Читать книгу Fear of Life - Dr. Alexander Lowen M.D. - Страница 9

1

The Neurotic Character

The Oedipal Problem

It is said that people learn from experience, and in general this is true. Experience is the best and, perhaps, the only real teacher. But when something falls within the area of a person's neurosis, the rule does not seem to apply. The person doesn't learn from experience but repeats the same self-destructive behavior again and again. For example, there is the person who always finds himself in the position of helping others. He responds eagerly when someone appeals to him for aid. Afterward he feels used and resentful because he doesn't believe that the person he helped appreciated his effort. He turns against the person he befriended and resolves to be less available and more critical of the need for his help next time. Yet when he senses someone in difficulty, he offers his services often even before they are requested, thinking that this time the result will be different. But it happens again as before. He doesn't learn because his helping has a compulsory quality. He is driven to help by forces beyond his control.

Take the case of the woman who in her relationships with men assumes a mothering role. The effect of this position is to infantilize the man and so to deprive her of sexual fulfillment. She may end the relationship feeling used and cheated and blaming the man's immaturity and weakness for its failure. Next time, she says, she will choose someone who can stand on his own two feet and not need to be mothered. But the next time turns out like the others. A strange fate seems to impel her into the very situation she is trying to avoid. She is driven to mother her men by unknown forces in her personality.

Such behavior can be regarded as neurotic because of the unconscious conflict that underlies it. In the case of the man, part of his personality wants to help, another part doesn't. If he helps he feels resentful, if he doesn't he feels guilty. This is a typical neurotic trap from which there is no way out except by retracing the steps that led into it. There is a similar unconscious conflict behind the behavior of the woman. That conflict is between her desire for a healthy and satisfying sexual relationship with a man and her fear of such a relationship. Mothering a man is her way of attempting to overcome her sexual anxiety, for it allows her to deny her fear of surrendering to a man. By acting as a mother, she feels needed and superior.

Here is still another example. A certain woman had great difficulty establishing a relationship with a man. When she met someone she was attracted to, she became hypercritical. She saw all his weaknesses and faults and rejected him. Since no one is perfect, her reactions made forming any relationship impossible. Although she says that she wants a relationship very much, she seems incapable of changing this pattern of behavior even after it is pointed out to her. It is not difficult to see that her hypercritical attitude is a defense against the feared danger of being rejected herself. She protects herself by rejecting the man first. But knowing this doesn't help much either. Her neurotic response is beyond her control.

To help her we must know what forces in her personality dictated this behavior. It only happened when she met someone to whom she was attracted. With others the problem did not arise, she could be friendly and relaxed. Since the difficulty developed only when she had some feeling for the person, we can assume that it was related to the feeling of desire or longing. She could not stand this feeling, it was too painful, and so she withdrew from the situation. Here, too, we must find out what happened to this person as a child to create this problem. Through analysis we will discover that she experienced a rejection by a parent, the pain of which was so overwhelming that she locked it up to survive. She closed her heart so as not to feel her heartache, and now she dares not open it. To love is to open the heart, and she is afraid to do so because of the pain in it. In her case the neurotic conflict is between the desire for love and the fear of it.

What makes such conflict neurotic is the person's repression of its negative element. Thus, the helping man denies his resentment at being asked for help, the mothering woman denies her fear of sex, and the hypercritical person denies her inability to love. Unable to face his pain and the anger to which it gives rise, the neurotic individual strives to overcome his fears, anxieties, hostilities, and anger. One part of himself seeks to rise above another, which splits the unity of his being and destroys his integrity. The neurotic person struggles to win over himself. In this, of course, he must fail. Failure seems to mean submission to an acceptable fate, but actually it amounts to self-acceptance, which makes change possible. To the degree that most people in Western culture are struggling to be different, they are neurotic. And since this is a fight one can't win, all who engage in this struggle will fail. Strangely, through the acceptance of failure, we become free from our neurosis.

A typical example is the man who repeatedly loses money in bad investments by following the advice of others. He is a sucker for the promise of quick and easy money. Although he had been burned enough to know that the promise is illusory, he cannot resist its lure. He functions under the drive of a compulsion that is more powerful than his rational judgment. It may be a compulsion to lose, for there are people who seem fated to be losers. But such a fate can be changed if the nature of the compulsion and its origin are carefully explored through analysis.

The classic example is the woman who, after divorcing her first husband because he was an alcoholic and determining that her second marriage will be different, discovers that her new husband is also a heavy drinker. Although she didn't know this before the marriage, she had been blind to many indications of this tendency. Through analysis it can be shown that she is attracted to men who drink but repelled when the drinking gets out of control. Like the man in the preceding example, she is not aware of her deep feelings and motivations. This lack is typical of a neurotic character.

The term neurotic character refers to a pattern of behavior based upon internal conflict and represents a fear of life, of sex, and of being. It reflects the person's early life experience because it was formed as a result of those experiences. The most crucial experience for the development of the neurotic character is the oedipal one. This key experience occurs between the ages of three and six, when the oedipal situation develops, namely, the sexual interest of the child in the parent of the opposite sex and the resulting rivalry with the parent of the same sex. Both parents play an active role in this triangular situation in which the child feels trapped. The child develops a neurotic character as the only possible solution to a situation that in his mind is fraught with danger to life and sanity. Whether the danger is as real as the child believes, one cannot say. No child in this situation can afford to test the validity of his belief. He must compromise by bridling his passion and suppressing his sexuality. I shall illustrate this process with the following cases.

