Women and Birth
Volume 21, Issue 3 , Pages 127-132, September 2008

Listening to pregnancy dreams: Towards a Jungian Inner Map of pregnancy, lactation, weaning and post-weaning

1/185 Wigram Road, Forest Lodge, NSW 2037, Sydney, Australia

Received 7 September 2007; received in revised form 7 June 2008; accepted 10 June 2008.

Article Outline

Summary 

From a Jungian perspective, there is a psychological pattern in the pregnancy, lactation, weaning and post-weaning process, which amounts to a ‘physiological initiation’ into motherhood, which is relatively unknown in current Western culture. This paper shows how this pattern in dream themes can be elucidated, forming an Inner Map of pregnancy. This map should help mothers better adjust to incipient motherhood, before the birth, and consequently help them to bond better with their babies. Building on the Inner Map, a research program is proposed into bone mineral metabolism post-weaning aimed at empirically grounding Jungian psychology.

Keywords: Pregnancy, Jungian theory/Psychology, Pregnancy dreams, Lactation, Weaning, Bone mineral metabolism, Post-weaning bone recovery phase

 

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Introduction 

Understanding dreams during pregnancy and lactation can help women better navigate the transition to motherhood and so better bond with their babies. This can greatly benefit the lives of both women and their children. This paper aims to elucidate the pattern in pregnancy and lactation dreams that Jungian psychology suggests is common across individuals and cultures. I call this pattern the Inner Map of pregnancy. Timewise it runs from conception through breastfeeding up to 6 months after weaning, when bone metabolism and mineral density revert to normal.

Once clearly established, the Inner Map should have three benefits. Firstly it should help avoid post-natal depression and psychosis by allowing pregnant women to accept and cooperate with the meaningful inner aspect of pregnancy. Understanding the pattern of the Inner Map can guide them to better perceive, particularly in dreams, their own inner transition to motherhood. Where perception leads, understanding and acceptance can later follow.

Second, deviations from the normal pattern of dreaming during pregnancy may help medical diagnoses by flagging upcoming medical abnormalities. Jung's own documented use of dreams to make strictly medical diagnoses1, 2 shows that this crossover from depth psychology to biology and medicine is not only possible but also practically beneficial.

Finally, I show how to empirically ground Jungian psychology. The hypothesis is that certain typical physiological changes will reliably and repeatably correspond to changes in dream themes, across individuals and cultures. Bone mineral metabolism, particularly post-weaning, is a prime target. If successful, this research will provide the empirical evidence for Jungian psychology that so far has been lacking.

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Archetypes 

Observed objectively, the biological stages of pregnancy have not changed in recorded history, and are quite ordinary, even banal. However, experienced within, images from dreams during pregnancy form an inner picture of the biological process at succeeding stages of the pregnancy. For the pregnant woman herself, this train of images becomes literally awesome, numinous or even transcendent. This kind of numinous, awesome inner experience is often described in religious language: in Jungian terms, these are called ‘archetypal’ experiences.

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Defining archetypes 

I adopt a dual approach to defining archetypes.3 Following Jung4 and English Analyst Anthony Stevens5 I define an archetype from two sides: from the side of biology as well as from the side of culture and religion. Swiss Analyst Marie-Louise von Franz speaks of an archetype having two poles, like the light spectrum6.

At the ‘infra-red’ end of the spectrum, an archetype is felt as corporeally or biologically acting on or through the body. At the ‘ultraviolet’ pole, inspiration is subjectively felt to enter into one's psyche or intellect from ‘elsewhere’. This can happen in all kinds of creative work, artistic or scientific, as well as in religious life.

Archetypes have this dual aspect because archetypes are simultaneously biological and psychological. Since archetypes are the basic building blocks of Jung's psychology, his psychology enjoys a dual status as part of both biological science and humanistic culture. An archetype can be defined in three ways: functionally; biologically; and culturally.

