ABSTRACT: Stanislav Grof’s four perinatal matrices provide a useful guide to why certain types of imagery appear in the Star Wars trilogy and to the dynamics of the struggle between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. The human struggle to be born imprints experiences upon the neonate so strongly that they influence the nature of postnatal imagination and behavior. That primal struggle tends to be constantly relived throughout our lives. So when films such as Star Wars project imagery evocative of that struggle, they mirror and evoke memories powerfully present in the unconscious. The opportunity to vicariously relive those experiences is part of the attraction of the trilogy, contributing to its unparalleled worldwide appeal.
"...a return to the womb. And we can take the analogy further: The walls of the room begin to close in on its inhabitants just before their final release through a small door -- rather like the contractions that push a baby out into the world. So on the one hand the experience is that of being consumed by the Death Star; on the other, this is an ordeal of initiation and rebirth."1
-- Mary Henderson, Star Wars: The Magic of Myth
"Star Wars gives birth to a sense of human complicity, as it involves us in a worthy struggle."2
-- J. P. Telotte, “The Dark Side of the Force”
"One would be naïve indeed to believe that so great a cataclysm (birth) would not leave its mark. Its traces are everywhere; on the skin...in all our human folly, in our madness, in our tortures, our prisons, in legends, epics, and our myths."3
-- Frederick Leboyer, Birth without Violence
Pervasive Perinatal Elements and Star Wars’s Popularity
The powerful appeal of the Star Wars trilogy has been explained in various ways, from the technical and special effects wizardry that eroticises speed and produces spectacular scenes to the extensive use of universal mythic themes and archetypes that resonate in the consciousness of the viewer. George Lucas’s own comments make it clear that the fit between the trajectory of the trilogy’s narrative and Joseph Campbell’s monomyth of the hero4 is no accident.
However, creators work at an unconscious level too. And it is important to note that the Campbell monomyth is, according to the evidence described below, itself shaped by perinatal experiences normally beyond conscious recall, that is, by experiences the fetus had in the womb, during birth, and immediately after birth. It then follows that the extent to which these unconscious powerful forces are tapped can, not only determine the content of the narrative, but the appeal it has for an audience.
Any film, any narrative, cannot avoid using some perinatal imagery, for reasons which should also become clear soon. Dreams, like creative works, are products of the unconscious, and a study of 590 dreams showed sixty percent of them contained such birth-related imagery. Indeed, several writers have noted the blatant perinatal imagery of some scenes in the Star Wars trilogy, but without apparently appreciating what was involved. Neither were they aware of how those elements relate to certain kindred material, in particular to the Oedipal struggle between Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. In this article I will seek to redress this lack by presenting the pervasively perinatal elements of the Star Wars tapestry along with an understanding -- based on the extensive research of Stanislav Grof into the perinatal unconscious -- of the significance of that perinatal weave.
Grof’s Birth Stages: Shaping Behavior for Life
Nearly two decades ago it could be written that “a vast body of psychological material on birth feelings has accumulated in the past two decades.”5 Of course, the evidence is even more compelling today. Deep regression of subjects by means of primal therapy, LSD, immersion tanks, holotropic breathing, and hypnosis has exposed fetal and neonatal experiences to verbalized recall. The conclusion: Not only is the fetus extremely sensitive to stimuli, but its experiences just before, during, and after birth embed themselves so deeply in the unconscious that they shape behavior and thought for life as the individual tries to bring some congruence between his or her unconscious preoccupations and the external world.
Birth, in particular, is an experience too overwhelming to be assimilated and defended against by immature nervous systems or digested by the unconscious. It has to be controlled by being projected into the imagination or dream life, or by being acted out in some way. Utilizing an extraordinary mass of clinical data from his research, Stanislav Grof devised a four-stage scheme of perinatal experience that provides matrices for arranging and interpreting fantasy and behavior.6 Furthermore -- and this is germane to a major point of this article -- if an individual was particularly impressed and imprinted by one or two of these perinatal matrices, or stages, his or her postnatal thought, artistic expression, and behavior tend to reflect this.
