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Fate and Character

The Operation of Fate

I have long been familiar with the Oedipus story, but recently I returned to it with renewed interest because of the role that fate plays in the myth. Consider the fact that both Laius, the father, and Oedipus, the son, consulted the oracle on separate occasions and were foretold the same fate, and that both took steps to avoid that fate. Laius staked his infant son in the field to die; Oedipus left Corinth to avoid killing his father. Yet despite these efforts to avoid their fate, the prediction of the oracle came true. The question that came to my mind was: Did it happen just because they tried to avoid their fate? This question struck me with some force, since I had been aware for some time that one aspect of the neurotic character is the neurotic's inability to accept himself. I realized that the neurotic individual struggles to avoid a feared fate, but by that very effort he ensures the fate he is attempting to escape.

Suppose, for example, that Laius had accepted his fate as prophesied by the oracle. Would the story be different? (Such an acceptance could be part of a religious attitude. If it is the will of the gods, so be it.) If Laius had raised Oedipus as his son, at least one incident in the story could not have occurred. Laius would not have been a stranger to his son and so could not have been killed in a chance encounter on the highway. Had Oedipus accepted his fate and remained in Corinth in obedience to the will of the gods, he could not have married his mother. The “ifs” can change a story, but it is because events happened just as they did that we have a meaningful story of human experience.

Freud had a similar feeling about the Oedipus story as dramatized by Sophocles in his play Oedipus Rex. He says, “The Oedipus Rex is a tragedy of fate. Its tragic effect depends on the conflict between the all powerful will of the gods and the vain efforts of human beings threatened with disaster. Resignation to the divine will, and the perception of one's own impotence, is the lesson which the deeply moved spectator, is supposed to learn from the play.”¹ Yet Freud himself was not prepared to accept the inevitability of fate. He believed that “although the oracle placed the same curse on us,” we could avoid the fate of Oedipus by repressing the feelings and memories associated with our infantile incest wishes. But, as I shall show, repression binds the individual to the traumatic situation and programs him to repeat it in later life.

The idea that the attempt to escape fate only serves to make that fate more certain is illustrated by John O'Hara in the introduction to his story “Appointment in Samarra.” A servant, sent by his master to buy some provisions in the marketplace at Baghdad, returned in a state of fright. He had been jostled by someone in the crowd, and when he turned, he saw it was Death who appeared to be threatening him. The servant begged his master for a horse so he could flee to Samarra to avoid his fate. The master gave him the horse and the servant took off in all haste. Then the master went to the marketplace, where he saw Death. He approached and asked why he had threatened his servant. I didn't threaten him, said Death. My arm went up in surprise to see him here in Baghdad because I have an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.

We often say that fate overtakes a person or that a person's fate catches up with him. I have said that such actions ensure one's fate. But ensure may be too strong a word. Invite seems more appropriate. For example, if a person walks about with a chip on his shoulder, someone is sure to try to knock it off. Certain attitudes naturally invite certain responses from others. Here is a simple clinical example. I had a woman patient who complained that she was never able to “get a man.” Her relationships with men all proved to be temporary. One day in the course of a session, she remarked, “My mother constantly told me, ‘No man would ever want you.’” It was as if her mother had laid a curse upon her that determined her fate, for she had reached middle age without having found a man who would make a commitment to her. But my patient played an active, if unconscious, role in creating her fate. Believing what her mother said, she clutched and clung to any man who showed an interest in her. She didn't do this in an obvious way, but by being very attentive and helpful to the man. The result, however, was always the same, for she could not hide her desperation. The man would become wary of being trapped and back away. Thus, it turned out that her mother's prophecy seemed to come true.

There is another way of looking at the operation of fate. The defenses we erect to protect us create the very condition we are trying to avoid. Thus, when someone builds a castle to protect his liberty, he ends up as a prisoner in his own castle because he dares not leave it. Similarly, one cannot assure peace by amassing arms, because armies by their very nature lead to war. This concept is particularly evident in the psychological defenses people develop. For example, the person who out of fear of rejection defends himself by not opening up or reaching out to people isolates himself and ensures by this maneuver that he will always feel rejected. No person is free who is tied to a defensive position. This is true of the neurotic character who erects psychological walls and armors himself muscularly as a protection against possible hurt, only to find that the hurt he feared is locked into his being by this very process.