Functionally 

When an archetype is acting on the ego, the ego feels an effect coming from ‘elsewhere’—from the non-ego, from the unconscious. An example from the history of science is Russian Chemist Dmitri Mendeléev's dream which showed him the structure of the periodic Table7; another is a repeated dream which showed German Endocrinologist Otto Loewi how to carry out the experiment on how nerves communicate across synapses, which won him the 1936 Nobel Prize for Medicine.8

In the pregnancy, lactation and weaning and post-weaning process the same thing happens – the ego feels an effect coming from ‘elsewhere’ – except the effect of ‘being acted on’ is also biological. It occurs predominantly at the infrared/corporeal pole of Von Franz's spectrum. ‘Something else’ drives the pregnancy along; and the ego of the pregnant woman with it. Consequently, she has to accommodate, or come to accept the changes it forces on her, in some way. As stated, the Inner Map can help to make this transition easier, by allowing the pregnant woman (her ego) to consciously come to terms with the pattern of the inner and biological forces driving her pregnancy along.

The Jungian concept of the ego may need some explanation: the ego is seen as only one complex amongst many. The ego is who I think or feel I am at any time—but through compulsions or slips of the tongue or foot, lapses of memory or moods, I can infer that some other part of me is also playing a role in ‘my’ life. So, from the Jungian perspective the ego is – to use the terminology – ‘relativised’; that is, I am compelled to admit that ‘I am not the master in my own house’.9 Who I think I am is not finally in charge of my personality or behaviour.

Biologically 

The insight that the biological and the numinous are two sides of a coin is quite helpful in the case of pregnancy. American Analyst Edward Edinger elucidates:

“…all that is called instinct in biological terminology, when experienced psychologically is best described as Deity”10

Ultimately it is the one single process that is observed alternately from within and from without—two different ways of observing the same unitary life process.

An archetype can be defined as the spontaneous symbolic or inner self-representation of an instinct.11 And pregnancy is nothing if not instinctual; for instance, the conscious will cannot vary the stages or timing of the pregnancy process. So, we can say that the Inner Map portrays (or more accurately, is) the archetypal structure of the pregnancy, lactation and weaning and post-weaning process. In other words, the archetype is at once all three of the numinous and meaningful inner experience; the organizing structure or pattern that is revealed in the imagery that makes up such an experience; and the physical changes undergone. The dream imagery of the pregnant woman shows the stages of the pregnancy, lactation and weaning and post-weaning process as seen from within, from the point of view of her unconscious.

Generally speaking, the unconscious can present itself to the ego in two ways. First, as a pattern of behaviour, which happens to the ego and which the ego is caught up in. Or second, as dream images, which are presented to the ego as a fait accompli, and which represent that same pattern of behaviour, in symbolic terms. The archetype is both at once—both the outer behaviour and the inner image. In pregnancy, specifically, the ‘behaviour’ is the physical instinctual growth of the fœtus, and the accompanying changes in the mother's body. The pattern of biological growth and change should therefore be reflected in the dream images during the pregnancy, lactation and weaning and post-weaning process.

When an individual is caught up in an unstoppable biological process – that is, a process that goes on whether one consciously wishes it to or not – then seen or experienced from within, that process is experienced as numinous forces carrying one along in their grip. American psychotherapist Kathie Carlson comments:

In pregnancy and childbirth…some women are gripped by a Life-and-Death drama that totally destroys an old ego sense of “being in control” and initiates them into far more than the experience of having to cope with a new baby. They may find themselves face to face with the Mother as Creator and Destroyer manifesting in irrational terrors or visions or dreams.12

The Inner Map can help guide the mother through this transformative aspect of the pregnancy, lactation and weaning and post-weaning process. The emotional journey through this process can be smoothed if the mother can be forewarned, and knows what to expect at each stage of the process. The appropriate expectation can be ascertained at each stage, because usually the dreams themselves contain both the guiding key symbol, as well as the terrifying or blissful aspect of each major inner experience.

Culturally 

Culturally, archetypes can be seen in the foundational patterns, main symbols and art forms of any culture. Jung argued that the same basic symbols and cultural patterns repeated themselves from culture to culture, even across cultures that were not connected historically or geographically. One example is the religious ‘god-eating’ symbol which appears in the Christian Mass, but also occurs in the Aztec cult of Huitzlipotchli, even though those two cultures had no common origin and no contact before the conquistadors.13, 14

So, any connection between the same symbol in two cultures that are not linked historically or geographically has to be acausal. Jung explains that in certain typical life situations which require a transformation, there is an unconscious substratum or matrix of the human mind which responds in the same structural, or instinctual manner to the same typical outer life circumstance.

This basic inner structure or matrix pre-dates our individual egos, and is the stuff out of which one's ego grows. Jung called this matrix the Collective Unconscious. The archetypes are the ‘stuff’ that the Collective Unconscious is made up of.

