It isn’t often a book comes along that gives poetic voice to a seminal scientific theory and when such a meeting of the minds does occur, we should take note. In this case, Ian McEwan’s new novel Nutshell is an extraordinarily accurate depiction of the scientific theory of eminent psychoanalyst Bernard Bail, who has discovered, through sixty years of clinical practice, that human beings are imprinted in utero by their mother’s unconscious mind. Although he does not yet have the international recognition enjoyed by Mr. McEwan, Dr. Bail’s insights into life in the womb and its ensuing consequences predate this novel by at least a decade, most notably in his 2007 book, The Mother’s Signature, in over a hundred essays on his website bernardbailmd.com, and he will soon become known to a wider public in a documentary movie about his life and work to be released in 2017.
It’s been said that great minds think alike and that great artists see or intuit truths about the world long before others can. With that in mind, here is an excerpt from an acclaimed writer, Denis Johnson, winner of the National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize finalist. I believe it contains an uncanny reflection of Dr. Bail’s imprint theory that was beginning to be articulated by Bail at around the same time that Johnson created his artistic image.
If Oscar nominated movies are a glimpse into the Zeitgeist of the times, then this year’s crop of nominees can offer us some hope that people are finally ready to see beneath the surface, to turn a Spotlight on the lie at the heart of the system and to take a Big Short on the fraud and stupidity of conventional thinking.