I had a patient who was humiliated as a child by his father because he wasn't strong enough or athletic enough to compete with his cousins. He was afraid of his father, and he was afraid of the tough kids in his neighborhood. As a result, he felt like a coward. To overcome this feeling he engaged in a strenuous program of body building. He developed and even overdeveloped his muscles until he looked like a strong man. But the effect was to make him muscle-bound-with the emphasis upon the word bound. He was so bound he couldn't express himself. He didn't know how to relate to people. In company he felt awkward and humiliated because he didn't have anything to say. Thus, the humiliation he felt as a child persisted into adulthood. He complained about a lack of feeling, but he had suppressed all feeling in the effort to overcome his fear. Only by accepting his fear and expressing his sadness could he become a real person in his relations with others. This is what therapy helped him do. The attempt to overcome a personality problem by denying it (“I am not going to be afraid”) internalizes the problem and ensures its continuance.

And yet, don't we all try to overcome our weaknesses, our fears, and our guilts? We mobilize our will in the attempt to surmount the inner obstacles that block us from the fulfillment of our dream. We say, “Where there is a will, there is a way.” With enough willpower one can almost do the impossible. The will is potent in doing or performing, but it is impotent in changing the inner state of our being. Our feelings are not subject to our will. We can't change them by conscious action, but we can suppress them. However, suppressing a feeling doesn't make it go away; it only pushes it deeper into the unconscious. By this action we internalize the problem. It then becomes necessary to have therapy to bring the conflict back to consciousness so that it can be worked out in a nonneurotic way. In the case of the patient described above, this meant becoming aware that he was afraid to say to his father, “I don't want to compete. I don't want to be what you want.” Having suppressed his rebellion, he has nothing to say.

My thesis is that one can't overcome a problem that is part of one's personality. The key word in the statement is overcome. The attempt to do that turns one part of the self against the other; the ego, through the will, is set against the body and its feelings. Instead of harmony between these two antithetical aspects of human nature, a conflict is created that must ultimately destroy the person. This is what all neurotics do, locking themselves into the fate they are trying to avoid. The alternative, and the healthy way, is through understanding, which leads to self-acceptance, self-expression, and self-possession.

There are, then, two ways in which we program our fate. First, by our attitude and behavior, that is, by our character, we invite certain responses from others. If, out of fear of rejection, we are aloof and withdrawn, we should not be surprised if people keep their distance. Or if we are paranoid, our distrust will antagonize people, and we will experience their hostility. The second way is by perpetrating within ourselves the fate we fear. We create our own inner emptiness by suppressing our feeling; we trap ourselves with tensions that develop as a resistance to yielding out of fear of being trapped. But these two ways are not unrelated. The person who feels empty within himself lives a life that is empty of meaning in terms of relationships and involvement. The person who feels trapped in himself does get trapped by life situations. The outer situation has to match the inner condition. A square peg doesn't fit in a round hole. Generally speaking, each person finds his appropriate niche in the world. Of course, it is also true, though it may seem like a contradiction, that the outer situation produces the inner situation. Through its influence upon the family, culture molds the character of children. If we live in an alienated world, we become alienated from our bodies and ourselves.

An understanding of the correspondence between the inner condition and the outer situation is essential to an understanding of human nature and fate. People are extremely uncomfortable when they find themselves in situations other than those they are accustomed to. Place a beggar in a fine home and he will plead to be allowed to go back to the streets. Dress a bum in gentleman's clothes and he will not know how to move. The reverse is equally true. We are creatures of habit; our bodies and our behavior become structured by situations, making it very difficult for us to adapt to different ones. Regardless of how we are born, it is how we are raised that determines our fate and our destiny. For example, children who grow up with TV can't live without it because they have become habituated to its kind of stimulation.

Changing the neurotic character is the essential therapeutic task and the most difficult. The case of Sam is a good example. He was a young man, near thirty, whose marriage had just broken up, and he was somewhat depressed. The divorce was mutually desired. Sam felt that his wife was too dependent; she complained, he told me, about his aloofness and unwillingness to share his feelings with her. Sam admitted that he had difficulty in showing or expressing feeling. In other areas of his life he was quite successful.

Characterologically, Sam could be described as having a rigid structure. His body, though well shaped, was tight. His neck was relatively inflexible, his legs were stiff. Despite these handicaps he had good coordination and was competent in many sports. His rigidity represented a need to hold up against collapse, helplessness, and dependency. In his marriage he took the role of the strong one and unconsciously invited his wife to lean on him. At the same time he resented her dependency. He had to be in control of all situations as he was in control of himself, yet he knew that this attitude was self-defeating. Sam needed to learn how to let go and come out with his feelings.

