News: Bits & Bytes

The tradition of the Verny Award began as a surprise announcement at the Atlanta congress in 1991 when Thomas Verny retired from the presidency of the Association after eight years of service. Thomas was the visionary founder and first president of the Association. At that time, the Board revealed it had secretly established the "Thomas R. Verny Prize" to be given every two years in Dr. Verny's honor to someone making extraordinary contributions to prenatal and perinatal psychology.

In making the announcement, David Chamberlain presented Thomas with the first "Oscar," a dark stone statuette of Imhotep, chosen to symbolize virtuosity in leadership and public service. The real Imhotep was an extraordinary Egyptian physician, writer, scholar, and advisor to Pharaohs about 500 B.C. His influence was so great that succeeding generations of Egyptians were not sure if he had been human or divine!
The gold-framed citation read,

"The Board of Directors presents the first Association "Oscar" to Thomas R. Verny, M.D., D.Psych., physician, psychologist, scholar, valued advisor, communicator to the multitudes, and accoucheur to pre- and perinatal psychology. We honor you today, July 19, 1991 at the 5th Congress in Atlanta, Georgia."

Thomas organized the 1st International Congress of Pre- and Perinatal Psychology in Toronto in 1983 and in 1986 became founder and first editor of the Journal of the Association. Beyond the bounds of the organization, his ambitious speaking schedule abroad and his classic work, The Secret Life of the Unborn Child (1981) drew world attention (ultimately in over 25 languages) to the vital but overlooked field of prenatal psychology. In the Verny tradition of "Outstanding Contributions" we have been pleased to recognize the distinguished work of Ashley Montagu (1993), Beatriz Manrique (1995), Michel Odent (1997), David Chamberlain (1999), Ludwig Janus (2001), Laura Huxley (2003), Tiffany Field (2005), and Peter Hepper (2007).

Here are brief comments about each recipient, with the most recent honoree on top.

Professor of Psychology and noted fetal researcher, Peter Hepper, Ph.D. of Queens University in Belfast, Northern Ireland was the 2007 nominee for the Thomas R. Verny Award for Outstanding Contributions to Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Health. He received the award from President Barbara Findeisen on the opening night of the 2007 Congress in Los Angeles and addressed the audience on “The Behavior of the Fetus.”

In 1993, The Wellcome Trust awarded Dr. Hepper substantial funds to establish and direct a Fetal Behavior Research Center at Royal Maternity Hospital in Belfast. Before this date, he had already captured headlines for ground breaking experiments on fetal learning (prenates recognizing the theme music on the British TV series, The Neighbors), discovering first response to sound at 16 weeks gestational age, and his studies of fetal and newborn responses to mother’s voice. From 1993 to the present, his experiments have continued to illuminate aspects of fetal learning and memory, and to document fetal vulnerability to maternal smoking (even to sham-smoking where the cigarette is not even lit but the fetus still reacts!)

Experimenting with helping pregnant women cease smoking, Hepper showed them directly on ultrasound the behavior of their fetus during smoking and following smoking. These women were five times more likely to cease smoking for the rest of their pregnancy than women who were not given the chance to observe the reactions of their babies. More recently, he has studied fetal reactions to pregnant mothers drinking various amounts of alcohol per week (or none) and discovered an ongoing pattern of abnormal spasms signaling brain damage associated with any amount of continued exposure to alcohol. In 2005 ultrasound pictures of these spasms sped around the world via television and the Internet following a presentation to the Royal Medical Society.

2005 Tiffany Field, Ph.D

The 2005 nominee for the Thomas R. Verny Award for Outstanding Contributions to Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Health was developmental psychologist Tiffany M. Field, Ph.D., Professor of Pediatrics and Psychology at the University of Miami School of Medicine. (Tiffany was scheduled to address the Congress but a family emergency prevented her from receiving the award in San Diego.)

Since her dissertation research in developmental psychology in 1977, Tiffany Field has been at the forefront of intimate and innovative exploration of earliest development. Never in doubt about the sentience of premies and term newborns, and moved by her personal experiences in childbirth, she has constantly worked to extend scientific knowledge of infant capacities, and to reduce the stress of babies undergoing neonatal intensive care. She has revealed the significance of early maternal-infant face-to-face communications as the foundation for social relationships, and probed multiple facets of the distinctive interactions of infants with depressed mothers.

