babies routinely withdraw from needles as they are inserted into the uterus. Is this not consciousness?
Alessandra Piontelli describes a twin pair at about four months who had periodic interactions. One of the twins was actively aggressive, the other submissive. Whenever the dominant twin was pushing or hitting, the submissive twin withdrew and placed his head on the placenta. When four years of age, they had the same relationship, and whenever there was tension between them, the passive twin would go to his room and put his head on his pillow. Apart from our own work in therapy, it seems clear that prenates are conscious beings and that behaviours that begin in utero are likely to carry over into later life.
R. D. Laing wrote that prenatal memories are the most influential because they are the first. In The Facts of Life he wrote, "The environment is registered from the very beginning of my life; by the first one (cell) of me. What happens to the first one or two of me may reverberate throughout all subsequent generations of our first cellular parents." (p. 30).
We all know the stories of the mother whose father died just as she became pregnant, and her daughter lived with a history of recurrent depression, and of the pregnant cellist who was practising for the Brahms concerto and found some years later that her child could play that piece without scorre.
All these numerous stories tell us that the foetus is not a tabula rasa, but has attitudes and beliefs that are growing within it in exactly the same way as the cells of the body and the brain.
The real problem is that in the early months the foetus does not have the physical capacity to hear or see, let alone sense or remember experiences beyond the placenta. Yet some memories, and many attitudes spring from the earliest moments of life - precisely and clearly spelt out.
So, who remembers?
Where are these memories kept?
Wade and Chamberlain have published widely on verifiable adult memories of experiences in the womb. These are so precise we have to conclude that there is a witnessing medium capable of sensing and remembering during parturition. This 'witness' is present in, or in the vicinity of the foetus and the mother all through pregnancy.
We find it is most effective for our clients and for their healing to refer to the one who senses and remembers as the soul, and that the loss is between souls. It is through the trauma of separation and grief at the death that issues/attitudes are locked into the human psyche while in the womb. Where there are twins in the womb their souls form a relationship that seems to begin from the moment of conception, if not before. The traumas that follow from the death of one twin is between souls.
We conceptualise the time that twins spend in the womb as a relationship between souls, and that ‘decisions' may be made between the souls while in the womb. We do this because, in searching for effective solutions in clinical work, we have found that the most effective results come from this approach. In other words, we trust that what the therapy presents in the most client-centred manner, is their truth.
The VTS provides a clear demonstration that the soul exists, that soul is present in the foetal field from conception, and that it is capable of experiencing and communicating.
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