Sam approached this problem of letting go as he approached any other task. He figured it out, then tried to do what was called for. It didn't work. That's not the way to let go. The more he tried to figure it out in his head, the tighter his body became. Even the work on his body to reduce its tension suffered from the same dilemma. He did the bioenergetic exercises as if he was trying to master a skill. The result was that he had very little feeling, though some vibrations did develop in his legs. Sam was characterologically geared for achievement, but letting go is not something one can achieve. Before any genuine feeling would emerge, Sam had to let go of his need to achieve or to be strong.

I have chosen this case to show the difficulty of the therapeutic task. The patient acts unconsciously to defeat the therapeutic undertaking. We call it resistance, but it is, in effect, nothing other than his character structure.

Here is another short example. A woman suffered from severe anxiety, which she sought to allay by finding a man who would protect and take care of her. To gain this end she was sexually seductive, and, since she was an attractive woman, she became involved with many men. All her relationships ended with her feeling betrayed and used. Her anxiety continued to mount. I might add that a previous therapeutic relationship ended with the therapist becoming sexually involved with her.

Mary's father died when she was seven. He had been her support. In all her subsequent relationships she was looking for another father. Since a therapist tries to provide some support for his disturbed patients, it is easy to see a male therapist as a father surrogate. Once Mary made the transference, she became emotionally involved with her therapist. She felt she needed him and was afraid he would die, leave, or not be there for her. Her major effort was directed to assuring his interest in her. Thus, she would be seductive one time, then testing the therapist another time. Needless to say, her maneuvers only increased her anxiety. Her very effort to gain security undermined her security.

Problems of this nature cannot be resolved until their connection with the oedipal situation is traced out and worked through. Sam's need to achieve and to be strong stemmed from his sense of inferiority vis-a-vis his father in that situation and his determination to prove be was a man. But the need to prove one's manhood reinforces the inner feeling of inadequacy and traps the person. Mary was trying to find a father who would accept her sexual feelings. She wanted to be a child and a woman at the same time, which made a real relationship with a man almost impossible.

Struggling against fate only enmeshes one more deeply in its coils. Like an animal caught in a net, the more one struggles, the more tightly bound one becomes. Does this mean we are doomed? We are doomed only when we struggle against ourselves. The main thrust of therapy is to help a person stop struggling against himself. That struggle is self-destructive, and it will exhaust a person's energy and accomplish nothing. Many people want to change. Change is possible, but it must start with self-acceptance. Change is a part of the natural order. Life is not static; it is constantly growing or declining. One doesn't have to do anything to grow. Growth happens naturally and spontaneously when energy is available. But when we use our energies in a struggle against our character (fate), we leave no energy for growth or the natural healing process. I have always found that as soon as a patient accepts himself, there is a significant change in his feelings, his behavior, and his personality.

Natural healing is inherent in the structure and function of the living organism. A cut finger will heal, a broken bone will mend, and an infection will clear up spontaneously. A body is not like a bubble, which once it bursts cannot be put together again. Within limits, the body's fate is to restore its integrity and to maintain its process against traumas and injuries from the environment. This should be equally true of the emotional traumas and injuries we receive as children. Why doesn't neurosis heal spontaneously like any other illness or disease? The answer is that the neurotic interferes with this healing process. He keeps picking the scab off the wound. By his defense or resistance, he keeps the injury alive. That is what it means to be neurotic and why we can define neurosis as a struggle against fate.

This idea of fate was never far from Freud's consciousness. He remarked about some people, “The impression they give is of being pursued by some malignant fate or of being possessed by some extraneous power, but psychoanalysis has always taken the view that their fate is for the most part arranged by themselves and determined by early infantile experiences.”² Freud illustrated this with the case of the benefactor whose proteges invariably abandon him and “who thus seems doomed to taste all the bitterness of ingratitude,” of the man whose friends regularly betray him, and of the lover whose affairs always end the same way. He even mentions the case of a woman whose three husbands had each to be nursed by her on their deathbeds.

Freud believed that such observations indicated the existence of a “compulsion to repeat-something that seems more primitive, more elementary, more instinctual than the pleasure principle.”³ Freud called that something the “death instinct,” which he saw as a “compulsion inherent in organic life to restore an earlier state of things.”⁴ There is much in common between instinct and fate. Both can be described as blind forces inherent in the nature of things. Both have the quality of predictability. Both are structured in the organism either genetically or characterologically. There is, however, an important difference between them. Instinct describes an act or a force that furthers the life process. It is an active principle. We speak, for example, of an instinct for survival. Fate, on the other hand, is a passive principle. It describes the way things are.

