"I woke up terror stricken", my patient said, "and I could make no sound. My voice was lost. I don't want to talk about this dream but another one I had earlier in the week."

She continues, "In the earlier dream….

I was walking with my two friends Mary and Jo. Both work at the hospital in the same department. As we walked, I noticed a man following. In a little while I became worried when I saw he was getting closer. At first I could not say anything. My mouth was dry, then I yelled 'run'."

"Mary and I ran side by side and Jo went off in another direction. We finally stopped worrying about Jo. Later we all met. Jo said, 'He didn't rape me. He said he wanted money for heroine. I gave him all I had'. Then she berated us for leaving her. I did not argue. She chose to run off in the opposite direction."

My patient is a 50 year old woman who is a physician working as a company employee. The other two are physician assistants who work in the same department. Mary is like my patient -- steady, thorough in her work, detailed in her notes. In fact, too detailed. Jo is younger and used to be her good friend, but not after an incident when Jo was on noontime duty.

As my patient described it, "I got a call from the ER. The nurse said, 'Come see the patient. Jo is not comfortable examining this kind of patient.' I called Jo who said the same, that she was not comfortable seeing brain injuries. I said, 'Jo, you have to see this patient.' I could tell that Jo had left the hospital, which she should not have done. The nurse called me again and finally I went."

"Later we were called to the senior physician's office, Dr. N., who listened to our stories. He then said, ‘Nancy is right Jo, you should have seen the patient'. To my surprise Jo began to talk about the morale in the department and insinuated some negative things about me, but Dr. N. didn't buy it. After this experience, we stopped being confidential friends. When we meet she is sugary sweet, which is OK with me, but I was disappointed."

Dr. Bail: What about the man chasing you?

Patient: He was average height; balding, and looked like the father of my son's friend John.

Dr. Bail: Why him?

Patient: I was upset when my son, Frank, came back from John's house as he told me that when he came up to the door he heard John and his friend Cyrus say 'let's hide'. My son was very upset that they would do this and he wondered why children are so cruel. But Frank did not dwell on it. I did, until he told me to stop. He wasn't that upset.

"John's mother is a complete bust as a mother. She has no control over John and his sister, even to the point of letting them miss school, as John did one semester because he wanted to play on his computer. All these boys are about eleven."

She continued, "John's father is a salesman who has a sleep problem. He is away much of the time. When he comes home, he spends little time with the children. It is not a good situation."

Dr. Bail: It's understandable that Jo gave this man -- John's father -- all her money. We all know addicts are desperate people and not to cross them. Of course, as you described John's father, he is not sleeping because he is a worried man whose fortunes have declined and he wants to go to sleep to forget, even for a little while, and this is true of all addicts. They are people who do not want to be aware of their lives and their situations, which they feel are hopeless.

Patient: While you were talking I thought of a letter I got from my mother. It's nice that she still writes every week but what she says about herself makes me mad. She is always putting herself down. I want to say, "Mother, you are 76. How about getting with it?" But I know it is of no use. As a matter of fact, she is like John's mother, never good at managing anything or keeping order. This was OK with my father who only wanted her to serve him, cook for him, and have their babies, of which I am one of five, as you know. Only my brother and I have made something of a life.

Dr. Bail: Going back to Jo, it was clear she feels quite vulnerable and has a poor opinion of herself. Obviously she didn't have the maturity to say, when confronted with her dereliction of duty, "You're right, Dr. N., I goofed", or, "It is my fault." Your mother seems to be without that kind of maturity.

My patient came to consult me about some marital problems but soon that preoccupation gave way to more personal issues such as herself and the family, especially her mother.

My patient was quiet and then said, "I've had these nightmares -- the one I told you about at the beginning of this session -- for a long time, since I was a little girl. I would wake up terrified. So when I woke from this dream, I knew it was here again."

Dr. Bail: What else do you recall.

Patient: There was smoke.

Dr. Bail: Smoke?

Patient: Smokescreen, of course, fire. You know, where there is smoke, there is fire.

