February –Reich’s Hysterical Character: The case of Melanie

Melanie, 41, is an active, vibrant, heterosexual woman with an abundance of energy coursing through her body. She has had a successful career as an executive and is financially secure. In spite of her career success, she suffers from debilitating anxiety that manifests in compulsive nervous habits, for example, chewing her nails or obsessively twisting her long auburn hair.  Her defensive style of laughing over everything, entertaining with a dramatic flair coupled with a chattery superficiality, leads her down an empty path. She focuses on her appearance and has a seductive flair obvious to those around her to the detriment of developing depth. Melanie over-exercises and is hyper busy; these character patterns are wearing thin internally and with her friends and colleagues. She lacks a central core, is suggestible, and can be easily influenced. She stands out as attractive and charming, yet embodies a sense of frantic frenzy that bubbles beneath the surface.

As she moves into her 40’s, aging issues are surfacing. She is in a transition from the young, driven woman climbing the ladder of success to one that is crossing over to critical junctures that are underdeveloped. She is externalized and has little connection with her interior. Melanie’s character patterns are no longer functional.

She has significant problems in the relationship arena as she flits from one mate to the next without an ability to settle and build on a relationship. Melanie moves toward relationships and then distances when she feels threatened by real intimacy. She would like to start a family — in theory — yet she is too restless to surrender to her loving feelings. She runs toward and away from men almost simultaneously. She can be flirtatious and alienate her friends with her seductiveness.

Melanie can slide into depression when she lets herself feel into her lonely emptiness which emerges when she is not working, exercising or running from activity to activity. She edges into a dark hopelessness. The pattern seems to be getting the better of her and she feels the dark shadow more often.

Melanie came to see me driven by her feelings of despair which were surfacing more frequently. We discussed taming her impulse to “run”. She felt deeply that she needed to change these impulses and behaviors. I made sure that all extraneous activities and treatments such as various “growth” workshops, acupuncture, healers, massage, were stopped so she could focus on therapy without running to and from her myriad of activities that would dilute our relationship. We discussed early-on that she would distance from me, “run” from me, much as she distances from others.

________________________________________________________

Starting in the fall of last year I began covering Reich’s character types: in October, the Schizophrenic character type, in November, Reich’s healthy paradigm as described in the Genital character. In 2020 I plan to use abbreviated case studies to illustrate the dynamics of the character type I select.

________________________________________________________

Returning to our case of the Hysterical Character, the term hysterical is an old-fashion analytic term that can be perceived as an offensive stereotype. However, it does serve to illustrate a specific character style, emanating, in part, from chronic fight and flight in the autonomic system that manifests in achievement, paired with defensive drivenness layered over emptiness as seen in our case example.

 I quote from my book Whole Therapist, Whole Patient:

“The hysterical character type exhibits a strong and compelling flight from contact that leads to chronic approach-avoid mechanisms, both in relationships and other areas of their lives. They can flit from relationship to relationship, deeply terrified of commitment. The abundance of free energy natural to this type is not fully lived or discharged as it causes too much anxiety to be contained and utilized. Thus the individual has chronic build-up of energy, experienced as anxiety, and acted out in flight, over dramatization and other behaviors that release it. That build-up leads to constant agitation, restlessness, lack of focus and immaturity. They are prone to some depression, moodiness and crave stimulation to alter their mood.” Whole Therapist, Whole Patient 67

“Reich considered the hysterical character a genital character with anxiety. This means that an individual, either male or female, has reached the developmental phase of genitality and is not lodged in an earlier developmentally regressed phase that prevents sufficient maturity. The hysterical character has the capacity for genitality but cannot embody it. That means, for the most part, that this character type does not have serious blockages or armoring throughout the segments of the body, thus they have freed up energy that flows down the body to the genitals mostly unobstructed. Therefore there is a high level of excitation in the system. Yet they suffer from anxiety related to this free moving energy and defend by running from real contact, focus and depth.” Whole Therapist, Whole Patient 66