Grof’s stages, in brief, are as follows: Stage 1, the matrix of security and union, relates to the primal union with the mother -- an intrauterine stage of symbiosis when, ideally, security and satisfaction of all needs are enjoyed and where inner and outer are not differentiated. Stage 2, persecution and pressure, corresponds to the onset of labor, when chemical changes and muscular contractions start to occur and the fetus feels the effect of an alarmingly changed and pressurized environment as the cervix remains closed. Incipient uterine contractions may be experienced as an attack, for example, by a huge octopus. Stage 3, struggle and sensation, relates to the opening of the cervix and propulsion along the birth canal when a struggle for survival amidst enormous pressures ensues. Immense energy is absorbed and released; there are feelings of suffocation and of powerful currents streaming through the body. Stage 4, triumph and survival, corresponds to exit from the birth canal, decompression, relief, relaxation, and physical separation from the mother.
Let us now look at how these elements express themselves in the Star Wars trilogy.
Stage 1 in Star Wars: Harsh, Barren, and Promising
Imagery in the trilogy evocative of Stage 1 is not plentiful. If one sees Luke as treading the path of the “hero with a thousand faces,” he must start from a state of comparatively blissful and primal innocence, such as life on his uncle’s farm on Tatooine. The surrounding landscape has a certain rugged beauty and majesty and permits a degree of agriculture and self-sufficiency.
But it is also dry, harsh, and barren...not the bounteous paradise typical of Stage 1 imagery. Luke is aware enough of the predatory Sandpeople and the persecutory forces of the Empire to feel less than entirely secure. His emotional needs are not satisfied. Frustrated with the drudgery of farm life, he longs to join his peers at the space academy and become a fighter pilot. He feels trapped and confined, and he chafes at the authority of Uncle Owen, who does not want him to follow his father’s footsteps. Luke by no means sees the world as idyllic, nor as transcending good and evil. Scenes of natural or palatial beauty, such as the Endor forest, do occur spasmodically throughout the trilogy, but they tend not to be concordant with security and bliss -- the frozen wastes of the icy planet Hoth spring to mind.
However, in learning of the Force from Obi-Wan Kenobi, Luke is given an intimation of something that mystically unifies the cosmos and transcends time and space, a unified field that permits telepathy, telekinesis, hypnosis, and identification with interstellar space. It registers the annihilation of the planet Alderaan, so that Obi-Wan can sense millions of souls perishing -- “a great disturbance in the Force.” Giving way to intuition and the Force, as Luke does in the attack on the Death Star in Star Wars (henceforth SW, the first story in the trilogy) is precisely the confident and serene surrender to a benevolent, protective guidance (“it will be with you always”) that marks the attitude of this stage. The Universe is a mystery to be experienced rather than a riddle to be solved. So although Stage 1 imagery of bounteous security is not abundant, the abstract notion of “the Force” is a salient Stage 1 characteristic.
Stage 2 in the Trilogy: Predicaments Aplenty!
Stage 2 imagery, on the other hand, is plentiful. The imagery of this of Grof’s stages revolves around a sense of entrapment, of being subject to inexplicable and unjustified threat, a sense of being unable to escape from perpetual suffering, endless terror, or unavoidable doom, of being a victim. It generates visions of imprisonment, torture, mutilation, inquisition, malevolent plotters, black magicians, demonic forces, the fall of angels, dehumanized and grotesque automata and robots, labyrinths, dangerous caves, swamps, darkness and ominous colors, bleak, arid landscapes, descent to the underworld, being sucked into an abyss, attacks from terrifying monsters, and so on. The corresponding theme of descent to the underworld -- of shifting from a sense of cosmic unity to the torments of hell -- reflect the onset of labor during birth.
Life experiences and feelings reminiscent of this stage are helplessness, loneliness, claustrophobia, alienation, rejection, abandonment, falls from grace, depression, paranoia, oppressive family atmosphere, sense of meaninglessness, futility, and despair, situations threatening survival and bodily integrity such as warfare, injury, accidents, incorporation, and near-drowning. The angst of existentialism (cf. Sartre’s No Exit) and the nightmarish, bizarre, and morbid features of the work of Zola, Doestoevsky, Poe, Hieronymous Bosch, Goya, Dali, and Petronius indicate the legacy of this stage of perinatal experience.7
The aridness of Luke’s Tatooine environment, the attack upon him by the Sandpeople who ride mammoth-like steeds, the threat of the Jawas to R2-D2, C-3PO losing an arm, Luke’s frustration at life on the farms (he ends one domestic scene in the farmhouse with the words, “I am going nowhere”) are Stage 2 elements in the earliest part of SW. Then, after the destruction of the farmstead and the murder of Luke’s uncle and aunt by imperial troops, Stage 2 imagery intensifies: There is the “descent” to the nightmarish, hostile underworld of the Mos Eisley cantina, populated by a wide range of grotesque creatures, one of whom has an arm cut off by Obi-Wan’s lightsaber.
