Water, Birth and Sexuality E-Book

Michel Odent

• Herausgeber: Clairview Books
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

'After the historic student revolt in France a period of audacious creativity resulted. The watchword was: "It is forbidden to forbid". We took advantage of this transient cultural folly to do what would have been impossible ten years before or ten years after, introducing in the maternity unit of a state hospital an inflatable outdoor pool as a way to replace drugs during birth.' – from the Introduction In this groundbreaking book, Dr Odent takes as his starting point the world-famous work on childbirth at Pithiviers, where he first noticed the strong attraction to water that many women have during labour. As well as discovering the practical advantages of water during the birthing process, he began to consider the meaning and importance of water as a symbol. Water, Birth and Sexuality examines the living power of water and its erotic connotations. Odent evaluates what water meant in different cultures throughout history, through myths and legends, and what it means for us today: from an advertiser's tool to a metaphor for aspects of the psyche. He also studies humanity's special relationship to dolphins, and the related 'aquatic ape' theory. A practical section on the use of water during birth and in various therapies, particularly sex therapy, is included. This edition of this classic work features a new Introduction.

Leseprobe

WATER, BIRTHAND SEXUALITY

OUR PRIMEVAL CONNECTION TO WATERAND ITS USE IN LABOUR AND THERAPY

MICHEL ODENT

Published in Great Britain in 2014 by Clairview Books,

Russet, Sandy Lane,

West Hoathly,

W. Sussex RH18 5ES

E-mail: [email protected]

www.clairviewbooks.com

© Michel Odent 1990 & 2014

First published in an earlier edition by Arkana, Penguin, in 1990

All rights reserved. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrical, chemical, mechanical, optical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. Inquiries should be addressed to the Publishers

The lines from Heathcote Williams’s Whale Nation (Jonathan Cape, 1988) on p. 63 and Falling for a Dolphin (Jonathan Cape, 1988) on p. 96 are quoted by kind permission of the author and the publishers

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 912992 25 6

Cover by Morgan Creative. Photograph by Jessica Johnson

Typeset in Great Britain

Printed and bound by Berforts Ltd., Herts.

To make Homo ‘sapiens’ better understood,Wilhelm Reich turned our eyestowards new-born babies and the desert.This book is dedicated to him –the great sexologist of this century.

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Introduction to 2014 Edition

CHAPTER 1: How to Use Water During Labour

Anecdotes

Practical Advice

Getting Out of the Water before the Birth

Birth Under Water

CHAPTER 2: Interpretations

How Water Works

How Getting out of the Water Works

Dilation–Ejection . . . Erection–Ejaculation

The Baby’s First Cry

Other Questions

Childbirth at a Turning Point

CHAPTER 3: The Power of Water

Consciousness-raising

The Water-birth Mafia

The Tcharkovsky Phenomenon

Water as a Symbol

CHAPTER 4: The Erotic Power of Water

Poets and Legends

Taking Advantage of the Erotic Power of Water

Water, Eroticism and Advertising

Eroticism and Painting

Other Forms of Art

Common Knowledge

Pornographic Art

Researchers in Human Sexuality

Sex Therapy

CHAPTER 5: The Tao of Medicine

Spas

Thalassotherapy

Other Water Therapies

A New Medical Era

CHAPTER 6: Religion

Healing and Religion

Water and Religion

Mystery – A Need

Water – A Mystery

CHAPTER 7: Man and Dolphin

The Naked Ape

The Fatty Ape

The Perspiring Ape

The Two-legged Ape

The Orgasmic Ape

The Weeping Ape

The Water-attracted Ape

The Diving Ape

The Talking Ape

The Fish-eating Ape

The Diseased Ape

The Birth-attending Ape

The Big-brained Ape

CHAPTER 8: Homo aquaticus

The Missing Link

The Deluge

Was Humanity Born in the Water?

