Knowledge as an emotional and intellectual realization of the
unconscious.
-Gnosiology, Psychedelic Drugs and Prenatal experiences. - .

[Lecture given at the 13th Congress of the International Society of prenatal and Perinatal Psychology
and Medicine (ISPPM) in Cagliari, Sardinia, Italy on June 24, 2000 and published in Neuro
Endocronology Letters Vol 21 , No 4, 2000 ]

Zephyros Kafkalides1
Corfu, Greece

Keywords: Autopsychognosia, Intelect, emotions subjectivity, Objectivity, unconscious , conscious,
Hallucinations, reality, psychedelic drugs, methodology, prenatal and perinatal theories, Grof,Lake,
Heisenberg, Feyerabend, Plato, Aristotle, Plank, James.

Abstract: The use of psychedelic drugs in minute doses as an adjuvant psychotherapeutic means,
within the context of Athanasios Kafkalides' autopsychognosia, caused the emotional revival of
prenatal and perinatal experiences. This mnemonic process gives rise to a wide range of gnosiological
questions such as , inter alia, those regarding the use of psychedelic drugs to stimulate memories and
the difference between emotional and intellectual realisation in the quest for knowledge. The new
findings in this field, necessitated profound changes of concepts like truth, reality,
subjectivity,obgectivity, unconscious, consciousness, cause and effect, emotions, intellect, quality,
quantity etc. The study presented here will deal with these issues in the context of gnosiotheoritical
stands supported by thinkers from Plato to Feyerabend.

1

The direct emotional experience of reality is a momentous event, which shakes the
very foundations of one's worldview. Physicists, at the beginning of this century, felt
much the same way when the foundations of their worldview were shaken by the new
experience of the atomic reality. Psychiatrists, Psychologists and other researchers in
the field of prenatal investigations with psychedelic substances experienced a similar
shock. The new findings in this field, necessitated profound changes of concepts like
truth, reality, unconscious, consciousness, cause and effect, emotions, intellect,
quality, quantity etc…In our present communication, we will try to develop those
concepts in the framework of Dr Athanassios Kafkalides' Autopshychognosia. In
fact, Autopsychognosia i.e. deep sessions with psychedelic drugs, is above all, a
combined emotional and intellectual knowledge about the content of the unconscious.
i .

1Correspondence to : Z. A. Kafkalides, Αttornay at Law, Triklino House, Corfu 49100, Greece . E-
mail zephyr@hol.gr

 

It is worthwhile to go back in to time and see the way ancient Greek philosophers
perceived knowledge. Aristotle confronted and studied the organism's psychological
forces from a broad biological perspective. All the functions of an organism, such as
nutrition, appetite, sensation, movement, perception and knowledge take place for
the survival and the salvation of the organism within the complex and hostile external
environment (σώζεσθαι εαυτόν).ii . Plato, on the other hand, defined knowledge as
anamnesis ( = reminiscence, recollection).iii . The conclusion of his dialogue Meno
applies to the nature of knowledge, which is an act of recollection of something
perceived before this life.iv Plato' s and Aristotle' s stands on knowledge are
complementary. Without the functioning of memory, how would it be possible for
the organism to survive? Knowledge, thus, is amongst other, a mnemonic process,
which serves self-preservation and the existential identity of the human being.


It is extremely importan to underline here the fact that, in ancient Greek philosophy,
knowledge was perceived as the combination of sensation and intellect. Let's add
to this concept the emotional element, which springs up from sensation and intellect
and transcends them v. An old dictum supports that In order to "know", one must
feel. In ancient Greek philosophy there is no such thing as pure Intellectualismus.
Intellect is a barrier which must be thrust aside in order to perceive the being of
things.

However, from the earliest philosophical speculations to the present day, emotion has
been often seen as interfering with rationality, as a remnant of our pre-sapient
inheritance. Bertrand Russell holds : "The emotions are what makes life interesting,
and what makes us feel important. From this point of view, they are the most valuable
element in human existence. But when , as in philosophy, we are trying to understand
the world, they appear rather as a hindrance vi. That is why, the term "gnosiology" ,
(theory of knowledge or epistemology) is confounded with the term "logic". The
latter is often used in a broad sense, to cover the whole field. This confusion doesn't
happen by chance, since the quest for "objective" knowledge must not be
confounded with emotions because emotions lend subjectivity to judgement.

