The Functions of the Orgasms: The Highways to Transcendence
By Michel Odent
Pinter & Martin
The impact surgeon and obstetrician Michel Odent has had on international birth practice and, accordingly, on the human race, is immeasurable. Author of over 50 scientific papers and eleven nonfiction works translated into 21 languages and taught in tertiary institutions throughout the world, Odent is the founder of London’s Primal Health Research Centre, a BBC documentary star, and responsible for introducing the concept of birthing pools and home-like birthing rooms to hospitals in the 1970s.
Odent’s experiences as a student in the technologically oppressive maternity wards of the 1950s led him to question what we understand as birth practice; those influential philosophical forays are responsible for triggering the new wave of analyses, including Tina Cassidy’s Birth: The Surprising History of How We Are Born (2006), Marsden Wagner’s Born in the USA: How a Broken Maternity System Must Be Fixed to Put Women and Children First (2006), and Ricki Lake’s outstanding 2007 documentary, The Business of Being Born, referred to as “the Inconvenient Truth of childbirth.”
In Odent’s latest book, The Functions of the Orgasms, he observes that culturally imprinted shame about reproduction has infected every aspect of sexuality, birth practice, and, concomitantly, humanity itself. In English, French and German, even the scientific terms for the female external genital organs have as their roots words relating to shame (the Latin verb “pudere”, which means “to be ashamed”, is at the core of pudendum).
Odent points out that a lack of tenderness has an inhibitory effect on laboring women, who, in many cases, seize and panic, resulting in unnecessary intervention. In particular, the increasing incidence of c-sections, both emergency and elective, perturbs him. “On the one hand, there are births that involve the release of love hormones,” he writes. “On the other, there are births that do not involve the release of love hormones. In the latter group we must include cesareans as well as deliveries of babies and placentas controlled by the use of pharmacological substitutes for the natural hormones.”
He goes on to argue that a revolution in our understanding of birth is necessary because of the biochemical – and, later, societal – impact of birth practice. Juvenile violent criminality, for example, has been described by Odent “as a form of an impaired capacity to love others.” When 4,269 male subjects born in the same Danish hospital were followed by a University of California research team, it was found that the main risk factor for being a violent criminal at the age of 18 was “the association of birth complications, together with early birth separation from or rejection by the mother.” (Curiously, early maternal separation-rejection by itself was not a risk factor.)
The answer, Odent believes, lies in listening. “Instead of identifying the basic needs of women in labour in order to facilitate labour and delivery and to reduce the need for drugs and intervention,” Odent notes, “the focus in recent decades has been on the elimination of pain and fear via non-pharmacological ‘methods’ … All these phenomena developed side by side at such a high speed after the Second World War that in the 1970s the birth environment had reached an … unprecedented degree of masculinization.”
Odent’s greatest anxiety is that as a race, we are losing the ability to love. “What if influential people … fail to notice that the redundancy of the hormones of love is an unprecedented turning point in the history of mankind?” he asks. The dramatic increase in the incidence of suicide – up 60% in 45 years – bears witness to Odent’s enquiry. In short: essential reading for those interested in the future of civilization.
- Copyright Antonella Gambotto-Burke 2010
February 10, 2010 at 3:41 am
Oh Oh oh (pardon the pun!) I so agree with the philosophy and principle and research behind this. Spread the love and start before birth! What could be more simple and yet frustratingly hard for many people to grasp.
I did 4 hours of yoga classes a week while pregnant with my first child, active birthing workshop, meditation, the full catastrophe in preparation for the full catastrophe, as it were. As the due date grew nearer, I developed a full body itchy rash (yes, yes TMI I know, but I do have a point) that was apparently an immunilogical reaction to the pregnancy (my body was literally going into shock wanting this baby out). I remained calm and breathed. I had acupuncture. Two weeks after due date, with no head engagement and nary a twinge of labour, my old fart conservative doctor (who had been hands-off the whole way, only doing one ultrasound) eventually pulled the plug (again, pardon the pun) and induced me. The birth scene was like a country vet’s – at the relevant moment doctor appeared replete with half moon glasses, benign elderly half-smile, full white coat and gumboots. An assistant toted a spotlight. Various implements and grunting later my almost-5kg baby made an appearance. After much blood loss and disfigurement-that-I-shant-elaborate-on, when second baby was due, I was convinced to go the c-section route, and found the birth to be far calmer (if somewhat eerily so). The point I have come to on this long and windy road is this: although I, with all my heart, believe in the need to reduce the ridiculous amount of surgical intervention into the birthing process, in rare cases (I believe of which I am one) such intervention is wholly necessary and unavoidable. I feel (perhaps unfairly) fraudulent in championing natural birth these days when I have ‘chosen’ an unnatural way to birth for myself. As though I have been batting for the other team so to speak. When I looked into ways and means of avoiding a c-section for my second child’s birth, I gave the midwife at the birthing centre a synopsis similar to the above. “There’s no reason why you can’t have another natural birth, maybe you just have big babies” she boomed, as though my fears were unfounded and that was the end of that. Maybe I was silly for letting that scare me away but it did. I am not presuming that Odent is arguing against the medical model in the required percentage of cases, just that it shouldn’t be the norm, and that the culture of fear needs to make way for a culture of love. In my case the fear of re-visiting my first experience was insurmountable, and so the interventionist route was chosen from the outset. I often wonder to what extent my son’s perilous vaginal entry into the world has had on his highly sensitive, occasionally volatile temperament, compared with my daughter’s smooth (yet cold and calculated) birth and her mild-mannered demeanour. The finding that it was the associated birth trauma combined with early mother rejection/separation rather than simply the rejection/separation component itself which determines adult criminality is startling to say the least and warrants further investigation.
I didn’t mean for this to turn into the first public airing of my birth story but I think there is a valid point in there somewhere. Brevity is not my strong suit.
And also FYI http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100205081809.htm
February 10, 2010 at 11:44 am
Five kgs? My God! You are heroic. My story is a little different. I made the mistake of having an epidural after ten hours (I froze), and then, when that didn’t work, I had another, and then, when that didn’t work, I had a number of morphine top-ups. So I couldn’t feel my stomach but was perfectly conscious of my legs and the rest of it, which they did not believe until I began maneuvering myself into a different position. I also kept throwing up into the bowl my husband held. As a consequence, my lovely little baby was born stoned, something I regret terribly.