The Irrational Basis of a Theory

The Beginning of a Conspiracy

CHAPTER 9: Homo demens

The Cycle of Water

Acid Rain

The Water Desert

CHAPTER 10: Outline of a Theory of Emotion-instincts

Barriers that Get in the Way

The Primal Adaptive System

Rediscovering Human Instincts

CHAPTER 11: Homo sapiens

With the Help of Science

Towards the Ocean

Select Bibliography

Index

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Labour in water (courtesy of the author)

Birth under water (courtesy of the author)

Welcoming baby: a mother and her sister (courtesy of the author)

Welcoming baby (courtesy of the author)

A Wedding Scene, Niccolò di Segna, twelfth century (Museo Civico, Siena)

The Birth of Venus, Sandro Botticelli, 1485 (Uffizi Gallery, Florence)

Apollo meets Thetis, a daughter of the god of the sea. The Setting of the Sun, François Boucher, eighteenth century (Wallace Collection, London)

The water-attracted ape (copyright © Mark Lewis/Ace Photo Agency)

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I owe special thanks to my son Pascal, who gave his mummy Judy Graham enough freedom to translate my Franglais into genuine English.

Special thanks to Alice Charlwood, who also helped me to put some chapters into good English, and to Muriel Tristant who typed nearly everything.

INTRODUCTION

For many thousands of years the countless philosophers and scholars who pronounced on human nature did so without seeing that man is first an aquatic primate. The time has come for a radically new vision of man.

I became aware of the power of water in a surprising way and in an unexpected environment. In a French state hospital in Pithiviers, where I was in charge of the surgical unit, I practised all kinds of emergency surgery, including Caesareans. As I was a rather overworked surgeon, my main aim was to reduce the number of operations I was called on to perform. When it came to Caesareans, I questioned whether it might be possible to make labour easier. I considered the effects of the environment on the birth process. As my original training had not been as an obstetrician, I did not try to find the answer in books. In any case, textbooks would not have provided the solution. Instead, I learned from the women who came to give birth and from the midwives.

It soon became apparent that many women wanted to take a shower or a bath during labour. But what I found really interesting was the incredible attraction to water that some had while in labour. So, at the maternity unit at the hospital in Pithiviers, we responded to what the women seemed to need. First of all, as a temporary measure, we had a big plastic paddling pool that could be filled with warm water. Later on we installed a very large, round, deep-blue bath that was plumbed in.

I had a revelation the day a woman gave birth on the floor before the pool was actually full. All she needed was to see the blue water. Until that moment I had only physiological explanations as to why warm water helped during labour. But this particular woman helped me to go beyond such simplistic thoughts. For the first time I was able to see the importance of water as a symbol and the role it can play in human sexuality.

We all went through another stage the day a mother-to-be did not feel the need to leave the bath at the time of the birth. The baby was born under water, like a dolphin. Many journalists with a nose for a story were excited by the news of birth taking place under water. Why? This question prompted me to study more thoroughly the relationship between humans and water.

During this study the word ‘sexuality’ took on an even broader meaning, going far beyond the mere genitalia, and farther still beyond events of sexual life such as giving birth and breast-feeding. Sexuality emerges as the very opposite of a copying process, quite the reverse of reproduction. It is based on new combinations of pre-existing genes. Sexuality implies creativity. Inversely, there is something sexual in a creative process. Human creativity is based on new combinations of preformulated ideas. In a sexualized world, the future is always different from the present. When one is endowed with human consciousness, sexuality also means an interest in the future, a concern for future generations. It is the capacity not to confuse one’s own death with the end of the universe. That is why this book is also about humanity’s ability to disturb profoundly the natural cycle of water, at the risk of destroying life on the planet. And, finally, it holds out the vision of an authentic Homo sapiens.

INTRODUCTION TO THE 2014 EDITION

A quarter of a century has passed since the time when Water and Sexuality was first written and when Clairview offered to publish a second edition titled Water, Birth and Sexuality. There are obvious reasons for expanding the original work. However, we found justifications against adding any new material, in spite of the accumulated technical and scientific advances during these past decades.