Tiffany has spent almost her entire career at Mailman Center for Child Development at the University of Miami, in close association with the Medical School and Hospital where over a thousand babies a year are served by the NICU and are seen in follow-up clinics for several years. In this setting, while preparing a new generation of medical and psychology interns to collaborate in baby care, she also rapidly became a prolific and preeminent infant researcher.

Her dramatic finding that massage strokes could speed the growth and wellbeing of premature babies made headlines and eventually led, in 1992, to the formation of the Touch Research Institute--all just down the hall from the NICU--and under her personal direction. TRI, with branches in Paris and the Philippines, is the world’s first scientific institute devoted to the study of touch. Already, in over 100 published experiments, Tiffany Field and colleagues are creating a new encyclopedia of knowledge about the power of human touch.

The citation prepared for Tiffany Field read:

TO
Passionate Developmental Psychologist
and Prolific Researcher,
TIFFANY M. FIELD, PH.D,
We present The Thomas R. Verny Award
For Outstanding Contributions to
Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health.
For three decades
You have persistently illuminated the true capacities
of the smallest newborns to sense, communicate, & learn.
you have exposed the routine stresses of
Neonatal Intensive Care
and revealed safe ways to reduce stress by human touch.
leading your team of colleagues at the
touch research institutes
in miami, Paris, and the phillipines
you are helping to humanize and personalize
the care of infants in hospitals today.
The Assoc. for Pre- & Perinatal Psychology and Health
honors you at its 12^th International Congress
in San Diego, California, November 16, 2005

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2003 Laura Huxley

The 6th recipient of the Verny Prize is Laura Archera Huxley. Born in Turin, Italy, Laura quickly grew into a virtuoso violinist who made her debut as a teenager in Carnegie Hall. Later her interests and skills broadened to include counseling, prenatal psychology and writing. Among her books are: This Timeless Life (describing her life with husband, Aldous Huxley), You Are Not the Target, Between Heaven and Earth, One-a-Day Reason to be Happy, and The Child of Your Dreams (co-authored with Piero Ferrucci).

Laura has received widespread recognition for her humanistic achievements. Some of these include an Honorary doctor of Human Services from Sierra University, Honoree of the United Nations, and Honoree of the World Health Foundation for Development and Peace, from which she received the Peace Prize in 1990. Laura developed deep concerns about children and their earliest relationship experiences and realized that “health and disease begin in the womb; love and hatred begin in the womb, and war and peace begin in the womb.” She saw that sensitive parenting held the key to health and happiness.

In 1977 she established the non-profit foundation “Children: Our Ultimate Investment,” held two significant conferences, and developed some imaginative practical projects, including “Teens & Toddlers.” Originally called “Prelude to Conception” Laura brought together 9-15 year old boys and girls and matched them up with toddlers in nursery schools. Suddenly the youth were having a vivid initiation into parenting and started to rethink the whole notion of sexuality and pregnancy. The initial pilot program blossomed into an experiential curriculum taught in High Schools first in Grass Valley, then South Los Angeles, and Santa Barbara. It spread to Vermont. Now “Teens & Toddlers” has crossed the Atlantic to Greenwich, Gloucester, and Southwark in England—drastically lowering the teenage pregnancy rate everywhere it goes.

The citation presented to Mrs. Huxley read:

"To Laura Archera Huxley, Counselor, Author, and Educator
You are the 6th recipient of the Thomas R. Verny Award
for outstanding contributions to Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health.
Your highest ideals for conscious parenting have been realized
in the ingenious course "Teens and Toddlers."
Because of you, vulnerable teens are entering nurseries
to interact with vulnerable toddlers
transforming each other's minds and hearts.
For making this possible in secondary schools on two continents,
the Association for Pre- & Perinatal Psychology and Health
honors you at its11th International Congress
December 4, 2003, San Francisco, California"
_______________________________________________________________________________

2001 Ludwig Janus, M.D.

In 2001 the Directors of APPPAH nominated Ludwig Janus, M.D. of Heidelberg, Germany to receive the Thomas R. Verny Award for Outstanding Contributions to Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Health. Dr. Janus is a gifted author, teacher, scholar, diplomat, and distinguished President of the International Society of Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Medicine since 1995.

