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Kitty Hagenbach
Promoting a paradigm shift in our understanding of the parent-child relationship
In 1923 Otto Rank wrote a book called The Trauma of Birth and, with it, opened a new path of research into the effects of birth on our lives. Psychology of birth developed slowly until Canadian psychiatrist Thomas Verny published his groundbreaking book The Secret Life of the Unborn Child in 1981. Verny claimed that the foetus experiences emotions in the womb and that pregnancy is a crucial period in the life of human beings, and hence, that it is important to parent our unborn children. This awareness heralded an entirely new field of pre and perinatal psychology, which has developed gradually to the present day.
Kitty Hagenbach has been a psychotherapist for fifteen years. She specialises in supporting parent-child relationships from conception onwards. She has a private practice and works both as a practitioner and as part of the management team at the Viveka Clinic in London. Her work is based on scientific research that points to the importance of the pre-natal period and to the ever-increasing certainty that the mother is the architect of the child's brain.
A journey that almost certainly began through her personal experience of being an unwanted child, has become a quest to understand the human condition and particularly the impact of very early experiences on the rest of our lives. As she puts it, "pre-natal life sets the stage for post-natal life, the experience in the womb becomes unconscious and shapes the whole of our lives.
This quest has led her from studying Transpersonal Psychotherapy, to an MA in child psychology, adolescence and family therapy and to train in pre and perinatal psychology. She is today one of the leading thinkers and practitioners whose work is promoting a paradigm shift in the way we understand babies' experience in the womb. However, Kitty sees human experience as a continuum; the pre-natal stage with all its significance and then post-natal life during which inner personal work can be done to repair damage from previous experiences.
Kitty is convinced that babies are aware and conscious from a very early stage, "babies bring all their wisdom with them; they have this spiritual knowing. Gradually, life takes its toll and their spiritual connection recedes into the unconscious with the hope that later in life it can be accessed again and offer that more conscious way of living." In her view there are no 'bad' babies, only carers who don't understand or are yet to understand how to meet their baby's needs. She is first and foremost an advocate for children and strongly believes that parents need to be accountable for their own emotional well-being.
Providing babies with a rich and supportive emotional experience from very early on, casts a spotlight on parents during pregnancy and beyond. Kitty sees pregnancy as a time of opportunity, when the mother can work on herself to become more emotionally aware and build her self-esteem. The father, if he is present, also plays an important role, not only because of the emotional, physical and financial support that he can provide to the mother, but also, any personal 'inner work' that he does, will support the child's development at an energetic level. It is important to be aware that babies inherit an ancestral pattern that comes from both biological parents. As she says, "we heal the ancestral line 'up' as well as 'down' towards our children. The more we heal, the fewer burdens our children will have to carry. I find many people in my clinical practice are willing to work more deeply on themselves if they feel it is going to benefit their children and not pass on the same wounding."
Kitty's aim is that preventative work by parents during pregnancy, or preferably before, supports their emotional well-being. This inner work needs to be done with compassion for oneself; it is not about feeling guilty or about focusing on the negative but about awareness and growth. She maintains that it is important for the parents, and for the mother in particular, to identify her own feelings, to name them, own them and deal with them. The fact that the mother can be emotionally accountable frees the baby. A baby that is coming in to the world, Kitty explains, takes on whatever the parent is going through at a personal level; babies take on all of their mother's feelings and often believe that they are responsible for them. Hence, when the mother talks to the baby inside her and honestly explains what is happening, she is helping the baby to differentiate between her feelings and the baby. This provides a safer environment for the baby.
The inspiration for this work has emerged from Kitty's own experiences as part of a line of unwanted children, which included her grandmother, her mother, her father and herself. This major imprint influenced her personality and her self-esteem and was manifest in a need to be a 'pleaser' and to do anything to be liked. Her early years were marked by loneliness and emotional neglect. At six weeks of age, her family moved from Cornwall to a very isolated rural part of Ireland, where there were no people or children to interact with. When, at the age of seven, they moved to Delgany, she was a depressed child who learned to be a very good member of other people's families. As she grew, she felt that she too could not cope with the responsibility and restrictions that having children would impose on her life. Kitty was 39 before she found the 'strength' to have babies and now has two wonderful sons in their teens.
It was the decision to walk away from her 'party girl' lifestyle, first marriage and job, managing a multi-storey shopping complex, which brought about the change, and 'second life' to Kitty. Unqualified from her schooling and with no apparent academic skills she had no idea what to do next, and spent a year travelling down the East Coast of Africa with a boyfriend, from Cairo to Cape Town. It was clear to her that although the African people had materially much less than she did, in reality, they had much greater richness and wealth. As Kitty said, "they lived in the present time; they were connected to themselves, to each other, to the family and to the earth."
The experience had a profound impact and ignited an interest to work in the area of human resources. After visiting Findhorn for a conference, she met two people who invited her to join their company, which ran transformational workshops in London. Kitty not only took part in these courses but also later ran the organisation. The courses fascinated her and prompted a journey of self-transformation that led her to look at, and work through, her own issues and to start facing and confronting her feelings.
It was during this period that she met Keith, her husband, and together they decided to have children. Kitty stopped work just before the birth of her first son, but now knew that she was inescapably interested in the psychological development of the human being and wanted to become a psychotherapist. She studied Transpersonal Psychotherapy and while training also had the opportunity to observe individual clients and look at her own personal issues, which together provided a wonderful context for her studies. Her interest focused on the effect of very early life and how that unconsciously stays with us for such a long time. This also inspired Kitty to complete a Masters in child psychology, adolescence and family therapy.
By the time her children were nine and eleven she was thinking about next steps. Together with her husband she sat down to consider how she could achieve a now long held ambition to train in pre and perinatal psychology in California; the course would mean, being away in the USA for two weeks every four months. From the moment her husband and boys decided to support her, all the many financial and other hurdles fell away as though each step on the way was pre-ordained. It was not the first or last time in Kitty's life that she would feel a synchronistic power embracing her route forward and the experience was crucial to her own personal growth and healing. As she said, "it is the work that I have done that has helped me feel safest in the world". She is now confident that she has arrived at a point where through her training, clinical practice and personal experience she can offer her understanding in a more formal way.
There is a combination of elements in Kitty's story that makes her work powerful. The reverence for human life, the honouring of the incoming soul, the understanding that not only physical needs but also emotional needs have to be met in the womb; her conviction that parents need support to deepen their own awareness and to be able to provide their children with a safe emotional environment. All of these come from a place of compassion, respect and the belief that we don't have to be perfect as parents, just to be willing to look into ourselves. That repair can be made at any stage of our lives and that we don't need to heal everything, just enough to make the relationship with our own children, deep, rich and enjoyable.
Kitty has the energy of someone who is following her path and the confidence that the Universe is supporting her along the way. This bright, warm, welcoming and strong psychotherapist breathes compassion and respect for each human being and works hard to make this world a better place for children.
Footnotes:
1. Perinatal is the time before and immediately after birth.
2. Leaders in this field are William Emerson, David Chamberlain, Allan Shore, Ray Castellino and cellular biologist Bruce Lipton.
Written by Patricia Patterson-Vanegas
Resources:
Kitty can be contacted at kitty@babiesknow.com
Association for Prenatal & Perinatal Psychology & Health (APPPAH) www.birthpsychology.com
Viveka: Private health clinic at the cutting edge of integrating the best medical treatment with complementary therapies. www.viveka.co.uk
Books:
Prenatal Parenting: The Complete Psychological and Spiritual Guide to Loving Your Unborn Child by Frederick Wirth MD, Harper Collins, £11
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© Juno Magazine 2007 |
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