We have seen that people do not always learn from experience, but repeat self-destructive behavior patterns. In my opinion such behavior reflects the operation of fate, because it is a manifestation of character rather than the expression of an instinctual force. The distinction can be made clear by using the analogy of a record player and comparing life to the music it sends forth. The active force is electricity, which runs the motor, which turns the record, allowing the needle to follow the grooves. When the record come to an end, the music ceases-the equivalent of death. The latter is not a compulsion but a state of being.

In this analogy the compulsion to repeat can be seen as a “broken record.” The needle goes round and round in the same groove, repeating the same notes because it is unable to advance. Thus, the repetition compulsion can be seen as the result of a break in the personality, which fixates the individual at a certain pattern of behavior he cannot change. But human beings are not mechanical devices. The repetition compulsion can also be seen as an attempt by the personality to return to the situation where it got stuck, in the hope of someday getting unstuck. However, as long as the break exists, the needle will go round and round in the same groove, the pattern endlessly repeated. That is its fate until the break is healed.

We shall see in a later chapter that when the break in the personality is severe, it gives rise to a death wish in the person. If the wish is conscious it constitutes a suicidal desire or intention. In many cases, however, it is unconscious and severely restricts the individual's ability to live his life fully. Such a wish, though structured in the personality, is not a death instinct, for in most cases it arises from a highly traumatic oedipal situation. To one degree or another that situation breaks the unity of the personality in modern man. His life becomes like a broken record, endlessly replaying the conflicts of his oedipal situation. I would venture the guess that the woman who nursed three husbands on their deathbeds had been in a similar position with her father when she was a child.

In describing the Oedipus complex, Freud revealed the dilemma of modern man, namely, that his success is achieved at the cost of his personal fulfillment and that his power over nature is gained at the expense of his orgiastic potency. But where Freud accepted the inevitability of this dilemma and attempted to justify it biologically in terms of the death instinct, I see the dilemma as the product of this culture and subject, therefore, to change as the culture changes. Pending that change we must find ways to work with that dilemma and the underlying oedipal conflict in the therapeutic endeavor to help a person gain a greater measure of fulfillment in his life.

Few books on psychology today are concerned with the oedipal problem. They don't deny its existence; they simply ignore it. On the thesis that we can be masters of our fate, each offers a recipe for the good life. You are told how to do if. how to be successful, how to be aggressive, how to fulfill your potential, how to be happy, etc. On a practical level the advice is sound in most cases. But the effect of these books upon people's lives is almost negligible. The problems of living seem to increase rather than decrease. The misery in people's lives doesn't seem to lessen. There does seem to be a malign fate operating in the lives of many people that psychology is impotent to change, a fate that is tied to the oedipal situation in their childhood.

The Nature of Fate

One of the themes of this book is that character determines fate. Character refers to a person's typical, habitual, or “characteristic” way of being and behaving. It defines a set of fixed responses, good or bad, that are independent of conscious mental processes. We cannot change our character through conscious action. It is not subject to our will. Generally, we are not even aware of our character because it has become “second nature” to us.

Fate, like character, can be good or bad. There is nothing in the definition of fate that implies a negative value. Fate is not synonymous with doom. True, it is man's fate to die, but it is also his fate to live. Webster's New International Dictionary defines fate as “that principle or determining cause or will by which things in general are supposed to come to be as they are or events to happen as they do; the necessity of nature.” Events happen as they do because of nature's laws. Thus, whether we call it fate, a law of nature, or God, we signify by these terms that events are part of a process that is beyond man's control. In Greek mythology, the fates were known as the Moiria. They were named Clotho (the Spinner), who spins the thread of life; Lachesis (Disposer of Lots), who determines its length; and Atropes (Inflexible), who cuts it off.

Destiny is often used as a synonym for fate, but the two words have slightly different meanings. Destiny is related to the word destination. It refers to what one becomes, whereas fate describes what one is. Fish are fated to swim as birds are fated to fly, but that is hardly their destiny.

Thus, it would be correct to say that it is my fate to be born as it is my fate to die, but my destiny was to become a psychiatrist. The first two are inherent in the nature of life, but not the third. Whether one becomes a king or a slave, a success or a failure, may be predetermined, but it is certainly not a necessity of nature. The oracle at Delphi did not foretell the destiny of Oedipus, which was to vanish from the earth and find an abode with the gods. He prophesied his fate, which was that he would kill his father and marry his mother. That, as we shall see, is a statement about the nature of things. Under certain conditions it is the fate of all men.