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Background literature 

Here I can only cover the bare bones of Jungian psychology; for readers who may be less familiar with Jungian sources, a great starting point is Robert Hopcke's Guided Tour to the Collected Works of Jung.15 Authors I recommend generally are Jung, Marie-Louise Von Franz and Edward Edinger. Robert Johnson's Inner Work16 is a friendly introduction to dream work. Kathie Carlson's In Her Image particularly relates to pregnancy and motherhood17 as does M. Esther Harding's Woman's Mysteries: Ancient and Modern18 and Carol Baumann's paper ‘Psychological Experiences connected with Childbirth’19. In Jean Shinoda Bolen's Goddesses in Everywoman the chapter on the Greek Goddess Demeter is quite helpful; it also describes bonding with a baby.20 Jung's discussion of Lunar symbolism in Mysterium Conunctionis21 is relevant, as is his preface to Harding's book22.

Other transpersonal approaches to pregnancy and childbirth have been developed by Moloney23 and Lahood.24 Rosario and Samuel's Daughters of Hariti25 is relevant, as is Barbara Tedlock's Woman in the Shaman's Body.26 More generally, there is a wonderful non-Jungian anthropology, Samuel's Multimodal Framework27, which uses the same basic approach, linking biology and culture via anthropology.

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Pregnancy and archetypes 

As stated, the Inner Map can help mothers appreciate and become acquainted with the archetypes governing pregnancy and motherhood—mainly the Mother Archetype, and Lunar symbolism. Lunar symbols are those symbols that have become associated with the phases of the moon in different cultures and times; they are explored by Jung21 and Harding.28

The inner aspect of the pregnancy, lactation and weaning and post-weaning process has been likened to a natural initiation from girlhood into motherhood:

…Nature has provided a strong mechanism, which might almost be called a physiological initiation for mothers (that is to say that the experience of childbirth contains within itself an initiation into motherhood) under civilized conditions more and more obstacles have been put in its path, therefore the natural (and relatively unconscious) transition from girlhood to motherhood no longer functions smoothly.29

So, the Inner Map listens to the naturally existing ‘initiation’, and aims to make it more conscious. For example, a daughter will simply replicate the way she was mothered unless she investigates more deeply into the psychological background of her family. The style of mothering in a particular family is an interpersonal pattern of behaviour. It constitutes an interpersonal way of considering the Mother Archetype. It is the pattern of intimacy and relatedness (or not) that reigns in one's own family for example, even across generations.

The Mother Archetype is an inner picture in a child's mind of what her mother is like. To little kids, their parents are literally like Gods. It is as if a part of our psyche retains internal images of this same strength and degree of bliss or terror. Those images also unconsciously inform how we act as parents or carers ourselves: that is the origin of the comment “I heard my mother's words coming out of my mouth” or “I inadvertently used the same movement as my grandmother”. That's the archetype coming through directly as outer behaviour! So, that pattern of behaviour is what you can see within – as an inner dream image – before the fact, if you want to. So, in her own dreams a daughter can experience the inner figure of her mother representing the pattern of behaviour that she has adapted herself to while growing up.

Now, if her own mothering has been adequate this does not pose a practical problem. However, when a daughter has been inadequately mothered, that pattern will govern how she mothers herself, unless and until she accustoms herself to know and transforms this inner image/outer pattern of behaviour. This means working through issues she has from her interactions with her outer personal mother. As she works through these issues, she will see inner changes in the inner Mother figures within her own psyche, in her dreams. A new style of mothering can then come into being, as her new inner mother figures evolve into a new style of mothering. So, fortunately, even if a woman has a difficult relationship with her own outer personal mother, those wounds can be revisited and worked on and healed via the Mother Archetype within herself.

As stated, the Inner Map should help reduce the incidence of post-natal depression and post-natal psychosis. Usually, if an individual is prepared to open up to and listen respectfully to a given content or image, then the face that that inner image or content shows back to the ego generally becomes more benign. So, as an individual woman becomes more aware of and heals the inner Mother Image or Mother Archetype within herself, the quality of caring that she offers her children can improve; just becoming aware of this inner pattern starts to change it. The Inner Map can extend this process by guiding her through the inner and emotional aspects of her pregnancy stage by stage, so that by the time the birth comes, she is already as prepared for motherhood as she can be.

