For A Lifetime Without Pain
Abandonment by an emotional, erotic partner leaves pain, examination failure leaves pain, an insult leaves pain …
A huge variety of different reactions, is revealed to us, in the above painful stimuli, from a relative passivity, up to extreme criminal behavior, always through mental pain.
If this mental pain was measurable, human relationships definitely would be very different.
Due to the great importance given to violence and murder of women, the presentation starts with an example of two opposite reactions and behaviors, to the same painful mental stimulus of two different people, in this case, two men.
How is pain felt by the first man who was abandoned by his erotic partner and who stoically accepted the separation and in a reasonable period of time begins to search for a new relationship, from the man who after the abandonment of his partner commits violence against her, reaching even the crime ? We see in the case of the second man, an escalating psychopathology and we simply come to the conclusion that this act is due to some kind of mental disorder.
But what has caused this mental disorder? Did this rejection of his partner awake something much deeper in his soul? Perhaps a traumatic experience stored in that area of memory that is not accessible from our conscious, to the unconscious? Or there is some established damage in his brain, some pathology, that leads him to crime?
I will therefore refer to two different neuropsychiatric approaches, fifty years apart one from the other, which may give us some answers to the above and help us understand what defines the difference in the expression of mental pain from person to person.
Speaking of memory, how way back in time can we go to extract information and images from our lives? Possibly the first 2 or 3 years of life. Before that time, there are no recorded memories, due to undeveloped nervous system, or man is born “tabula rasa”, unwritten paper? Did the experiences of that period lead to what we are today? Should we include in our unconscious the intrauterine period of life together with the stimuli and information received from the time of the union of the egg with the sperm until the first 2-3 years of our life and which information unfortunately we can not recall?
This stage of human evolution, the intrauterine life and its impact on psychology of adult life, was revealed to very few psychiatrists researchers when they began to investigate the human unconscious in the 50’s and 60’s, using a new drug at the time, diethylamide of lysergic acid 25, in deep psychotherapy sessions, the very well known LSD. Among these psychiatrists was Dr Athanasios Kafkalides who formulated his own methodology that leads to “AYTOPSYCHOGNOSIA” as he named it. ” A neuronal process that leads in the subjective emotional-mental awareness of the content of the unconscious and the motivations of behavior.”
These studies led to findings that correlated severe mental disorders in adults, such as sexual dysfunction, depression, neurosis and psychosomatic reactions, with unpleasant intrauterine traumatic experiences. These individuals, revived emotions, which were caused by stimuli emanated from the maternal body during their intrauterine life, emotional stimuli, which opposed their existence (felt unwanted) or in some cases, opposed the identity of their gender (they felt unwanted because of their gender). Depending on the quality of the emotions experienced by the participants in deep psychotherapy sessions with psychedelic drugs, Dr A. Kafkalides, classified them as “wanted” and “unwanted fetuses”. The shades between them may reflect the psychological constitutions that
compose our society.
These different shades of psychological constitution, are strictly determined by the intensity the frequency with which the stimuli of rejection are transferred from the mother to the fetus and in the postnatal period of their life as well as the environment in which they will live and grow up. Recent reports by neuroscientists, 2018, (the other neuropsychiatric approach), after many years of research have associated prenatal stress with the development of
1. schizophrenia,
2. autism,
3. neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) and other mental disturbances for both sexes,
which are considered the most serious in terms of prevalence, morbidity and impact on our society.
According to them, the pregnant woman, when strongly stressed by endogenous or exogenous causes, releases cortisol, catecholamines (adrenaline, noradrenaline, dopamine) into the blood of other hormones and biochemical molecules, at elevated levels that reach the underdeveloped nervous system of the fetus causing lesions, in the central and peripheral nervous system of the fetus, which manifest as me mental and physical disorders in adulthood. There are also blamed for heart and metabolic diseases.
At this point, we see that two different neuropsychiatric approaches lead to almost common conclusions, “human intrauterine life determines the mental and physical health” and as Athanasios Kafkalidis characteristically points out, plays a key role in shaping the personality of the individual.
Indeed, this speech highlights that ignorance of a future mother about the importance of the prenatal stage of human existence, can lead to the birth of innocent children who may be unhappy through internal conflicts, anxieties, phobias and insecurities, which arise simply because they were not offered the simplest of things, an unconditional acceptance of their existence.