Margaret consulted me because she was depressed and felt that her life was empty. She was an attractive woman in her middle thirties and a nurse by profession. She had never married, though she had had many relationships with men. None had worked out satisfactorily for her. Years earlier her depression had been so severe that she was suicidal. Her suicidal tendencies had diminished through psychoanalytic treatment, but her depressive tendencies continued. However, she had never ceased to work. She was a hard worker and was highly regarded in her profession.

The outstanding expression of Margaret's body was its lifelessness. If she didn't talk or move, she might be taken for a wax figure. Her eyes were dull, her voice flat. However, from time to time while looking at me her eyes would light up and her face would become alive. It never lasted more than a few minutes, but it was an astounding transformation. When it happened, I was aware that she regarded me with feeling. Usually she appeared preoccupied and was aware of me only to communicate her thoughts. As we worked together I realized that her lifelessness went quite deep. When she opened her eyes wide, they had an almost hollow look. Her breathing was very shallow, her movements never animated.

The therapeutic task was to help Margaret discover why the light faded from her eyes. Why was she unable to maintain the glow of life? What was she unconsciously afraid of? Margaret's lack of life was the result of self-negation and a self-destructive attitude. In most neurotic persons this attitude is unconscious. Margaret was aware, however, that she was self-destructive. She said, “I am always trying to kill my body by not eating properly, not sleeping enough, by being worried about my image, and by being frantic about my work. I am never ‘there’ for myself, I am never able to enjoy myself, I don't take care of myself.”

When I asked Margaret how and why that attitude developed, she replied, “I was literally destroyed by my mother, so frequently that I identified with her.” Margaret had told me earlier that her mother used to beat her regularly. She described her mother as a hypochondriac who lay on a couch all day reading and complaining. However, the mother was really ill. She was a diabetic, but Margaret said that she was also self-destructive in that she took no responsibility for her own life. She died of heart trouble in her fifties. “But,” Margaret said, “my father was equally self-destructive, working twenty hours a day and never taking time for pleasure. He was Christ, the martyr. He died of a heart attack in his forties.”

She added, “My father was a burden to me. I felt I had to save him. He was in my mind all the time. He made me very sad and unhappy. I could never reach him. I remember looking at him when he was suffering from heart trouble, and he had such a pathetic look. It was actually worse than pathetic. It was the look of suffering. He was a sufferer. I need to help people.”

We cannot understand Margaret or her problem without a picture of the family situation in which she grew up. In that picture the most important elements are the personalities of the parents. They affect the child more by who they are than what they do. Children are very sensitive and pick up their parents’ moods, feelings, and unconscious attitudes by osmosis, as it were. This was especially true for Margaret since she was an only child. Her parents’ influence was unmitigated by the presence of other children. Consider the following.

“My mother said my father was a rough lover. I realize that I choose men who are somewhat like him in their suffering and in their rough intensity of sexual need. I don't see the suffering in these men until I get socked with it later. Then I find that I am taking care of them, helping them, and there is nothing in it for me. This is one way I am self-destructive. But I don't know if I could like anybody who is not suffering. My heart wouldn't open to that person. The last man I was involved with attempted suicide. I had a long line of men I had to help. It seems that if I can't do the neurotic thing, there is nothing else.”

What exactly was Margaret's relationship to her father? She says that her mother told her that she was very close to her father until the age of four or five. She has no memory of that closeness nor any knowledge of why it ended. All she remembers is that her father was beyond reach. She felt close to him in her heart but there was no contact between them. “It was like in a dream. I am still in that dream. I relate to men on this basis. I build enormous fantasies of what life would be like with them, only to discover after a few meetings that they couldn't possibly fulfill my dreams.”

From the above it is clear that in her contacts with men Margaret is looking for the kind of relationship that she had with her father before the age of five. It was a search for a lost paradise. She was trying to find her Shangri-la. She asked me, “Why am I always getting cuddled by men at bars? I must give off something.” Her manner and her expression indicated that she, too, was a sufferer. Just as she is drawn to those who suffer, so they are drawn to her. Each hopes the other can relieve his suffering, but each only brings suffering to the other. Neither has any joy to offer.

From the above it is obvious that Margaret suffered a severe loss at about the age of five, when the loving relationship she had with her father ended. The depressive tendency is conditioned by such a loss.¹ Undoubtedly, there had been an earlier loss of love in her relationship with her mother, but the early loss had been mitigated by the warmth of her contact with her father. When that ended, Margaret was lost. She survived by a great effort of will, manifested today in the set of a grim and determined jaw. But memories of the time when she glowed in the warmth of her father's love are still reflected in the momentary brightening of her eyes and face.

What happened to cause the destruction of the loving relationship she had with her father? Why did it have such a devastating effect upon her personality? Margaret had no memories of that time. They were completely repressed. However, she has had many years of psychoanalysis and is familiar with the oedipal problem. During our discussion of this subject, she remarked, “I don't remember any sexual feelings for my father, but during my analysis I had a dream of sleeping with him. Having been in analysis for some time, I felt that I could have this dream without thinking I was crazy. However, in the dream I felt I couldn't let go. I couldn't really enjoy it.”

