Ancestral Memory and Personality Profiling
Try this for an awesome thought.......
In the split
second moment of conception, the two streams of genetic information
from your parents, handed on from generation to generation over
literally hundreds of millenia, combined in one single cell that was to
become you. It ensured that you became a totally unique living record
of the lives and ways of your ancestors. And we are not just talking
about the way you look - we are talking about your ancestral memories,
the complete set of instincts and response patterns that were
responsible for the survival of those two genetic streams in the first
place. The instincts and response patterns that you were actually born
with.
Ancestral Memory and Neurosis by Terence Watts
This paper is an outline of the hypothesis that ancestral memory may
cause conflict which commences at the very beginning of the experience
of life, by which I mean the moment of birth. It proposes that
ancestral memories from two different parental genetic chains come
together to create the potential for discord in the psyche, and/or are
acted upon by external influences to cause conflict which will have to
be resolved in some way if the individual is to be content in life. It
is a hypothesis that is concerned more with psychotherapy as opposed to
hypnotherapy, though much of the information is useful in the latter
discipline to assist clients to 'wellness' and release of neurotic symptoms and has proven an invaluable tool in my work with clients.
Before The Beginning
Although we are taught
that man first appeared on earth around 3 million years or so ago,
there is no proof that those creatures were actually our ancestors.
Some scientists believe we are related to the very early species and/or
to the later Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon man, while others believe that
we are a separate race entirely, first appearing between 90,000 and
200,000 years ago. It doesn't much matter, really, as far as we are
concerned; if we are related, then we have inherited their savagery; if
we are not, then we had enough of our own to deal with theirs, for they
were around until about 30,000 years ago, by which time Modern Man was
an established species.
Homo Sapiens was probably nomadic in existence until about 10,000
years ago, when they started to form settlements and domesticate plants
and animals - the earliest attempts at civilisation. So there had already been many thousands of years of ancestral
savagery; for some it was kill or be killed and take what you want; for
many, it was keep your head down and out of trouble; and for the rest,
every time danger threatened it was run like the wind. The
fight/flight/freeze response surely has its roots here.
There have been hundreds of generations of violence, plagues,
famine, witches, warlocks and wizards, crusades, wars, fantastic
inventions and even more fantastic events since those days. Interbreeding passed on mixed genetics; environment ensured a goodly
amount of neurosis and general anxiety. So truly, each and every human
being is unique, because the computations of the effects of that
environment upon the genetic exchanges are almost infinite. And when
you take a look at the whole evolutionary process on a percentage
basis, it's no wonder that we all of us still exhibit primitive
behaviour quite often.
The Wandering Savage
Even being generous and
assuming that Homo Sapiens, our race, did not appear until around
100,000 years ago, we are no more than one half of one percent modern,
the rest primitive. 99.5% of our psycho-genetic make-up has not reached
the level of the middle ages and by far the vast majority of it is
still that of a wandering savage.
Evolution moves slowly and it will be a very long time yet before
the human race truly becomes as we try already to be. In the meantime,
most of our race are going to be born with conflict - or potential for
conflict - already in place, the resolution of which is unlikely to be
at birth, but probably as and when needed, or maybe even never.
Perhaps, in the rare situation where there is no conflict, either
within or externally, this may result in the superconfident
personality, the 'together' person who finds the process of living an
easy one to cope with from the very beginning and who tends to be
successful in most of their undertakings. The one who makes living look
easy, in fact. And to that individual, it IS easy, since his or her
ancestral urges are in harmony with his existence, allowing the
individual to easily adapt, dominate, or simply not care.
Ancestral memories would not be of actual events - it is not to be
confused with the idea of past life or reincarnation - but of reactive
response patterns and emotional states brought about by environment.
Early tribes whose main way of life was subservience, aggression,
nomadic urges, famine fear, etc. These circumstances could, over many
generations, create minute changes in the content of the amino acids
that form part of the DNA chain, aided by in-breeding and the process
of natural selection at work. These genetic changes would obviously be
passed on to the progeny, probably affecting actual brain chemistry, so
that each generation was progressively more inclined to the
predominating characteristic. They would have been predominantly
Warriors, Nomads, or Settlers. So there would be a predisposition at
birth towards the behaviour patterns of the tribe an individual was
born into. But the tribes could not have remained pure indefinitely.
The nomadic behaviour of some ensured that interbreeding and cross
breeding soon guaranteed that each individual carried the genes for
different behaviour patterns, though there would almost always be a
single dominant one - or dominant set, since a behaviour pattern is
unlikely to be created by a single gene. It's certainly possible,
though, that an individual can be subject to two opposite and equal
urges being 'built in' to the psyche, as it were, so that there is a
permanent state of flux between, say, the urge to pacify and the urge
to dominate. These conflicting urges would have caused conflict in an
environment where the rest of the tribe were still committed to, or
appearing to be committed to, just one of those behaviours.