Thus, on the way to knowledge, the emotional element is rejected. Psychoanalysis , of
course, gives great importance to emotions from the very early writings of Breuer
and Freud vii. Psychoanalysis, combines therapy ( which is the result of applying the
acquired knowledge) with the reliving of emotion , which was linked to the recalled
event. ( abreaction). Autopsychognosia on the other hand, considers the emotional
revival of past experiences provoked by psychedelic substances, a sine qua non
condition for acquiring more direct and clearer knowledge. In other words, what
Autopsychognosia with psychedelic drugs is aiming at is a deeper intercomunication
link and, if possible, an increase of the interconnections between the neocortex and
the limbic system. This is achieved to a certain extent , through the emotional-
intellectual realization of the unconscious-8 . In contrast to plain intellectual realisation
(which leave the subject indifferent from an emotional point of view),
autopsychognosia uses the term emotional - intellectual realization and attempts to
give some interpretations to the concepts of the "unconscious" and the "conscious"
(consciousness). Certain "partial" definitions , at the theoretical level, are the
following. We mention them with great reserve, because the term "define" means
"limit" while the above mentioned concepts can not be limited.

The Unconscious comprises memory traces that the various stimuli which have
acted upon the nervous system during its evolution have left upon the neurons and
the human cells. We have memory traces of experiences after expulsion birth, of
experiences of expulsion birth, of intrauterine life, memory traces of experiences from
the lives of one's ancestors on the zoological scale. To these we can ad memory traces
"beyond the boundaries of the womb" i.e memory traces of experiences from the
initial phases of the creation of matter-mass-energy after Zero Hour. All these
memory traces constitute the unconscious. The Consciousness : The subjective
understanding, on an emotional and intellectual level, of the content of the
unconscious. Thus, we can give one more "partial" definition of knowledge :
knowledge is the emotional-intellectual realization of the unconscious.

This process however, is a personal endless and continuous quest because the
unconscious is infinite. Autopsychognosia, so to speak, is a process of Aletheia ( =
Truth). We use the word "Aletheia" in the linguistic sense given by Heidegger 9.
Aletheia = a (prevative prefix) + lithe (oblivion) = non oblivion, unconcealment 10
(the unconscious becomes conscious). In this process we do not consider emotions as
a hindrance to knowledge but as an essential attribute to it .

2

The findings of prenatal researches led, amongst other things, to the following
conclusions: The fear of rejection and the serenity of acceptance - specially
the intrauterine rejection or acceptance of the fetus by the mother- shape man' s mental
health, his capability of perception and knowledge, and his emotional-intellectual
motives of behaviour 11 If the above conclusions are valid, we are facing a severe
gnosiological overthrow of Aristotle's and Lock's conception regarding the soul
before birth as a white paper void of all characters.

The problem we are facing with prenatal experiences is that the revival of any period
of the past is a subjective state for the individual experiencing it; this cannot be
perceived by any observer. The individual, for example, who feels that he/she has
returned to the womb, is referring to a situation which is real for him (her)alone and
which is due to his/her nervous system retaining the "memory traces" of stimuli
which had acted upon it during fetal life. When these memory traces are reactivated
by psychedelic substances (or in some other way12 i.e. concentration, meditation,
hyperventilation etc..) the conditions of fetal life are relived. The psychedelic
experience which leads to the revival of the near and distant past as well as to states of
altered consciousness ,occurs within a different space - time continuum than the
observer's. Scientists, however, insist on substanciating the most important attributes
of knowledge, i.e necessity and universal validity. If the western scientist cannot
quantitatively prove the "truth" of the above propositions, he is obliged to discredit
their content.

