Tag: bodymind

Reich’s economic model of psychosomatics (2 – the biological core)

Following his discovery of the link between sexual repression and character, Reich inquired into the nature of the mechanism underlying this link. His starting point was the observation that there existed, even if they were hard to codify, characteristic postures and facial expressions which allowed the most unlearned observer to decipher the character disposition of his interlocutor. Reich hypothesized that these resulted from, in the main, hypertonicity of certain functional muscle groups. Almost all muscles display in equilibrium or at rest a natural level of contraction called tonus. When this equilibrium is disturbed by a constant perception of threat, muscles become pathologically hypertonic. The attitude habitually assumed, be it of aggression, mistrust, helplessness etc, then becomes anchored in the muscular economy with attendent effects (though Reich does not discuss this) on skeletal development as well. Reich contends that the somatic and psychic expression of neurosis are functionally identical and mutually reinforcing. The somatic expression he calls the “biological core” of the neurosis. It is similarly this pattern of muscular spasticity which disrupts the orgastic response.

Reich goes on to make his central conjecture, laid out in Function of the Orgasm, that the natural orgasm serves a purpose of discharging vital energy and thereby regulating the energy economy of the body; this is thus a direct somatic parallel to Freud’s libido theory. Disturbances of the orgastic function compel the organism to regulate its energy economy otherwise, whether by reduced energy production (lethargy) or by other, imperfect mechanisms such as compulsive behaviors which only kick in when the tension has reached an unbearable level and then only partly resolve it.

The hypothesis of the “functional identity” of the neurosis and its somatic expression allows Reich to complement then-existing psychoanalytic techniques with a body-oriented approach and, he claims, achieve more consistent results, more rapidly, as well as penetrate some types of neurosis which were less amenable to traditional methods. His espoused technique advocates alternating opportunistically between addressing psychic and somatic blockages. This he called “vegetotherapy” in an allusion to its effects on the vegetative, or what we would now call the autonomic (i.e. involuntary) nervous system. How he did this in practice seems to be less well documented, perhaps because his discovery of the biological core of psychic neuroses leads him into more speculative areas of inquiry and the period of his interest in psychosomatic therapy is as a result relatively condensed, leaving methodology to be developed by others.

This new period in Reich’s life is underscored by a realization that sexual repression has not only somatic effects with psychic correlates – neuroses – but also that these primary somatic effects have in the long term direct secondary chronic effects at the somatic level in the form of illnesses such as cancer, dementia and rheumatic arthritis. This takes the hygienic challenge a long way from treated self-reported actual neuroses with anecdotal curiosities in turn-of-the-century Vienna to treating major plagues of contemporary civilization, both psychic and somatic.

Part 3: Reich’s legacy

Reich’s economic model of psychosomatics (1 – from Freud’s libido theory to character analysis)

Although the work of Wilhelm Reich in relation to what he called sex-economy lies at the root of many contemporary approaches to psychotherapy and personal development, it is widely misrepresented, caricaturized and misunderstood and a summary of it for the educated layman is, to my knowledge at least, difficult to come by. I am often asked to explain Reich’s thought which has very much influenced my own, and so I thought fit to attempt such a summary. In this and the next article, I propose to set out how he arrived at, and the basis for, the character-analytic approach to psychotherapy and his later vegetotherapy which aimed at directly working on what he called the “biological core” of neurosis. In a subsequent article, I would like to offer a review of his theories in the light of current knowledge, and particularly in what one would hope could be described as a somewhat more accommodating social environment than prevailed at the time of his work. (UPDATE: since I wrote this article, a very good overview of Reich’s life and work has been written by Jason Louv, see here. My own treatment is a bit more technical.)

Reich’s developments of psychotherapy all draw root in Freud’s early work. Subsequent developments of Freud’s psychoanalysis, which Reich viewed as a capitulation to social conservatism, took their work in different directions. They share, nonetheless, a substantial common bedrock, and Reich remained deeply admirative of Freud’s labors even when he disagreed with him on fundamental matters.

As is well-known, the various phases of Freud’s thought never resulted in a single synthesis and different strands within it remained in tension with each other. Freud thus never arrived at an integrated theory of psychic functioning. Reich took his lead from Freud’s libido theory of neurosis; neurosis was thus the result of a binding of sexual energy as a result of developmental factors in childhood. Freud never elucidated how this binding took place or how psychoanalysis was precisely supposed to work in order to dissolve the binding and thus resolve neurosis, but he developed different models of psychodynamics, in each case essentially of a mental nature. The blocking factors in neurosis were thus mental representations and the prescribed route to their dissolution ultimately also mental, although it proceeded from the unconscious, which for Freud could not be directly observed.