But even before this are Stage 2 scenes on the imperial command ship: Vader tortures a rebel officer, interrogates, confines, and agrees to the torture of Leia, and generally radiates malevolence as he expresses confidence that fear will hold the empire together. Leia’s sense of despair at her imprisonment is conveyed by the hologram message, “Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi,” which R2-D2 plays for Luke and Obi-Wan.
The incorporative, engulfing aspect of Stage 2 imagery is illustrated first when the Death Star’s tractor beam sucks in the Millennium Falcon and then when Luke, Han, Leia, and Chewbacca, pursued through the labyrinth, dive down into the garbage pit and stand knee-deep in liquid and solid garbage, threatened with mastication and digestion. Luke is pulled under by a largely unseen, slimy monster that wraps around him and, when Luke momentarily surfaces, pulls him under again. This “Belly of the Whale” motif takes on an even more blatant uterine aspect when the walls close in and threaten to crush the quartet.
The themes of (actual or attempted) swallowing, incorporation, engulfment, mutilation, dismemberment -- the oppressive atmosphere redolent of what the fetus experiences during the contraction phase in a closed uterus -- is much more pervasive in The Empire Strikes Back (henceforth ESB, the second movie in the trilogy).8 Luke, while patrolling on the ice planet Hoth, is seized by an abominable snowman, is hung up in a cave for future consumption, cuts off the monster’s arm, and is put inside a dead wampa by Han, who cuts its belly open to provide shelter for Luke. Having escaped from Hoth, Han's spaceship, the Millennium Falcon, with Han, Leia, Chewbacca, and C-3PO aboard, flies into a cavity in the ground which coincides with the mouth of a monster, down whose gullet the craft flies before settling in its stomach. In typical perinatal style, the trapped characters manage to fly out through its mouth in the nick of time before teeth can enclose and trap them.
Luke meanwhile crashes on Dagobah and his craft sinks into an eerie , swampy, underworld place that gives Luke the creeps (“something out of a dream...I feel cold, like death”), where R2-D2 is swallowed by a monster lurking under the water and is then spat out. Reptilian creatures and an apparition of a subsequently decapitated Vader add to the horror. Onboard the imperial command ship, C-3PO is comprehensively fragmented and sent to a junk pile, an enduring fear for this droid. As if in recognition of the salience of the fragmentation theme, Vader, in announcing a reward for the capture of the Millennium Falcon and its inmates, declares that there is to be “no disintegrations.”
On Bespin, “the pattern of capture, rescue, and escape becomes relentless and oppressive, until finally rescue and escape become impossible.”9 Han is put into a torture chamber by Vader, screams are heard, and then he is lowered into a pit and prepared for a living death, frozen in carbonite and destined for Jabba the Hutt. The infernal environment for all this is suitably red, black, and sulfurous. Red, black, and sulfurous fumes are the backdrop for the duel between Vader and Luke in the bowels of Bespin, full of pits, tunnels, voids, and grills, where Luke has his right hand cut off and falls into an abyss and down a chute. To the extent that Leia is a mother figure, her separation from Luke for much of ESB amounts to an abandonment.
The opening scenes of The Return of the Jedi (henceforth ROJ, the final story in the trilogy) -- in the infernal, nightmarish underworld of Jabba, a den of black and red horror with a tooth-like entrance door -- are perhaps the clearest expression in the trilogy of visions of Tartarus. There are a collection of repulsive monsters, notably the wide-mouthed Jabba, who eats a small creature alive, and the large-toothed Rancor, who devours two associates of Jabba before having its voracious jaws pried apart and then being killed by Luke. Han still frozen in carbonite, a sinister-looking bounty hunter, a disintegrated droid and a tortured droid, and the threat of a similar fate for C-3PO are additional elements in the theme.
The incorporative theme as well is continued when Jabba calls the thawed-out Han "Bantha-fodder." The threats to bodily integrity and the terrors of incorporation are magnified by the fate that is promised our heroes once they are fed to the Sarlacc, a man-eating pit in the desert, where they will encounter “a new definition of pain and suffering” as they are digested over a thousand years. This toothed orifice in the desert is fed at least five of Jabba’s crew (on one occasion swallowed with an audible gulp) when a fight started by Luke breaks out. The incorporative grisliness of the vagina-dentata-like orifice is reinforced by a tentacle it sends forth to wrap around Lando before he is freed from it by Han.
