Fear of Life. Dr. Alexander Lowen M.D.
the room and it was impossible.”
Ruth couldn't understand why she dreamed of a giant. I had to point out to her that perhaps he wasn't a giant; perhaps she saw him that way because she was only a small child. When I said that, she realized that the man in the dream was her father and that the woman was her mother. The dream dramatized her oedipal situation. But she also recollected that in the dream when she pressed close to the man, she could sense his sexual excitement by the tumescence of his penis.
Ruth then recalled another memory from her childhood. She remembered that her father frequently put his hand on his genitals when he saw her. At the same time he also pursed his lips as if to suggest a kiss. She sensed that she may have had the desire to suck his penis but was very ashamed of that feeling. This desire in the girl underlay the fantasy of a woman's tongue in her mouth.
What kind of man did Ruth marry? Was he like her father? In one important respect the two were similar. Both were sexually excited by young girls and put off by adult female sexuality. I can say this because I saw Ruth's husband in consultation. Because of her experience with her father, Ruth had suppressed much of her sexuality. She made her appeal to men as an innocent young girl, and she attracted a man who would respond to her on that level. Although married and the mother of children, the woman in her was unfulfilled. That was her fate until she came to therapy. To change that fate it was necessary to change the energy dynamics of her body, to make her pelvis come alive. I might add that in the process of doing, so her ulcer-type pains disappeared.
The tendency of people to repeat old, established patterns is the main problem in therapy. Here is a simple example. A person complains of a feeling of being “out of it,” of holding back, of an inability to move forward. When I look at how this person stands, I see that his knees are locked, the weight of his body is on his heels, and he is leaning backward. Thus, he is doing (unconsciously) just what he is complaining about. This bodily attitude can be reversed. I ask the patient to bend his knees slightly to unlock them and to shift his weight forward to the balls of his feet. He is also instructed to breathe and keep loose. When he does this, he experiences himself differently. He feels himself in the world and ready to act or reach out. His whole body feels more alive. He can sense that the difference involved a change from a passive way of standing and holding himself to a more aggressive one. It is what he wanted and it feels good, but it is uncomfortable. He feels under stress and is afraid that he will fall forward. He can hold himself in the new position by concentrating on it, but as soon as his mind focuses on another subject, he will revert to his old way, which feels natural and comfortable to him.
Why is change for the better so difficult and frightening? We know that in every process of change there is an element of insecurity. The move from a known to an unknown position entails a period of instability. The child learning to stand up and walk is insecure but not frightened. He is not afraid to fall. We cling to the old because we believe it to be safer. We believe the new is dangerous. In the case of neurotic patients, that belief has a certain validity. If one was punished as a child for being aggressive, then it seems safer to take a passive position in life. One can't change one's position or way of standing until the early experience is relived and the feelings associated with it expressed. This is the psychological work of therapy.
The problem of change has another dimension, however. That dimension can be described as a tolerance for excitation. Too little excitation is boredom, depression, or death (“bored to death”). Too much excitation overwhelms the organism, flooding its ego boundaries and wiping out the sense of self. The feeling is one of estrangement and is akin to insanity. Character can be seen as the way we handle excitement, ensuring that it is neither too little nor too much.
As children we learned very early that being quiet and good earned us some love. If we were too active and too noisy, we were disapproved of or punished. Our parents couldn't stand our liveliness. It was too much for them. It drove them crazy. We had to suppress it to survive. Now, our potential for aliveness is too much for our structures. We can't stand it. When we are overexcited we become jittery, nervous and frightened. The therapeutic task here is to expand slowly the person's capacity to tolerate excitation or aliveness.
Summarizing, we can say that once a pattern of behavior is structured in the body it becomes self-perpetuating. It determines how we act, and we must act according to character. Necessarily, then, every effort we make to overcome our character is part of our character and only result's in reinforcing its structure. I see this all the time in my office. The compulsive individual compulsively tries to effect a change but only ends by becoming more compulsive. The masochistic individual submits to therapy as he does in all other life situations, and so therapy changes nothing. Even his gestures of rebellion lead to his being more submissive. This has to be understood and accepted before change is possible.
The Fate of Love
We saw in the previous section that much of our behavior is determined by our character structure. We think we choose freely, but it can often be shown that there is a seeming fate at work in our choices. Especially in such important matters as love or marriage, fate seems to play a very large role. People are drawn to each other by inscrutable forces that have some relation to their personalities and character. My wife and I come from different backgrounds and different parts of the country. That we met may be pure chance, but that we married and have stayed married for more than thirty-five years is not due to chance. Our personalities harmonize and our character structures dovetail. Though we vibrate on the same wavelength, we are opposites in many ways. However, we didn't know this when we got married. We acted on our feelings, which is how fate operates. Looking back, we can say that it was fate that drew us together and kept us together. But our marriage could easily have failed. We came close to breaking up many times. Opposite characters clash as often as they complement each other. We had to face our neurotic characters so that we could see and understand how we hurt each other despite our conscious desire not to do so. If one is blind as Oedipus was, one cannot avoid the tragedy of losing one's love.
Like every modern man, I made every effort to avoid marrying my mother. That was one of the forces that drew me to a woman who came from a different “place.” And my wife is in very many respects different from my mother. As a child I had resolved my oedipal conflict in such a way that I could not have married any woman who was like my mother. Consciously I had to see my wife as “not my mother” while unconsciously I treated her as if she was my mother and almost destroyed my marriage. Only by recognizing this fact did it become possible for me to respond differently to her.
No more than others could I avoid the fate inherent in the oedipal situation. I have come to recognize that my wife and my mother have certain qualities in common. Aside from their being women, both admire men who are competent, capable, and successful, and both have a strong sense of pride. I am aware that this sense of pride in a woman exercises a strong attraction upon me. Thus, it was the qualities that my wife shares with my mother as well as those that are different that drew me to her so strongly. And, therefore, on one level I did marry my mother.
If, as I believe, we are all destined to marry our mothers, why should this be a prophecy of doom? People often say that getting married is a fatal step, but don't they really mean that it is a fateful one? Which word one uses could depend on the kind of mother one had. If she was a source of joy, pleasure, and satisfaction, one could ask no more than to have a wife who would be like her in every way. If the experience with one's mother was painful and frustrating, one would want to marry a woman who is her opposite. Actually, most mothers are not all good or all bad. Generally there is both pain and pleasure in the relationship, although one or the other may predominate. However, an infant cannot accept that the person who gives him pleasure is also the one who causes him pain. We know that the infant splits the image of his mother into two figures, the “good” mother and the “bad” mother. Although these images become fused later, the initial split persists in the person's unconscious mind.
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