psychedelics and various non-drug means, as well as those occurring spontaneously. To account for all the phenomena occurring in these states, we must drastically revise our understanding of the dimensions of the human psyche. Besides the postnatal biographical level that it shares with traditional psychology, the new expanded cartography includes two additional large domains. The first of these domains can be referred to as “perinatal”, because of its close connection with the trauma of biological birth. This region of the unconscious contains the memories of what the fetus experienced in the consecutive stages of the birth process, including all the emotions and physical sensations involved. These memories form four distinct experiential clusters, each of which is related to one of the stages of childbirth. I have coined for them the term “basic perinatal matrices” (BPM I–IV). BPM I consists of memories of the advanced prenatal state just before the onset of the delivery. BPM II is related to the first stage of the birth process when the uterus contracts, but the cervix is not yet open. BPM III reflects the struggle to be born after the uterine cervix dilates. And finally, BPM IV holds the memory of emerging into the world, the birth itself. The content of these matrices is not limited to fetal memories; each of them also represents a selective opening into the domains of the historical and archetypal collective unconscious, which contain motifs of similar experiential quality. Detailed description of the phenomenology and dynamics of perinatal matrices can be found in my various publications (Grof 1975, 2000). The official position of academic psychiatry is that biological birth is not recorded in memory and does not constitute a psychotrauma. The usual reason for denying the possibility of birth memory is that the cerebral cortex of the newborn is not mature enough to mediate experiencing and recording of this event. More specifically, the cortical neurons are not yet “myelinized” – completely covered with protective sheaths of a fatty substance called myelin. Surprisingly, this same argument is not used to deny the existence and importance of memories from the time of nursing, a period that immediately follows birth. The psychological significance of the experiences in the oral period and even bonding – the exchange of looks and physical contact between the mother and child immediately after birth – is generally recognized and acknowledged by mainstream obstetricians, pediatricians, and child psychiatrists (Klaus, Kennell, and Klaus 1995; Kennel and Klaus 1998). The myelinization argument makes no sense and is in conflict with scientific evidence of various kinds. For instance, it has been established that memory exists in organisms that do not have a cerebral cortex at all. In 2001, an American neuroscientist of Austrian origin, Erik Kandel, received a Nobel Prize in physiology for his research of memory mechanisms of the sea slug Aplysia, an organism incomparably more primitive than the newborn child. At Tufts University Tal Shomrat and Michael Levin, conducted fascinating research into the molecular mechanisms in Planarian flatworms that enable these organisms to regenerate their entire body, including the brain. The Planaria may offer unique opportunity 14 (12) Stanislav Grof
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