Secreting Religion
Perinatal Dynamics, Ego Death and ‘Reproductive Consciousness’ in Childbirth
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/arsr.v22i2.161Keywords:
holotropic, childbirth-pain, ego-death, birth-trauma, transpersonal-psychology, women’s religionAbstract
I present narratives from nine women describing the special events of consciousness they experienced during childbirth. These narratives are discussed in terms of transpersonal psychology. Most of the women interviewed spoke of a meaningful encounter with death and this will be explored as the primary catalyst for such events. I will also outline how these events seem to suggest a unique category of transpersonal consciousness particular to birth-giving women for which the term ‘reproductive consciousnesses’ will be tentatively designated.References
Aijmer, Goran (ed.) 1992 Coming into Existence: Birth and Metaphors of Birth. Institute for Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology, Gothenburg, Sweden.
Anderson, Rosemarie 1998 Introduction. In Transpersonal Research Methods for the Social Sciences: Honoring Human Experience, edited by William Braud and Rosemarie Anderson, xix–xxxi. Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA.
Andrews, Edward 1963 The People Called Shakers: A Search for the Perfect Society. Dover, New York.
Bache, Christopher 1985 A Reappraisal of Teresa of Avila’s Supposed Hysteria. Journal of Religion and Health 24: 21-30.
Expanding Grof’s Concept of the Perinatal: Deepening the Inquiry into Frightening Near-death Experiences. Journal of Near-Death Studies 15(2): 15-139.
Dark Night, Early Dawn: Steps to a Deep Ecology of Mind. State University of New York Press, Albany, NY.
Bahktin, Mikail 1981 The Dialogical Imagination, edited by Michael Holquist, translated by Caryle Emerson and Michael Holquist. University of Texas Press, Austin.
Cardena, Etzel, Steven Lynn and Stanley Krippner (eds.) 2000 Varieties of Anomalous Experience. American Psychological Association, Washington, DC.
D’Aquili, Eugene 1979 The Neurobiology of Myth and Ritual. In The Spectrum of Ritual: A Biogenetic Structural Analysis, edited by Eugene d’Aquili, Charles Laughlin and John McManus, 152-82. Columbia University Press, New York.
Human Ceremonial Ritual and Modulation of Aggression. Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 20(1): 21-30.
Davis-Floyd, Robbie 1992 Birth as an American Rite of Passage. California University Press, Berkeley.
Eliade, Mircea 1964 Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
Feltham, Colin, and Ian Horton 2006 The Sage Handbook of Counselling and Psychotherapy. Sage Publications, London.
Ferrer, Jorge N. 2002 Revisioning Transpersonal Theory: A Participatory Vision of Human Spirituality. State University of New York Press, Albany, NY.
What Does it Mean to Live a Fully Embodied Spiritual Life? International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 27: 1-11.
Granqvist, Hilma 1947 Birth and Childhood among the Arabs. Soderstrom & Co., Helsinfors, Finland.
Griaule, Marcel 1965 Conversations with Ogotemmeli: An Introduction to Dogon Religious Ideas. Oxford University Press, London.
Grof, Stanislav 1975 Realms of the Human Unconscious: Observations of LSD Psychotherapy. Souvenir Press, London.
The Implications of Psychedelic Research for Anthropology: Observations from LSD Psychotherapy. In Symbols and Sentiment: Cross Cultural Studies in Symbolism, edited by Ioan M. Lewis, 140-74. Academic Press, London.
Beyond the Brain: Birth, Death and Transcendence in Psychotherapy. State University of New York Press, Albany, NY.
The Adventure of Self Discovery. State University of New York Press, Albany, NY.
Healing Potential of Non-ordinary States of Consciousness. Unpublished Manuscript.
a Ken Wilber’s Spectrum Psychology: Observations from Clinical Consciousness Research. In Ken Wilber in Dialogue: Conversations with Leading Transpersonal Thinkers, edited by Donald Rothberg and Sean Kelly, 85-116. Quest Books, Wheaton, IL.
b The Cosmic Game: Explorations at the Frontiers of Human Consciousness. State University of New York Press, Albany, NY.
Gross, Rita 1993 Buddhism after Patriarchy: A Feminist History, Analysis, and Reconstruction of Buddhism. State University of New York Press, Albany, NY.
Halifax, Joan 1979 Shamanic Voices: A Survey of Visionary Narratives. E.P. Dutton, New York.
Harvey, Youngsook Kim 1980 Possession Sickness and Women Shamans in Korea. In Unspoken Worlds: Women’s Religious Lives in Non-Western Cultures, edited by Nina Falk and Rita Gross, 41-52. Harper & Row, San Francisco.
Kapferer, Bruce (ed.) 2003 Beyond Rationalism: Rethinking Magic, Witchcraft and Sorcery. Berghahn, New York.
Katz, Steven (ed.) 1978 Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis. Oxford University Press, New York.
Kitzinger, Sheila 1964 The Experience of Birth. Gollancz, London.
Klassen, Pamela 2001 Blessed Events: Religion and the Home Birth Movement in America. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.
Kuper, Adam 1994 Culture, Identity and the Project of a Cosmopolitan Anthropology. Man 29(3): 537-54. doi:10.2307/2804342.
Laderman, Carol 1983 Wives and Midwives: Childbirth and Nutrition in Rural Malaysia. California University Press, Berkeley.