In these ways, for sustained horror, the Jabba segment is perhaps unequaled in the trilogy, as it recaptures the most nightmarish elements of the second perinatal stage. Jabba -- a vile fiend surrounded by demonic creatures and without even the stature of a tyrant -- with gleeful, mocking sadism dispenses capricious, random suffering that seems to have no purpose10 apart from inculcating pervasive terror and reducing to dehumanised monsters anyone not yet at that level. Keeping with this element, elsewhere throughout the trilogy the Empire exerts its pervasive terrorizing power through robotic stormtroopers, who are the servant automata of a dehumanizing technology.
In another scene expressing Stage 2 imagery, Han, Luke, and Chewbacca are slung on a spit in preparation for roasting and consumption by the Ewoks. This occurs in another of those red and black, suggestive-of-the-infernal environments common in ESB and ROJ and indicative of the hellish second matrix. And as the story unfolds in ROJ, the Stage 2 theme of the fallen angel is kept before us. Nonetheless, the frequency and intensity of that stage’s horrid imagery declines for the remainder of ROJ as the narrative moves more into Stage 3 and 4 imagery, i.e., engagement/struggle and, eventually, triump. In these scenes the hellish red and black colors are offset with blue in creating the backdrop. These colors dominate when Vader and Luke meet the emperor on the Death Star and then do battle with each other. Significantly, indicating a movement out of Stage 2 helplessness, this time it is Vader’s hand that is cut off. As for the emperor, he is hurled down a deep chute of the reactor core and consumed by fire.11
Finally, Stage 3...At Least There's Hope!
Despite the abundance of Stage 2 plot developments, as described above -- and despite what one might think considering these seemingly impossible situations -- Stage 2 experience in the trilogy is not marked by the sense of futility that it usually engenders. That this is so may be due to the equally abundant Stage 3 imagery.
This imagery revolves around titanic battles, volcanic ecstasy, oscillation between intense pain and pleasure, massive explosions, launching missiles and spaceships, flash discharges and high-voltage currents, powerful currents streaming through the body, diabolic war machines, cataclysms, massacres, orgies, carnivals, sensual dancing, crusades, conquests, destruction of cities and civilizations. Postnatal life experiences that relive the third perinatal stage include struggles, fights, choking, suffocation, strangulation, adventurous activities such as participation in battles and revolutions, court power struggles, infliction of pain, dangerous driving and flying, betrayal and intergenerational conflict, amusement park rides, wild parties, seduction, rape, willingness to endure great hardships to secure victory, and enormous discharges of destructive impulses and energies.
Though gruesome like Stage 2, Stage 3 is the stage of purgatory rather than hell. Although some of the elements are not easily distinguishable from Stage 2 (death, or the threat of death, looms large in both), here there is engagement and fighting back, rather than helpless suffering from persecution. Suffering in Stage 3 has a clear and definite purpose. The sensuous, volcanic nature of the output of Rubens and Van Gogh, the intense upward striving of Gothic architecture and El Greco’s paintings, the exploits of Don Juan and the basic themes of Wagner operas are illustrative of how such imagery appears in creative work.
The most important themes of the trilogy fit fairly obviously into this stage. There is a heroic struggle of good versus galactic tyranny and evil taking place in space, on the ground, and within structures; rebel characters and pilots are involved in frequent chase and battle scenes; and characters are portrayed who have some emotional life. These characters stand starkly in contrast to the dehumanised, faceless, sterile, Fascist, regimented, droid-like, mechanical forces of the octopoid empire (Vader is described by Yoda as “more a machine now than a man”), who enforce martial law and maintain roadblocks at colonial outposts such as Mos Eisley and who devise two Death Stars.
To support the violent upheaval of Stage 3, there are numerous fiery explosions,12 including that of a whole planet, Alderaan, which Tarkin sadistically forces Leia to watch. Fiery explosions also take place in the battle for the rebels’ generator on Hoth near the beginning of ESB.13 Vader strangles several subordinates in the course of events and himself breathes in a labored, constricted way with the aid of a respirator. The Millennium Falcon can accelerate to light speed via its hyperdrive, and in ESB it and its pursuers have to negotiate a dangerous meteor field. The attacking missions that lead to the destruction of the Death Stars withstand ferocious pursuit and resistance from defending spacecraft and steer at high speed through a long and dangerous channel. The thrills and spills of the speeder-bikes through the forest of Endor are further obvious examples of this stage’s imagery.
