The Mother's Signature

In The Mother’s Signature, Dr. Bernard W. Bail, M.D. describes with amazing clarity and insight his discovery, gleaned through sixty years as a psychoanalyst, of how our unconscious through our dreams reveals the process by which we become who we are. Using his groundbreaking psychoanalytic method as a time machine allows Dr. Bail to travel to the very beginning of mental and physical life. The dreams of his patients have led him to explore the mother’s unconscious impact upon her embryo, fetus, and infant. What Dr. Bail has discovered is that the mother’s unintended projections of her unconscious feelings into her infant’s nascent being become the seeds that determine the destiny of the child from birth until death. “Our unconscious is our universe, and we have to accord it a vastness we may not always be able to comprehend as perhaps we cannot always comprehend the vastness of our physical universe.” - Bernard W. Bail, M.D.

In The Mother’s Signature, Dr. Bernard W. Bail, M.D. describes with amazing clarity and insight his discovery, gleaned through sixty years as a psychoanalyst, of how our unconscious through our dreams reveals the process by which we become who we are. Using his groundbreaking psychoanalytic method as a time machine allows Dr. Bail to travel to the very beginning of mental and physical life. The dreams of his patients have led him to explore the mother’s unconscious impact upon her embryo, fetus, and infant. What Dr. Bail has discovered is that the mother’s unintended projections of her unconscious feelings into her infant’s nascent being become the seeds that determine the destiny of the child from birth until death. All things have a beginning, and the beginning of the mind is found in its formation within the mother. How could a mind not be influenced and formed by the force that creates and nurtures it? Nature by definition passes on the patterns of the mother into the child from the very moment of conception. This very core process of nature would affect the mind as much as it affects the body. Dr. Bail, a psychoanalyst and philosopher, offers a theory of mind that offers us the possibility of living a rich and meaningful life. He has found that the development of higher consciousness takes place in the unconscious, and that the route to the soul emerges through the analysis of dreams. This integration of body, mind, and spirit brings us a profound understanding of the human endeavor and a vision of a better life for the individual and a better world for humankind. The seeds of all mental, emotional and physical illness in our corporeal existence begin in the womb and the mother's unconscious imprint distorts our lives before we have even begun to live them. “Our unconscious is our universe, and we have to accord it a vastness we may not always be able to comprehend as perhaps we cannot always comprehend the vastness of our physical universe.” - Bernard W. Bail, M.D.

Dr. Bernard W. Bail, M.D. is a physician, a psychoanalyst and a training analyst who lives and practices in Beverly Hills, California. He has worked with both patients and analysts for over fifty years. Dr. Bail is a member of the International Psychoanalytical Association and the American Psychoanalytic Association where he chairs the ongoing discussion group “Infant Mental Life and the Dream in Psychoanalysis.” Through his intensive work in the unconscious via the dream, Dr. Bail developed a new paradigm for psychoanalysis centered at the beginning of human life. Dr. Bail has led a courageous and fascinating life that has resulted in significant service to humanity. Beginning in the 1940’s with valorous and life-changing duty as a lead radar navigator bombardier in Europe, he was captured and interned in a German prisoner of war camp hospital. He was profoundly changed by this experience, as documented in his moving memoir “Irmgards Flute”, and inspired to become a doctor, in particular a psychiatrist, and eventually a psychoanalyst, dedicated to understanding and thereby healing, the suffering and violence he had witnessed and been subject to during World War II. His pursuit of the deeper truths hidden in the heart of humankind led him eventually to Beverly Hills, California where he has practiced the art of psychoanalysis for the past 60 years. A lifetime of listening to the dreams of his patients with an open mind has allowed him to glimpse the origins of human suffering and to serve as a resource for illuminating the wisdom and truth of the unconscious as expressed through our dreams. In the wake of his discoveries and new ideas he has made the art of psychoanalysis into a science which he has documented in his groundbreaking book, “A Mother’s Signature”(The life and times of the fetus in the womb) For his military service during World War II, Dr. Bail received the Distinguished Service Cross, three Distinguished Flying Crosses, five Air Medals, and five Battle Stars in the European Theater of Operations, a Purple Heart, a Prisoner of War Medal, and the 44th Bomb Group Presidential Citation. In addition, the French government awarded Dr. Bail the French Legion of Honor, the highest military honor bestowed by France.