APPENDIX B

A BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE RESEARCH OF JAMES PRESCOTT AND MICHEL ODENT

James Prescott was for some sixteen years with the National Institutes of Health and their subsidiary, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. His specialty was early child development. In the late 1970s he and his associates were given a grant by the U.S. government to make the first scientific study of the root causes of crime and violence ever undertaken. Prescott and his team undertook the assignment with passion and vigor. Among many of their endeavors they set up their own “Primate Laboratory” to study the conception, birth, and growth of our ancient cousins, as well as following the research in other primate laboratories and field reports such as those of Jane Goodall and others. They exhaustively reviewed all current studies and research reports on birthing, the nurturing, and care of infants in a wide variety of societies, as well as studies of childhood-adolescent development in the United States and a host of both “primitive” and modern cultures, rich and poor.

In the final stages of their research they investigated anthropological studies and firsthand reports on fifty different cultures worldwide to determine the behavioral characteristics of so wide a spectrum: were the members of a society essentially benevolent or violent—both among themselves and in their interactions with other societies?

Their final summaries were presented in two sections, one concerning birth-bonding and early development, the other the treatment of adolescent populations from earliest puberty to adulthood. They were the first research group to show the clear parallels between the “toddler period” of early development and the period of late childhood and adolescence.

As covered in this present book, details of the two main compulsive drives of the toddler are to explore its new body-world, and build neural “structures of knowledge” accordingly. Prescott’s studies showed that a nearly exact set of drives is found in adolescents. Given, in less than a year of astonishing growth, a new body, with new hormones, drives, forms of relationship demanding attention, and a seriously different reorganization of the brain, which will not be completed until the twenties, the adolescent is truly reborn into a new world on just as extensive and all-encompassing a level as the toddler, and must, if we are to survive, be treated with the same nurturing care and consideration we are destined by Nature to give to our infant-children (whether we do or not).

If a society is nurturing and benevolent toward its infants in birth, bonding, and early growth, that society will create and maintain about half the requirements for a benevolent, caring cultural ambient. If a society is nurturing, benevolent, tolerant, and caring for its adolescent population, that society will likewise develop about half the requirements and distinguishing behaviors of a benevolent, caring society. A society failing to nurture their young, yet lenient toward their adolescents and their extremities of behaviors (particularly sexual), will be partially benevolent toward their own kind. If a society nurtures its young but is repressive toward its adolescents, it will be about half-tolerant and half-benevolent among its members.

Any society that is both unnurturing and repressive toward its infant-young and toward its adolescents will be hostile and violent within its own border and kin, and hostile or warlike toward its neighbors. There is a direct, one-for-one correspondence.

The United States, Prescott’s HEW report stated, fails on both counts—abandoning and failing to nurture its young, while harsh and repressive toward its adolescents, particularly in regard to sexuality.

In regard to early infant nurturing, Prescott’s group found that mothers in nurturing societies carry their infants for at least the first year of life. This action provides the infant mind-brain-body a most critical factor—the nurturing effect of sufficient movement of the body and close contact with a caretaker. Frequent body movement, whether through the nurturing caretaker or self-stimuli by the infant (in their own near constant movement of body when awake) and being moved as when carried, is critical to the growth and development of the cerebellum, the entire sensory-motor system (including vision, balance and orientation, hearing and speech), and a laundry list of related aspects of development that will affect the individual lifelong.

“Touch deprivation” is rampant in American children, brought about by failure of sufficient movement, holding, touching and general sensory-stimulation in the early years. One thing never experienced in the womb is stillness or silence. From conception, the embryo, fetus, and infant is in some continual form of motion and sound—the mother’s breathing, heartbeat, blood circulation, speech, as well as any movement of the mother herself. Born in the sterile world of the hospital, isolated in cubicles, seldom picked up, deprivation occurs from the beginning. Spending their earliest and most critical sensory-development periods in confining cribs, bassinets, carriages, strollers—all isolating the child in a touch-deprived environment—brings impairment on most of the levels of sensory experience, which brain development and communication must have. Touch-starvation in American children, as reported by French physician Alfred Tomatis, has a direct corollary in speech and hearing deficiencies. Touch-deprived children demand and seek greater volumes of sound, leading to intense, ever-increasing decibel levels of the music they are attracted to, greater levels of direct, close-packed physical contacts and less and less capacity for silence or concentration and learning, particularly on abstract levels. Meanwhile autism, in its varying expressions, increases.

