Understanding Past Life Memories and Near Death Experiences Through the Lens of Prenatal and Perinat

A central concern of my aesthetic and therapeutic research is the origin of images. When and where do inner images begin? Prenatal and perinatal research has taught us that all image conceptions and fantasies of mankind can ultimately be traced back to the body experience and body experience history of the individual. The genetic, molecular, and cellular levels of body memory are information carriers of their own history, transitioning smoothly into neural memory patterns that determine later representations of body sensations and feelings in basic patterns. The regression ability of the artists can go into these early and original body memory levels, as we also experience it again and again in therapeutic deep regressive settings with patients. So there are real experiential realities in the intrauterine space that can also be remembered! In my almost 40 years of work in end-of-life care of tumor patients it became noticeable that the greater a prenatal, perinatal or early childhood trauma experience was, or in the family system a transgenerational trauma was unresolved, the more necessary also ideas and fantasies of other worlds became. Patients' inner images of death and an afterlife were always correlatively identifiable with the rescue illusions that had necessarily arisen in the specific traumatic experience of their early biography. Likewise with patients with the ideas that they had lived before. The special structural force of pre- and perinatal traumatizations often hardly allows other ideas than that there must be another life, because the own one seems to be too burdened and hopeless! This emergency reaction is then projected onto the real world instead of being able to classify oneself as an individual link in a long chain of ancestors and descendants. These topics will be differentiated in the lecture, also with the help of case studies. Klaus Evertz, lecturer, works as psycho-, art- and body therapist in own office and Center for Palliative Medicine, University Hospital Cologne. Painter and cultural psychologist. Research in Images as Forms of Consciousness. Lectureships at the Universities Cologne and Dresden, the University for Environment and Economy (Depart. Art Therapy) Nuertingen and the Dr.Mildred-Scheel-Academy, Cologne. His main work is a design of a Prenatal Aesthetic in Kunstanalyse (Art Analysis) (2002). Editor of „Lehrbuch fuer Praenatale Psychologie (Textbook for Prenatal Psychology)“, Mattes, Heidelberg (2014) and "Handbook of Prenatal Psychology", Springer, New York (2020). Coauthor of „Lehrbuch für Palliativmedizin (Textbook for Palliative Medicine“, Schattauer, Stuttgart (1997, 2007, 2011). His pioneering re-search on pre- and perinatal trauma and transgenerational trauma has potential applications for psycho-, art- and bodytherapists helping to identify the effects of these traumata on mental health and behaviour. Since 1997 Member of the Advisory Board of „International Journal of Peri- and Prenatal Psychology and Medicine“, since 2007 Member of the Board of Associate Editors. He is Past-vice-president of the International Society for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Medicine (ISPPM). Institut for Arttherapy and Artanalysis Cologne Neusser Str. 569 50737 Köln/Cologne Germany Tel./Fax 0049 – 221 5509156 E-mail: [email protected] klausevertz.de