This book reveals one aspect of human nature, as perceived at a certain phase of our history, in a particular context. Some aspects of human nature may be better grasped during critical short periods. My learning about the influence of an aquatic environment on humans cannot be dissociated from the ‘French post-May 1968 era’. After the historical student revolt in France a period of audacious creativity resulted. The watchword was: ‘It is forbidden to forbid’. We took advantage of this transient cultural folly to do what would have been impossible ten years before or ten years after: for example, introducing in the maternity unit of a state hospital an inflatable outdoor pool as a way to replace drugs during birth. During this historical phase some labouring women had a birthing pool at their disposal, well before the media or even word of mouth could have influenced them. Their spontaneous behaviour was far more instructive than any intentional birth plan. Acknowledging the historical context that enabled such new awareness remains paramount. This is why any addition would distract from the essential discoveries, and distort the original message.

* * *

However, I’ll mention briefly the kind of additional information I would have introduced, if the book had been updated and enlarged. Some of these additions have practical implications, particularly those related to the use of water during labour. Others serve as theoretical advances in our understanding of human nature.

I would have probably focused on a crucial point regarding the use of birthing pools. It is not always understood that when a woman is in established labour, immersion in water at body temperature tends to make uterine contractions more effective during a limited period of time—no longer than two hours. Because this simple fact is not understood—in spite of easy to interpret physiological feedback—many women enter the birthing pool too early, and remain there when their contractions become less effective. Today, many women stay too long in the water, for the only reason that they are the prisoners of the project of giving birth under water. This is one of the negative effects of the popular term ‘water-birth’. We must constantly repeat that since we introduced the concept of the birthing pool in the 1970s, the primary objective has been to minimise the need for pharmacological assistance during labour. A birth under water can occur occasionally, but it should not be intentional.

I would probably have written several pages—even several chapters—in order to update the new theory of human nature named by Elaine Morgan, ‘the aquatic ape hypothesis’. Today, we must concede that Homo sapiens has all the physiological characteristics of a member of the chimpanzee family adapted to the coast. Starting in 1990, I participated in seminars organised by Elaine Morgan in the UK and the USA. Each seminar was an opportunity to look at specifically human features that are shared with mammals adapted to the sea, or suggest adaptation to a coastal environment.

I had the opportunity to write a chapter about ‘The obstetrical implications of the aquatic ape hypothesis’ for an academic ebook titled Was man more aquatic in the past? In this chapter I discussed subjects such as vernix caseosa, placentophagy, and pregnancy diseases. I also participated in a London conference on ‘Human Evolution: past, present and future’. I realised how the aquatic ape hypothesis became much stronger after receiving confirmation by experts, such as Michael Crawford and Stephen Cunnane, on the specific nutritional needs of the brain.

When I wrote Water and Sexuality I had not realised that for many decades iodine was the only nutrient for which governments had legislated supplementation. In many countries it is now taken for granted that table salt is iodized. However, in spite of mandatory iodination, iodine deficiency is sufficiently widespread and deleterious to be currently ranked the world’s most serious nutritional deficiency, affecting probably one billion people. It is difficult to meet the daily iodine requirements among populations that do not have access to the shore-based food or the sea-food chain in general. The situation is serious since iodine is now considered the ‘primary brain selective nutrient’. Its essential role in the production of thyroid hormones and the roles of thyroid hormones in brain development and brain functions are now well-established.

Today, the focus is on the iodine requirements of women of childbearing age. Thyroid size, thyroid hormone production, and therefore iodine requirements increase throughout pregnancy at such a point that pregnancy can be considered a test of maternal thyroid function, where women with limited thyroid reserve may develop hypothyroidism. The average intellectual quotient of a great number of human groups is at stake. Today, thyroid dysfunction in pregnancy is rarely severe enough to cause full mental retardation of cretinism, but it can be a risk factor for impaired practical reasoning, memory, language comprehension, eye-hand coordination, and hearing.

