Psychoanalysis and the unconscious

by D. H. Lawrence

And where in the developed fœtus shall we look for this creative-productive quick? Shall we expect it in the brain or in the heart? Surely our own subjective wisdom tells us, what science can verify, that it lies beneath the navel of the folded fœtus. Surely that prime center, which is the very first nucleus of the fertilized ovule, lies situated beneath the navel of all womb-born creatures. There, from the beginning, it lay in its mysterious relation to the outer, active universe. There it lay, perfectly associated with the parent body. There it acted on its own peculiar independence, drawing the whole stream of creative blood upon itself, and, spinning within the parental blood-stream, slowly creating or bodying forth its own incarnate amplification. All the time between the quick of life in the fœtus and the great outer universe there exists a perfect correspondence, upon which correspondence the astrologers based their science in the days before mental consciousness had arrogated all knowledge unto itself.

The fœtus is not personally conscious. But then what is personality if not ideal in its origin? The fœtus is, however, radically, individually conscious. From the active quick, the nuclear center, it remains single and integral in its activity. At this center it distinguishes itself utterly from the surrounding universe, whereby both are modified. From this center the whole individual arises, and upon this center the whole universe, by implication, impinges. For the fixed and stable universe of law and matter, even the whole cosmos, would wear out and disintegrate if it did not rest and find renewal in the quick center of creative life in individual creatures.

And since this center has absolute location in the first fertilized nucleus, it must have location still in the developed fœtus, and in the mature man. And where is this location in the unborn infant? Beneath the burning influx of the navel. Where is it in the adult man? Still beneath the navel. As primal affective center it lies within the solar plexus of the nervous system.

We do not pretend to use technical language. But surely our meaning is plain even to correct scientists, when we assert that in all mammals the center of primal, constructive consciousness and activity lies in the middle front of the abdomen, beneath the navel, in the great nerve center called the solar plexus. How do we know? We feel it, as we feel hunger or love or hate. Once we know what we are, science can proceed to analyze our knowledge, demonstrate its truth or its untruth.

We all of us know what it is to handle a newborn, or at least a quite young infant. We know what it is to lay the hand on the round little abdomen, the round, pulpy little head. We know where is life, where is pulp. We have seen blind puppies, blind kittens crawling. They give strange little cries. Whence these cries? Are they mental exclamations? As in a ventriloquist, they come from the stomach. There lies the wakeful center. There speaks the first consciousness, the audible unconscious, in the squeak of these infantile things, which is so curiously and indescribably moving, reacting direct upon the great abdominal center, the preconscious mind in man.

There at the navel, the first rupture has taken place, the first break in continuity. There is the scar of dehiscence, scar at once of our pain and splendor of individuality. Here is the mark of our isolation in the universe, stigma and seal of our free, perfect singleness. Hence the lotus of the navel. Hence the mystic contemplation of the navel. It is the upper mind losing itself in the lower first-mind, that which is last in consciousness reverting to that which is first.

A mother will realize better than a philosopher. She knows the rupture which has finally separated her child into its own single, free existence. She knows the strange, sensitive rose of the navel: how it quivers conscious; all its pain, its want for the old connection; all its joy and chuckling exultation in sheer organic singleness and individual liberty.

The powerful, active psychic center in a new child is the great solar plexus of the sympathetic system. From this center the child is drawn to the mother again, crying, to heal the new wound, to re-establish the old oneness. This center directs the little mouth which, blind and anticipatory, seeks the breast. How could it find the breast, blind and mindless little mouth? But it needs no eyes nor mind. From the great first-mind of the abdomen it moves direct, with an anterior knowledge almost like magnetic propulsion, as if the little mouth were drawn or propelled to the maternal breast by vital magnetism, whose center of directive control lies in the solar plexus.

In a measure, this taking of the breast re-instates the old connection with the parent body. It is a strange sinking back to the old unison, the old organic continuum—a recovery of the pre-natal state. But at the same time it is a deep, avid gratification in drinking in the sustenance of a new individuality. It is a deep gratification in the exertion of a new, voluntary power. The child acts now separately from its own individual center and exerts still a control over the adjacent universe, the parent body.

So the warm life-stream passes again from the parent into the aching abdomen of the severed child. Life cannot progress without these ruptures, severances, cataclysms; pain is a living reality, not merely a deathly. Why haven’t we the courage for life-pains? If we could depart from our old tenets of the mind, if we could fathom our own unconscious sapience, we should find we have courage and to spare. We are too mentally domesticated.