Reich’s own approach is quite at ease with Freud’s model of the three stages of consciousness, being the system unconscious, the system preconscious and the system conscious. According to this model, drives which arise in the unconscious undergo a sort of filtering process in order to arrive at the level of consciousness, during which their associations and objects change more or less radically. Thus, for example, the infantile desire to suck, if insufficiently satisfied in infancy, persists in the unconscious and is satiated, though never ultimately satisfied, through ersatz means which could involve actual sucking (thumb, lollipop), other oral actions (obesity and bulimia), fixation with oral sexuality, or other forms of clinging behavior not immediately oral in their manifestation. In order to achieve satisfaction of these ersatz or secondary drives, individuals would develop typical strategems which are in a direct line of descent from those they employed successfully in childhood – all essentially manipulative, solliciting one or other emotion on the part of the caregiver which would then elicit the desired response. Some would focus on solliciting pity, others fear, still others admiration, or benevolence through humor, or distraction, etc. Whilst Freud did not feel he had a social mission and confined himself to the therapy of those cases who presented themselves for treatment, it is easy enough to see how the learning process in early childhood coupled with certain not immediately definable characteristics of the child would lead to characteristic dispositions in adulthood, a starting-point for Reich’s work.

Reich’s interest in character was at first prompted, however, by considerations of methodology. Freud and many of his close collaborators had never taken a systematic interest in determining and assessing what worked in the therapeutic context. It was supposed that individuals needed to “cooperate” in the therapy. If they failed to do so, there was no alternative approach available. Reich realized, however, that the fact of cooperation or of failure to cooperate was endogenous to the therapeutic setting. It itself needed to be interpreted and worked through. The manifestation of resistance was evidence that one was reaching carefully repressed material. To dismiss a patient for refusal to cooperate was to admit defeat, perhaps at the moment when one was closest to achieving a breakthrough.

Reich started with a layman’s concept of personality, but soon progressed it to a developmental model in which typical frustrations of infantile libido led to a freezing of certain character responses, which were then overlaid on each other. In the therapeutic setting, the therapist would work backwards through these layers, to arrive at, and liberate, the earliest material.

Reich also noted that all patients presented with actual disturbances of “natural” genital sexuality. These disturbances were of various sorts but fundamentally there were only a limited number of variables. Decreased or absent pleasure in the genital act could be due to (i) diminished sensitivity of the genital apparatus itself, (ii) its failure to respond to conventional stimuli or at all or (iii) a failure of genital response to (sufficiently) engage adjacent muscles involved in the natural orgastic response. Persons with diminished sensitivity were often, in the male, erectively potent or, in the female, highly flirtatious, but derived little pleasure from the sexual act. Reich saw this as an instrumentalisation of sexuality in the service of a secondary drive. Persons with erectile dysfunction or vaginismus were disinterested in sexuality or conventional sexuality because it conflicted with defense mechanisms they had developed. Persons, finally, with a flat orgastic response curve (premature ejaculation in the male, muted or no orgasm in the female) encountered during the process of sexual arousal psychological obstacles which made full sexual expression impossible. This typology of genital response, Reich was able to correlate, albeit loosely, with the stages in the development of the libido posited by Freud as well as with contemporary character. Frustration prior to the oral stage led to a withdrawal of sexual interest and to schizoid character. Frustration at the oral stage led to oral fixation and a lack of autonomy, expressed as sexual passivity and a capacity for surrender but a diminished response. Frustration at the anal stage led to rigidity and inability to surrender, whilst frustration at the genital stage expressed itself as individuals with strong seductive powers and sexually active, but reporting a lack of pleasure in the sexual act and as seeking it for secondary, narcissistic purposes. In Reich’s view, the vast majority of people presented with some form of neurosis and it had both character and genital expression.

Reich’s approach felt little need for Freud’s later ego theory, but remained compatible with it. In addition to his methodological work, Reich’s greatest breakthrough was his solution of the problem of masochism, discussed at length in Character Analysis. Freud had posited a primary masochism, fruit of a biological drive he termed the death instinct (Todestrieb). For Reich this had no parallel in the animal kingdom and was unacceptable. He derived masochism as a secondary drive when the pleasure principle was frustrated by overwhelming violence to which the individual as a small child was powerless to respond. The frustrated drive first sought an outlet in sadism, turning this sadism against itself when it was further repressed. Constant juxtaposition of pleasure and punishment led to a state where they became psychically interlinked. Reich pointed out that no-one took pleasure in actual pain, only in the expectation of it. Pent-up energy which could not be channeled into pleasurable activity led to tension and anesthesia and the need for more extreme stimuli to break through to the core of the sexual drive.

Whilst Freud brokered a peace with society and seems to have viewed sublimation of sexual drives as in some degree necessary to civilization, Reich presents an uncompromising faith in the natural order reminiscent of Rousseau and Nietzsche; for him it is axiomatic that to recover the natural functioning of the human organism is the one and only path to happiness. Natural man is capable, for Reich, of the highest moral qualities and it is his sexual repression that brings evil and suffering into the world.

Part 2: The Biological Core

Our love affair with nonsense

One advantage of undergoing depth body psychotherapy is the anger that it releases; from which my readers can surely benefit. Here goes a rant, therefore 😉

I am of the view that tantra is nothing more or less than an exploration and acceptance of who we really are as sexual, spiritual beings.

To embrace tantra is therefore to rebel against thousands of years of repression and manipulation of our identities by others, and to reclaim the bodies that we live in for ourselves. It’s a revolutionary engagement; nothing can be more revolutionary.