Thyroid dysfunction in pregnancy related to iodine deficiency may be limited to an isolated ‘hypothyroxinemia’. The molecule of thyroxine, with four atoms of iodine, is expensive in terms of iodine consumption. It is as if the body, in order to minimize the damages, prefers to economize on iodine by directly making the more active triiodothyronine, which has only three atoms of iodine. This condition requires only supplements of iodine. It is not the same in the case of real hypothyroidism, which must be treated with hormonal substitutes.

These complex issues are so serious that huge amounts of money are currently invested in research regarding thyroid dysfunction in pregnancy. One study in progress seeks to determine how treating mild imbalances of thyroid hormones during pregnancy can affect the offspring’s intellectual development at 5 years of age.1

Today, one of the best ways to convince anyone that Homo sapiens has many physiological characteristics of a primate adapted to the coast is to introduce the issue of daily iodine requirements, and to refer to the extreme vulnerability of the developing brain to the lack of iodine.

Another aspect of human physiology suggestive of adaptation to the coast is relevant in a book about the relationship between human beings and water. This is the association of an enormous, highly-developed brain with a weak capacity to make a molecule that is particularly important to feed the brain. Translated into the language of biochemists, 50% of the molecules of fatty acids that are incorporated into the developing brain are represented by the so-called DHA, which is a very long chain molecule of fatty acid (22 carbones) as unsaturated as possible (6 double bonds) in the omega 3 family. It appears that among humans the delta 4 activity is low; this means that the enzymatic system is not effective in introducing the 6th double bond. This fact suggests that ideally human beings need to include preformed DHA in their diet to satisfy the needs of the brain. Yet DHA is preformed and abundant only in the sea-food chain.

More than ever, we must keep in mind that the ‘aquatic ape hypothesis’ is not based on a limited number of features that are apparently specifically human. It is based on a constantly increasing number of such features. This is why I hope this new edition will stimulate curiosity to do further reading. The task now is to digest these new findings and to enter a new phase in our understanding of Homo sapiens.

Michel Odent, January 2014

______________________

1See: http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT00388297?term=NCT00388297&rank-1

Further reading:

Mario Vaneechoutte, Editor: Was Man more aquatic in the past? Bentham e-book, 2012

A. Stagnaro-Green, S. Sullivan: ‘Iodine supplementation during pregnancy and lactation.’ JAMA 2012; 308(23): 2463-64

M. A. Crawford, D. Marsh: The Driving Force: Food, Evolution and the Future, William Heinemann, London 1989

Elaine Morgan, The Descent of the Child, Souvenir Press, London 1994

M. Odent: ‘Birth Under Water’, Lancet 1983: 1476-77

Michel Odent: Childbirth and the Future of Homo Sapiens, Pinter & Martin, London 2013

CHAPTER 1

How to Use Water During Labour

Anecdotes

A pregnant woman had but one obsession: to give birth under water. She threw herself with great energy into realizing her dream. In the end some friends lent her their home: a comfortable flat with a huge bath. On the day of the delivery, the mother-to-be was coming and going between the toilet and the bedroom, shouting out without restraint, as is common during a fast labour. Before long, she gave birth to her baby on the carpet by the bed. Two hours later, having held the baby close to her the entire time, she suddenly came back down to earth and said, ‘By the way, I forgot the bath!’

Another young woman travelled thousands of miles to use the small pool in the maternity unit at Pithiviers Hospital. She was a diver and was in her element in water. But on the day of the birth she made only a short appearance in the pool.

Another woman, living locally in the heart of the town, had never before been in a swimming-pool; she could not swim and used to claim that she would have nothing to do with such tricks. However, on the day of the birth, she was irresistibly attracted by the water and could not leave the bath before the birth of her baby.