James Prescott, having provided extensive evidence for how and why all this takes place, knew serious frustration over having been largely excluded from his own profession by having suggested, in his massive study of adolescents, sexual freedom for those adolescents, as found in all benevolent societies. The religious right had just taken over under Ronald Reagan when Prescott submitted his works for approval by the administrators of the NIH. Like Candace Pert, who was blackballed by NIH for challenging their authority, Prescott knew growing frustration over the years, watching the rising tide of dysfunction found at every level of American children, all in the face of the massive evidence he had collected concerning the cause. Michael Mendizza (Touch the Future, www.ttfuture.org) has cataloged most of Prescott’s work, making it available today, when it is more pertinent to our needs than ever.

Michel Odent

French physician Michel Odent revolutionized birthing at Pithiviers Hospital in France, and eventually set up a research clinic in London for a full-dimension physiological analysis of all elements of sexuality, conception, birthing, breastfeeding, and general care of infants. During his tutelage at Pithiviers, his department delivered nearly 3,000 infants without loss of a mother or child.

The two works produced to date from Odent’s London research center are Scientification of Love and The Functions of the Orgasms, which, combined, hold within them not only “the highway to transcendence” (as Odent called it), but that which could be the very saving grace for our species as a whole. In no way can I overstate the importance of Odent’s works, and in nothing less than a whole book could one convey the vast wealth of critical information and observations offered in Odent’s simple, easily grasped explanations. But I will try here to give some scant sampling of Odent’s invaluable offering and knowledge— some known for ages, lost time and again and rediscovered time and again—all now backed by true scientific studies of physiology. Bear in mind Maria Montessori’s prophetic warnings of nearly a century ago and quoted often in this present book, that humankind abandoned in its earliest formative period becomes its own greatest threat to survival, and add to this Charles Darwin’s studies showing our species was brought about through love and altruism. It is time we defined those terms and truly embraced them in our conscious awareness. Following are some samples from Odent:

