The second central concept in Grof’s model is that of the perinatal. Though initially an expansion and deepening of the Rankian insight into the effect of the birth trauma on the development of personality, the concept eventually unfolded in the direction of a more complex and nuanced understanding of the death/rebirth archetype, where the life-and-death struggle of the fetus at birth is seen as the prototypical encounter with the universal, or archetypal, process of deep transformation.