I could also add to my definition the mystical heart of tantra, which is the doctrine of non-duality. But it is not really a doctrine; it is really an evidence, if you know yourself.

To realize this evidence and to enact this rebellion, no-one needed to invent something called “tantra”. Humankind has been doing this forever, in a multitude of cultural forms. I do not believe that anyone, in any period, in central/south Asia had access to any unique insights regarding this problem. At best, it was locally possible in some periods to go further in exploring this path than others elsewhere had done. Nonetheless, this truth of the human condition is around every corner and accessible to everyone. It is a pure evidence, and it has become even more so as scientific knowledge has accumulated.

Being doctrineless, tantra is wonderfully compatible with all forms of authentic knowledge that exist, both scientific and spiritual. A movement calling itself “tantric” can reinvent itself constantly and is perfectly justified in doing so, since its practices are judged only by the canon of utility, and not of  truth. Collectively, I believe we have discovered much about what is useful on the path of self-development; I believe we have discovered nothing about what is true.

It is, of course, understandable, indeed inevitable and even (maybe) desirable, that tantra – like other spiritual movements – manifests itself in movements and communities with a concrete form, and which develop allegiances, language and rituals of their own. This development both aids the spiritual growth of community members and is necessary to the propagation of the message and methods of the group. I have nothing, even, against its “branding” and I am very tolerant of quirkiness in its self-conception and self-expression.

But let’s remember that the very nature of non-duality implies that no doctrine can be “right”; all language is metaphorical and contingent. Nothing is more than a pathway to self-knowledge, and an infinite number of such pathways exist.

Which makes me wonder why so many self-proclaimed tantrikas give such a damn about lineages, ancientness of traditions, Hindu deities and so on; and even when they don’t, still path lip-service to a host of tantric myths and try to anchor what they are doing in the authority of the past.

That seems to me paradoxal, since tantra is all about living in the here and now…

This attachment to form, ritual and myth raises some more fundamental questions about what the nature of tantra is, and about the spiritual marketplace we inhabit, within which movements identifying themselves as tantra compete for attention.

It won’t have escaped the attention of even the most casual observer that this marketplace is unusually crowded, with numerous generic, branded and even patented therapy methods, bodywork modalities and spiritual practices competing with each other in terms of the hyperbole of their claims of efficacy.

The most successful (in terms of the following they attract) are usually those that promise the most for the least effort, or which particularly suit the personalities of the would-be disciples : notably in terms of those individuals’ desire to avoid personal responsibility for their spiritual path (or physical or emotional healing or well-being) and cast this on to the willing shoulders of ego-driven gurus.

Why is this so?

In my view and experience, leaving aside exogenous life events like illness and bereavement, and solitary practices like prayer and meditation, there are only two things which can effect long-term positive change in personal behavior. These are (i) love and (ii) work designed to release underlying tensions in the bodymind.

Furthermore, as far as love is concerned, I am convinced of its power but I am unsure of its duration if it is not accompanied by abreactive work.

Tensions in the bodymind being manifested physically (although they are not purely physical in their etiology), a physical dimension to such work is indispensable.  That leaves a broad panoply of activities which are not without value, though their relative value may be discussed (and may vary from person to person). However, it excludes, at the same time, a vast bunch of stuff which is of little value, no value at all, or quite negative in terms of its value because it distracts people from real solutions to their problems. For example, Tarot, numerology, mandalas, angels, mantras, crystals….It also puts into perspective the possible value of other modalities whose only reasonable mode of effective action is through the love and acceptance they communicate (though also limited energetic effects as well as autosuggestion are possible). In this category I would place, for example, reiki (see here for a review of its clinical effectiveness). I would be still more skeptical about other physical methods which do not involve significant manipulation, such as sophrology.

All of these modalities, apart from competing with tantra in the aforementioned spiritual marketplace, are, perhaps surprisingly (at least to me) actually embraced by many people who practice tantra, as a complement to their own practice.

This is, I believe, very damaging for the credibility of the practitioners concerned and for the layman’s understanding of what tantra has to offer, which is nonetheless so brilliantly set out in books by Osho and others.

At my last workshop with Advaita, I was particularly pleased to hear two spiritual myths debunked, myths with which many tantra practitioners coexist quite happily.

One was the notion of karma. According to Advaita (I paraphrase her), this is an immoral notion designed to encourage resignation in the face of violence. We are born with no form of original sin, whether Christian or oriental. On the contrary, we are born innocent and we are corrupted by parents, teachers and society. I entirely agree with this important, and objectively indisputable, moral standpoint.

A second was the zen notion of emptiness. According to zen, one should strive after emptiness in order to feel compassion. I think I understand this one and for me I have no problem in embracing that notion. Yet when Advaita says that we can only feel compassion from plenitude, it is a vastly more helpful conception to normal people. What prevents us from feeling compassion is what prevents us from feeling ourselves. And the search for emptiness can all too easily become a quest to repress feeling and emotion.

Having brilliantly debunked these concepts, though, why stop there?

I don’t doubt that it’s profitable to peddle the kind of nonsense you can find on www.schoolofawakening.com, for instance; but is it helpful to the soul? And therefore, is it ethical?

In any case, tantra it is not.