receptivity

Pre-Oedipal regression is most commonly associated with pathology, but this tends to overlook the fact that the pre-Oedipal stage of life is when we are most receptive to new information from our environment. At this early developmental stage, we are not yet prone filtering the information we receive, by means of the common device of repression, but instead experience, without much mediation, every single change in our environment. Furthermore, Nietzsche saw that there was a reality principle, as it were, operating in the less filtered mode of perception that pertains to this primitive "self" – such that it has the executive capacity even to veto the higher operations of ego if they overall do not meet with its standards concerning honesty and vitality. Jung, in a similar vein, saw the valuable role of this primitive self as working towards constructing our inward sense of psychological wholeness. This pre-Oedipal-self latches on to "archetypes" – which are ideas that govern development along certain very specific lines of the imagination. It does so in the same way as a child latches onto a nurturing mother, in order to facilitate its development and to use her as a bridge towards a greater degree of psychological integration with the world. Therefore, regression to the pre-Oedipal level, if done correctly – which is to say, shamanistically -- can have the advantage of making one more receptive to the world as it happens to be, and more open towards creative paths of self-development.