So neurosis, the feelings of being a misfit in some way, would have
been created. It indicates that neurotic behaviour patterns could even
be in some way instinctive - in that they could be inborn' rather than
created by experience - which raises serious questions, not to be
approached here, about the efficiency of the principle of natural
selection.
It's worth recognising the fact that while it is possible that there
were as many as 150,000 generations of our ancestors as savages, there
have been only around 100 generations since the advent of Christianity
and the guilt and sometimes excessive superego development that goes
with it. The prehistoric gene still carries an awful lot of weight, and
it is in constant conflict with the Ego in even the most healthy
individuals. At birth, each and every one of us is already subject to
this vast history of genetic and behavioural influence.
We are born genetically programmed with a predominance towards one
of those three tribal behaviours - the Warriors, Settlers, or Nomads.
And then life happens…
The Birth Predisposition
The birth
predisposition is probably a physical part of the Right Brain, and
therefore 'hard-wired' and unchangeable without the intervention of
surgery, clinical intervention, or other physical damage such as
illness or accident. It is possible that an individual with a severely
uncomfortable 'hard-wired' conflict may be unlikely to find an
alleviation of their problems via therapy of any sort. Essentially,
they are suffering from one of the forms of psychosis, and it will
typically become most evident in their late teens. Although behavioural
therapy can help in these cases, brain-chemistry altering drugs would
be the most likely path to the relief of those apparent symptoms, which
are likely to be very specific and very profound.
A readiness to profound anger, depression and excessive aggression,
all for no real reason, are good examples. Fortunately, these cases are
either rare, or the adaptability of the human psyche resolves the
conflict before it becomes apparent. At birth, the logical left brain
is almost empty - evidenced by the low number of synapses, the measure
of brain activity - and like a sponge, starts soaking up information,
every new stimulus, avidly and immediately. It can't NOT. And since the
logical brain IS pretty much empty, everything perceived, though not
necessarily understood, assumes high importance and is accepted without
question. Repeated a few times, it becomes a fundamental belief, since
we have few prior experiences for comparison and we have not yet
discovered doubt to make us wary.
Cuddles, Comfort, Pain and Violence
The birth
predisposition, the genetic ancestral memory, is nothing more than a
set of responses to stimuli, rather than a belief and expectation
system; from the very moment of birth onwards, though, those responses
start to shape the way we will become, forming the bedrock of our
personality.
Our first experiences are our yardstick of the world however good or
bad they are; they are what we learn to expect and they result in a
fundamental behaviour set that is designed around those expectations.
Cuddles, comfort, pain, violence, and the situations which cause them
are all equally accepted as being normal and our reactions to them are
governed by that birth predisposition. Most of the time, thanks to the
adaptability of the human psyche, the basic pattern of being thus
formed allows us to function at least fairly comfortably - which is
just as well because it can seldom truly change very much, if at all.
It is probable that we continue to create those fundamental beliefs at
least throughout the Oral stage of our development, because at that
time we are busily adapting to our environment in order to survive. At
that time, we have no way of knowing that what you see is NOT
necessarily what you get, so everything that befalls us is always
indicative of the way life is, as far as we are concerned, and we have
to learn to deal with it in some way.
It is only as we mature and begin to develop the more finely tuned
emotional responses that the human animal is capable of, that we begin
to recognise the truth; that few things are perfectly good or perfectly
bad. Along with that recognition comes the ability to offset one
circumstance against the other and accept what seems to be a reasonable
compromise. But the decisions we make in that direction are at a purely
conscious level; the subconscious has its own unchanging view of
things, and where it perceives an event is bad, it will create a
feeling of unease, even though we may have made a decision that seems
to reflect what we really want. That is how our subconscious always
perceives things for the whole of our lives. Good or Bad. Black or
white. And until that later emotional development, the identification
procedures and demands of the ID are not modified enough by the
influences of the SUPEREGO to soften the impact upon the EGO; so
everything is perceived as either good or bad, responsible for pleasure
or unpleasure, and an experience to be stored for future evaluations
and comparisons.