Margaret still doesn't enjoy sex. She still can't let go and have an orgasm. She uses sex for contact and closeness. She cannot give in to her sexual feelings because she is afraid they would overwhelm her and drive her crazy. I shall explore this aspect of the fear of sex in a later chapter. My intention here is to show the relation between the neurotic character and the oedipal problem.

What really went on in her family? What was the relation between the parents? Margaret said, “I used to have the fantasy as a child that my parents were very close to each other and that I was the outsider. I felt isolated. Then, as I grew older, I saw that my mother was alone and my father, too. I realized that she talked about him as if he was a stranger.” She did recollect a scene in which her father tried to throw her mother out of the window, but she doesn't know why. We can guess. Like so many other marriages, her parents’ relationship had started on the high note of romance but ended on the bitter one of frustration. This is the terrain in which the oedipal problem develops. The frustrated parent generally turns to the child of the opposite sex for sympathy and affection.

The feelings between Margaret and her father were very deep. Despite the barrier between them, he was close to her heart and she to his. Margaret said that she was told that when she won some awards at school and church he cried. Why was any expression of these feelings restrained? There is only one answer. They had become sexual on both sides. The danger of incest seemed real. The father had to withdraw from any contact with the girl, and she had to be made to suppress her sexuality since it threatened him.

The child's sexual desire for the parent is an expression of her natural aliveness. The child is innocent until the parents project their sexual guilt upon her. Margaret was the bad one because her sexuality was alive and free. It had to be beaten out of her, which her mother did literally with a horsewhip with which her father used to train horses. She was forced to deny her body and invest her energy in schoolwork. The father didn't protect her because he felt too guilty to interfere. She was effectively broken as one breaks the wild, free spirit of a horse so it can be ridden by a man. Since Eve, the female has been regarded as the temptress. This bias reflects the double standard of morality characteristic of patriarchal culture. In the past, Western society has found it necessary to suppress the woman's sexuality more than that of the man.

We can understand now why Margaret developed her neurotic character. She was not allowed to relate to her father on a sexual level, and that taboo became ingrained into her personality and extended to all men. She can be the child who wants to be cuddled or she can be the understanding and sympathetic helper who will try to ease a man's suffering. Since neither of these approaches fulfills her need for a sexual relationship (which is more than just having sex), she becomes depressed. I don't believe that she can overcome her depressive tendency until she regains her sexuality. Having lost her sexuality, she lost her life. To be sexual is to be alive, and to be alive is to be sexual. In subsequent chapters I will show what is involved in working through this problem.

Margaret's case is not unique. It may differ from the average in the severity of the beatings she received, in the degree of repressed sexuality in the family, and in the special form her neurotic character assumed. Yet it is typical of what goes on in modern families, namely, the incestuous feelings between parents and children, the rivalries, jealousies, and threats to the child. It is also typical of the way the oedipal problem shapes the neurotic character of the individual. Here is a different case, which shows many similarities with Margaret's, although it involves a man.

Robert was a highly successful architect who consulted me because he was depressed. His depression was caused by the breakup of his marriage. When I asked why the marriage failed, he said that his wife complained that there was no communication between them, that he withdrew from contact, and that he was sexually passive. He admitted the truth of her complaints. He recognized that he had great difficulty expressing feelings. He had undergone psychoanalytic treatment earlier for a number of years. The treatment had helped him somewhat, but his emotional responsiveness was still very weak.

Robert was a handsome man in his late forties. He had a well-built and well-proportioned body and regular facial features. When I looked at him, he smiled too quickly. I sensed that eye contact embarrassed him. On closer examination I saw that his eyes were watchful and without feeling. The most notable aspect of his body, however was its tightness and rigidity. Without his clothes he looked like a Greek statue. Dressed, he could be taken for a moving mannequin. He was so controlled that his body did not look alive.

What happened in Robert's childhood to account for his emotional deadness? Like Margaret, he was an only child. His mother, however, doted on him when he was young. Although his parents were not rich, he was dressed in very expensive clothes, which were always kept clean. He said that pictures showed him to be an adorable little boy. His biggest wrongdoing was to get dirty. He was immediately washed and his clothes changed. He was never beaten. Punishment for any transgression took the form of shame and the withdrawal of love.

Robert related that as a boy he had the fantasy that he was not the child of his parents. He said that they really wanted a girl. He imagined that someday his true parents would discover him. This feeling of not belonging arises whenever there is a lack of emotional contact between parents and a child. In Robert's case his parents also felt that he didn't belong to them. They said he was different from them. Robert explained his feeling by the fact that his mother and father were so close that he felt on the outside. “I felt that I would pound on the door and say, ‘Let me in.’ At other times I felt I would run away and find my true family.” It may be recalled that Margaret had a similar feeling of being an outsider and not belonging to her family. She discovered later that the apparent closeness of her parents was more of a facade than a reality. What was the situation in Robert's family?

Robert described his mother as an amazon driving wild horses with whips. Though she was not pretty, wore glasses, and was socially uncomfortable, she had made a splendid marriage. His father, he said, was handsome, charming, and very much sought after. He was a winner, a man bound to succeed. Robert recognized that his mother was ambitious. He said, “She tried to project an image of refinement. Her parents had been farmers. She wanted to show that she was the best wife for my father, that their union was the perfect marriage.”