So let’s sound the alarm for young people who have not yet become parents, so that they realize how easy it is to destroy the lives of their children in their ignorance. Let the joy of life, art and science and humanity dominate the lives of coming generations. Maybe this way the world will become less tied to matter so be more spiritual, closer to the truth, freer and I think happier, without repeating our mistakes and the mistakes of the older generations which brought so much pain and so much destruction to this Earth.
Ignorance of a future mother about the importance of the prenatal stage of human existence, can lead to the birth of innocent children who may be unhappy through internal conflicts, anxieties, phobias and insecurities.
A FEW WORDS ABOUT THE SPEAKER
NAME: KONSTANTINOS KAFKALIDES MD
AFFILIATION: INDEPENDENT RESEARCHER, GREECE
Being the son and the grandson of two physicians, I always wanted to become a doctor.
But mostly I was influenced by my father who taught me another perspective and dimension of Psychiatry.
I am grateful to life, offering me as a father and as a teacher, the neuropsychiatrist, Dr. Athanasios Kafkalides, one among the very few psychiatrists researchers who began to investigate the human unconscious in the 50’s and 60’s, using a new drug at the time, diethylamide of lysergic acid 25, in deep psychotherapy sessions, the very well known LSD. His research work, together with that of Frank Lake and that of Stanislav Groff, ranked him among the pioneers of “prenatal psychiatry”, in essence, a new subject, which deals with the study of the effect of neurobiochemical factors emanated from the nervous system of the pregnant woman, to the underdevelopment nervous system of the fetus and their impact on the physical and psychological state of it later in adult life.
My awareness on prenatal psychiatry and psychology, was inevitable. I remember myself 8-9 years old, early 60’s, listening to my father when fascinated by the new findings through his research work, he was talking about the new era was rising for Psychiatry and bringing new knowledge, which might change the shape of the world. That is, if man could look deeper within him self, what is happening to him, to dissolve his emotional confusion, this would allow him to reconcile with himself, the people around him and his wider environment, improving his action, turning the world more beautiful.
When I was preparing myself for the medical school, the worries of adolescence combined with deeper existential insecurities drove me away from it, encircling me around the safety offered by mathematics and physics, thus choosing the NTUA School of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering.
While I was working since 1978 at the CAA (Civil Aviation Authority), as an engineer, at the age of 40, I decided to study medicine. I passed the qualifying exams to the Medical School of Yannina, while working in Civil Aviation. Subsequently, as an employee of the CAA, by order of the CAA Governor, I attended at the Veterans Hospital the School of Aviation Medicine. As an aeromedical physician I took over the management of the CAA aeromedical section for the medical certification of professionals, private aircraft pilots and cabin crews, from 2002 to 2011.
I was vice-president from 2004 to 2014 of the non-profit society HSPPPM (Hellenic Society of Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Medicine, of which I was a founding member, chaired by Mrs Olga Gouni psychologist. I participated in conferences of HSPPPM and ISPPPM (International Society for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Medicine). In 2007 in Moscow at an ISPPPM conference, I presented “Cellular memory and pathogenesis of autoimmune or suicidal diseases” and at the 1st PTPPPA World Congress in Belgrade in 2015, I presented “Traumatic memories of a sperm cell” and “AUTOPSYCHOGNOSIA” by Dr Athanasios Kafkalidis and the use of ketamine hydrochloride in deep psychotherapy. In an effort to raise the awareness of psychiatrists and psychologists in the above methodology, I presented my personal experience recorded and with English subtitles, in a session with the psychedelic drug ketamine hydrochloride. With my brother we have republished the first book of Athanasios Kafkalidis “The Knowledge of the womb: Autopsychognosia with psychedelic drugs “, as well as” Studies on prenatal psychology and psychedelic science “by Zephyros A. Kafkalides and Constantine A. Kafkalides MD Jan 2017, with our announcements at world conferences.
As far as I was allowed, I promoted the clinical experience and scientific work of our father at the University of Yannina, in international conferences and voluntarily offered my knowledge and experience, purely counseling, in the context of prenatal psychology, where I was asked and was needed.