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
