The Imprint and the Development of the Self

 One of my patients had parents who tried to stop him from doing anything.  From the start they didn’t want to be bothered with him, and they told him to sit in his chair, not move and not talk.  This was on top of a birth that was blocked and resulted in great difficulty for him to get out.  These two traumatic experiences during the critical period of development combined to make him unstoppable once he got out of control.  He became furious if anyone put an obstacle in his way.  If he was put on hold on the phone, or if in an office he was told to wait while they went to look up his file, he became enraged.

 He did not know it, but he was reacting to events that had occurred long ago.  To be stopped originally meant death; if he could not get out at birth he would have died.  He had to force his way out, and when later faced with obstacles he became overly aggressive.  He was fighting during birth and later, parents who never let him have his way.  His only solution to problems was to charge ahead, never knowing when to back off.

 Another patient had very different key personality-shaping events during the critical period.  His mother was heavily anesthetized during childbirth.  The anesthetic entered his system, depriving him of oxygen.  In order to survive, he had to conserve energy and not use too much oxygen.  In other words, to save himself his system slowed down to a passive, waiting state, a physiology of defeat and despair, as there was nothing he could do about what was happening (the anesthesia). This was later compounded by his childhood treatment by his parents, who never let him express his feelings or object to anything.  There was no use in battling at birth, and later no use in struggling for anything with his parents, which would have only made them more dismissive and unresponsive.

 In both cases, he was dominated by outside forces over which he had no control, and he had no choice but to give in and give up.  Passivity was the appropriate, and in fact life-saving, reaction.  And from then on, when faced with even minor obstacles, he would give up, as he did originally and later with his parents.  In effect, he would go into a “defeat” mode again and again, just as he had from the start; which was only later labeled depression.

 Both patients are victims of events, as many of us are.  Early experiences, during the critical first three years of life, largely give shape to our personality and our health.  The Catholic Church used to say, "Give me a child ‘til age six and he will be a Catholic forever."  It turns out that all they need is the first three years.  This is almost the end of the critical period when we become pretty much what we will be for the rest of our lives.  Here is where we become either optimistic or pessimistic, concentrated/dispersed, active/reflective, trying/giving up, reaching out/reaching in, overcoming obstacles/overwhelmed by obstacles, looking ahead/ looking back, goal oriented/floundering, aggressive/passive.  Because we are largely feeling beings during these critical years, without the + powers that come later, the core of the self is largely shaped through the warp and weft of pre-verbal and non-verbal processes.  Moreover, what diseases befall us also begin here.

 The concept of the imprint has been central to my work for several decades. When early trauma during the critical period of development is great, it becomes an imprint — a permanent state.  The suffering component – the part that cannot be integrated because it is too much to bear – is sheared off and stored.  This is the imprint, and it takes on a life of its own in our nervous systems.  It becomes an alien force, not truly a part of us, detached yet seeking ways of entry to conscious-awareness.  In depression, there is a state of chronic suffering because the person cannot translate vague, global suffering into its specific imprinted pain.  So it is that alien force that shapes our thoughts and behavior.  Some people literally perceive “alien forces” in the world; these are no more than their own terror, projected externally.