Taming the Wind of Desire: Psychology, Medicine, and Aesthetics in Malay Shamanistic Performances. University of California Press, Berkeley.
Lahood, Gregg 2006a An Anthropological Perspective on Near-death-like Experiences in Three Men’s Pregnancy-related Spiritual Crises. Journal of Near-Death Studies 24(4): 211-36.
b Skulls at the Banquet: Near Birth as Nearing Death. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 38(1): 1-24.
a One Hundred Years of Sacred Science: Participation and Hybridity in Anthropology. ReVision: A Journal of Consciousness and Transformation 29(3): 37-48.
b Rumour of Angels and Heavenly Midwives: Anthropology of Transpersonal Events and Childbirth. Women and Birth 20: 3-10. doi:10.1016/j.wombi.2006.10.002.
a Worlds Made Flesh: Why We Don’t Talk Much about Childbearing or Possession in Transpersonal Theory, Transpersonal Psychology Review 12(1): 15-33.
b From ‘Bad’ Ritual to ‘Good’ Ritual: Transmutations of Child-Bearing Trauma in Holotropic Ritual. The Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health 22(2): 81-112.
c Paradise Bound: A Perennial Philosophy or an Unseen Process of Cosmological Hybridization. The Anthropology of Consciousness Journal 19(2): 1-57.
Laughlin, Charles 1988 Transpersonal Anthropology: Some Methodological Issues. Western Canadian Anthropology 5: 29-60.
Womb=Woman=World: Gender and Transcendence in Tibetan Tantric Buddhism. Pre- and Perinatal Psychology 5(2): 147-65.
Psychic Energy and Transpersonal Experience: A Biogenetic Structural Account of the Tibetan Dumo Yoga Practice. In Being Changed by Cross-cultural Encounters: The Anthropology of Extraordinary Experience, edited by David Young and Jean-Guy Goulet, 99-135. Broadview Press, Peterborough, ON.
Lewis, Ioan 2003 Trance, Possession, Shamanism and Sex. Anthropology of Consciousness Journal 14(1): 20-39. doi:10.1525/ac.2003.14.1.20.
Loy, David 1988 Nonduality: A Study in Comparative Philosophy. Humanity Books, New York.
Maslow, Abraham 1964 Religions, Values and Peak-Experiences. Ohio State University Press, Columbus, OH.
The Farther Reaches of Human Nature. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 1(1): 1-9.
Menon, Usha, and Richard Shweder 2000 Power in its Place: Is the Great Goddess of Hinduism a Feminist? In Is the Goddess a Feminist? The Politics of South Asian Goddesses, edited by Alf Hiltebeitel and Kathleen Erndl, 151-65. Sheffield Academic Press, Sheffield.
O’Brien, Mary 1981 The Politics of Reproduction. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.
Ortner, Sherry 1974 Is Female to Male as Nature is to Culture? In Woman, Culture and Society, edited by Michelle Z. Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere, 67-87. Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA.
Paul, Lois 1975 Recruitment to a Ritual Role. Ethos 3(3): 449-67. doi:10.1525/eth.1975.3.3.02a00050.
Paul, Lois, and Benjamin Paul 1975 Maya Midwife as Ritual Specialist: A Guatemalan Case. American Ethnologist 2(4): 707-26. doi:10.1525/ae.1975.2.4.02a00080.
Potter, Jack 1974 Cantonese Shamanism. In Religion and Ritual in Chinese Society, edited by Arthur Wolf, 207-31. Stanford University Press, Stanford.
Rabuzzi, Kathryn 1994 Mother with Child: Transformations through Childbirth. Indiana University Press, Bloomington.
Rachana, Shivam 2000 Lotus Birth. Greenwood Press, Yarra Glen, Victoria.
Sered, Susan 1994 Priestess, Mother, Sacred Sister: Religions Dominated by Women. Oxford University Press, New York.
Sheldrake, Rupert 1981 A New Science of Life. J.P. Tarcher, Los Angeles.
Sunden, Hjalmar 1966 [1959] Die Religion und die Rollen. Eine psychologische Untersuchung der Frömmigkeit [Religion and Roles: A Psychological Investigation of Piety], translated by Alfred Topelmann. Alfred Topelmann, Berlin.
Tarnas, Richard 1991 The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas that Have Shaped Our Worldview. Harmony Books, New York.
Tart, Charles 1971 Scientific Foundations for the Study of Altered States of Consciousness. Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 3(2): 93-124.
Turner, Edith 1992 Experiencing Ritual: A New Interpretation of African Healing. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia.
Walsh, Roger 1995 Phenomenological Mapping: A Method for Describing and Comparing States of Consciousness. The Journal of Transpersonal Psychology 27(1): 25-57.
Washburn, Michael 1995 Ego and the Dynamic Ground. State University of New York Press, Albany, NY.
Wilber, Ken 1995 Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: The Spirit of Evolution. Shambhala, Boston.
Wright, Peggy 1995 Bringing Women’s Voices to Transpersonal Theory. ReVision 17: 3-10.
Wulff, David 2000 Mystical Experience. In Anomalous Experience, edited by Etzel Cardena, Steven Lynn and Stanley Krippner, 397-440. American Psychological Association, Washington, DC.
Young, David, and Jean-Guy Goulet (eds.) 1994 Being Changed by Cross Cultural Encounters. Broadview Press, Peterborough, ON.
Published
Issue
Section
License
Equinox Publishing Ltd.
