Is it true that character traits, tastes and preferences begin to form long before birth? And what factors influence our development?
The assumption that an unborn child can remember something was first suggested by a student of Sigmund Freud, Otto Rank. Speaking at one of the meetings of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, Rank said that by eliminating the consequences of birth trauma, the patient can be saved from neuroses. He spoke emotionally and convincingly, but in the end caused a storm of indignation among the members of society and from his teacher, Freud.
Another pupil of the great psychoanalyst, Gustav Hans Graber, half a century later announced that the child remembers the events that happened to him not only during childbirth, but also long before birth. It was on the initiative of Graber that the International Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Medicine was created. Later, his followers began to conduct experiments, trying to penetrate into the distant past of man.
During such sessions, under the influence of psychoactive substances, people recalled how they felt rejected even before birth (while their mothers had an unwanted pregnancy). And patients with problems in the sexual sphere – that, it turns out, the mother dreamed of a child of the opposite sex.
However, other researchers immediately proved the failure of such experiments. For example, psychologist Elizabeth Loftus said that memory can helpfully throw up “necessary” but false memories. She showed her patients, who were in Disneyland as children, pictures from there. They happily recalled that they had seen both this and that … One of the pictures showed Bugs Bunny the rabbit. Almost 20% of respondents “remembered” that they saw him, although this is impossible: Bugs Bunny is not in Disneyland and never was, since this character was invented at another studio.
However, modern scientists are still inclined to believe that the fetus has a memory. True, it is very different from the memory of an adult. The embryo does not remember information, but … emotions. For example, the anxiety of the mother, who is worried – is everything okay with the child? Will the birth go well? Sometimes – for example, due to the death of a loved one or the loss of a job – the mother experiences so much that negative emotions are transferred to the child. As a result, he may be born not very healthy, and then more often suffer from incomprehensible fears, mental disorders or bad habits.
If an embryo can remember sad events, can it remember something useful? Probably yes. Sounds become the main channel for the perception of the outside world. The child begins to hear them at the 19th week, and from the 23rd already reacts to them.
In 2002, the British Journal of Music Education published a study showing that children who listened to music (and especially Mozart) in the womb were more developed than their peers. In the first year of life, they used to roll over, sit down, start to “walk” and pronounce their first words earlier.
This was confirmed by the studies of Spanish experts in 2007. However, from the point of view of intrauterine development, these experiments can hardly be called pure: advance in development could be caused not so much by music, but, for example, by the fact that parents communicated and worked with children more.
In the 1990s, the President of the French National Association for Perinatal Education, André Bertin, published data that proved that the fetus remembers the sounds it hears inside the womb. Therefore, having been born, he is able to recognize the voices of his mother and loved ones and the music that he “listened to” (though, according to some reports, he remembers it only 3 weeks after birth, and then forgets).
But does it really speed up development? The embryo communicates with the world differently than we do. First of all, at the biochemical level, beyond words and concepts. That is why, if the mother does not want a child or she is simply in a bad mood, Mozart will not help her baby become free and happy. And if a woman during pregnancy is joyful, calm and enjoys beautiful music, the child also receives the same pleasure.