She also tried to project the image of being the perfect mother. To fulfill that image Robert had to be the perfect child, which he tried to be. But perfect children are not real, that is, not alive. Real children get dirty, make messes. To keep his mother's love Robert had to become an image, a statue or a mannequin. And for the same reason the father wasn't real either. Who can be a real man to a perfect wife? Robert has no memory of his parents ever fighting. Even as a child Robert sensed that the family situation had an air of unreality. To whatever degree he felt alive, he couldn't be their child. He could belong only by being unreal himself.

It would be a mistake to think that there were no passions in this family. Robert never talked about the sexual life of his parents, but they must have had one. He never mentioned any sexual feelings he may have had as a child, but he must have had some. He had repressed all memories of his early years. That repression went hand in hand with the deadness of his body. The information he related to me was mostly secondhand. However, we do have some evidence of the existence of an oedipal situation. Robert said that as a boy he had fantasies of winning his mother and trouncing his father. In his fantasy his mother preferred him to his father. Another significant piece of evidence is the fact that Robert did trounce his father. He said, “I have outshone him to a point where I am ashamed of it.” Actually his father never proved to be a winner. It was Robert who became the big winner in the world and who fulfilled his mother's ambitions.

However, there was a price attached to this victory. That price was the loss of his orgastic potency, namely, the ability for a total body surrender in sex. Robert's sexuality was limited to his genital organ; the rest of his body did not participate in the excitement or the discharge. His inability to give himself fully to his sexual feeling was due to the rigidity and tension in his body, which was also responsible for his emotional deadness. Whether the emotional deadness resulted from a fear of sex or whether his orgastic impotence was caused by his emotional deadness need not be argued. The problem had to be worked out simultaneously on both levels, the sexual and the emotional. On a deeper level, both represented a fear of life.

Robert, however, was unaware of any fear of sex or of life. Fear, being an emotion like any other, is equally suppressed in a state of emotional deadness. This makes the problem very difficult, since all one can go on is the absence of feeling. For example, Robert had no recollection of any sexual feelings for his mother. He couldn't imagine such feelings, for he found his mother sexually unattractive. He did not recall ever seeing her naked, nor ever having had any curiosity about her body. He does remember that one night he decided to listen at their bedroom door, but he was quickly discovered and sent to his room. He did not associate this incident with sexual curiosity. Evidently his curiosity was crushed very early. When he was three he had occasion to see a little girl being bathed, but he was berated for looking.

Because Robert doesn't remember, it cannot be assumed that he had no sexual feelings as a child. Since such feelings are normal, it must be assumed that they were strongly suppressed and the memory of them repressed. This assumption is supported by the severity of the muscular tension and bodily rigidity that are the means of suppression. In discussing this matter Robert remarked that cutting off feeling was a common maneuver he used whenever someone hurt him. He cut off all feeling for the person and “cut” the person as if he didn't exist. He said that it was a tactic used against him by his mother and that he used it against her in return. As I see it, mother and son were engaged in a power struggle in which seduction and rejection were the means of control. His mother doted on him, dressing him as Little Lord Fauntleroy, to use his words, but she also “cut him off” whenever he didn't do what she wanted. He did what she demanded, but he also rejected her sexually.

There is another aspect to Robert's problem. His bodily rigidity must be interpreted as a sign that he was scared stiff. I worked with him long enough to know that it was true. But, he didn't feel it. Of course, being emotionally dead he didn't feel much. Nevertheless, it was necessary to find out of whom he was afraid and why.

Robert says that he was raised as Little Lord Fauntleroy. I saw him as a prince. His mother took the role of the queen. The situation would require that his father be the king, but he didn't carry off that role. Instead of being on top, he pushed his son into that position. The boy was to achieve what he couldn't. The prince was to take his place and become king. But, much as the father may have desired to see his son outshine him, it was only natural that he would also feel resentful and angry at being displaced and downgraded. When two males compete for the same female, the fight can be deadly. But a son is no match for a father and is terrified to make a real challenge. He must back off, admit defeat, and give up his sexual desire for his mother. He accepts psychological castration and, thereby, removes himself as a competitor and threat to his father.

The oedipal situation is now resolved. The boy can grow up and conquer the world, but on a sexual level he still remains a boy. Robert was aware that on one level of his personality he still felt immature, not fully a man. Emotionally, he remained a prince.

In a subsequent chapter I will discuss the treatment of the oedipal problem. First we need to understand the problem both as a cultural phenomenon and as the result of family dynamics. In the next section we will look at the Oedipus legend in some detail to see how closely these cases parallel the myth.

The Oedipus Legend

Oedipus was a prince, the son of Laius, king of Thebes. When he was born, his father consulted the oracle at Delphi about his son's future. Told that when the boy grew up, he would kill his father and marry his mother, Laius, to avoid this calamity, had the boy staked out in a field to die of exposure. Oedipus was saved by a shepherd who took pity on him and brought him to Corinth, where he was adopted by Polybus, king of Corinth, who raised him as his own son. Because his foot was inflamed from being tied to the stake, he was given the name of Oedipus, which means “swollen foot.”

