Psychic and Sensory Life of the Foetus

Introduction

The various researches carried out in the course of the last ten years concerning foetal life allow us to reinforce the theories that attempt to bring to light the presence in the foetus of a very intense psychic and sensory life. It is indeed in the course of the nine months of his intra-uterine life that the child stores up the greatest part of his human experiences — those which will subsequently weave the warp of his postnatal existential journey.

If it would have been ill received to evoke such a proposition some years ago, this is no longer so today. It is true that from all sides, emanating from specialists of various disciplines, proofs abound coming to buttress what we put forward as early as 1954: namely, that the foetus takes an active part during his mother’s pregnancy by the institution of a relational dynamic with her.

It is therefore in our day a commonplace to say that the foetus feels, perceives, memorises, integrates. It is also readily admitted that it hears from the fourth and a half month of its prenatal life. We have been led, in a work entitled La Nuit Utérine (Éditions Stock, Paris 1981), to specify that he perceives well before this moment and that he accumulates numerous memories which procure him his sensory experiences. From then on, an outline of psychic life is established on these beginnings of communication with the surrounding uterine world. This is to say that a whole psychological universe is established, whose importance has hitherto escaped us but whose resonances suggest that an unsuspected field of investigation opens up regarding a primary psychology still too unknown.

The research we have been conducting for some thirty years allows there to appear a convergence of clinical facts which render undeniable the existence of a prenatal psychology. Anatomical, embryological, physiological proofs moreover assure the well-foundedness of an embryo-foetal psychogenesis.

The anatomical proofs

They are incontestably those which weigh most heavily with the various specialists. Before stating them, we shall recall below some elementary data concerning the anatomy of the human ear.

To follow the order of genetic evolution, we shall say that there exist three stages going from within outwards: the inner ear, the middle ear and finally the outer ear:

The inner ear contains the sensory organ or membranous labyrinth. The latter, included in the bony labyrinth, is divided into two parts:

• the vestibular labyrinth or vestibule and the cochlear labyrinth or cochlea,

• the middle ear or tympanic cavity comprises the ossicles: stapes, anvil and malleus,

• The outer ear is constituted by the external auditory canal and the pinna.

However little one informs oneself patiently, it is easy to find an authority for all research. It is thus, for example, that in 1930, R.H. Bast published a work on the ossification of the otic capsule in the human foetus, in which is inscribed a whole series of meticulous studies gathered by this author and going back to 1670! One finds there a rich argumentation on the anteriority of the human ear in relation to the body as a whole. In 1962, B.J. Anson continued his investigations in the same direction, which led him to publish in 1974, in collaboration with T.R. Winch, a study confirming his first researches on the processes of ossification specific to the ossicular chain and distinct from the habitual processes of ossification. This specificity had moreover been remarked in 1959 by Shambaugh Junior in a work devoted to ear surgery (W.B. Saunders Company, London).

Coming to confirm these anatomical proofs, radiological studies made by G.B. and K.A. Elliott and published in January and March 1964, apply themselves to demonstrating the structural organisation of the inner ear arrived at its terminal phase from the fifth month of intra-uterine life. They recall among other things that in 1958, R.A. Willis presented the inner ear as one of the elements undergoing the most rapid and most stupefying transformations lived by the embryo.

Moreover, T. Madonia, F. Madonia and G. Cali introduced as early as 1963 the notion of a precocious activity of the ampullae of the labyrinthine semicircular canals, and thus emphasised the precocious role of the vestibule of the inner ear, that is, of the kinetic and static regulation mechanisms. Indeed, everything that is movement, even immobility, depends on the vestibules and their accessories: the semicircular canals.

All the specialists who have been led to study the developmental processes of the ear have been struck by the precocity of this organ. G.B. and K.A. Elliott have insisted on this point in specifying that the completed receptors of the cochlear organ had then a mathematically predicted size, based on the frequencies that would later have to be reproduced by the subject to modulate the intensities of his own voice.