However, to be able to envisage propositions such as the aforementioned, one must
undergo a change in his traditional belief concerning the "objectivity" of truth . So
we ask ourselves: do the prenatal experiences and realizations, such as described
under autopsychognosia sessions with psychedelic substances, correspond to "truth"?
But what is it for something to be true or false? Intuitively truth is a relation -
between the thing that is true, and the thing that makes it so. But both terms of the
relation are in dispute, as is the relation itself. Philosophers differ as to whether the
truth bearer is a sentence, a proposition, a thought, a statement, a belief, or some other
entity, whether linguistic or mental. They differ too as to what truth consists in. Some
speak of correspondence - but with what? Others replace correspondence with some
other relation: coherence, for example. Others still reject the whole idea of truth as a
relation, regarding it instead as an intrinsic property of whatever possesses it. There
are even those who argue that truth is neither a property nor a relation, and that the
concept is merely redundant13 . What we see here is a total subjective state of things.
There are as many definitions of "truth" as philosophers. We cannot actually define
with absolute objectivity such concepts as truth, knowledge, reality.

If, however, we ask the subjects who relived and described their prenatal and
transcendental experiences, during sessions, whether those were real and true, they
would answer by the affirmative. For them, what they have experienced was the truth,
"their truth" and the acquired knowledge "their knowledge". So, knowledge as an
emotional-intellectual realization of the unconscious is a subjective process.

In 1966, at the International congress of Psychiatry in Madrid, Dr Athanassios
Kafkalides presented his first case who had relived his intrauterine life. In the 4th
session with LSD-25 he regressed to the womb and fully re-experienced his birth and
the very earliest days of his life14 .. When some of his colleagues reacted by saying
that this was a hallucination and a fantasy unrelated to reality, Kafkalides answered as
a pure pragmatist: Proof that the patient's feelings and recollections while under LSD
correspond to reality, is his cure; a radical change of character, behavior and mental
productive work took place after LSD treatment, so how could hallucinations
possibly heal ? But this was a pragmatist's view15 . Nevertheless this feeble argument
was the first step which led Kafkalides to stand away from the Cartesian methodology
without rejecting its deductive - inductive technique. This turning point in his
methodological approach has to be envisaged within the wider differentiation which
took place in the framework of modern western thought.

During the first decades of the 20th century,the physicists Bohr, Heisenberg and Paoli
were obliged, due to the latest data in the subatomic world, to change their
methodological conception . In the 1942 manuscript16 , Heisenberg makes a stand
against the vulgar distinction "subjective reality"-"objective reality". In order to
understand the 20th century physics, he believes that the Cartesian dualism between
res cogitans and res extensa must be abandoned 17. .

European languages have two words to designate reality, the etymology of which is
different; the first one is "reality" (from latin, res = thing) and the second one is
"effectiveness" ( agere = to do ) In German , those two words are reproduced by the
words Realitat and Wirklichkeit. The more abstract concept which derives from agere
or wirken is closer to the one used in science. For Heisenberg, reality is an active
experience. Subjectivity thus plays an important role in the whole process of
knowledge. Many philosophers of this era, in particular , those who knew and
conversed with Heisenberg, such as Husserl, Heidegger, Cassirer insist on the
necessity to object to the Cartesian division, "subject-object". In the following years,
the above mentioned physicist's ideas had an important influence on many other
thinkers such as Fritjof Kapra and Paul Feyerabent18 . The latter through his major
work Against Method, criticized Rationalism's exaggerations.

The world is not only macrocosmic, solid and objective but also microcosmic ,
different and subjective. The deeper we go into inanimate and animate matter
the more difficult is for reason to function within its traditional frame. The world of the
becoming gets closer and closer to an Heracletian concept while the Anaximandrian
concept of the being ( the "Άπειρον" , the infinite substratum which is "beside the
elements", not identifiable with any one of them), accepted by Heisenberg19 , remains
inaccessible to human brain. The principles of Autopsychognosia which follows must
be considered within the above gnosiotheoritical context. :

3

At this point, we must underline that following the LSD discovery, in 1943, by Dr
Albert Hoffman, serious research was undertaken in the psychotherapeutic field with
the use of psychedelic substances. There is a direct relation between the use of
psychedelic substances and the revival of prenatal experiences and realizations. It's
not due to pure chance that great prenatal and perinatal findings came to light through
the works of scientists who used such substances, in minute doses, as an adjuvant
psychotherapeutic mean. Allow me to mention amongst others Kafkalides' 21,Grof's 22
and Lake's clinical results 23. Its striking to realize that , in the same period of time,
in three different countries, the patients of the above mentioned psychiatrists , relived
the same experiences and reached more or less the same conclusions and
realizations which constitute the basis of the theoretical work of the above mentioned
scientists.