When Oedipus grew to manhood, he, too, consulted the oracle at Delphi to learn his destiny. And he was told that he would kill his father and marry his mother. Since he believed Polybus to be his father, Oedipus decided to avoid the fate predicted by the oracle by leaving Corinth to seek his fortune elsewhere. On the road to Boeotia he was accosted by a traveler who ordered him out of his way. A quarrel ensued, and Oedipus struck the man with his staff, killing him. Not knowing who his victim was, Oedipus proceeded to Thebes. When he arrived, he learned that the city was being terrorized by the Sphinx, a strange monster with the face of a woman, the body of a lion, and the wings of a bird. The Sphinx posed a riddle to any traveler she caught. Those who failed to answer correctly were devoured.

Creon, who was ruling the city since the death of his brother Laius, had promised the crown and the hand of the widowed queen Jocasta to anyone who would free the city from the ravages of the monster. Oedipus undertook the challenge and confronted the Sphinx. To the question “Which animal walks on four legs in the morning, two at midday, and three in the evening?” Oedipus answered, “Man.” In his infancy he crawls on all fours, in his maturity he walks on two legs, and in the evening of his life he walks with a cane. When the Sphinx heard this answer, she threw herself into the sea and was drowned. Oedipus returned to Thebes, married the queen, and ruled the city for more than twenty years. From their union came two sons, Eteocles and Polyneices, and two daughters, Antigone and Ismene. Oedipus’ reign in Thebes was prosperous, and he was honored as a just and devoted sovereign.

In Greek mythology there is often some tragedy in the life of the hero. For example, both Hercules, the great destroyer of monsters, and Theseus, who slew the Minotaur, perished tragically. Among others, Erichthonius, who as king of Athens introduced the worship of Athene and the use of silver, was killed by a thunderbolt from Zeus. The hero's achievement, which is supported by one god, offends another. His superhuman exploit makes him appear godlike. The gods are notoriously jealous. The hero must pay a price for his hubris, since he is a mortal after all.

Oedipus is regarded as a hero for his conquest of the Sphinx. The Erinyes, as the fates were called, were lying in wait. A terrible plague ravaged the city of Thebes. There was drought and famine. When the oracle at Delphi was consulted, he said that the scourges would not cease until the murderer of Laius was discovered and driven from the city. Oedipus vowed to find the culprit. To his surprise, his investigations revealed that he was the guilty one. He had killed his father on the highway to Thebes and, unwittingly, had married his mother.

Overwhelmed by shame, Jocasta hanged herself. Oedipus put out his own eyes. Then, accompanied by Antigone, his faithful daughter, he left Thebes and became a wanderer. After many years he found a final refuge in the town of Colonus near Athens. There, reconciled to his fate and purified of his crimes, he disappeared mysteriously from the earth. The implication is that he was taken to the abode of the gods, as befits a Greek hero. Having provided a last haven for Oedipus, Colonus became a sacred place.

The legend relates the end of this unhappy family. Oedipus’ two sons had agreed to share the rulership of the kingdom alternately. But when the time came for Eteocles to turn the power over to his brother, he refused. Polyneices gathered together an army of Aegeans and laid siege to Thebes. In the course of the battle the two brothers slew each other. Creon, who then became ruler of the city, decreed that Polyneices should be treated as a traitor and his body left unburied. Antigone defied the decree out of love for her brother and buried him with honors. For this disobedience she was condemned to be buried alive. Her sister Ismene shared her fate.

Looking back to the cases of Margaret and Robert, we can see that their lives did not parallel the history of Oedipus. Neither was guilty of the crimes of incest and parental murder, despite the fact that both were involved in oedipal situations in their childhood. How they avoided the fate of Oedipus is explained by Sigmund Freud, the first person to recognize the importance of the oedipal situation and the significance of the Oedipus story for modern man. In the next section we will examine the psychoanalytic view of the development of the Oedipus complex.

The Oedipus Complex

Freud was drawn to the story of Oedipus because he believed that the two crimes of Oedipus, the killing of his father and the marriage to his mother, coincide with “the two primal wishes of children, the insufficient repression or the reawakening of which forms the nucleus of perhaps every psychoneurosis.”² This nucleus became known as the Oedipus complex. Earlier, Freud had written, “It may be that we are all destined to direct our first sexual impulses towards our mothers and our first impulses of hatred and violence towards our fathers, our dreams convince us that we were.”³ If this were so, then the fate of Oedipus would be the common fate of all mankind. Freud recognized this possibility, for he said, “His fate moves us because it might have been our own, because the oracle laid upon us the very curse that rested on him.”⁴

In psychoanalytic thinking all children are considered to go through an oedipal period, from about the ages of three to seven. In this period they have to deal with feelings of sexual attraction to the parent of the opposite sex, and jealousy, fear, and hostility toward the parent of the same sex. The complex also includes varying amounts of guilt associated with these feelings. Otto Fenichel says, “In both sexes, the Oedipus complex can be called the climax of infantile sexuality, the erogenous development from oral eroticism via anal eroticism toward genitality.”⁵

It is important for our study to understand what is meant by infantile sexuality and how it differs from the adult form. The term “infantile sexuality” actually refers to all sexual manifestations from birth to about six years of age. The erotic pleasure a baby derives from nursing or thumbsucking is considered to be sexual in nature. Between the ages of three and five, childhood sexuality becomes focused on the genitals. In the fifth year, according to Freud, at the height of development of childhood sexuality, that focus comes close to that reached in maturity. The difference between childhood and adult sexuality is that the former lacks the elements of penetration and ejaculation, the reproductive aspects of sexuality. Childhood sexuality is, therefore, a surface phenomenon. Freud described it as phallic rather than genital. This distinction is valid if we recognize that phallic refers to a rise in excitation rather than a discharge. Adult sexuality is characterized by its emphasis upon the latter. However, the feelings associated with childhood sexuality can hardly be distinguished from those relating to the adult form.