One of the characteristics of fate is its predictability. Those of us who do not believe in fate or oracles might think that the future is unpredictable. To some extent this is true, but there is a greater measure of predictability in life than most people realize. Prediction is possible wherever there are structures, for structure determines function or action. This concept is easy to illustrate. Because of its structure an automobile cannot fly like a plane. One can safely predict that it will roll on the ground. Because a human body has a certain structure, it can function in certain ways and no others. Although we can swim underwater, we cannot breathe underwater like a fish because we do not have any gills. A structure sets limits, which makes prediction possible. Thus, knowing the structure of government agencies, we can predict their behavior. Similarly, it would be safe to predict that, all other factors being equal, a one-legged person cannot run as fast as a two-legged person. The number of examples is limitless. Since structure determines behavior, it creates fate.

The important thing about this concept is that it applies equally to psychic structures and to character structures. If we know a person's character structure, we can predict his fate. Take the case of a person with a masochistic character that is structured in the body mainly as chronic tensions in the flexor muscles.⁵ Because of these tensions it is very difficult for him to express feelings easily. These tensions are especially severe in the throat and neck, strongly blocking the utterance of sound. The total pattern is one of holding in both physically and psychologically, with the result that such a person tends to be submissive. Since such behavior is predictable, we can say that it is his fate to be submissive.

If character determines fate, then we have to know how character develops. In 1906 Freud showed that certain character traits could be related to a child's experiences in early life. According to Freud, parsimony, pedantry, and orderliness were the result of a toilet-training program that fixated the child on the anal function.⁶ Other psychoanalysts established connections between other character traits and certain experiences involving the child's instinctual life. Karl Abraham pointed to an association between ambition and oral eroticism.⁷ These studies concerned specific character traits. The understanding of character as a total pattern of response was provided by Reich in his classic work Character Analysis.⁸ Reich described character as a process of armoring on an ego level, which had the function of protecting the ego against internal and external dangers. The internal dangers are unacceptable impulses; the external dangers are threats of punishment from parents or other authority figures for these impulses.

Later, Reich extended the concept of character armor to the somatic realm. In the latter, the armor is expressed in chronic muscular tension, which is the physical mechanism by which dangerous impulses are suppressed. This muscular armoring is the somatic side of the character structure, which has a psychic counterpart in the ego. Since psyche and soma are like the two sides of a coin, head and tail, what goes on in one realm also occurs in the other. Or, one can say that the muscular armor is functionally identical to the psychic character. Therefore, one can read a person's character from the expression of his body. The way a person holds himself and moves tells us who he is. Reich said the various character types needed to be more systematized. I did this in my book The Physical Dynamics of Character Structure, retitled The Language of the Body in the paperback edition.⁹ In this book I showed how the different characters become structured in the body through the individual's interaction with the family environment.

Broadly speaking, character forms as a result of the conflict between nature and culture, between the instinctual needs of the child and the demands of the culture acting through the parents. Parents as representatives of the culture have the responsibility of inspiring their children with the values of the culture. They make demands upon the child in terms of attitudes and behavior that are designed to fit the child into the family and the social matrix. The child resists these demands because they amount to a domestication of his animal nature. Therefore, the child must be “broken in” to make him part of the system. This process of adapting a child to the system breaks his spirit. He develops a neurotic character and becomes afraid of life.

The neurotic character is the person's defense against being broken. In effect, he says, “I will do what you want and be what you want. Do not break me.” The person doesn't realize that his submission amounts to a break. Once formed, his neurotic character constitutes a denial of the break, while his muscular armoring functions as a splint that doesn't let him feel the break in his spirit. It is like closing the door after the horse is stolen and then believing that the horse is still inside. Of course, one dares not open the door to find out. Then, by repressing the memory of the traumatic event, one can pretend that it didn't happen and that one has not been broken.

The repression jells the character into a structure, like an egg that has been boiled or a pudding that has been chilled. Prior to the act of repression the character is labile; it has not yet hardened into a fixed structure. This repression occurs in the process of resolving the oedipal problem. Thus, Reich says, “Character armoring is, on one hand, a result of the infantile sexual conflict and the mode of solving it.”¹⁰ Not only does the repression remove from consciousness all memory of the oedipal situation, but it buries with it almost all the events of early childhood. This is the main reason that most people remember very little of their lives before the age of six.