Let us add to these elements so convincing in themselves that F. Faulkner revealed in 1966 by a publication on human development, the precocity of the myelinisation of the ear. He thus brought the certainty that the auditory nerve, clothed in a layer of myelin, was completely functional. It is in the sixth month of intra-uterine life that the myelinisation of the auditory nerves begins. It then continues at a vertiginous speed, so much so that at birth, the corresponding temporal area — that is, the projection zone of the cochlea upon the brain — is itself myelinated and therefore functional. This fact has been confirmed by P. Yakolev and A.R. Lecourt on the one hand, and by R. Marty on the other.

The physiological proofs

In the course of these last years, a quite particular interest has been manifested for all that touches on foetal audition. A growing attraction indeed retains the attention of numerous researchers. Various hypotheses attempt to explain the mechanisms of the developmental organisation of audition. It is true that, in this direction, little information reaches us from the recollection of earlier publications. Among these, one may note an article by A. Peiper who, in 1924, indicated a foetal reaction to intense noises at the fortieth week; another article by H.J. and H.B. Forbes, in 1927, stipulated that “the foetus responded to sound by motor reactions”. Later, in 1935, L.W. Sontag and R.F. Wallace gave more precisions on the mode of reactions to sonic stimuli. In 1947, L.W. Sontag reported in an article written in collaboration with J. Bernard indications on the possibility of response to different tonal heights.

It is, in truth, only in 1962 that we find ourselves before an objective study made by K.D. Murphey, audiologist, and C.M. Smyth, obstetrician. These two researchers report measurable modifications bearing on cardiac rhythms in function of the stimulation sent (500 cs and 4,000 cs). Following them, other specialists have engaged themselves on the same path and have arrived at the study of a measurement of foetal audition. It is then conceivable to claim to practise an audiometry. This is at least what was proposed in 1964 by B. Dnornilka, A. Jasienska, W. Smolarz and R. Wawryk, and in 1967 by B. Johanson, E. Wedensky and B. Westin. They thus wished to prove that the best means of objectifying the effects of auditory stimulations was to measure the cardiac rhythm of the foetus.

Moreover, in 1967, F.B. Horn and his collaborators recorded evoked responses at the level of the brain. This fact was taken up by N. Sabake, T. Arayama and T. Suzuki at the same period and gave rise to publications on the evoked potentials concerning the acoustic stimulations perceived by the human foetus.

The embryo-foetal proofs

They are important insofar as one bends oneself over the processes of a phylogenetic order. Indeed, embryology takes on a new lighting as soon as one is concerned to look at how evolution proceeds over time. It is known indeed how much embryological development tends to model itself on that of phylogenesis.

From the moment a cellular organisation is elaborated, an outline of an ear appears. Thanks to this first structure, the organism that is being constructed can locate itself in space, displace itself and above all gather the stimulations necessary for the animation of its nervous system which, in parallel, begins to constitute itself.

There are two fundamental elements to retain:

The precession of the ear in relation to the neurological structure.

The dynamogenetic, energetic function of the labyrinthine organ.

Another element, not without importance, must be brought to light. It is the presence of the specific, basal cell of all the detection and registration system that the ear constitutes. This generating cell is called the cell of Corti. It is indeed found in the organ of Corti or apparatus of audition properly speaking. The cell of Corti is the active sensory element. Since the dawn of time, it is similar to itself. It is found in medusae, lower fishes, higher fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals.

It is the cell which lines the whole of the sensory plates of the labyrinthine apparatus, both in its vestibular part and in its cochlear part. Better still, everything suggests that this cell of Corti has known a quite other destiny than that we have just described. Generated in water at the outset, it lived in the course of time, from generation to generation, from species to species, in a necessarily aqueous milieu. Either it bathes openly and directly in water, or it encloses itself in a cavity while remaining plunged in a liquid universe. Indeed, the bony labyrinth is closed; it thus contains the so-called perilymphatic liquid in which the membranous labyrinth is held in suspension. It is itself filled with a so-called endolymphatic liquid which differs from the previous one by some physico-chemical characteristics.