This was essentially the gist of the session. The smoke and fire will have to be understood at another time. This is often the case in conducting an analysis. One has to wait until something unfinished is clarified.

Commentary:

The implications of this dream are far-reaching in that the patient is really talking about mothering and its impact, its consequence for the children.

Consider that John’s mother is essentially not there, giving neither of her children any mooring in responsibility, any sense of foundation, any sense of what a relationship is to and for a friend. Note that John is easily led to play a trick on the patient’s son, his friend. John has no loyalty to Frank nor will he have loyalty later in life to a friend unless there are changes in his life regarding future friends.

Jo, my patient’s woman friend, acts responsibly in giving all her money to the addict who threatens her. In real life she is unable to take the blame for her irresponsibility -- in other words, a version of John’s mother.

There is a further metaphor in Jo’s action of giving everything to the addict. It suggests she will give everything away for her security, make any compromise with her life if she is promised security. She, too, is a person without a moral base. Morality, a sense of responsibility, a sense of values, all come from the mother. Indeed, almost all begin to come in by way of the mother -- by way of her placenta which is the fetuses docking site. Indeed the dock in reality is just a replication of the fetal dock -- the infant connected by a long rope to the iron stanchion and the fetus floats much like a ship. It is here that the infant, later adult, gets its sense of security, its sense of balance, its sense of maturity.

Let me present a subsequent fragment of a dream that illustrates the problem further:

The patient dreams that her best friend, Carla, is crossing a covered bridge with her children. The patient is behind her and determines that she needs to help Carla. Her main association was that when she visited Carla a few months ago, she saw how upset she was getting with her children because her husband was not helping at all with them. Carla was becoming short and a little mean with her kids.

My patient continues her dream….She sees a garage on the covered bridge. She opens the door and goes in. It was dark. She heard noises, became frightened, and opens the door to go out. The covered bridge recalled a vacation area where she and her family had a wonderful, peaceful time. The garage recalled her own garage door that she could not shut. A patient of hers -- a man who worked fixing garage doors -- told her how to do it. She took his advice and fixed the door.

For the analyst, the taking of advice is a good sign. Here is a person who asks for help and takes it when it is offered. The darkness reminded her of coming to see me and her recurrent nightmares, as well as the question “What was she afraid of all these years?” She said, “You know people don’t know how much is really involved in raising a kid. I had no idea before I was married and until Frank came along. I still had no idea the time and effort that it involves. It floors me thinking about it, especially since I’ve come to see you.”

Metaphorically, the covered bridge represents the mother’s womb, which is a bridge from beginning the journey of life to ending that particular phase of the journey with birth. She revealed that in her fetal state she already knew that her mother needed help, that her mother indeed was overwhelmed (as noted in her association to Carla). Alternately, her association to the vacation referred to her moments of a wonderful, peaceful time in her mother’s womb. The garage was another segment of her fetal state when she was particularly frightened by what was coming from her mother who had no idea of what motherhood would require.

What vibrations does the fetus -- this pulsating piece of life -- feel coming in and engulfing it: love and calmness or anxiety, fear, anger or hate? These feelings course through the mother to the fetus. All is felt. All is registered.

On thinking further about this session, I felt that my patient was quite right to start with the dream that she occupied herself with for most of the hour. The exploration of the second dream related in the session set the platform for a deeper knowledge into the problem of her nightmares, which had been with her since she was a little girl.

Terror is based on shock, surprise, dread, paralysis, helplessness, inability to speak and -- to bring us up to date -- this is exactly what the terrorist brings. From the point of view of the terrorist there is a desire for revenge, ignited by other issues of injustice, poverty, invasion by another person or people. All are strikingly like the original trauma of infancy so that one might say that to strike back at an invader is fundamentally striking back at the mother who is the first invader, long forgotten. The mother's imprint is the sign of this invasion.