Let us see how the infantile sexual conflict is solved. Freud observed, “The early efflorescence of infantile sexuality is doomed to come to an end because its wishes are incompatible with reality and with the inadequate stage of development the child has reached. That efflorescence perishes in the most distressing circumstances and to the accompaniment of the most painful feelings.”¹¹ The distressing circumstances are the withdrawal of love and the implied threat of castration. The painful feelings are fear and sadness. As a result, the child suppresses its sexual feelings for the parent of the opposite sex, but this is not the same thing as the natural termination of infantile sexuality. Infantile sexuality comes to a natural end if it is not interfered with. The child moves out into the world at about six years of age (going to school is an example) and forms erotic attachments with its peers. Freud conceded that the child's wishes are unrealistic. Reality and normal growth separate a child from his incestuous involvement with his parent. Suppression under the threat of castration is like pulling out a child's baby teeth rather than waiting for them to fall out naturally under pressure from the permanent teeth. The final results may look alike, but the interaction (threat of castration, pulling out teeth) inflicts a severe trauma on the child.

The painful termination of childhood and infantile sexuality forces the child to repress the memory of this period. So few persons can recall the feeling of sexual excitement experienced in relation to the parent of the opposite sex. They will deny that there was any jealousy by the parent of the same sex. However, the experience has become structured in their body. While the repression of a memory is a psychological process, the suppression of feeling is accomplished by deadening a part of the body or reducing its motility so that feeling is diminished. The repression of the memory is dependent upon and related to the suppression of feeling, for as long as the feeling persists, the memory remains vivid. Suppression entails the development of chronic muscular tension in those areas of the body where the feeling would be experienced. In the case of sexual feeling, this tension is found in and about the abdomen and pelvis.

Since the experience is different for each individual, the tension will reflect that experience. In some persons the whole lower half of the body is relatively immobilized and held in a passive state; in others the muscular tensions are localized in the pelvic floor and around the genital apparatus. If the latter sort of tension is severe, it constitutes a functional castration; for, although the genitals operate normally, they are dissociated in feeling from the rest of the body. Any reduction of sexual feeling amounts to a psychological castration. Generally the person is unaware of these muscular tensions, but putting pressure upon the muscles in the attempt to release the tension is often experienced as very painful and frightening.

In the attempt to avoid the fate of Oedipus, modern man becomes neurotic. The neurosis consists in the loss of full orgastic potency and in the formation of a character structure that binds the modern individual to a materialistic, power-oriented culture with bourgeois values. If the suppression of sexual feeling is not severe, the individual can make an adjustment to the cultural mores without developing symptoms of emotional illness. This is not to say that such a person is emotionally healthy. His neurosis would be characterological and expressed in rigidity of attitudes. If it is severe, the person will develop symptoms of emotional illness or a state of emotional deadness like Margaret and Robert.

If repression is equated with neurosis, then the price of avoiding Oedipus’ fate is to become emotionally ill. But we have to question whether this maneuver is really effective in helping us escape that fate. One result of repression is to fixate part of the personality at the level of the repressed conflict and thus to create an unconscious compulsion to act out the suppressed desire. Further, the loss of orgastic potency undermines an individual's maturity and reduces him to feeling childlike at times. Without being aware of it, many men seek women who remind them of their mothers and toward whom they adopt a juvenile or passive position. Fate acts in strange ways. Do we not, as neurotics, end up marrying our mothers or women who are so much like them that it amounts to the same thing? And if we marry a woman who is not like our mother, do we not treat her like our mother and, in effect, turn her into a mother figure?

The same is true of a woman. If her sexual feelings for her father were suppressed, with a concomitant repression of the memory, the desire remains fixated upon the original love object and can only be transferred to someone who reminds her of that person or to whom she can relate in the same way. This is the basic reason young women marry older men, as we all know. In other cases, though, the acting out of the suppressed desire may not be so evident; but careful, analysis shows that the marital situation replicates the oedipal one.

The following case illustrates this principle. I began by remarking to one patient, Bill, that most men marry their mothers. He immediately countered by saying, “My wife is not at all like my mother.”

I answered that often the personalities are different, but we men treat them as if they were the same. And we insist that they treat us as our mothers treated us.

“Oh, no!” Bill said. “My mother was never home to take care of me. She was always out playing cards. One of my problems with my wife stems from the fact that I did demand that she stay home to take care of the kids and of me. She complained that I never allowed her any independent activity. She has started something for herself now, and I am letting her do it. This is a new attitude for me and it seems to be working out better in our relationship.”

I should add that Bill and his wife were constantly fighting with each other and their relationship was not a happy one. Each felt deeply frustrated in the relationship, yet Bill assured me that they cared deeply for each other.

It would seem, therefore, that my thesis was not applicable to this case. Bill made demands on his wife that he had never been able to make on his mother. But how did it work out in practice? Did his wife take care of him as he demanded?