The general opinion concerning psychedelics is that they are hallucinative producing
drugs. But what does hallucination mean? Cartesian psychiatry states that "a
hallucination is a vivid sensory impression occurring without external stimulus". The
Greek word for "hallucination" is "pseudoaesthesis" (ψευδαίσθησις) from "pseudo"
(false) and "aesthesis" (perception), an etymology which leaves the scholar of
traditional thought with no doubt that a "pseudoaesthesis" is something false, unreal
and morbid and that "pseudoaesthesiogenic" drugs - as psychedelic drugs are known
in Greek - cause false and morbid experiences. But just how unsuccessful the term
"hallucination" is can be shown by the following example: If at this very moment,
here in Cagliari, I recall the details of an adventure I had in Athens a year ago and feel
I am reliving it vividly, then according to the aforementioned definition I am suffering
from hallucinations, since extremely vivid sensory impressions were created in my
mind without external stimulus. If we try to understand how I could recall details of
my adventure in Athens, we shall have to accept that those details left memory traces
which were reactivated, resulting in my reliving my experience without my actually
being in Athens. Something similar to this occurs in my mind when during a Session
with psychedelic drugs I relive intra-uterine or any other experiences. In giving this
example, We are not suggesting that morbid hallucinations do not exist; We simply
want to show that the term "hallucination" is an erroneous one requiring clarification.
We believe that the "pseudo" (false) element in "pseudoaestheses" (hallucinations)
caused by the latter regard only the observer. For the individual, his subjective
hallucinatory state is real and we are obliged to respect this .

4

Max Plank, in his lecture ,on November 1941, given at the Scientific Society Kaiser
Wilhelm, in Berlin stated the following : "A new scientific truth can't establish itself
by the mere fact of being accepted by its opponents who claim to have been
convinced and enlightened , but furthermore, by the fact that, in the course of time,
its opponents die and the new generation grows familiar ,from the beginning with
truth"24 . Williams James, on the other hand, in one of his Bostonian lectures, in
1906, poses the question very clearly ,by saying : "First, a new theory is attacked as
absurd; then it is admitted to be true, but obvious and insignificant; finally it is seen
to be so important that its adversaries claim that they, themselves, discovered it."25
We think that the above propositions applies also to the prenatal findings and it
doesn't surprise us that prenatal theories still remain marginal in a world , where the
principle of tabula rasa prevails and the subjective-emotional state of the individual is
considered as a hindrance to knowledge.

In relation to the aforementioned I would like to quote a passage from Paul
Fayerabend's major work Against Method, where he asserts that: "The idea that
science can, and should, be run according to fixed and universal rules, is both
unrealistic and pernicious. It is unrealistic, for it takes too simple a view of the talents
of man and of the circumstances which encourage, or cause, their development. And it
is pernicious, for the attempt to enforce the rules is bound to increase our professional
qualifications at the expences of our humanity. In addition , the idea is detrimental to
science, for it neglects the complex physical and historical conditions which influence
scientific change. It makes our science less adaptable and more dogmatic: every
methodological rule is associated with cosmological assumptions, so that using the
rule we take it for granted that the assumptions are correct. Naive falsificationism
takes it for granted that the laws of nature are manifested and not hidden beneath
disturbances of considerable magnitude. Empiricism takes it for granted that sense
experience is a better mirror for the world than pure thought. Praise of argument takes
it for granted that the artifices of Reason give better results than the unchecked play of
our emotions. Such assumptions may be perfectly plausible and even true. Still , one
should occasionally put them to a test. Putting them to a test means that we stop using
the methodology associated with them, start doing science in a different way and see
what happens".

We believe that in the future to come what we presently characterize as prenatal
research, will become "la voie royale" of a new ontology. But great gnosiological
changes were never simple and easy. So, allow me , by concluding to mention Plato's
words in his Republic: "Great deeds are always precarious" , to which I will add
Heidegger's words: "great deeds always take place in the middle of a storm."