In this position Ludwig has been a tireless organizer of symposia, workshops, annual conferences, and world congresses in Europe, Israel, England, and Australia (For latest details, see their website.) His scholarly productivity has been extraordinary including publication of 110 scientific articles, six books, several edited collections, and loyal service as Co-Editor of the Journal of the ISPPM. In academic life, he also serves as Lecturer and Instructor in Psychoanalysis at the Institutes of Psychoanalytic Training in Heidelberg, Saarbrucken, and Frankfurt.

Undergirding these luminous public roles has no doubt been his private psychoanalytic practice in Heidelberg which began in 1975, his marriage to Dr. Brigitte Janus-Stanek (herself a psychoanalyst), and their grande adventure raising six of the world's best-adjusted children.

Psychologist David B. Chamberlain strongly supported the First International Congress on Pre- and Perinatal Psychology held in Toronto in 1983 and was appointed vice-president of the Association and named chairperson of the 2nd International Congress held in San Diego, CA (1985). Since his presentation, "Consciousness at Birth: A Review of the Empirical Evidence," to the first congress, David has continued to review the experimental literature, building a strong empirical base for pre- and perinatal psychology and health. He is internationally recognized for over forty publications to date about prenates and neonates, and has carried his message to Austria, Poland, Germany, Spain, France, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, Brazil, Italy, England, Ireland, Canada, and the United States. Much of his knowledge of newborns is found in Babies Remember Birth (1988), now in a 3rd and expanded edition with the title, The Mind of Your Newborn Baby (1998). This work is currently available in eight languages.

Earning a doctor's degree from Boston University in 1958, David has worked principally as a psychotherapist and educator. In 1970 he was licensed to practice psychology in California. Five years later, his way of approaching therapy was profoundly influenced by training in clinical hypnosis which opened the door to unexpected memories of birth and life in the womb. His original research, "Reliability of Birth Memories: Evidence from Ten Mother and Child Pairs in Hypnosis" (1980/1986) demonstrated that the children were having reliable memories of their own births, not fantasies, as previously believed.

From 1991 to 1999 David was a tireless and productive President of APPPAH, widely appreciated for his friendliness and resourcefulness. He carried extra responsibilities as Acting Editor of The APPPAH Newsletter (1995-1999), produced and edited annually One Hundred Books in Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health, (1993-1999), and served as Book Review Coordinator from 1997-1999. In November 1996, David founded and continues to edit birthpsychology.com, APPPAH's gateway on the world wide web. The website currently attracts about 1,000 persons per day from over 50 countries, making it a large voice for prenatal and perinatal psychology and health.

The third recipient of the Thomas R. Verny Award for Outstanding Contributions to Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Health is Michel Odent, M.D. of London, England.

Michel Odent's fame developed as a consequence of his innovations at the maternity unit of a small government hospital in Pithiviers, a town in northern France about one hundred miles from Paris. Although he went there in 1962 as a surgeon trained in a new technique of Cesarean delivery, his perceptive observations of women giving birth with the help of midwives, led him to a new understanding of the psychology of birth, especially the dynamic interaction of mind, emotion, and body affecting mother and baby. He noticed that when women were provided with privacy, laboring women went into a natural trance and would give birth spontaneously, provided they were not distracted by well-meaning instructions and interventions from those attending them. He realized that in trying to control birth, professionals were making normal birth impossible.

At Pithiviers, the birthing area was slowly changed to be more functional, with beds built as low platforms on the floor making it easy to move about and shift postures at will. Water pools, unknown in hospitals at the time, were installed as an option for labor or birth. Birth was never induced; there were no drugs, painkillers, or forceps, and few Cesareans were necessary. Mothers and infants remained together for hours after birth. Although there was no screening of patients for risk, and very low-key preparation for birth (mostly women gathering and singing together), the unit's safety statistics were among the best in the world. His book, Birth Reborn (NY:Pantheon, 1984) with a foreword by Doris Haire and an introduction by Shiela Kitzinger described the experience of birth at Pithiviers and brought the world to his door.

