Life Can Be a....?

Two significant facts come to mind. The first being that life expectancy rates in the “land of the free and the home of the brave,” are declining. I’ll bet they’re not declining in the Netherlands {Amsterdam} and Denmark {Copenhagen}. The second is that suicide is the 5th leading cause of death in our country. Homicide follows at number 16. Freud was right when he enumerated about life being difficult, even though he was not residing in our country. He obviously was talking about mankind. We know man acts out his quest for pleasure {sex and aggression} and sometimes avoids pain in attempting to meet his drives and/or needs. The preceding statistics suggest something is ajar and not working right for man. If man is pursuing happiness, perhaps he has lost his way, and traveling down the wrong road. Let’s look at some possible explanations and barriers making things difficult for man to achieve happiness and wellbeing. Freud described the birth as being the prototype for the experience of future anxiety. The birth was the reality of the situation in which later signals of danger are built. Otto Rank, within Freudian ideology, reinterpreted this Freudian concept and in 1924, published “The Trauma of Birth.” Essentially, Rank was saying that the fear of life begins with the dynamics of the birth. Prior, according to Rank, the embryo functioned as a symbiotic unit within its blissful surroundings. With birth, the infant separates and attempts to reinstate a unity between himself and the mother. In doing so, the infant experiences advances toward independence or separation as being a potential threat. Thus, according to Rank, as a result of birth beginnings, our life long task is dealing with a union and the terror or fear of separation from that relationship. I suggest that our issues might be worse prior to the birth. The risk or danger begins at conception depending upon the behavior of the mother. We know that a mother drinking alcohol, smoking or taking drugs like opioids affects the embryonic or executive functions in the fragile developing brain within the womb. The birth mother might be economically poor and exhibit inadequate nutrient consumption .Her diet affects the embryo as well. The woman might have been raped and had engaged in potential abortion deliberations. She might have suffered a significant fall or crash while carrying the embryo. She might’ve been in a physically and/ or mentally abusive interpersonal relationship. Seems to me there are a host of numerous situations that the embryo’s delicate health could be affected prior to the birth. If this is the case, the embryo is not in a state of bliss during pregnancy. To Be Continued