“No,” Bill said. “She wasn't capable. It turned out to be the other way around. I took care of her.” Bill, then, admitted that this was his father's attitude toward his mother and that his own attitude toward his wife was the same. He also admitted that the two women had many personality traits in common. His wife was anxiety ridden as his mother had been. “When I or the children are away, she becomes a nervous wreck just like my mother.” And both, as we saw, were relatively helpless-needed taking care of.

“In appearance, however,” Bill added, “my wife and my mother are different. I could not have married a woman who looked like my mother because I didn't like the way my mother looked.”

Bill made the point that his wife was sexually attractive to him, which his mother wasn't (we know that this last remark isn't true). “She still is attractive to me, but she is afraid of sex. We don't have much sex because she is sexually unresponsive.” As a result, his own sexual feelings steadily decreased, causing a further deterioration in the relationship.

What a twist of fate. Bill married his wife thinking it was going to be different because of his strong sexual excitement with her, only to find that it ended on the same note as his first love affair-that with his mother-sexual frustration and the loss of sexual feeling. Symbolically, he had taken his father's place with his mother. His father had had no greater fulfillment.

At this point the discussion turned to his wife, Joan. Bill remarked, “I am the exact opposite of her father. He was five feet, two inches tall, I am six feet, two. He was always broke and never home. I am financially successful and caring. He never touched his daughter, would not permit her to sit on his lap, and was ashamed of showing affection. This is not true of me.”

We do not consciously choose mates who are like our parents. If anything, we seem to pick those who, on the surface, are just the opposite. However, as I pointed out earlier, on the unconscious level each boy marries his mother as each girl marries her father. Unconsciously, we choose as spouses those who have traits or features in common with the loved parents. From what I could determine, Bill's wife and his mother had in common the fact that on an emotional level both were little girls who needed and were looking for a father.

Bill was aware that Joan's fear of sex stemmed from her experience of rejection by her father. That rejection was due to sexual feelings that made her feel guilty. I knew that Bill, too, suffered from sexual guilt. That could be deduced from the severe tension in his pelvic area, which limited the flow of sexual excitation into the pelvis. I asked Bill about his early sexual experiences with his wife.

Bill related the following: “We were very strongly attracted to each other. Joan let herself go with me as she had not done with other men. We engaged in heavy petting, but we did not have intercourse. I did not want to do that until we were married. Joan came from a good family, and I respected her. Strangely, after we got married, all her passion disappeared. We have had problems ever since.”

Bill did not realize that in protecting Joan's chastity, he rejected her sexuality just as her father had done. Joan desperately needed to feel that her sexuality was normal and healthy. Bill could not help projecting his own sexual guilt on her. In his mind's eye, he saw Joan as the mother of his children and he unconsciously identified her with his own mother. Having suppressed his sexual feelings for his mother, he could not fully transfer them to his wife. Throughout his marriage, Bill suffered from some degree of erective impotence. He blamed it on his wife's fear of sex and lack of passion. It is not difficult to see that she was disappointed in her marriage by Bill's lack of manhood. At bottom, he proved to be not so different from her father.

At our next session, Bill said, “I realize I am both opposite and similar to Joan's father. She treats me with the same guilt and fear she has toward her father. From time to time I will experience failure in my ability to hold the erection. I feel terrible. I feel impotent. I feel like a failure.”

We have now uncovered the common factor that identified Bill with Joan's father. Bill had characterized Joan's father as a failure financially. He now recognized that he, too, was a failure, not only because of his difficulties with erection but because his wife had never reached a sexual climax. He blamed himself for this, and he felt guilty toward his wife for his failure. The situation was like a vicious circle, slowly enmeshing the two of them in misery, each outwardly blaming the other but inwardly blaming himself.

Having suppressed much of his sexuality in “resolving” the oedipal situation, Bill could not approach a woman manfully. He was too sexually insecure. His structure only allowed him to pick a girl-woman who needed him. He could then be sure she wouldn't abandon him. In return, he assumed the responsibility to help her, to protect her, and to fulfill her. He played the role of the father, but he was still the boy. As a boy, he had to pick a nonorgasmic woman, which only confirmed his failure to be a man. The harder he tried to overcome his weakness, the more he failed, for he was denying a fate that he had structured in his body.

The idea of fate as body structure is more clearly shown in the following case.

Ruth was a woman about forty years old who complained of depression and a lack of feeling. Her sexual desire was very low. However, she could be excited by a woman, especially when she fantasized kissing a woman with tongue penetration. One other complaint was about severe ulcer type pains in her stomach. In other areas of her life Ruth was a highly successful person. She had her own very profitable business. She had many friends and was socially active. She was married and had a family. Publicly, Ruth was one kind of person; privately, she was another. This denoted a split in her personality that was also manifested physically.