1. The capacity to love is determined, to a great extent, by the early experience in fetal life and in the period surrounding birth.
2. A study of how we learn to love starts at the breast a few seconds after birth and holds a clue to the cause of violence or peace in our society.
3. Odent proposes that the capacity to love is encapsulated in the not very complex molecule of oxytocin, which holds the capacity to love and protect our planet, the prerequisite of global survival.
4. Today the nature of love and how the capacity to love develops has become a subject for scientific study, the implications of which are at least as important as those of genetics, electronics, or quantum theory.
5. For all the different manifestations of love—maternal, paternal, filial, sexual, romantic, platonic, spiritual, brotherly, not to mention love of country, love of inanimate objects, compassion and concern for Mother Earth—the prototype is maternal love.
6. Evidence points to a very short and yet critical period of time just after birth, which has long-term consequences so far as our future capacity to love is concerned. We disregard the consequences of interfering with or neglecting the physiology of that critical period at our peril.
7. The biological sciences represent a mirror in which we look for a reflection of ourselves. Today, that mirror has been brilliantly polished and broken into a thousand pieces. Our objective must be to establish links between all those pieces.
8. The different hormones released by the mother and baby during labor and delivery all play a specific role in the ongoing interactions between mother and baby.
9. The greater the social compulsions for aggression and destruction of life, the more intrusive relations become between infant and mother, through the imposed cultural rituals and beliefs in regard to the period surrounding birth.
10. The relationship with the birth-mother and the relationship with Mother Earth are two aspects of the same phenomenon.
11. The language of modern physiologists can clearly explain what is happening when a woman is giving birth.
12. When a woman is giving birth, the most active part of her body is the ancient primitive brain (reptilian-sensory-motor).
13. When there are inhibitions in giving birth or any other sexual activity, the developed neo-cortex (latest evolutionary brain) is activated and in charge (which is an exact turnaround of the developmental roles of hind-brain and fore-brain, detailed in this present work).
14. Any neocortical stimulation, particularly of the intellect, will interfere with the process of delivery.
15. All mammals have a strategy for giving birth in privacy, generally in the dark.
16. Among more natural societies, as in most mammalian life, where women prefer to birth in solitude, even the snapping of a twig indicates possible intrusion and can slow or halt the birth process, waiting for “the coast to clear.” Precisely those prerequisites for quiet and safety still hold in the modern woman—just massively ignored and overridden by astonishing medical intrusions throughout the birth process, in the best of situations. (Thus, lengthy, painful, and dangerous birthing becomes the norm. Intellect replaces intelligence and compassion. Home birth is far safer for both mother and infant than any hospital situation.)
17. A laboring woman needs to feel, above all, safe and secure; this is a prerequisite for the changing level of her consciousness, which is a characteristic of the natural birth process.
18. There is a current cultural misunderstanding of the birth process. This misunderstanding is transmitted by nonverbal messages, as when books concerning birth show the laboring woman surrounded by anxious people watching her, advising, reporting progress, all suggesting impending danger and the mother’s needs that require their help in her labors—all delaying and making labor more and more difficult, and dangerous.
19. Researchers have found the only significant result of electronic monitoring of birth, now common practice in most obstetrical situations, is an increase in cesarean sectioning (which is far more lucrative to both doctor and hospital).
20. Any stimulation of the mother’s neo-cortex—talking to her, surrounding her with bright lights, making her feel observed, insecure or unsure, or any action stimulating her release of adrenaline—inhibits the birth process.
21. Sexual intercourse, childbirth, and lactation can be inhibited by the same neocortical centers—or neocortical “brakes.” Modern physiologists view sexuality as a whole. Intercourse bringing pregnancy, and birthing completing it, are twin functions in Nature’s way.
22. Oxytocin is one of the main hormones involved in the different aspect of male and female sexuality.
23. Oxytocin is the hormone capable of inducing maternal behavior in the hour following birth. (Marshall Klaus, of Case Western Reserve University, said there was about a forty-five-minute window open for establishing the critical bonds between infant and mother—after that, such bonding is difficult, insufficient, even unavailable, abandonment then being complete and near irrevocable.)
24. By releasing its own oxytocin, a fetus may contribute to its own delivery.
25. During intercourse, childbirth, and lactation, two groups of hormones play a pre-eminent role—the altruistic hormone oxytocin and the beta endorphins that can be considered our “reward” systems. An integrated vision of sexual life inspired by modern biological science has practical implications for our survival.
26. Beta endorphins, akin to oxytocin in ability to bring peaks or orgasms, occur during labor and peak as well during breastfeeding. Such hormones play a critical role in the ongoing development of the infant and well-being of the mother. (Recall the report from Israel several years ago that any society eliminating or curtailing breastfeeding has an immediate, one-for-one corresponding increase in breast cancer—information never published in the United States and, ironically, ignored by most Israeli doctors as well, who are as blinded by their own ego-inflation and economic interests as much as American physicians.)
27. The senses of taste, smell, and hearing play an important role in the baby’s identification of its mother before and after birth.

This list can go on and on, and grow quite technical. So at this point I would again quote Maria Montessori in her observation that humankind abandoned in its earliest formative period becomes its own worst threat to its survival. Doctors, midwives, hospitals, and helping friends all inadvertently feed on, and in turn feed into, a laboring mother’s feelings of inadequacy and helplessness, the various enemies within. In this regard, a bit of knowledge of recent biological research would enlighten, and is needed on all levels of our society, most seriously by the delivering mother, who should be protected by a new standard-bearer concerning the world around that mother: “Keep laboring women out of reach of meddling members of society around them.” Solo birthing is being discovered by more and more courageous, intelligent women, and is paying remarkable dividends.

One of the great barriers to women regaining control over their own lives, and their birthing and mothering capacities is the fearful set of obstructions men and fathers bring about. The notion that fathers are important at birthing is a new myth, and is not the case. Women have handled these issues for millennia—a power still genetically encoded, ready to go to work.