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A full or integrated experience of the archetype 

I said above that dream images are the self-portrait of an instinct, and are presented to the ego as a given. While this is so, the particular imagery will vary slightly from individual to individual, since we all have different experiences of and associations to typical life situations.

Imagine two daughters, each with very different relationships with their outer personal mothers. One is accepted by, gets on very well with, and is perhaps even a little spoiled by her mother. The other has the opposite problem and has been emotionally abandoned by, does not get on with, and always ends up fighting with her mother. Another way of expressing this same pattern of behaviour is to say that one has had a more positive experience of the Mother Archetype, the other a more negative experience. But both experiences, though opposite, are equally one-sided.

A full, integrated experience includes both sides of an archetype, which is bivalent, like a Janus head, looking both ways at once. Another example can be taken from Cinderella. Cinderella has to suffer through an experience of the negative side first, but then she also has to accept the positive side too—the Fairy Godmother. Kali in Hinduism is a good example of an integrated Mother Goddess, both nourishing and destroying.

Generally in the West we suffer from a split between the positive and negative sides. The Virgin Mary carries only the good side. The Witch or the Whore of Babylon carries only the dark side. In Russian culture, however, the situation is less polarized, as can be seen with the Baba-Yaga in Russian Fairytales, who is less one-sided. Fortunately in individual inner work this split can be redressed.30 Negative Mother Archetype imagery can gradually become replaced with more complete, balanced imagery that contains both light and dark.

One good example of a Mother Goddess who was/is not split, is Isis, the Egyptian Mother Goddess. Isis is not entirely foreign to Western sensibilities as in the Roman Empire Isis was worshipped as far afield as London. To give an idea of the ‘unsplitness’ or integration of both sides of Isis, some of her various names are interesting. Jung records Isis being referred to as the Ancient One, the Moon, the Earth. She includes both good and evil, being the Mother of both Set and Horus—her evil and good sons, respectively; She possesses the elixir of life; She is the All-Mother; the ever-renewing, all accepting Mother Nature; She is, according to one ancient commentator “the nature of the æon whence all things are and by which all things are”.31, 32

To return now to everyday life, an integrated symbol like Isis can allow each of our daughters to accept the other side of herself. This benefit of the Inner Map can even be intergenerational: for the daughter with the too-positive a relationship with her personal mother, redressing the inner or personal balance this means being able to perceive, and accept more of the negative side in herself; and vice versa for the daughter with the too negative a relationship. By accepting those unexpected, opposing qualities in herself, a mother implicitly gives permission to her daughter to also grow into those qualities. In turn, this more positive experience can then enlarge that daughter's future capacities and choices as a mother vis-à-vis her own children later.

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Creating the Inner Map 

The Inner Map can be created by asking a statistically significant number of women to record their dreams throughout pregnancy; ideally from conception on. Dreams should be recorded and dated by gestational age or time elapsed since birth, through each stage of pregnancy, lactation, weaning, and through the post-weaning stage of bone density recovery—which lasts up to 6 months after weaning.33 For non-lactating mothers this stage also seems to last 6 months, but until 6 months after birth.34 Non-lactating mothers act like an (admittedly imperfect) control group, which matched for age and parity should permit a useful comparison of the dream imagery of lactating and non-lactating mothers.

For the participant in, or subject of the research, it may be helpful (but not necessary) to ‘prime the pump’ by writing a Progoff-style autobiography.35 The writer should pay particular attention to her relationship with her mother and/or mother-figures, and also her mother's relationship with her own mother, if known. So, she can become more aware of the specific style of mothering in her family; this awareness can make it easier to remember and write down dreams. A record of the cultural and religious background(s) in her family may also help, owing to the expected individual and familial inflections of the Mother Archetype.

If possible, it is better to not only note but also emotionally own the various reactions and responses to the upbringing and style of mothering one grew up in—rather than simply recording bare autobiographical facts. For those only able to record facts however, this would most likely be sufficient, as dreams would most likely pick up from this point, so long as dream content is related to honestly and in a participatory manner.16 Practically, since time is so short after the baby is born, it may be easier to record dreams onto a tape, MP3 or mobile phone while breastfeeding.36

For the researcher, the research can initially be simplified by first collecting dreams only from a culturally homogeneous group in order to avoid anticipated intercultural differences. While not absolutely necessary, it may be desirable for simplicity at first. Later stages of research can then progress to collecting dreams from groups straddling intercultural groups; it would be interesting to collect dreams across different cultures, ideally some more matrifocal, some more patrifocal, to see what culturally specific inflections appear.37

