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
