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