Although the Oedipus complex is regarded as a normal development for all children in our culture, this does not mean that it is biologically determined. We must distinguish between two different phenomena. One is the preliminary blooming of sexuality, which occurs at this time and which is manifested in masturbatory activities and a heightened sexual curiosity. It is also reflected in the child's sexual interest in the parent of the opposite sex. Evidence for this early blooming is provided by patients’ dreams and memories. It can be confirmed by any observant parent, since children make no effort to hide their sexual feelings. And medical research has shown that there is an increased production of sexual hormones during this period. This preliminary awakening of sexuality is generally followed by a quiescent period, the latency period, which lasts until puberty, when both hormonal and sexual activity begin to assume their adult form. Another biological phenomenon parallels this double flowering of sexuality, and that is the development of teeth. We have two sets of teeth; the first, or baby teeth, reach their fullness at about the ages of six to seven, when they fall out and are replaced by the permanent teeth. It is also around this time, six years of age, that most children begin their formal education.

The other phenomenon is the creation of a triangle in which the mother is a sexual object for both father and son, or the father a sexual object for mother and daughter. When this happens, as it invariably does in our culture, we have to deal with the parent's jealousy and hostility to the child. It may be quite natural for a boy to feel some jealousy over his father's sexual relation with his mother. This jealousy in no way threatens the father. It is quite another story when the father becomes jealous of his son because he senses that his wife favors or prefers the boy. This situation is fraught with real danger for the child. In the same way the mother's jealousy of her daughter poses a serious threat to the girl. This aspect of the Oedipus complex is culturally determined. “In this sense,” according to Fenichel, “the Oedipus complex is undoubtedly a product of family influence.”⁶ Its specific form will depend, therefore, upon the dynamics of the family situation.

Another element, namely, sexual guilt, also enters into this complex. Although all parties are involved in the triangle, the child is made to feel guilty about his sexual feelings and behavior. He acted innocently, following his instinctual impulses, but in the parents’ eyes any sexual expression by the child is “bad,” “dirty,” or “sinful.” Parents project their sexual guilt upon the child. Thus, the Oedipus complex of the child generally reflects the unresolved oedipal conflicts of his parents. The child's feeling of guilt about his sexuality derives less from what his parents say or do but, as Fenichel points out, even more from “the general attitude of the parents toward sex, which is constantly manifested by them, with or without their knowledge.”⁷

But this statement only locates the problem in the preceding generation. To understand how this guilt arose in the first place, we must study the origin of those cultural forces that created the oedipal situation. In a subsequent chapter we will undertake this study by analyzing the mythology and history of ancient Greece. We can anticipate its result by saying that fear and hostility between parents and children and sexual guilt are both results of the change from the matriarchal to the patriarchal principle of relationships. That change occurred at the beginning of civilization, when mankind gained power over nature. The acquisition of power led to a struggle for power that goes on to this day in all “civilized” societies.

Finally, the complex also includes a murderous rage on the part of the child toward the parent of the same sex. The child wants to kill the parent, but is more afraid that he will be killed by the parent. Because of the great fear, the rage is suppressed and comes out only in death wishes against the parent or as fear that the parent will die or be killed in an accident. In the end, the child is made to feel guilty about his hostility toward the parent.

The Freudian position has been that the child's rage and hostility against the parent is directly related to and associated with his incest wishes. Thus, Erik Erikson writes, “The ‘Oedipus’ wishes (so simply and so trustingly expressed in the boy's assurance that he will marry his mother and make her proud of him and in the girl's that she will marry her father and take much better care of him) lead to secret fantasies of vague murder and rape. The consequence is a deep sense of guilt-a strange sense, for it forever seems to imply that the individual has committed a crime which, after all, was not committed but would have been biologically quite impossible. This secret guilt, however, helps to drive the whole weight of initiative toward desirable ideals immediate practical goals.”⁸ This view supports the idea that the Oedipus complex is not only biologically determined but essential to the continued progress of culture. Doesn't it seem strange that such lovely feelings on the part of a child for a parent could lead to “secret fantasies of vague murder and rape”? It makes more sense to me to assume that it is only after the child is made to feel guilty about his incest wishes that the secret fantasies of murder and rape arise.

