originally posted by: peppycat
I'm curious, how did this man know more about childbirth? Was he a doctor or Psychiatrist? Can you share something he said about you or women in
general that a woman wouldn't normally know?
Sorry for not responding to this sooner, it took me a while to dig out the issue. He, Michel Odent, is an obstetrician, he has therefore been present
at a sufficient number of births to know what is what. Here are a couple of pertinent quotes...
"In reality, the main reason for difficulties in childbirth is that the women's capacity to give birth is repressed by neocortical activity in the
brain. Put simply, the mother goes on thinking in the birth process."
Now, you will only appreciate this if you have given birth
naturally or without epidural because you will have "felt" what he is talking about,
and from what I can gather, even then, only partially.
In response to the question, "What would happen if a woman could turn off neocortical activity during childbirth?"...
"...what I call the 'fetus ejection reflex' can occur...when a woman in labour is not under neocortical control, she will say completely crazy things,
nonsense. If nobody is interfering, there will be a suddenly be a short series of irrestible cotractions, no voluntary movements at all. It's as if
the woman is in a kind of ecstatic state, off the planet, and then the baby is born."
In short, the key to easy childbirth
and great sex, is to power down the neo-cortex. Nothing too shocking there, but I had considered,
previously, that midwifery was a vital skill that was developed to improve our survival. Not so, it was the development of ecstatic/dissociative
practices that made birth easier it more probably now seems. Possibly even, that the evolution of the capacity to have ecstatic sex is tied into
facilitating both reproduction but also for overcoming the difficulties of the human birth canal.
New Scientist, 4 July 2015, page 26
edit on 16-12-2015 by Anaana because: Failure to give credit where it is due