I find this patient's experience to be not an uncommon one. In the course of their analyses, many of my patients come to a point where they can recall night terrors from childhood. They may also have nightmares as an adult, but these always originate from infantile states of mind. Night terrors are known by doctors, especially pediatricians. Small children suffer them. They get through childhood in whatever way they do but the terrors never go away and in time they may come whenever stresses in life begin to stimulate the deeper layers of the mind and states of anxiety. This is when dreams of terror arise, disrupting the person’s life so that they may be forced to seek help in whatever way they can, which today is mostly through prescriptives given by physicians. All such pharmaceuticals are designed to subdue the mind -- to still the turbulence beneath, if possible to put the mind back to sleep.

It is understandable that these patients come to their physicians for medications, which are widely advertised. Since the average physician is not trained to elicit the psychological state of the person before him, prescribing one of these widely advertised drugs would be a natural event. It would be rare for such a person to come to a psychoanalyst for help unless there was a familiarity with psychoanalysis in that person's environment. Even if there were, there is an inundation of medication in the profession such that the odds would be that medication would be prescribed first.

At any rate, my intent in presenting this work is to address the ubiquity of the problem of night terrors and other equivalent infantile states of anxiety. They are the manifestation of an inconsolable infant whose parents rock him/her and walk the floors at night until by some miracle the baby falls asleep again. Any remedy would be a miracle to these parents. Again, I do not write here to present a case that is interesting in its own right, but to present the link of this mother's dreams and her associations to her mother, who did not know how to be a mother. Many mothers do not know how to mother their children or about all the consequences that follow such a deficit. These psychological traumas have consequences in the body politic since the unconscious of one person impacts upon others. Unconsciously we are all connected the world over.

If America, and no doubt the world, suffers from an anxiety it is that of terrorism. It is striking that this issue has swept through America and

Europe and other parts of the world. When the word is uttered, it is not without meaning to the mass unconscious or to the individual. If there are actions, the feelings aroused by those actions seep deeply into the unconscious mind and it is this that begins to stir the anxiety that we have felt as infants.

It is this anxiety, this terror, that sweeps up a person and, through the mass unconscious, sweeps up a nation. This terror can extend to a point of helplessness, to a point of passivity and fear so as to leave one receptive to any authoritative voice that says, "I can protect you". In such a state of demoralization, a fearful and bewildered people may well give everything away, such as did Jo in my patient’s dream.

The analytic evidence indicates that such states do not derive only from the mother's imprint, the first violation of the integral infant -- making for the vulnerable fetus and infant the mother as the archetypal terrorist. Such states also derive from a mother who in real life cannot manage, care for or love the infant in such a way that the infant is made to feel secure. Obviously there are many insults that intrude into the infant’s mind and all are experienced by the infant as acts of terror.

Happily not all of mankind comes to adulthood with a readiness to respond to this dreaded anxiety. There are many fortunate people who have had sufficiently good mothering as to not be vulnerable to this ever-constant threat. It is this phenomenon of the ever-constant threat that lies behind all the monster movies, horror movies, scary movies. The buffs that enjoy them may well be responding in terms well known to the psychiatric profession - denial and reaction formation: "I am not afraid, I like it". These individuals have erotized their feelings so that what is terrifying becomes thrilling.

I would further say that terrorists are individuals who have likewise been psychologically damaged. After all, they too were once babies. Their lives, their countries, or their affiliations have turned them to this path. For those who are the victims, the perpetrators embody -- from their infantile unconscious -- the mother, who, as I say, becomes for them the archetypal terrorist.

In this essay, I have not gone into the politics of America, but eventually the basic fact of the mother’s sphere of influence on the fetus and infant will have to be recognized. This fetus, this infant might one day be a congressman or senator or supreme court judge or even a president and the influences at the earliest experiences of pre-natal and post-natal life are crucial to the kind of leader he or she will become.

The premise of this essay is that the exploitation of terrorism politically arouses the anxieties of the individual -- and consequently the mass unconscious -- and weakens both, making everyone more vulnerable to physical and mental illness.

