Fernand Lamaze
Encyclopedia
Fernand Lamaze was a French
obstetrician
, most famous as the popularizer of psychoprophylaxis, a method of childbirth preparation and pain management that has come to bear his name (the Lamaze technique
).
Lamaze visited the Soviet Union in 1951. There he observed a birth using psychoprophylaxis, which had been developed primarily by Soviet psychotherapist I.Z. Velvovskii of Kharkov, Ukraine
.
Based on Ivan Pavlov
's theory of conditioned response, psychoprophylaxis strove to eliminate the pain of childbirth through education about the physiological process of labor and delivery, through the trained relaxation response to uterine contractions, and through patterned breathing intended to both increase oxygenation and interfere with the transmission of pain signals from the uterus
to the cerebral cortex
. Lamaze was so impressed by what he witnessed that after he returned to France, he devoted the rest of his life to promoting psychoprophylaxis.
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
obstetrician
Obstetrics
Obstetrics is the medical specialty dealing with the care of all women's reproductive tracts and their children during pregnancy , childbirth and the postnatal period...
, most famous as the popularizer of psychoprophylaxis, a method of childbirth preparation and pain management that has come to bear his name (the Lamaze technique
Lamaze technique
The Lamaze Technique, often referred to as Lamaze, is a prepared childbirth technique developed in the 1940s by French obstetrician Dr. Fernand Lamaze as an alternative to the use of medical intervention during childbirth...
).
Lamaze visited the Soviet Union in 1951. There he observed a birth using psychoprophylaxis, which had been developed primarily by Soviet psychotherapist I.Z. Velvovskii of Kharkov, Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...
.
Based on Ivan Pavlov
Ivan Pavlov
Ivan Petrovich Pavlov was a famous Russian physiologist. Although he made significant contributions to psychology, he was not in fact a psychologist himself but was a mathematician and actually had strong distaste for the field....
's theory of conditioned response, psychoprophylaxis strove to eliminate the pain of childbirth through education about the physiological process of labor and delivery, through the trained relaxation response to uterine contractions, and through patterned breathing intended to both increase oxygenation and interfere with the transmission of pain signals from the uterus
Uterus
The uterus or womb is a major female hormone-responsive reproductive sex organ of most mammals including humans. One end, the cervix, opens into the vagina, while the other is connected to one or both fallopian tubes, depending on the species...
to the cerebral cortex
Cerebral cortex
The cerebral cortex is a sheet of neural tissue that is outermost to the cerebrum of the mammalian brain. It plays a key role in memory, attention, perceptual awareness, thought, language, and consciousness. It is constituted of up to six horizontal layers, each of which has a different...
. Lamaze was so impressed by what he witnessed that after he returned to France, he devoted the rest of his life to promoting psychoprophylaxis.