By the time we are about ten years old, we have discovered how we
fit into the world, the likelihood or otherwise that our desires and
expectations will be fulfilled, and what is expected of us. The affects
of life and experience upon our birth predisposition have shaped and
moulded our own unique personality and we are now the sum total of our
ancestors, our triumphs and our disappointments, and our reactions to
the behaviour of others. We also have an intense knowledge of how others seem to think of us
and without some sort of intervention, this overall view of ourselves
will change very little for the rest of our life; not that we actually
continually see ourselves as being only ten-years-old, just that our
opinion of ourselves in relation to others will remain pretty much
constant from then on. So if, for example, we have perceived that
adults are going to belittle us or hurt us in some other way, then we
may experience problems as we grow older and begin to mix predominantly
with adults; the subconscious continues to perceive them as a source of
threat. This, I am certain, is the origin of inferior feelings and low
self esteem in the adult, and also the reason that the onset of
maturity so often heralds psychological difficultyIf there have also been
difficulties with peer socialisation during the early years, then there
may be feelings of complete isolation and separateness as an adult. So
our early years are fraught with uncomfortable possibilities and
combinations of influences; in spite of it all, though, the majority of
individuals safely reach maturity able to deal comfortably with the
stresses of existence as long as life goes reasonably well. But
sometimes, life goes far from well, and sometimes, fate is ungenerous
if not brutal. It is then that we may begin to feel that we simply cannot cope. We need help.
Role Of The Hypnoanalyst/Psychotherapist
My role is to help you gain a better understanding
of self - to discover, perhaps, who You really are; to discover and
use positive resources within and to resolve doubts and anxieties that
may have been suffered for many years. There are very many forms of
psychotherapy being practised and taught, each with its own advantages
and disadvantages, each with its dedicated followers. It is good to be
eclectic, but not too much so; energies may become dissipated and, for
most of us, it is probably better to have a favoured modus operandi
into which we can incorporate other knowledges and resources that we
may acquire over the years. I prefer an essentially
cognitive/behavioural, client-centred approach, probably because my
initial training alongside Terence Watts was in hypnoanalysis and I therefore have a bias
towards the doctrine of cause and effect. We should all work where we
have the highest level of conviction and, for me, that conviction is
that problems arise in the psyche in the ways already outlined here.
There does not have to have been any crisis which would be
universally viewed as traumatic; there does not have to be a single
causal event or mishap which is at the root of all the individual's
problems. Our problems may be due to nothing more than the fact that
when we are born we are reared by people whose way of being is
fundamentally different from our own predisposition.
There does not have to be a 'villain of the peace', and even when
there is, it is not necessarily the case that s/he is the cause difficulties. That said, it is when we are confronted with the
neuroses of others during our formative years that most damage is done.
It is here that we find the roots of all the complexes, in particular
the masturbation and/or guilt complex, as well as sublimated
instinctive drives, embarrassment about perfectly 'normal' behaviour
patterns (dating, eating in public, etc.), shame about body and bodily
functions, phobias (often by example: if mother is afraid of spiders,
then they must be creatures to be feared), general anxiety (again,
often learned by example), etc.
A neurotic parent will tend to produce a neurotic child; two
neurotic parents can scarcely do anything else. Even where the
behaviour of others during those formative years has been emotionally
and psychologically stable and therefore non-injurious, even where
nothing other than support and encouragement has been extended towards
the developing individual, there may still be problems arising from the
developmental process.
An individual may struggle to solve problems with a firm,
no-nonsense attitude, because their family has insisted that this is
the way it must be - the Warrior instincts - whilst they would secretly
prefer to adopt a negotiating or reconciliatory approach, that of the
Settlers; they might learn that practicality earns respect, whilst all
the time experiencing the imaginative, Nomadic, flights of the creative
mind; or perhaps be taught that it is 'normal' to be one of the general
crowd, while every instinct is that of the scholar, the introvert, with
a thirst for knowledge and understanding.
These and other contradictions can cause, at least, feelings of
uncertainty, at worst, feelings of being inadequate or a misfit. If the
'secret' urges are eventually fulfilled, then there will probably be no
resultant neurosis; it is when the individual suppresses them, that
they make their presence felt in the form of symptoms. Then, they have
often been denied for so long that there is no longer any conscious
knowledge of their existence, just a feeling of being different in some
way, which is often translated as being 'odd' or 'weird', out of skip.
Attempts to change or modify any behavioural or thought process
without resolving any beliefs, mistaken or otherwise, that are the
cause of that behavioural or thought process are likely to result in a
long haul to emotional health and may even then provide only a
relatively temporary respite from discomfort. The client's own
resources are at least as viable as the client's own conflicts and come
from the same root - the birth predisposition and early experience.
They just need finding, focusing upon, and using.
If you are interested in discovering your profile please contact me.
rachaelslack@hypnolife.co.uk
07590034127
