Since 1972, thanks to Nicola
Peluffo’s, professor of Dynamic Psychology at the University
of Turin, pioneer studies, it has been supposed the existence
of a complex intra-uterine psychic life.
At the beginning his ideas have met a very strong opposition in
the academic world. At last nowadays they have started to be unanimously
accepted and they have also found experimental confirmation.
In his book “Micropsicoanalisi dei processi di trasformazione
“ (Micropsychanalysis of transforming processes)1, Peluffo has analysed
the complicated immune reactions that take place in mother-foetus
unity and has tried to understand how becomes possible the only
exception to the rule of istocompatibility.
As everybody knows our organism is protected from external aggressions
by a complicated overseeing system, the immune system, which is
due to avoid the invasion of genetically foreign matter. Our body
has a very sophisticated self representation and it is able to
make comparison among the biological entity it gets in contact
with. Whenever these entities contain istologicaly non compatible
matter, the immune system reacts by destroying and eliminating
the unknown entity.
It is well known that the foetus, since the cellular stage, contains
genetic matter of father’s origin, absolutely non compatible
with mother’s organism. Nevertheless the mother is able to
accept and harmonize the foreign matter carried by father’s
spermatozoa, while, for example, she would have a strong rejection
reaction in case of transplantation of any other genetic matter
of the same origin (father’s origin). N. Peluffo, in his pioneer work, stated that as regards the psychic
elaboration, pregnancy provokes a somatopsychic unbalance which
induces the appearance in the mother of oneiric or fantasy experience
of bacterial invasion. Such a reaction is the psychic representation
of the somatic process: the immune reaction. Furthermore, according
to what Peluffo affirms, in the involucre constituted by the foetus-mother
unity there is a meeting, a speech, an interaction between mother’s
conscious, pre-conscious and unconscious psychic experience and
the foetus. They work as stimulus-phantasies which evoke in the
future baby the arising of answer-phantasies existing in the hereditary
potentiality. Such a psychic dynamic, often characterized by the
structuration of invasion or mutual phagocytement phantasies,
takes the place of the somatic rejection reaction. Consequently
the conflict moves on the psychic elaboration level, leaving the
somatic field.
Moreover, in perfect agreement with Silvio Fanti considerations,
Peluffo has advanced the hypothesis that psychic events which
take place in uterus, mark the psychism of the future baby by
shaping the structuration of his psychism and having influence
on his psychobiological destiny:” On the biological level
war declaration accurs when mother’s immune system breaks
out against father’s genetic invasor. Thousands of spermatozoa,
with their father’s genetic war-head have died trying to
get close to the ovule, the survivor unloads his material and
from that moment on, the outcomming product, that will be the
embryo-foetus, will have the war inside himself. I believe that
such fact puts the embryo-foetus in an everlasting precariousness
condition. A continuous perturbation of the inertia principle
which will be perceived, when the psychobiological development
will make it possible, as an experience of imminent end. It is
possible to find such psychic experience in children and adult
dreams….How many anxiety dreams carry this feeling of imminent
end, represented by the experience of breathing interruption or
by it’s contrary, the aspiration in an endless hole?”.2
In a different session I have described a clinical case 3 of a young psychotic
man whose delirious phantasies of body deformation perfectly corresponded
to his mother’s invasion experiences during pregnancy: psychobiological
conflict had framed evident marks. The psychotic who mainly lives
in the primary process (on definition outside space and time and
characterized by a free displacement of energy among representations),
once he has grown-up, is still immersed in the foetus body shaping
process, he can’t successfully metabolize tension surplus.
With regards to intra-uterine life Manuel Tartari writes:”
Let’s try to imagine a human being all sensitivity and motility,
who perceives rough chemical , sensorial changes, any mother’s
sharp movement, modifications of mother’s heart-throbs, blood
inflow, nourishment and adrenaline flow. Probably he’ll register
such events as stop. These events will cause scars on the border
between somatic functions (breathing, blood circulation, ecc.)
and nervous functions; a pre psychic memory which contains tracks
of the perturber event. When the development will make possible
a mental transformation of all this, there will be an unconscious
nucleous of representations and affects that will try to elaborate
the suffered perturbation, which means to shape it”4.
In each micropsychoanalysis in adults’ analytic material,
we can regularly find confirmation of intra-uterine traumatic
experiences; length of the session ( on average three hours) allows
a real recovery of such experiences, without the use of interpretation,
during repeated dream interpretation.
However, recently new and original researches, based on the adaptation
of infant Observation to ecographic registration of foetus activity,
have brought experimental confirmations. Alessandra Piontelli
has described these studies saying:” My researches have put
in light an important continuity on certain aspects of pre- and
after-birth life. Each foetus has individual development characteristics
which…continue during after-birth life…Each observed
foetus had a different personality…such that they were considered
as children with a temperament that allowed prevision on their
future”.5
It is very possible that in the near future, when iconic registration
techniques of foetus activity will reach the movie quality, it
will be possible to utilize such material as a very strong and
incontrovertible associating inductor during the analytic session.
1 - Peluffo N., Micropsicoanalisi dei processi di trasformazione,
Books’ Store, Torino, 1976. back 2 - Peluffo N., Elaborazioni oniriche dei derivati di fissazioni
utero-infantili, Bollettino dell’Istituto Italiano di Micropsicoanalisi,
n° 17, 1994. back 3 - Zangrilli Q., La strutturazione dell'idea delirante, Bollettino
dell’Istituto Italiano di Micropsicoanalisi, Primo semestre
1986.back
On line: http://www.psicoanalisi.it/Zangrilli/p/ideadelirante.htm 4 - Tartari M., La vita intrauterina, Il Modello micropsicoanalitico,
Bollettino dell’Istituto Italiano di Micropsicoanalisi, n°
27-28, 2000. back 5 - Piontelli A., From Fetus to Child, Tavistock/Routledge, London,
1992. back
N. Peluffo, in his pioneer work, stated that as regards the psychic
elaboration, pregnancy provokes a somatopsychic unbalance which
induces the appearance in the mother of oneiric or fantasy experience
of bacterial invasion. Such a reaction is the psychic representation
of the somatic process: the immune reaction. Furthermore, according
to what Peluffo affirms, in the involucre constituted by the foetus-mother
unity there is a meeting, a speech, an interaction between mother’s
conscious, pre-conscious and unconscious psychic experience and
the foetus. They work as stimulus-phantasies which evoke in the
future baby the arising of answer-phantasies existing in the hereditary
potentiality. Such a psychic dynamic, often characterized by the
structuration of invasion or mutual phagocytement phantasies,
takes the place of the somatic rejection reaction. Consequently
the conflict moves on the psychic elaboration level, leaving the
somatic field. 