This was also the view of my teacher, Wilhelm Reich. In his study, Der Triebhafte Charakter (The Impulsive Character), published in 1925 while he was still a member of the psychoanalytic movement, he writes, “The Oedipal phase is among the most meaningful in human experience. Without exception its conflicts stand at the core of every neurosis and mobilize powerful guilt feelings…These guilt feelings develop with particular intensity into attitudes of hate, which are part and parcel of the Oedipus complex.⁹ Note that the hate is derived from the guilt, not the other way around. Reich also had a different view of the value of the guilt feelings. Erikson saw them as furthering cultural progress. For Reich, they stemmed from a sex-repressive upbringing, the function of which “is that of laying the foundation for authoritarian culture and economic slavery.”¹⁰

Having delineated the Oedipus complex, we are interested next to learn its fate in the personality. How are the conflicts contained within it resolved? If it was merely a question of the sexual feelings of a child for his parent, these, being infantile in nature, would be superseded in the course of natural growth. No child hangs onto its baby teeth forever. They are pushed out by the permanent teeth as the latter emerge. The same should be true for infantile sexual feelings. With the onset of mature sexuality in puberty, the young person would direct his sexual feelings toward objects outside the family. Unfortunately, in our culture this natural development does not occur without disturbance. The infantile sexual feelings are too entangled with feelings of guilt, fear, and hatred for such a simple resolution to occur. The whole complex is repressed.

The repression of the Oedipus complex takes place under the threat of castration. In this, both Freud and Reich are in accord. The boy gives up his striving to be sexually close to his mother and his hostility to his father out of fear of castration. Freud says specifically that “the boy's Oedipus complex succumbs to the dread of castration.”¹¹ The child is afraid that his penis will be cut off or taken away. When children are threatened with punishment for masturbation, this threat to the genitals is often explicitly stated. But even where neither parent makes such an overt threat, the fear of castration is not absent. The boy is aware that he is competing with his father, and he can sense the latter's hostility. Since the penis is the offending organ, it is only natural to assume that it will be injured or cut off. Human castration was practiced in past times. People had their hands cut off for stealing. It is not difficult to see why boys would develop this image of the threatened punishment. Many people have typical anxiety dreams about this possibility. A patient of mine related one from his youth. He dreamed that his penis elongated and passed out the window, down the front of the building, across the street, and up the front of the building opposite to enter a window. On this street there was a tram railway. Just as his penis was about to enter the window, he heard the clang of an approaching streetcar. In all haste he was trying to get his penis back into his room before the car ran over it, when he awoke.

I could advance another hypothesis to account for the fact that all my patients have a fear of castration. Any hostility directed at a child for his sexuality by a parent will produce in the child a pulling up and contraction of his pelvic floor. Hostility will have this effect, even though it takes the form of a hateful look. And as long as the child is frightened of the parent, the tension in the pelvic floor will remain. Since tension and fear are equivalent, the contraction of the pelvic floor is associated with a fear of injury to the genitals. The person will not be conscious of the fear if he is not conscious of the tension. In that case, the fear of castration may be expressed in dreams or slips of the tongue. However, using body techniques that help the person become aware of the tension often brings the fear to consciousness.

My female patients also suffer from a fear of castration, experienced as a fear of injury to the genital area. However, in most cases this fear is not conscious, and it may require considerable analytic and body work before the person allows herself to feel the fear. Generally it is easier for the patient to experience the hostility of the parent as a threat to life. Such threats, because of the fear they evoke, function as threats of castration. In addition, girls are shamed and humiliated for any overt expression of sexual feeling, especially toward the father. Since the fear of humiliation produces a suppression of sexual feeling, it acts like a threat of castration.

The most effective weapon a parent has to control a child is the withdrawal of love or its threat. A young child between the ages of three and six is too dependent on parental love and approval to resist this pressure. Robert's mother, as we saw earlier, controlled him by “cutting him out.” Margaret's mother beat her into submission, but it was the loss of her father's love that devastated her. Whatever the means parents use, the result is that the child is forced to give up his instinctual longing, to suppress his sexual desire for one parent and his hostility toward the other. In their place he will develop feelings of guilt about his sexuality and fear of authority figures. This surrender constitutes an acceptance of parental power and authority and a submission to the parents’ values and demands. The child becomes “good”, which means that he gives up his sexual orientation in favor of one directed toward achievement. Parental authority is introjected in the form of a superego, ensuring that the child will follow his parents’ wishes in the acculturation process. In effect, the child now identifies with the threatening parent. Freud says, “The whole process, on the one hand, preserves the genital organ, wards off the danger of losing it; on the other hand, it paralyzes it, takes its function away from it.”¹²

The effective suppression of the feelings associated with the Oedipus complex leads to the development of the superego. This, as we have seen, is a psychic function that represents the internalized parental prohibitions. But while this psychic process has been adequately described in the psychoanalytic literature, little has been written about the fact that the suppression of feeling occurs in the body. The mechanism for this suppression is the development of chronic muscular tensions, which block the movements that would express the feeling. For example, if a person wants to suppress an impulse to cry because he feels ashamed about crying, he would tense the muscles of his throat to prevent the sob from being expressed. We could say that he choked off the impulse or that he swallowed his tears. In this case the person is aware of the feeling of crying or sadness. However, if not crying becomes part of the person's way of being, that is, part of his character (only babies cry), then the tensions in the muscles of his throat develop a chronic quality and are removed from consciousness. Such a person may pride himself that he doesn't cry when hurt, but the fact is that he cannot cry even should he wish to because the inhibition has become structured in his body and is now beyond conscious control. An inability to cry is commonly encountered among men who complain about a lack of feeling. The person may be depressed and recognize that he is unhappy, but he cannot feel his sadness.