Apropos this theme, terrorism has a cache for all the governments of the world. Some 15 years ago AIDS was the alarm spread throughout the continents of the world. But AIDS had no great appeal and, while a threat, not a terribly big one except for those infected. Besides, there is no monetary wealth in AIDS. No big money. In terrorism there is big money, big chances for corruption, big opportunities for deception (e.g., What happened to the nine billion American dollars that were lost between the Baghdad airport and Baghdad?).….all fueling power and control, which seems to drive seekers of public office. Interesting in this respect is that the position of power -- unlimited, unchecked power -- is the position of the mother in everyone’s infancy Thus, essentially what the seeker of high office wants -- even unknown to himself -- is to be that mother. What kind of leader he/she will be depends on the constellation of the personality traits conscious and unconscious of his or her mother.

Imagine the dizzying realization that one is the President of the United States of America, the most powerful country in the world, therefore the most powerful man or woman in the world; just as, fundamentally the most powerful person in the infant’s world is the mother.

Now it is a question of how dark a man is the president. His darkness will compel a great obedience to him beyond all self-interest. It is an allegiance based on an early profound fear of being hated and ex-communicated or, in extreme cases, emotionally tortured by mothers or mothers to be who have intense negative feelings about the fetus in the womb or the baby that arrives. These are the fundamental facts in this allegiance and these facts pertain to all institutions subsidiary to the executive one in our Constitution. Those individuals in the congress and the courts, are after all men and women, human beings, and have also once been children and infants. Such extends to the public whose care is the responsibility of the president --hopefully, to be equal and just. However, we all know this is seldom the case.

I would surmise that mankind has never been free of war. It makes no difference what the reason advanced, since we know that those who propose war can always find a reason and need to enlist the people to engage in it. Surely they, if failing in this gift, can always find the intellectuals of their time to find reasons for war. After thousands of years into war, there are sufficient antagonisms between people to enflame a populace to engage in what are fruitless killings for the masses though profitable for the few.

Since in these enlightened times, wars continue, genocides continue, ethnic cleansing continues, it is clear that no scientific advance in our physical world has been of any use toward the solution of the problem of war. So we cannot look to the scientists occupied with the physical world of space or of the quasar. Nor can we look to the intellectual havens in the universities of any country to have come up with viable and new solutions. There are none. It is thus clear to me that there is one frontier that man has never explored and that is his inner self. Though there was a beginning with Freud and his discovery of the unconscious, the development of this avenue floundered because its paradigm was not correct. All analytic institutions consequently became politic bodies, and these bodies have not come up with new solutions relevant to world problems. Politic bodies are not really interested in new ideas but, like politic bodies in the world, they are interested in power and in spreading a faith no longer relevant or believable or sustainable.

My analytic explorations into the unconscious have produced a new paradigm, incidentally confirmed scientifically by the evolutionary biologist, Dr. David Haig, at Harvard University (Zimmer, 2006). This paradigm is the only psychoanalytic paradigm that has scientific validation and has answers – as well as offered the potentiality of many answers -- that are relevant to people all over the world.

Thus we begin in our mother's womb and do not know if we are black or yellow, Christian or Muslim. In prenatal life, we only know one thing as growing embryos: we know in some way we must survive. Thus, for human beings and mammals, our mothers are crucial. It is survival at any cost and unfortunately there is a cost to survival for man born of woman, fertilized by man. This cost is in the form of the unconscious invasion of the mother’s unbearable feelings into the fetus who may physically suffer the shock of that event. Dreams have verified this event.

However it began I do not know, since mankind has been around longer than even our scientists’ guess. New finds push the existence of man further and further back. We have no record obviously of those ages of existence.

However, since we have minds we have the space to store events, a space to record our experiences, a space to draw conclusions. There is far more space in the mind than we can ever guess. If I had to guess, I would say it is as infinite as the universe. If I were a church going person, I would say as infinite as God is everywhere and infinite.

But this space of mind fills up with time, with people, with culture, with education - primarily with the mother whose internal body is our only environment from the moment of conception. She is our only mooring. But mothers think of us even before conception or marriage. These thoughts and feelings can also be infinite.

