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