A similar mechanism operates in the suppression of sexual and other feelings. By sucking in the belly, pulling up the pelvic floor, and holding the pelvis immobile, one can reduce the flow of blood into the genital organs and block the natural sexual movements of the pelvis. At first, this is done consciously by tensing the appropriate muscles. But in time the tension becomes chronic and removed from consciousness. In some cases the tension is so severe that the person is not aware of any sexual feelings. I have a patient in therapy who is unable to feel any sexual desire, much as she would like to. In other cases the effect of the tension is to reduce the amount of sexual feeling the person can experience. In these persons one can find superego prohibitions against feeling and expressing sexual desire. The psychic and somatic determinants of behavior are functionally identical. But without acting upon the somatic component, one cannot effectively change character.

Broadly speaking, feeling is the perception of movement. If a person holds his arm absolutely immobile for five minutes, he will lose the feeling of his arm. He won't feel that he has an arm. The reader can experience this loss of sensation or feeling by letting his arm hang at his side without movement for five minutes or so. Similarly, if you put a hat on; notice how for a few minutes you are conscious of the hat, but then, if it doesn't move, that consciousness disappears and you forget about it. But not all movement leads to feeling. Perception is necessary; if one moves while asleep, there is no feeling. But without movement, there is nothing to perceive. Since the suppression of feeling is accomplished by chronic muscular tensions that immobilize the body, it is impossible for a person to sense a suppressed feeling. He may know logically that feelings are suppressed, but he cannot feel or perceive them. By the same token, character that is structured in the body as chronic tension is generally beyond the person's conscious perception.

An observer can see the tensions and, if he is trained, can interpret them to understand the person and his history. The common remark that “we do not see ourselves as others see us” is true because our eyes are turned outward. We “see” ourselves subjectively, that is, through feeling, whereas others see us objectively, through vision. Thus, an observer can see by the way we hold ourselves (stiff upper lip, set jaw, and tight throat) that we cannot allow ourselves to give in to crying. All we feel is that we have no desire to cry. The same thing is true of sexuality. The way we carry ourselves expresses our relation to our sexuality. If the pelvis is cocked back but loose and swinging, it denotes a strong identification with one's sexuality. If it is tucked forward (tail between legs) and held rigidly, it expresses the opposite attitude. We are our bodies, and they reveal who we are.

Both Freud and Fenichel held the belief that neurosis resulted from an inadequate repression of the Oedipus complex. Its persistence was supposed to fixate the individual at an infantile level of sexual development. We are familiar with the man who lives at home with his mother and who is neither married nor has a regular sex life. His life does seem to have an infantile quality. Most people are aware of the incestuous relationship between mother and son except the two persons involved. The man would strongly deny that he had any sexual feelings for or interest in his mother. I would believe him. He has suppressed all sexual desire for her and has effectively repressed the memory of any feeling he once had. His guilt would not permit him to remain in the situation if he had any conscious sexual feeling for his mother. He is “hung up” on her, not because of an inadequate repression but because the repression was too severe. He has no sexual feeling left with which to go out into the world as a man. Such severe suppression of sexual feeling can be explained only by assuming that there was an equally intense incestuous attachment during the oedipal period.

Repression of the Oedipus complex allows the child to advance into the latency period. Theoretically, this enables him to invest his energies in the outer world, but, as we have just seen, if the repression is severe, this avenue is very limited. The Freudian position poses a real dilemma, as Fenichel notes: “Superficially, no sexual attachment is completely attractive because the partner is never the mother; in a deeper layer, every sexual attachment has to be inhibited because every person represents the mother.”¹³ Given the repression of the Oedipus complex, there is no way the individual can find fulfillment; the most he can hope for is to find a place in society, do his work, get married, and raise a family. Neurosis for Freud represented an inability to function normally in society. He recognized that civilization exacted a price, imposed restraints upon the individual, and created discontents. If in an individual case the price was too high, the restraints too severe, the discontents too great, psychoanalysis was available to help the person gain the ego strength to adapt more successfully.

Freud thought that only by repressing the Oedipus complex could one avoid the fate of Oedipus. But, as we saw, that doesn't work. The oedipal conflicts are not resolved by repression. They are only buried in the unconscious, where they operate as a fate to control one's behavior. Reich says, “When Freud said that the Oedipus complex vanishes as a result of castration anxiety, we have to add the following: True it vanishes, but it arises anew in the form of character reactions, which, on the one hand, perpetuate its main features in a distorted form, and are, on the other hand, reaction formations against its basic elements.”¹⁴

I agree with Reich. The Oedipus complex vanishes as a conscious phenomenon through repression, but it then becomes active in the unconscious. Consequently, a person will marry someone who, superficially, is the opposite of his or her parent but then be compelled by the complex to treat the spouse as the parent. Another result is the superficial demonstration of the proper filial love and respect to the parent of the same sex while maintaining under the surface a great hostility. In effect, as I shall explain later, each boy marries his mother and each girl marries her father. And, while we do not kill the parent literally as Oedipus did, we do so psychologically by the hatred in our hearts. It is my argument that repressing the Oedipus complex assures that on a psychological level one will share the fate of Oedipus.