Born Aliens Part II

Author: Sam Vaknin

Expectedly, it is vague in the first four months of life. When

presented with depth, the baby realizes that something is

different - but not what. Babies are born with their eyes open

as opposed to most other animal young ones. Moreover, their eyes

are immediately fully functional. It is the interpretation

mechanism that is lacking and this is why the world looks fuzzy

to them. They tend to concentrate on very distant or on very

close objects (their own hand getting closer to their face).

They see very clearly objects 20-25 cm away. But visual acuity

and focusing improve in a matter of days. By the time the baby

is 6 to 8 months old, he sees as well as many adults do, though

the visual system - from the neurological point of view - is

fully developed only at the age of 3 or 4 years. The neonate

discerns some colours in the first few days of his life: yellow,

red, green, orange, gray - and all of them by the age of four

months. He shows clear preferences regarding visual stimuli: he

is bored by repeated stimuli and prefers sharp contours and

contrasts, big objects to small ones, black and white to

coloured (because of the sharper contrast), curved lines to

straight ones (this is why babies prefer human faces to abstract

paintings). They prefer their mother to strangers. It is not

clear how they come to recognize the mother so quickly. To say

that they collect mental images which they then arrange into a

prototypical scheme is to say nothing (the question is not

"what" they do but "how" they do it). This ability is a clue to

the complexity of the internal mental world of the neonate,

which far exceeds our learned assumptions and theories. It is

inconceivable that a human is born with all this exquisite

equipment while incapable of experiencing the birth trauma or

the even the bigger trauma of his own inflation, mental and

physical.

As early as the end of the third month of pregnancy, the fetus

moves, his heart beats, his head is enormous relative to his

size. His size, though, is less than 3 cm. Ensconced in the

placenta, the fetus is fed by substances transmitted through the

mother's blood vessels (he has no contact with her blood,

though). The waste that he produces is carried away in the same

venue. The composition of the mother's food and drink, what she

inhales and injects - all are communicated to the embryo. There

is no clear relationship between sensory inputs during pregnancy

and later life development. The levels of maternal hormones do

effect the baby's subsequent physical development but only to a

negligible extent. Far more important is the general state of

health of the mother, a trauma, or a disease of the fetus. It

seems that the mother is less important to the baby than the

romantics would have it - and cleverly so. A too strong

attachment between mother and fetus would have adversely

affected the baby's chances of survival outside the uterus.

Thus, contrary to popular opinion, there is no evidence

whatsoever that the mother's emotional, cognitive, or

attitudinal state effects the fetus in any way. The baby is

effected by viral infections, obstetric complications, by

protein malnutrition and by the mother's alcoholism. But these -

at least in the West - are rare conditions.

In the first three months of the pregnancy, the central nervous

system "explodes" both quantitatively and qualitatively. This

process is called metaplasia. It is a delicate chain of events,

greatly influenced by malnutrition and other kinds of abuse. But

this vulnerability does not disappear until the age of 6 years

out of the womb. There is a continuum between womb and world.

The newborn is almost a very developed kernel of humanity. He is

definitely capable of experiencing substantive dimensions of his

own birth and subsequent metamorphoses. Neonates can immediately

track colours - therefore, they must be immediately able to tell

the striking differences between the dark, liquid placenta and

the colourful maternity ward. They go after certain light shapes

and ignore others. Without accumulating any experience, these

skills improve in the first few days of life, which proves that

they are inherent and not contingent (learned). They seek

patterns selectively because they remember which pattern was the

cause of satisfaction in their very brief past. Their reactions

to visual, auditory and tactile patterns are very predictable.

Therefore, they must possess a MEMORY, however primitive.

But - even granted that babies can sense, remember and, perhaps

emote - what is the effect of the multiple traumas they are

exposed to in the first few months of their lives?

We mentioned the traumas of birth and of self-inflation (mental

and physical). These are the first links in a chain of traumas,

which continues throughout the first two years of the baby's

life. Perhaps the most threatening and destabilizing is the

trauma of separation and individuation.

The baby's mother (or caregiver - rarely the father, sometimes

another woman) is his auxiliary ego. She is also the world; a

guarantor of livable (as opposed to unbearable) life, a

(physiological or gestation) rhythm (=predictability), a

physical presence and a social stimulus (an other).

To start with, the delivery disrupts continuous physiological

processes not only quantitatively but also qualitatively. The

neonate has to breathe, to feed, to eliminate waste, to regulate

his body temperature - new functions, which were previously

performed by the mother. This physiological catastrophe, this

schism increases the baby's dependence on the mother. It is

through this bonding that he learns to interact socially and to

trust others. The baby's lack of ability to tell the inside

world from the outside only makes matters worse. He "feels" that

the upheaval is contained in himself, that the tumult is

threatening to tear him apart, he experiences implosion rather

than explosion. True, in the absence of evaluative processes,

the quality of the baby's experience will be different to ours.

But this does not disqualify it as a PSYCHOLOGICAL process and

does not extinguish the subjective dimension of the experience.

If a psychological process lacks the evaluative or analytic

elements, this lack does not question its existence or its

nature. Birth and the subsequent few days must be a truly

terrifying experience.

Another argument raised against the trauma thesis is that there

is no proof that cruelty, neglect, abuse, torture, or discomfort

retard, in any way, the development of the child. A child - it

is claimed - takes everything in stride and reacts "naturally"

to his environment, however depraved and deprived.