After two decades there, he was commissioned by the World Health Organization to study planned home birth in industrialized countries. To Michel, home birth was needed to evaluate the hospital experience of birth. His survey drew attention back to family and home as the normal and ideal place for persons to be born and to die.

In 1990, he founded and directed the Primal Health Research Centre in London and became a homebirth midwife. Much in demand, he became an itinerant scholar-teacher to groups around the world. Dr. Odent has published 30 professional papers and 9 books in 19 languages. He edits the newsletter Primal Health Research which focuses on the long-term health consequences of conditions in utero, at birth, and in early infancy. (North American subscribers can contact Birthworks, 42 Tallowood Drive, Medford, NJ 08055.) Visit his Internet address at: http://www.birthworks.org/primalhealth. The award included this tribute:

TO MICHEL ODENT, M.D.
Visionary Accoucheur and Primal Health Pioneer
We present the Thomas R. Verny Award
for Outstanding Contributions to Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Health.
Your understanding of the foundations of health
and the psychology of spontaneous birth are slowly making their way around the world
holding promise for better birth and better health for babies, mothers, and fathers everywhere.
APPPAH honors you today at its 8th International Congress
December 5, 1997 in San Francisco, California.

The winner of the 1995 Thomas R. Verny Award for Outstanding Contributions to Pre- and Perinatal Psychology is an extraordinary mother of four children, grandmother of six, professor, author, psychotherapist, research psychologist, and Director of the world's most ambitious experiment in prenatal stimulation. She is President of CEDIHAC, the Spanish initials which can be translated The Research Center of Human Integral Development through the Community, in Caracas, Venezuela.

Dr. Manrique studied at the Central University of Venezuela and at Yale University in the United States. She teaches at her alma mater and at Catholic University and Metropolitan University in Caracas. For five years she directed "Project Family," a key instrument of the Ministry for Intelligence Development, a unique effort of the government of Venezuela. With inspiration from California obstetrician Rene Van de Carr--the Grandfather of prenatal stimulation--she went on to design a comprehensive program of enrichment for pregnant mothers and fathers involving 600 families in the slums of Caracas. The first news of this large undertaking was published in the Pre- & Perinatal Psychology Journal in the Winter issue 1989.

In her research design, Dr. Manrique arranged for thorough testing of babies at important milestones of development for six years following the experimental stimulation. Subjects were carefully arranged into experimental and control groups so that tests would reveal the practicality and usefulness of the program. Created to break the cycle of poverty and misery for children and families, the program begins when the prenate is about 20 weeks gestational age. Beatriz created the educational materials for the parents and trained the staff. Mothers met in small classes for two hours a week for three months to learn to interact with their babies in the womb through singing, talking, and other stimulations. They were guided to improve their nutrition and prepare confidently for childbirth.

Systematic testing and comparisons show that the program has been a resounding success. Testing revealed that the stimulated babies have been consistently superior in visual, auditory, language, memory, and motor development compared to those who did not have the program of prenatal enrichment. At age three, to give just one example, the stimulated babies had an advantage of 14 IQ points, as measured by the Stanford-Binet scales, over those who had missed the program. In addition, mothers gained in confidence, were more active at birth, more successful in breastfeeding, showed more intense bonding, and had greater family cohesion (husbands remaining in the household after birth.)

By intensive and comprehensive effort in her work with 684 families, measuring babies for six years, Dr. Manrique has proven the critical importance and unquestionable benefits of prenatal stimulation activities. Her success in Caracass has laid a strong foundation for programs of this kind which the government will sponsor throughout Venezuela, and which can also spread to other countries of the world.

The Citation, presented with the award check, read as follows:

"To Beatriz Guzman de Manrique, Ph.D.,
psychologist extraordinary,
you are the 1995 recipient of
The Thomas R. Verny Prize
for Outstanding Contributions to Pre- and Perinatal Psychology and Health.
With heartfelt devotion, unswerving purpose, and consummate professionalism
you have proved to the families of the world
the benefits of prenatal bonding."