Fetal psychology
 | It has been suggested that Prenatal and perinatal psychology be merged into this article. (Discuss) Proposed since May 2016. |
Fetal psychology, also known as antenatal psychology and prenatal psychology, is a topic of study within the more general field of developmental psychology, with researchers evaluating how the process of fetal development throughout pregnancy co-creates the psychological self possessed after birth and has many other varied yet lasting effects.[1][2] Examples of scientific journals exploring the topic include the Infant Mental Health Journal or IMHJ, which is the official publication of the World Association for Infant Mental Health or WAIMH.
Many discussions around prenatal psychology relate to the "fetal origins hypothesis", which posits that multiple afflictions and other difficulties experienced in adulthood arise at least in part due to negative prenatal experiences. The difficult issue of weighing environmental factors during different stages of one's life against each other as well as against underlying genetic factors is controversial within the behavioral sciences, and opinions about said hypothesis vary, particularly in how the underlying nature versus nurture question goes back centuries. Matters of prenatal psychology have also historically been tied to many pseudo-scientific claims over the years, one notable example being in Scientology.
Background and research findings[edit]
General analysis and research[edit]
As stated by Psychology Today in a 1998 article, "The roots of human behavior, researchers now know, begin to develop early-- just weeks after conception, in fact." One specific example is that of the ability to taste and have a sense of what is or is not desirable to eat and drink. The fact that the final trimester experience involves the fetus swallowing even up to a liter a day of amniotic fluid influences the born infant's perception of the flavors during breast-feeding, with the infant already having been exposed to food and drink tastes from the mother's diet. Researchers have theorized that spices subject to culturally-varying attitudes such as curry, cumin, and garlic will be more enjoyed by those already prenatally attenuated to bits of those products.[2]
Analysis of the nature of sound during pregnancy has shown that the fetal heart rate often lowers when the mother speaks, and researchers have proposed that the fetus feels soothed by such a sound that it hears and recognizes. The auditory mother-and-child bond keeps developing after birth.[2]
Illness and other afflictions in the prenatal context[edit]
In the modern, scientific setting, British epidemiologist David Barker was one of the earliest proponents of the idea that diseases experienced even long after childhood trace their origin directly to negative prenatal experiences. Barker first published in the 1980s specific findings proposing a direct link between fetal malnutrition and late-onset coronary heart disease. He based the research on observing a socio-economic trend existing even when looking at individuals with similar lifestyle factors.[3][4]
The hypothesis in a general sense can be summed up as:
"It appears that adaptations to prenatal and postnatal environments establishes patterns of interaction between genes which control a variety of cellular and organ functions, which allows individuals to survive early prenatal and postnatal life but which have adverse consequences much later. Furthermore, adaptations made in utero to a hostile prenatal environment may place the infant at an adverse risk for adult onset diseases if the subsequent postnatal environment is not matched to that found in prenatal life."[4]
The hypothesis in terms of fetal psychology is a matter of interest among researchers looking into individuals suffering from mental illnesses such as clinical depression and schizophrenia, though no clear-cut consensus exists in such areas. One study reported on by The Guardian of note looked at girls born to Dutch women pregnant during a time of severe famine in the closing years of World War II. The cohort appeared to possess an above-average risk of developing schizophrenia.[5]
Fringe theories and pseudo-scientific investigations[edit]
Popular American author Ernest Hemingway sarcastically remarked to his family about putting too much into prenatal experiences as a cure-all, writing to them in 1950 that he had "not been able to practice jumping back into the womb or any of those popular New York indoor sports" so will "have to just continue to write them as I see them."[6]
From the middle of the 20th century onward, material emerging from sessions of psychedelic psychotherapy using LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs have been used in theories purporting that a huge range of elements of adult life from mental illnesses to personality traits and more were entirely created from prenatal experiences. These theories have attracted dogged criticism as violating the scientific method, particularly in the matter of ignoring how ingested materials such as LSD cause individuals to invent new experiences rather than recall past ones.
Science fiction author and new religious movement leader L. Ron Hubbard argued in his book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, first published in 1950, as well as in later works that individuals experience events that form traumatic "engrams" sticking to the hidden but always conscious area of their minds. These occurred, in his opinion, at an alarmingly frequent level before birth. Hubbard proclaimed that said experiences psychologically trigger even illness thought entirely physical down the line, and he recommended a specific form of processes to go through and destroy said "engrams", specifically calling on people to try and re-experience not just prenatal life but also birth itself. He even went so far as to claim that following Scientology theory could "produce immortality", arguing in one newsletter that the "source of leukaemia [sic] has been reported to be an engram containing the phrase 'It turns my blood to water'." These assertions have faced considerable opposition over the years as completely un-scientific, with back in 1950 both the American Medical Association and the American Psychological Association criticizing Hubbard's claims as having no evidence.[7]
See also[edit]
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References[edit]
- ↑ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/icd.662/abstract
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Hopson, Janet L. (September 1, 1998). "Fetal Psychology". Psychology Today. Retrieved May 27, 2016.
- ↑ http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/wol1/doi/10.1111/j.1479-828X.2006.00506.x/full
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2744561/
- ↑ Thomson, Helen (21 August 2015). "Study of Holocaust survivors finds trauma passed on to children's genes". The Guardian. Retrieved 27 May 2016.
- ↑ Hemingway, John (2007). Strange Tribe. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 103–106. ISBN 9781461749943. Search this book on
- ↑ Atack, Jon (1990). A Piece of Blue Sky. New York, NY: Carol Publishing Group. pp. 105–135. ISBN 9780818404993. Search this book on
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