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Abstract: Reprinted from JOPPPAH 23(2) Winter, 2008. This article investigates the relationship between traumatic events from conception to birth and Schizoid Personality Disorder, Dysfunction, and Deprivation. From extensive experiential work with clients, based on the work of the British psychiatrist, Dr. Frank Lake, and her own personal experiences, the author discusses the very painful schizoid personality dysfunctions and deprivations relating to traumas of great severity in the first trimester of life. Loss of bonding and fear of intimacy are explored, along with dissociation and boundaries, seen as learned behavior in the womb. Case studies and statements from clients are included.
Keywords: prenatal and perinatal psychology, attachment, primal health
In recent years, many books have been written and workshops and courses run on the very real issues of childhood trauma and abuse. In my work over the last thirty years with clients, and also from my own personal experience, the major question has been how someone who is so dysfunctional in their relationships, can often live their daily work life quite unperturbed. The point being made is the paradoxical nature of the dysfunction. The schizoid person has two modes of being; one is traumatized and dysfunctional, the other unperturbed and capable of seemingly normal relationships.
Another important question is how far back do we have to go in order to find the answers? The contradiction in the personality is baffling and no reasonable cause may be found for it unless one seeks answers in the time before birth.
The task has been to facilitate ways to help clients become functioning human beings in intimate relationships and friendships. It is very possible the way we react to trauma as babies, infants, children, and adults is the aspects of personality acquired in utero through negative and positive imprinting. I eventually found that my own disorder and dysfunction predated childhood trauma and the fractal, or pattern of dysfunction, came from the prenatal period. The trauma happened before I was born, in the first trimester, during the first three months of life in the womb. The effects of this event continued with me in childhood and adulthood until I found the means to experience this primal trauma through emotional feeling, physical sensation, and historical memory in order to gradually...