The oscillation between pain and pleasure, also characteristic of Stage 3, is conveyed not only by the varying fortunes of the protagonists but also in the struggle within the Force between its light and dark sides. This is expressed, for example, by the temptations offered to Luke’s self-control, especially that of giving in to hate and being consumed by it when he is being zapped by the emperor’s bolts of electricity. If applied to others and not the self, the power to control leads to the dark side, as Yoda warned. Likewise, Luke struggles between two poles over whether he must kill or redeem his father (“there is still good in him”). A struggle goes on within Vader, too, notably in the final scene on the Death Star when he turns on the emperor and finally redeems himself.
Individual combats include Han and Greedo at Mos Eisley, Obi-Wan and Vader on the Death Star in SW, Luke and Vader in their spacecraft in the attack on the Death Star in SW, Luke and Vader in ESB and ROJ, Luke and the Rancor. Vader’s betrayal of Lando on Bespin, who is then forced to betray Han, and Tarkin’s betrayal of Leia when she supplies some information on the rebels and then has her home planet blown up, also fit this stage.
The dyadic interlock of the third perinatal stage, when mother and child cause so much pain to each other and are bound together in a situation both have to face, leads to situations in postnatal life where, figuratively and literally, blood spilt on both sides can mix and fuse, so that the partners of dyads are bound to each other in unsuspecting ways. They are motivated by the same forces. Examples of bound dyads are sadists and masochists, prisoners and guards, policemen and criminals, ultrarightists and ultraleftists, revolutionaries and tyrants.
The nature and danger (for Luke) of this dyad is brought out by the additional internecine fact that tyrant and rebel are father and son, by the way this is brought home to Luke by his seeing his own features appear in the mask of the decapitated Vader under the tree on Dagobah, and by the emperor’s recognition that the rebel could, if turned, become an effective co-tyrant, channeling his destructive impulses into oppression.
Grof has found that many subjects who could recover Stage 3 experience, especially the final phases of the birth journey, easily identified with famous tyrants such as Nero, Genghis Khan, Hitler, Stalin. This gave them an insight into the mentality of the tyrant and its kinship with that of a child struggling in the birth canal and responding with fury to the infliction of suffocation, pain, and anxiety, and how they might (strive to) become tyrannical if the appropriate level of the unconscious were sufficiently stimulated by the circumstances of their lives.14
Among the characteristics of tyrants uncovered by Grof's work were extreme loneliness and paranoia. The loneliness of Vader and the emperor is strongly implicit in their portrayal in the films. It is impossible to imagine either of them in a domestic or convivial situation, chatting and relaxing with relatives and friends. That Vader is the favorite character with many children may have something to do with their greater proximity to being in the birth canal.15 It may be a response to the invitation to be the rebel part of the revolutionary-tyrant dyad (preferring Vader to Luke is a rebellious perversity common in children), but it may also be an empathetic response to two other characteristics of dictators, a feeling of inferiority, and a hunger for recognition and respect.
Luke becomes more like Vader when he acquires a bionic hand. Unlike many revolutionaries, Luke manages to resist the sadomasochistic, other-destructive and simultaneously self-destructive position this would entail. Still, the issue and the temptation to betray all is clearly presented. On Vader's part, he actually switches to the role of rebel and betrayer to the emperor. In ESB he apparently determines to save Luke’s life and offers him the chance to rule the empire with him (“We will rule the galaxy together as father and son”) if he will join the dark side of the Force and help him overthrow the emperor, which Vader himself, in fact, does at the end of the trilogy.
Stage 4: Deliverance and Triumph
According to Grof, imagery associated with Stage 4 involves expansiveness, expansions of space, visions of gigantic marble halls, radiant light and beautiful colors, entry into heaven or the Elysian fields, the final overthrow of a tyrant, triumphal scenes and processions, victory over monsters, majestic mountains and starry skies. Relevant postnatal life experiences include fortuitous escape from or termination of dangerous situations, survival of an accident or natural disaster, the end of a long and exhausting war, and the overcoming of severe obstacles by active effort to achieve signal success. The mood of this stage is one of liberation, salvation, redemption, love, forgiveness, humility, a sense of having been unburdened and purged, exhilaration, and warmth and desire to serve humanity. The sense of cosmic unity here has much in common with Stage 1 but is experienced in the aftermath of a life-altering struggle and a sense of rebirth. Hercules completing his labors, St. George returning from slaying the dragon, Theseus the Minotaur, and Perseus the Gorgon, are illustrative.
