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Death is
a passage
Death is
not a
transition to nothingness but to life. This transition is in a very
particular way a human act and the place where men, brothers and sisters in
humanity, can accompany the one who dies. It is the ethical and spiritual
place par excellence, the place of respect.
Alain Mattheews, professor of theology, professor at the Institute for
Theological Studies in Brussels and visiting professor at the Ecole
Cathédrale de Paris, reports in this book the richness of the Christian
tradition and the meaning of pain and death. Written in particularly clear
and pedagogic way, he wants to help thinking calmly about current questions
regarding death, either inside the medical world or in one’s own family.
The emergency of a new
solidarity
The
doctrine of Catholic Church became more refined to face modern questions as
the definition of death, the pain relief, the abstention or the refusal of
using intensive medication. Alain Mattheews reminds the main reference
documents which help to understand how to respect life during its last
moments. As John Paul II reminds it, “the dignity of dying people” becomes
deeply rooted in their creature character and in their personal vocation to
eternal life; the look full of hope transfigures the decomposition of our
mortal body. Faced with the fear of death and with the temptation of
euthanasia, the Church reminds the emergency to invent new kinds of physical
and spiritual comfort, to mobilize all the forces of Christian charity and
human solidarity.
Respecting life even dead
Euthanasia can mean a loss of life meaning, but the use of intensive
medication can be considered as a loss of death meaning; between both
extremes also representing dehumanisation, the real compassion makes you
feel solidarity for other people’s pain, but it does not kill the person
whom we cannot bear pain. To accompany critically ill patients, to treat
pain and to give them attentive cares, is to be the guardian of their
humanity. The body and the mind can crumble, the person remains in its
relational unity, in its “mystery”, in its “alliance” with its creator,
recognized, known or not. To look after, is to take care to accompany other
people.
Death, test of love
As the Platonic formula
says “life, learning of death”, the act of dying isn’t it the capital act of
our existence on earth, the one by which the future ceases to make way to
the being? The death causes freedom, reveals the core of the hearts; “it is
the dies natalis, the day of the authentic birth when, this time, I will
make myself as I want to be for eternity”. This meaning suggests attitudes
as for the one who experiences the transition as for the one who accompanies
him. By enlightening us on the greatness of death, that of our close
relative to be accompanied or ours to be prepared, the book of Alain
Mattheeuws revives, calms and appeals to solidarity faced with the
temptation of despair.
Accompagner la vie dans son dernier moment
– Alain Mattheeuws – Editions Parole et Silence, mars 2005. |
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Mental pregnancy
The interest for the psychological or psychopathological investigation on
pregnancy is not recent. The works carried out on the madness of pregnant
women or those who just had their baby are from XIX century, with Esquirol
and Victor Marcé’s written works. Nevertheless, this issue has an
indisputable keen interest since 1960, with authors as Winnicott, Bibring,
Racamier, Brazelton, etc., and the numerous researches issued these last
years do not contradict the researcher enthusiasm for this period of life,
despite the insufficient means allowed for mental accompaniment during the
pregnancy.
After a first book dedicated to conceptional revolution, “L’embryon sur le
divan1”, Benoît Bayle, hospital psychiatrist and doctor in
philosophy has just published this spring 2005 two books: “L’enfant à
naître. Identité conceptionnelle et gestation psychique” and “L’identité
conceptionnelle. Tout se joue-t-il avant la naissance?”. The approach of
this author is original and is explained by its personal development: in
1985, still student, impressed by the anxiety of the women in the department
of fertilization in vitro, he decided to dedicate a research on
psychological implications for artificial reproduction in sterile women (p.
257). “L’enfant à naître” is in the parting of these two ways. For one
side, the procreative revolution requires to better know the place the
conception and the prenatal period have in the psychological development of
human beings. For the other side, the accompaniment of pregnant women, but
also of children or adults, underlines the existence of psychopathological
problems which come out as soon as the baby is conceived and which marks his
development. It is up to us to prematurely discover them as well as their
stakes”.
Psychological development
This questioning makes him stop and think little by little to examine the
mental pregnancy that he proposes in detail in this book. “Isn’t it
necessary to first understand the “natural” human reproduction before
considering the artificial conceptional environment?” another question
bases specifically his psychopathological approach of human conception: “Can
we notice the emergence of psychological development disorders as soon as he
is conceived?”