This may be true - but it is irrelevant. It is not the child's

development that we are dealing with here. It is its reactions

to a series of existential traumas. That a process or an event

has no influence later - does not mean that it has no effect at

the moment of occurrence. That it has no influence at the moment

of occurrence - does not prove that it has not been fully and

accurately registered. That it has not been interpreted at all

or that it has been interpreted in a way different from ours -

does not imply that it had no effect. In short: there is no

connection between experience, interpretation and effect. There

can exist an interpreted experience that has no effect. An

interpretation can result in an effect without any experience

involved. And an experience can effect the subject without any

(conscious) interpretation. This means that the baby can

experience traumas, cruelty, neglect, abuse and even interpret

them as such (i.e., as bad things) and still not be effected by

them. Otherwise, how can we explain that a baby cries when

confronted by a sudden noise, a sudden light, wet diapers, or

hunger? Isn't this proof that he reacts properly to "bad" things

and that there is such a class of things ("bad things") in his

mind?

Moreover, we must attach some epigenetic importance to some of

the stimuli. If we do, in effect we recognize the effect of

early stimuli upon later life development.

At their beginning, neonates are only vaguely aware, in a binary

sort of way.

l. "Comfortable/uncomfortable", "cold/warm", "wet/dry",

"colour/absence of colour", "light/dark", "face/no face" and so

on. There are grounds to believe that the distinction between

the outer world and the inner one is vague at best. Natal fixed

action patterns (rooting, sucking, postural adjustment, looking,

listening, grasping, and crying) invariably provoke the

caregiver to respond. The newborn, as we said earlier, is able

to relate to physical patterns but his ability seems to extend

to the mental as well. He sees a pattern: fixed action followed

by the appearance of the caregiver followed by a satisfying

action on the part of the caregiver. This seems to him to be an

inviolable causal chain (though precious few babies would put it

in these words). Because he is unable to distinguish his inside

from the outside - the newborn "believes" that his action evoked

the caregiver from the inside (in which the caregiver is

contained). This is the kernel of both magical thinking and

Narcissism. The baby attributes to himself magical powers of

omnipotence and of omnipresence (action-appearance). It also

loves itself very much because it is able to thus satisfy

himself and his needs. He loves himself because he has the means

to make himself happy. The tension-relieving and pleasurable

world comes to life through the baby and then he swallows it

back through his mouth. This incorporation of the world through

the sensory modalities is the basis for the "oral stage" in the

psychodynamic theories.

This self-containment and self-sufficiency, this lack of

recognition of the environment are why children until their

third year of life are such a homogeneous group (allowing for

some variance). Infants show a characteristic style of behaviour

(one is almost tempted to say, a universal character) in as

early as the first few weeks of their lives. The first two years

of life witness the crystallization of consistent behavioural

patterns, common to all children. It is true that even newborns

have an innate temperament but not until an interaction with the

outside environment is established - do the traits of individual

diversity appear.

At birth, the newborn shows no attachment but simple dependence.

It is easy to prove: the child indiscriminately reacts to human

signals, scans for patterns and motions, enjoys soft, high

pitched voices and cooing, soothing sounds. Attachment starts

physiologically in the fourth week. The child turns clearly

towards his mother's voice, ignoring others. He begins to

develop a social smile, which is easily distinguishable from his

usual grimace. A virtuous circle is set in motion by the child's

smiles, gurgles and coos. These powerful signals release social

behaviour, elicit attention, loving responses. This, in turn,

drives the child to increase the dose of his signaling activity.

These signals are, of course, reflexes (fixed action responses,

exactly like the palmar grasp). Actually, until the 18th week of

his life, the child continues to react to strangers favourably.

Only then does the child begin to develop a budding

social-behavioural system based on the high correlation between

the presence of his caregiver and gratifying experiences. By the
third month there is a clear preference of the mother and by the

sixth month, the child wants to venture into the world. At

first, the child grasps things (as long as he can see his hand).

Then he sits up and watches things in motion (if not too fast or

noisy). Then the child clings to the mother, climbs all over her

and explores her body. There is still no object permanence and

the child gets perplexed and loses interest if a toy disappears

under a blanket, for instance. The child still associates

objects with satisfaction/non-satisfaction. His world is still

very much binary.

As the child grows, his attention narrows and is dedicated first

to the mother and to a few other human figures and, by the age

of 9 months, only to the mother. The tendency to seek others

virtually disappears (which is reminiscent of imprinting in

animals). The infant tends to equate his movements and gestures

with their results - that is, he is still in the phase of

magical thinking.

The separation from the mother, the formation of an individual,

the separation from the world (the "spewing out" of the outside

world) - are all tremendously traumatic.

The infant is afraid to lose his mother physically (no "mother

permanence") as well as emotionally (will she be angry at this

new found autonomy?). He goes away a step or two and runs back

to receive the mother's reassurance that she still loves him and

that she is still there. The tearing up of one's self into my

SELF and the OUTSIDE WORLD is an unimaginable feat. It is

equivalent to discovering irrefutable proof that the universe is

an illusion created by the brain or that our brain belongs to a

universal pool and not to us, or that we are God (the child

discovers that he is not God, it is a discovery of the same

magnitude). The child's mind is shredded to pieces: some pieces

are still HE and others are NOT HE (=the outside world). This is

an absolutely psychedelic experience (and the root of all

psychoses, probably).

If not managed properly, if disturbed in some way (mainly

emotionally), if the separation - individuation process goes

awry, it could result in serious psychopathologies. There are

grounds to believe that several personality disorders

(Narcissistic and Borderline) can be traced to a disturbance in

this process in early childhood.

Then, of course, there is the on-going traumatic process that we

call "life".

About the author:

Sam Vaknin is the author of Malignant Self Love - Narcissism

Revisited and After the Rain - How the West Lost the East. He is

a columnist for Central Europe Review, United Press

International (UPI) and eBookWeb and the editor of mental health

and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory,

Suite101 and searcheurope.com.

Visit Sam's Web site at http://samvak.tripod.com

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Born Aliens Part II

Article : Born Aliens Part II