To this well-known line, a different evolutionary orientation is offered moreover to the cell of Corti. The latter orients itself towards a complex non-liquid organisation in function of the more or less profound transformations that the ensemble of the various sensitive musculo-tendino-articular and cutaneous organs, and even visceral, undergoes. The hair system seems, for its part, to belong to the same origin. It is thus that man, whose destiny is to become a listener, will attain this not only with his ear, but also with his skin, with his whole body. One may say of him that he then rises up as a veritable antenna, as an ear in its totality listening to the outside world. One thus glimpses the importance of this conception which links the auditory organ to the cutaneous sensitive apparatuses and to a part of the sensory organs.

A sensitive and sensory dynamic will therefore be established, responding to the different motor activities, from statics to kinetics, global or partial — that is, at the level of the motor activities of the body’s globality or of a part of it. There results a crystallisation of the sensitivo-kinetic image of the body. The notion of this body, active and living in a surrounding milieu, then manifests itself and determines the first image of self instituted on the basis of the primary support.

One now better understands the role held by the Corti-type cell and by its derivatives. It is indeed found in the utricle, the saccule and the ampullae of the semicircular canals. It is this which constitutes the sensory organ of the cochlea and which, in addition, determines all the cutaneous sensitivity superficial and deep, muscular, articular and bony. In fact, thanks to it, are coordinated the sensory plays that govern the body through the peripheral nerve pathways. The body is really active and activated in its globality thanks to a monitoring of regulations at several stages, which answer to the various planes of evolution of the nervous system annexed to the ear. The latter precedes, as would an embryological inductor, the evolution of the central nervous system itself — just as if the brain answered to the high-level call which leads the human being ineluctably towards listening. This is an interesting fact to note.

Indeed, the embryological evolution of the ear reveals that it organises itself very rapidly. From the first days of embryonic life, in the cephalic part, in a place of cellular hyperactivity called auditory placode, the organisation of the inner ear is set in place. The vestibule starts first, but already the cells of Corti install themselves in order to be operational in the cochlea from the fourth and a half month of intra-uterine life. They begin to be active only in the cochlear base — that is, where the high frequencies are perceived. (T. Wada, 1923). It is only much later, well after birth, that the low frequencies will be integrated (O. Larsell, E. McCrady and J.F. Larsell, 1944). For H. Gavini, the low frequencies are really perceived only between 8 and 15 years (1962). This fact is essential to retain. Indeed, it seems to us very important to note in this evolution the precocious development of the base of the cochlea with a view to situating there the zone of the high frequencies.

All this explains that the inner ear, during intra-uterine life and for long thereafter during postnatal life, plays a role of filter, selecting and favouring the high frequencies. Doubtless, thanks to this disposition, the embryo-foetus knows how to shelter itself from the aggression of the multiple noises that the uterus gathers. Moreover, it succeeds in perceiving more specifically its mother’s voice according to a quite characteristic mode that we have determined and reproduced. We have called it “the Filtered Maternal Voice” (FMV). Embryo-foetal audition is therefore distinguished from adult audition by the very fact that perception is selective around 5,000 Hz and beyond.

Embryo-foetal psychogenesis

On this anatomo-physiological background particularly vivid, essentially active, one is present at the setting in place of a psychogenesis on the basis of which the later psychic activity will draw its own origins. It is at this level that genetic psychology implants its roots. There is nothing unusual about this. It is evident that in the embryo-foetus an intense psychological dynamic is organised, both affective and relational.

Moreover, however little one searches with application whence come the behavioural habits of the human, one is quite surprised to discover how much the most archaic structures, those one knows to be rooted to the very depths of the soul, answer to the acquisitions of the very origin of this experience in the “primitive cavern”. From this primordial dwelling, from this envelope which has enclosed every man, many archetypal reminiscences allow many symbols to show through which find in this place their primitive source.

Already an essential relational dimension is instituted with the outside world, the uterus in the circumstance, and all that it represents on the nutritional plane, under the angle of sonic and tactile communication, under the aspect of the organisation of spatial research.