It became clear to me after many years of observation conducting the analysis of patients that mothers in the main unconsciously project their especially painful, unwanted thoughts and feelings into the fetus they carry, and that these thoughts and feelings can shake the fetus, stun the fetus, shock the fetus so that when I see a grown up before me, whatever the nature of his/her problem, I know there is this shock and I also know that there is an undying loyalty to that mother beyond their knowing. If one has one mooring, it is this mooring to the mother and it is never forgotten. All of us in the world today seek for this original mooring. Often people live their lives according to the shock experienced as a fetus, unconscious of it but nonetheless absolutely tied to it. I have described this reaction in the paper, The Mother's Signature” (2001). This is the first invasion that a fetus experiences. It is an event fetuses have to forget if they are to mentally as well physically survive.

Because the intruder is the mother who will care for its existence, the memory of this event remains in the unconscious. One can see the impact in the life of the person -- the life that the person lives and the plan that the person must follow throughout his or her lifetime (Mother’s Signature, 2001). I liken this event to a terrorist attack as much of the same characteristics are there. The victims are subject to a surprise attack that stuns them, terrorizes them, strangulates their voices, and may even mutilate them or kill them.

No one would be surprised to rationally comprehend that a person at this state of mind would have a great hated for the entity that savagely --though unknowingly -- attacked and frightened him or her. But this reservoir of hatred is held in store, at bay, and can be later tapped to heap upon someone else, an outsider. This redirection of the hatred satisfies the damaged person; it satisfies the mother (parents) from whom the hatred is deflected; and if one multiples the one by millions of people in various lands, there is enough hatred that can be stirred for use over and over again.

This paradigm is true no matter who one is, where one lives, what one believe in --no matter the color of one’s skin or the religion one professes to believe. This is a universal event and universally true. Consequently there are wars and there will continue to be wars until these facts are acknowledged throughout the mass unconscious and until the genesis of mother workshop is understood.

This truth will be difficult for the world’s conscious to absorb, but if the people are to survive, they will have to come to terms with it. With these realizations they can begin to think of ways to solve their problems other than by war and killing that has led mankind to our current abyss.

Until there is recognition that the impact of the mother’s unconscious mind on the fetus and infant determines who that person is to become in later life -- only then can a sane solution be found for those who suffer the potentiality of terrorism and also for those who are the bearers, albeit unconsciously, of the mother's imago.

Postscript:

Physicians swear the Hippocratic oath at the very least to do no harm. Patients are chosen coming for help, for solace, for peace, for freedom from pain and anxiety. Parents are in a similar function, unconsciously swearing the same vow to the children they bear. Leaders are in a like position. It is their sacred duty to harm none of their people, to treat all the people equally with love.

If they inflame the embers of shock and terror -- of a state long forgotten but lying dormant in every one of us -- the tongues of fire will race through the deep layers of mind to bring ancient ghosts to life and infuse the personality with dread. It will stoke paranoia into life. It will create a body politic of fear that will give up every liberty to seek security and it will do that like the child who hides in the mother’s lap for security. It will increase the emotional illness in the mass unconscious and the physical as well. It is costly beyond all measure unto future generations.

Lies make people ill. Only the truth can heal. That master of all psychologists said, "The truth will make you free,” -- the truth in every crevice of the mind instead of lies, ambiguity and a dread beyond all measure.

Leaders who break the covenant are reprehensible and immoral. This tragedy approximates the ancient Greek tragedies and we will be the witnesses like the chorus in these plays. But we are more than witnesses, for the mind includes all the elements of the story in any of the Greek tragedies. The mind can lend itself to one party or to the other or to the neutral intoning chorus. In our lives we must choose not to have disaster as the outcome. The mind really can see the truthful way out, but it must choose. In Greek tragedy, the actions and their consequences that follow, the Greek Gods always sought to redress. Universal law always seeks to balance.

Epilogue:

Conceived in wetness, nourished in fluid, we are born into the dryness of earth. We all have in us the longing for the ancient cuneiform of our origins that call to us even unbeknownst to ourselves. The great writers, the great poets describe it best. Like John Masefield, “I must go down to the sea again . . “ There is a great resonance here for us. We know what he means.