Athanasios Kafkalides

Dr. Athanassios Kafkalides was a Greek neuropsychiatrist. He was born in 1919 and he died in 1989 while in Athens. He graduated in medicine from the University of Athens and took post-graduate courses in neurology, experimental neurophysiology, neurosurgery and psychiatry at the Prince of Wales General Hospital, the Institute of Neurology in London, the Serafimer Lazarettet and the Karolinska Institut in Stockolm, and the Aeginetion Hospital in Athens.

From 1960 to 1987 he devoted a great deal of time to clinical research into the field of psychedelic psychotherapy, using drugs such as LSD, psilocybin and ketamine). At the IV World Congress of Psychiatry in Madrid, in 1966, he delivered a paper on the subject of intrauterine life, pioneering the field of pre- and perinatal psychology. He delivered further papers on intrauterine experiences and their repercussions at the VI International Congress of Psychotherapy (Wiesbaden, 1967), the Panhellenic Congress of Psychiatry in Salonica (1972), Athens (in 1975), and at the Congress of Preventive Psychiatry (Athens, 1979).

He was invited to Cyprus by the Pancypriot Society of Mental Health to give a series of lectures on experiences during intrauterine life and their effects on everyday life [1980]. In 1983-1984 he was invited to Australia, where he gave a series of lectures on his clinical research with ketamine. He has published several papers on LSD and its psychotherapeutic application in "Annales Medico-psychologiques de Paris" (1963), in "Exerpta Medica" (1968), and in Proceedings of the IV World Congress of Psychiatry, Marid (1966).

His two major works, "The Knowledge of the Womb", and "The Power of the Womb", were first published in Greece in 1980 and 1987. Two years after his death, the I Congress on Autopsychognosia was held in memory of his psychotherapeutic, psychiatric and philosophical work.

"The Knowledge of the Womb" was written after many years of clinical research carried out by Dr K into the unconscious and the causes of mental disturbance. It is based on the experiences and conclusions of 16 individuals who relived the conditions of their intrauterine life and expulsion-birth during sessions with psychedelic drugs. The 16 realized that the quality of their intrauterine life and the conditions of expulsion-birth had enormous repercussions on their everyday life after expulsion-birth. The method of achieving this knowledge is called "autopsychognosia". Autopsychognosia is a neuronal process which gives rise to emotional-intellectual realizations about the content of the unconscious and the motives of behaviour.