7 psychopathological studies
Without taking into account historical and ethical aspects, he proposes
seven detailed psychopathological studies. The first one is dedicated to the
replacement child, conceived to replace a dead older brother and studies the
psychopathological relations which link the mourning and the human
conception by numerous clinical experiences. Other studies examine the
relations between conception and sexual trauma (rape, incest...), between
conception and mental pathology (schizophrenia, neurosis, depression,
alcoholism…). A study concerns children born from medically assisted
reproductions.
A chapter dedicated to the denial or negation of pregnancy shows a contrario
the mental elaboration which takes place during the pregnancy and the
significance of the psycho-affective relation between the mother and the
being in gestation.
Periconceptional survival
Interested via these studies, in the biography of the conceived human being,
Benoît Bayle builds up some original psychological concepts as the
periconceptional survival. Survivals from periconceptional and prenatal
period are embryos and foetus which survive to the death of one or several
embryos or foetus coming from the same conceptional environment: birth after
several induced abortions, conception with intrauterine contraceptive device,
embryo survival after embryonic reduction, freezing and destruction of
supernumerary embryos... The numerous reported experiences show how the
conceptional story of each conceived being influences sometimes heavily its
psychological future. These works concerning the survival offer a
psychological framework particularly adapted to understand the impact of
artificial reproduction on the child development, for instance for multiple
embryonic transfer. May the fact of transferring three embryos and that only
one of them survives marks the psychological development of the survivor?
Embryo: mental nesting
To achieve his development Benoît Bayle “contributes to the psychological
study of pregnancy”. Under this title, he carries out an unusual reversal:
to consider the prenatal period as a phase for psychological development of
the conceived human being. It is not anymore the woman who are at the centre
of his analysis (even if he mentions numerous works dedicated to women), but
the conceived human being of whom he considers the antenatal psychological
development. The conceived human being realises not only his biological
nesting, but also his mental nesting: he has to be established in the
maternal psyche which will offer him in return a mental space containing.
It is also by his presence that the woman will experience the emotional
upheavals of the pregnancy. Thus the constitution of this mental space is
realized, according to Benoît Bayle, by taking two directions: a direction
in which the woman becomes a mother, with her history, but also, this is
new, a direction of the conceived human being, with a psycho-socio-cultural
conceptional identity (for not saying mental, because this term may be
interpreted outside the meaning the author gives it). The author mentions a
persuasive example: the woman is not expecting a baby the same way if he
comes from the man she loves or if he comes from a rape. Then he observes
the process of “mutual subjectivation” at work: the conceived human being
subjectives the woman who expects him making her a “mother on a way”
according to her own conceptional identity (as for instance, in the extreme
situation of “becoming mother” of a child born from rape); reciprocally, the
woman participates to the subjectivation of the conceived human being during
the pregnancy. Thus a real prenatal intersubjectivity exists (which does not
neglect for all that the place the man has when becoming a father).
“The child to be born” is thus a new approach of the mental gestation, which
defines the new outlines of human embryo and of its conceptional identity. A
book which is certainly quite technical, rather intended to a professional
public, but indispensable for all those who are interested in the conceived
human being “from its first embryonic form”, as well as for all those who
are working with the accompaniment of pregnant women in difficulty.
Marks to cure
This study on conceptional identity and on mental gestation interests all
the ages of the life, from the human embryo to the adult, as a conceptional
psychopathology may express over time, regarding the pregnant woman but also
the baby, the child, the adolescent or the adult. This book proposes marks
to know how to identify it and to cure it.
The conceptional identity.
The other book of Benoît Bayle, “L’identité conceptionnelle. Tout se
joue-t-il avant la naissance ?” is a collection of articles already issued
and new contributions about the new conceptional environment, prenatal
clinic and filiation. We can also find specialized clinical articles, as
well as a conference on pregnancy which sums up the bulk of author’s work.
L’enfant à naître – Identité conceptionnelle et gestation psychique -
Benoît Bayle – Ed. Erès – avril 2005 - 391 p.
L’identité conceptionnelle. Tout se joue-t-il avant la naissance ? -
Benoît Bayle – Ed. Penta-L’Harmattan - juin 2005 - 173 p.
1- See for an analysis of conceptional
revolution and new conceptional environment, L’embryon sur le divan - Benoît
Bayle – Ed. Masson - 2003, presented in
Gènéthique n°44, August 2003. |