In the Star Wars trilogy, the starlit panoramas of much of the action in space obviously fall into this category, as do the numerous escapes from tight corners by our heroes, though celebrations of escapes are mostly fairly muted. The cloud city of Bespin has some of the relevant characteristics -- graceful, lofty, light-filled chambers. The triumphal scene in the great hall, with its huge vertical beams of light, when Luke and Han are given medals by Leia at the end of SW, the street celebrations near the end of ROJ in the 1997 Director’s Cut version and the rejoicing in the Ewoks’ settlement clearly qualify.
The redemptive theme that runs through the second half of the trilogy (this includes Lando making up for his “betrayal”) and blends with resistance to the emperor and the dark side of the Force reaches its climax when Vader casts down the emperor and finally responds to the good that is in him. Luke has successfully emerged from the struggle to learn to use the Force constructively for a greater good, in contrast to Vader’s customary destructive use of it. The ultimate reconciliation of Luke and Vader is pivotal to the success of the whole rebellion.
As Han realizes he is free to develop his relationship with Leia, and the spirits of Obi-Wan, Yoda, and Vader stand side by side, exalted and smiling upon Luke and perhaps representing healing of cleavages in his psyche, the mood is indeed one of “liberation, salvation, redemption, love, forgiveness, humility.” The most appropriate word is, perhaps, deliverance. The qualities required for successful resistance to tyranny -- such as strength, courage, and commitment -- are the very qualities that can serve a tyrant well. And not the least of Luke’s triumphs is, for now at least, successful resistance to the temptation that many revolutionaries succumb to, becoming tyrants themselves.
The war and revolution themes of Stages 2 and 3, experienced from the perspectives of victim/vanquished or oppressor/victim, need a Stage 4 resolution that restrains the triumphal mood which can, unless great care is taken, slide back into Stage 3 oppression by the victors. The trilogy ends with no suggestion that this is about to occur.16 Luke had resisted the Satanic temptations of Vader and the emperor.
The Struggle to Be Reborn
In conclusion, Grof’s thesis that much human fantasy and behavior can be explained by perinatal imprinting is clinically evident and has been fruitfully employed by many in attempts to understand human behavior, notable among whom are astronomer Carl Sagan, philosopher of religion Huston Smith, and mythologist Joseph Campbell.17 “Current transpersonal research shows surprising similarities between birth, death, shamanic initiation, the mythological hero’s journey, certain aspects of schizophrenia, and psychedelic experiences.”18
While the physical struggle to be born is a symbiotic conflict between mother and child, the emotional and spiritual struggle to mature is often played out as a conflict between father and child that leads to a different kind of deliverance. Indeed, as in virtually all other stories in this genre, real mothers are wholly absent from the Star Wars story. When material from the perinatal level of the unconscious emerges into consciousness, the individual can begin "the hero's journey." And in the course of it, he or she becomes intensely preoccupied with death and a dramatic struggle to be born (reborn) and to free the self from whatever it is that confines it -- which at its base is the post-traumatic baggage we all carry from our childhoods and especially that first, biological, birth.
Some USA viewers of the Star Wars films have enjoyed a perceived analogy with America's War of Independence to explain the phenomenal grasp the Star Wars saga has upon the consciousness of so many. But in actuality the Star Wars trilogy owes much of its cross-cultural appeal to the way that its overall theme, its individual scenes, and the pace and manner of its projection recapitulates the experience of our births, in general, and in particular the way it validates the struggle we all experience in our lives as a result of that early imprint.
Notes and Works Cited:
1. Mary Henderson, Star Wars: The Magic of Myth (New York: Bantam, 1997), p. 53, speaking of the garbage masher in the belly of the Death Star in "Star Wars" (henceforth SW, and referring to the first part of the trilogy) that threatens to masticate and digest Luke, Han, Leia, and Chewbacca.
2. J. P. Telotte, “The Dark Side of the Force: Star Wars and the Science Fiction Tradition.” Extrapolation 24, pp. 216-226, Fall 1983, p. 226.
3. Frederick Leboyer, Birth without Violence: The Book That Revolutionized the Way We Bring Our Children into the World. (Glasgow: Fontana, 1977), p. 9.