Ruth's problem was clearly revealed in her body. The upper half of her body was slender and well shaped and had a very girlish quality. Looking at this part of her body, one would have estimated her age to be about twenty-six, whereas she was considerably older. In contrast, her hips and thighs were disproportionately large and heavy, suggesting a more mature woman. The skin in this area had a coarser quality than that on the rest of the body. From the knees down, however, her legs were shapely. The pelvis looked “dead,” that is, without much life. Its motility was greatly reduced, and she didn't breathe with her belly. The deadness was also apparent in the masklike expression of her face and in her mechanical smile. This deadness in the face and pelvis was responsible for the lack of feeling about which she complained.

A person's body structure tells us something about his history when interpreted bioenergetically.¹² Each experience leaves its mark on the body. Significant experiences shape the body as they shape the personality. A bioenergetic therapist who is trained in reading the language of the body can make some good guesses about those experiences. Often, these guesses are confirmed by the patient when he senses the conflicts manifested in his chronic muscular tensions.

The marked discrepancy between the two halves of Ruth's body reflected the split in her personality. In the upper half of her body she was a young girl, seemingly innocent about the facts of life. This innocence was belied- however, by the masklike facial expression that reminded me of the Sphinx and suggested that she knew more than she said. The lower half of her body told a different story-of a person who had more than a casual acquaintance with the excitements and frustrations of sex.

Bioenergetically, the heaviness, deadness, and disproportionate bigness of the hips and thighs in a person are the result of a stagnation of energy and sexual excitement. Stagnation occurs when an area of the body that is strongly excited and charged with feeling is immobilized to hold or contain the feeling because discharge is not possible. If this happens occasionally, it is painful but has no effect upon the body structure. The constant exposure of a young child to sexual stimulation under circumstances that prevent any discharge of the excitation and make the child feel guilty for sexual feelings can result in an overfullness and enlargement of the pelvic area. Since the pain is continuous and intolerable, all feeling in the area must be suppressed. This is accomplished by developing strong tensions about the pelvis, which immobilize it and thereby deaden and numb it.

Ruth was completely out of touch with this area of her body. She had no feeling of it or in it. The respiratory movements did not descend into the lower abdomen. She lived from the waist up.

The interpretation this body dynamic suggests is that the patient had in early life experienced a constant sexual excitation, probably from her father. She, of course, responded to it with sexual feelings as any girl in the oedipal period will. At the same time she was not allowed any expression of her sexuality and was forced to “cut it off.” The mechanism she developed to cut off sexual feeling was evident: muscular tension in the waist and diaphragm that blocked the flow of any excitation into the belly. Even such emotional expressions as belly crying or belly laughing were impossible for this patient. In addition, the immobility of the pelvis prevented the buildup of any deep sexual excitation. We can hypothesize that the oedipal period ended in such a painful way that Ruth was forced to repress her memory of the event to avoid feeling the pain. The fear of her mother was so strong that she had to suppress all sexual feeling to protect herself.

Psychologically, Ruth could be described as a “castrated” woman. (The expression “cut off her sexual feelings” says the same thing.) She was terrified of her mother (whom I regard as the castrating person), but this fear was completely denied. In its place there was the submission to penetration of her mouth by another woman's tongue. The displacement of sexuality to the mouth and its inversion allayed her castration anxiety.

If one was to help Ruth get out of her depressed state, it had to be by helping her get some feeling into the lower half of her body. Psychology is relatively helpless in this task. One had to work intensively with her on a physical level to effect some change in her personality. Her breathing had to be deepened, the muscular tensions in the lower abdomen, pelvis, and thighs had to be reduced and released, and the pelvis had to be mobilized. Often the procedures were painful, due to the severity of the tension, but as the tensions let go, the pain diminished. The body work was done in conjunction with a continuing analysis of her relations to her father, her mother, to me, and to a former female therapist.

What emerged from the analysis was the lascivious behavior of her father. She recalled a number of incidents in which her father displayed a prurient interest in her girl friends, at the same time deriding them as dirty and loose. These memories were related without any feeling or emotional charge. The first breakthrough occurred in the form of a dream following the development of some sexual feeling in her pelvis through the body work. She related: “I dreamed that I was in a room with a giant. He was more than nine feet tall. I felt a strong sexual desire for him, and I pressed close against him. My head came just to the level of his pelvis. I wanted to sleep with him, but a woman came into 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.