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Future research avenues—building on the Inner Map 

I suggest that a strict empirical basis for the Inner Map can be obtained by lining up biochemical changes alongside dream theme/archetypal changes during PLW to see if changes of each kind repeatably and reliably correlate. If they do, this would provide one way of putting Jungian psychology on an empirical basis. (That encapsulates the methodology to be used; due to scope I do not elaborate here, but have done so elsewhere.38) As stated, bone mineral metabolism, in calcium and phosphates, during lactation, weaning and in the post-weaning reversion to normal bone metabolism, is a prime candidate for this next step in research.

During lactation the mother's skeleton acts as calcium storage for the baby. Calcium required for breast milk is taken up directly from the mother's bones and not from her diet. In the 6 months after weaning, the mother's body reverts to taking up calcium from the diet as usual. This allows depleted bone to recover lost mineral content. Because these changes in bone metabolism go so deep, I suspect that they will be visible in dream imagery, as well as measurable empirically in X-ray (dual energy X-ray absorbitometry) measurements. That is the hypothesis to be tested.

For review articles on bone calcium metabolism in humans, see Prentice33, Kovacs.39, 40 Bone phosphate data in humans is not yet complete. For a basic graph, showing a marked increase in serum phosphate levels in lactation only in humans, see Kovacs.41, 42 In rats, more complete data shows bi-hormonal regulation of bone phosphate levels by Fibroblast Growth Factor 23 (FGF-23) and 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D; see Liu.43

If this same bi-hormonal regulation also exists in humans, FGF-23 concentrations ought to match the established human serum phosphate level data, which ought to, in turn, correspond repeatably with dream theme changes at milk let-down and at weaning and in the post-weaning bone density recovery phase. If so, this would provide one empirical basis for Jungian psychology. Hopefully, once the Inner Map is complete, human bone density data for the pregnancy, lactation and weaning and post-weaning process will also be complete—particularly in the post-weaning bone density recovery stage. Completeness in both sets of data will greatly facilitate this future research step.

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Conclusion 

Jung's hypothesis of a species-wide biological basis to dreaming suggests that throughout the normal stages of pregnancy, lactation, weaning and post-weaning bone density recovery phase, there ought to be a regular, repeating pattern of changes in dream themes. I advocate collecting dreams from a statistically significant number of pregnant women in order to draw out any common dream themes that may exist. Any common themes ought to constitute the Inner Map of pregnancy, lactation and weaning, which according to Jung ought to be valid across individuals and cultures. This hypothesized validity can be tested by collecting dreams across individuals and cultures and comparing dream theme changes, and their timing, by gestational age or time passed since giving birth, to see if those changes are really common or not.

Once fully developed and tested, the Inner Map should be able to help women better understand and more consciously make the transition to motherhood, and so better bond with their children. It should also help avoid post-natal depression and psychosis. Suggested future research may also be able to empirically and medically ground the Inner Map, specifically in reference to patterns in bone mineral metabolism, which may be found to reliably correspond to the pattern of dream theme changes in the Inner Map. If so, that would close the circle opened by Jung's hypothesis of a common biological basis to dreaming.

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Acknowledgements 

There was no financial assistance. My great thanks to everyone at Bridge Business College for putting up with me while I was writing this paper and to my dance and movement teachers, Annetta Luce, Leisa Shelton and Shushi Slobosay, without whom this could not have been written.

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References 

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  2. Davie T. Comments upon a case of ‘Periventricular Epilepsy’. Br Med J. 1935;3893(Aug):293–297
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  5. Stevens A. Archetype revisited: an updated history of the self. London: Brunner Routledge; 2002;p. 17–8, 51–5
  6. Von Franz M-L. Alchemy: an introduction to the symbolism and psychology. Toronto: Inner City; 1980;p. 59
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  36. My thanks to Colleen Lee for this.
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  43. Liu S, Tang W, Zhou J, Stubbs J, Luo Q, Pi M, et al. Fibroblast growth factor 23 is a counter-regulatory phosphaturic hormone for vitamin D. Am J Soc Nephrol. 2006;17:1305–1315

PII: S1871-5192(08)00051-6

doi:10.1016/j.wombi.2008.06.001

Women and Birth
Volume 21, Issue 3 , Pages 127-132, September 2008

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