From then on, every later progression will be a complexified repetition of these fundamental structures. One is present at a true “de-telescoping” of various stages which seem interwoven — and they are in their programming. It is thus that the embryo emanates from the egg, that the foetus is born of the embryo, and that the latter generates the newborn. It is the same from the primordial cell to the man approaching his terminal phase. Every first integration is the warp on which rests and reproduces itself, then complexifies, every later psychological activity.

Projective symbolism allows the trace of this primordial experience to be found again. Research on dwelling, certain tests such as those of the tree, of the little man, of the house… etc., cause to appear integrated imageries under the most archaic aspect of the primary engramming gathered during the sojourn in the uterine den.

In addition, the cardiac and respiratory rhythms of the mother, those of the foetus itself, the noises of the neighbourhood emanating from the mother’s body are so many sonic sensations stored up and filtered, we recall — therefore perceived only in the mode of rhythm. The repercussions of this sonic experience can have consequences in the course of postnatal life on the psychological plane, even psychiatric (Salk). Noises and sounds external to the abdominal wall also have their effects (Peipper, Forbes, Sontag, Feijo). But it is surely the absorption of the mother’s voice that remains the major phenomenon of all the later affective and emotional organisation. The considerable impact that the filtered maternal voice represents in the evolution of the desire to communicate has been evidenced (Alfred Tomatis).

It is evident that this relational dynamic demands a substrate to establish itself. The latter is none other than the relation with the mother. One could never sufficiently insist on this primordial, profound, affective communication, which puts two beings into resonance: that of the mother and that of the child to be born. Never will the relational liaison be as intense as during these nine months when the mother and the embryo-foetus know a true symbiosis which allows them to become what they are in potency: the mother and the child. By his presence and from the first moments of his uterine insertion, the embryo-foetus transforms the woman who carries him. She is wholly other. And her soul vibrates in a duet of love specific, very different from all the habitual emotional effusions. She vibrates thenceforth at the emission of the life she transmits. To beget a child awakens in the woman her dimension of potential generatress which makes of her the partner of a couple that nothing could replace.

It is known how much man, in his destructive genius, has been able to occult, degrade, destroy, annihilate this essential liaison to which he owes his meeting with life. Enclosed in an existential dialectic which loses him in the meanderings of an evolution decided by his predecessors, man is sometimes forgetful of his essence, of this essence on the basis of which is established the veritable dialogue and from which emanates this exceptional relation between two beings who melt into each other. There exists no situation similar to that of gestation for instituting this dual amorous liaison, in the most noble sense of the term — that of dependence freely consented to, induced by an attentive mutual listening.

There is no psychogenesis without the total implication of the mother. Even in the destructive delirium of man, even in the woman the most opposed to her pregnancy, the most refusing, a maternal vibration subsists in her depths. But while she gives life, she introjects death, not without destroying herself in her essential reality.

One glimpses there the whole later psychological structure and its deviations which will close the psychic universe of the child, upon which will be grafted that of the adult.

Conclusion

One may say that listening induces the embryo-foetus in his becoming-man. It is known now that this faculty interpellates the ear but also all cutaneous sensitivity, all deep sensitivity, even visceral. It is to tense all one’s body towards the other, to listen — but it is also to know that one is, by this same relation. One cannot listen without implicating oneself, and listening begins with listening to oneself in the organisation of the relation with the other.

The existential journey begins from this first relation. It will be all the more true, the more authentic for being devoid of all affective and emotional distortion. From then on, this existential journey will approach what the evolution of the Being itself should be. We know that it is quite otherwise, and yet, we are convinced that a deepened study of the relational dynamic during intra-uterine life would be rich in teaching for orienting human conduct. There is no doubt that education would draw from it its fundamental bases. In this, the embryo-foetus remains our master.

Alfred A. Tomatis*, Milan 1984. *Translation of La vita psichica e sensoriale del feto published in L’Enciclopedia della Scienza e della Tecnica.