1 More about the term autopsychognosia see Zephyros Kafkalides, Fear, Rejection and Aggressiveness in
Autopsychognosia with Psychedelic Drugs, Int.J.Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Medicine Vol.11 (1999)
No 1,19-32
2 In that sense, we can assume that Aristotle was a supporter of the theory of functionalism (i.e.the view that
behaviour and mental phenomena can be explained as an organism's strategies for adapting to its biological or
social environment.
3 The Meno had already announced that knowledge is acquired, not as information conveyed from one mind to
another by teaching, but by recollection in this life of realities an truths seen and known by the soul before its
incarnation (before birth) F.M.Cornford, Plato's Theory of Knowledge, Routledge 1979, (first published 1935)
4 Paul Friendlander, Plato, Princeton University press, 1969 ( Platon: Seinswahrheit und Lebenswirklichkeit ,
first published in 1964 )
5 We remind here that all ancient Greek knowledge verbs were perception verbs: idein, eidenai, noein (ειδειν,
ειδέναι, νοείν) The Platonic usage for "knowledge" was centred on perceptual verbs. Thus in "I know I don't
know" the cognitive verb is idein. Lyons (1963) analysed Plato's usage of knowledge verbs, concluding that
"eidenai" includes both "gignoskein" and "epistasthai".
6 Bertrand Russell, An outline of philosophy, George Allen & Unwin ltd, 1951 (first published 1927)
7 J Laplanche et J.-B.Ponyalis, Vocabulaire de la Psychanalyse, Presse Universitaire de France, 1967
8 Athanassios Kafkalides, Autopsychognosia, Odyseus, 1989
9 Costis Papagiorgis, Martin Haiddeger's Ontology, Nefeli, Athens 1983
10 Martin Heidegger, Qu'est - ce que la metaphysique?, Editions Nathan, 1985
11 Athanassios Kafkalides, The knowledge of the womb , Autopsychognosia with psychedelic drugs, Triklino
House, 1995 (originally published in Greek in 1980 by Olkos , Athens)
12 Ludwig Janus, The enduring effects of prenatal experience - echoes from the womb-, Jason Aronson Inc., 1997
(Originally published in German in 1991) - see results of various psychotherapeutic methods in this field
13 Roger Scruton, Modern philosophy, Arrow Books, 1997
14 Athanassios Kafkalides, A Case of homosexuality treated with LSD-25 [Proceedings of the IV World Congress
of Psychiatry, Madrid 1966]
15 Pragmatism can be briefly described as the theory stating that a proposition is true, if holding it to be so, is
practically successful or advantageous.
16 Werner Heisenberg, Philosophie, le manuscript de 1942, Editions Seuil, 1998 ( Original title : Ordnung der
Wirklichkeit, first published by R. Piper GmbH&KG, Munich,1989)
17 In atomic physics the scientist cannot play the role of a detached objective observer, but becomes involved in the
world he observes to the extent that he influences the properties of the observed objects. The world is not "sitting
out there" with the observer safely separated from it. Fritjof Capra, The Tao of physics, Shambhala, Boston, 2000
(first published in 1975), The turning point, Simon & Schuster, New York 1981
18 Paul K. Feyerabend, Against method, 1975
19 Werner Heisenberg, Physique et philosophie, Albin Michel, 1971- The Anaximandrian Apeiron as an infinite
αρχή (Aπειρον) is "that which is beside the elements", not identifiable with any one of them. (see G.S Kirk&
J.E.Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers, Cambridge ,1957)
20 Athanassios Kafkalides, The power of the womb and the subjective truth, Triklino House, 1998 (originally
published in Greek in 1987, by Free press, Athens)
21 Athanassios Kafkalides, Causes of Sexual Conflicts - Effects on Behaviour, communique at the VII Panhellenic
Congress of Psychiatry, Athens, 1975
22 Stanislav Grof, Realms of the human unconscious, The Viking press, New York, 1975 - LSD Psychotherapy,
Hunter House, 1980.
23 Simon H. House, Primal Integration Therapy-School of Lake , The International Journal of prenatal and perinatal
psychology and medicine, Volume 11, No 4, December 1999
24 Max Planck, Sinn und Grenzen der exakten Wissenschaft, Kindler Verlag GmbH, Munchen, 1971


25 William James, Pragmatism, Dover publications, inc. New York , 1995