4. Joseph Campbell's monomyth of the hero is presented in his classic work, The Hero With a Thousand Faces (1990, reprint, Princeton University Press). He describes a universally depicted mythic cycle which begins with the hero (representing the average person) leaving the sameness of everyday reality to be drawn into an adventurous encounter with dark forces (representing the average person's call to encounter her or his inner darkness on the path of self-realization), to do righteous and eventually victorious battle with these forces, in the process to become transformed, and then to return again to the everyday world, a renewed person with a "torch" to bring to the world.
5. Loyd DeMause, “The Fetal Origins of History.” Journal of Psychoanalytic Anthropology, 4, pp. 1-92, 1981, p. 8. Cf. Christina and Stanislav Grof, The Stormy Search for the Self (Los Angeles: Tarcher, 1990), p. 145: “Recent research has repeatedly confirmed and further developed the original ideas of Freud’s disciple Otto Rank about the permanent role that the birth trauma and even perinatal influences play in human life. These findings have inspired an entire new field: prenatal and perinatal psychology.” The likelihood of perinatal imprinting and the undoubted ability of some people to recall fetal experience even without the aid of special techniques is discussed by R. D. Laing, The Voice of Experience (London: Penguin, 1982). Laing refers to the work of Otto Rank, Arthur Janov, Francis Mott, M. Peerbolte, Frank Lake, Stanislav Grof, Donald Winnicott, and Frederick Leboyer.
6. Stanislav Grof, Realms of the Human Unconscious (New York: Viking, 1975); Stanislav Grof, “Perinatal Roots of Wars, Totalitarianism, and Revolutions: Observations from LSD Research,” Journal of Psychohistory 4(3) Winter 1997, pp. 269-308; Stanislav Grof, Beyond the Brain (New York: State University Press, 1985).
7. On Petronius, see Ron F. Newbold, “Feelings of Entrapment, Persecution, and Depression in the Satyricon: A Perinatal Explanation,” Classicum 16(1) April 1990, pp. 14-15. See too, idem, “Perinatal Imagery in Claudian,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 73(1) Spring 199, pp. 7-15.
8. For the darkness of this film, see especially A. Gordon, “The Empire Strikes Back: Monsters from the Id,” SFS 7 November 1980, pp. 313-318.
9. Mary Henderson, 1997, op. cit., p. 60.
10. Aside from punishing the disobedient dancing girl, Oola, and settling a score with Han.
11. It is of interest that fire and falling can be symbols of the birth process. See Grof, 1977, op. cit., p. 303.
12. “The Death Star goes up in an orgasmic explosion of fireworks.” A. Gordon, “Star Wars: A Myth for our Time,” Literature/Film Quarterly 6(4) Fall 1978, pp. 314-326, at p. 324.
13. The alternation between ice/cold and fire in this part of the film is typical of the sensory oscillation that can characterize Stage 3 experience.
14. The insight that tyrants could lead pitiable lives and that they were as much victims as aggressors has a long history. Plato, for one, made such observations. As Henderson (1997, op. cit., p. 156) points out, tyrants are often those who used strength and fury to master what they saw as evil but then are mastered by those qualities to become evil themselves.
15. For children’s identification with Vader, see L. Scicaj, “Bettelheim, Castaneda, and Zen: The Powers Behind the Force in Star Wars,” Extrapolation 22(3), 1981, pp. 213-230, at p. 215.
16. But David Ansen is right to ask, “What kind of government do the Rebels stand for anyway?” in “How the Force Conquers All,” Newsweek 101(23), June 6, 1983, pp. 44-45, at p. 45. And the Nazi-style triumphal gathering at the end of SW may be a flirting with the possibility of future tyranny.
17. See Henderson (1997, op. cit.) in particular on Campbell’s monomyth of the hero. For religion in the trilogy, see P. Vardy, “The Theology of Star Wars,” The Month 20(1), January 1987, pp. 14-18; R. Short, “Closer Still to Christ: The Star Wars Saga," or "The Gospel According to Saint Lucas,” The Gospel from Outer Space (London: Collins, 1983), pp. 45-96.
18. T. Roberts, “Brainstorm: A Psychological Odyssey,” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 26, 1986, pp. 126-136, with many references. The quotation comes from page 131.
Copyright © 1999 by Ron F. Newbold. This paper originally appeared on the Primal Spirit website.
