July 2020 Reich’s Phallic Character: The Paranoid- The Case of Sandra

manic depressive

Sandra, 42, was a highly intelligent wiz with numbers who has excelled in mathematics since she was a youngster. She was accepted into an Ivy League university and ended-up with a lucrative position in a top-tier brokerage firm in Manhattan.  Sandra’s relationship with math had always been straight-forward and involved no interpretation; it was a pure and simple proposition. As long as her mind focused on numbers she managed well.

The problems arose in other areas of her life and there she did not cope effectively. Sandra was known among her work associates to be difficult, and, at times, stridently combative. She misread cues, created “stories” in her head about other people’s trespasses; and was convinced they were calculating ways to undermine her. Frequently, she would provoke others in a misguided attempt to prove that her suspicions were correct. She couldn’t resist setting up others and relishing the sense of vindication.

Paranoid Symptomology

She often squinted her eyes, peering out through tiny slits – a sign of ocular holding or eye armoring. (https://orgonomictherapy.com/2019/04/25/cultivating-clear-eyes/ ). Particularly, at those times her perceptions were compromised as she could not accurately assess reality through her eyes. With an ocular block, one’s vision can be blurred, resulting in less visual acuity and the mobility of the eye is diminished. Sandra’s eyes looked frozen, wide-eyed with alarm and terror. Her eyes also expressed anger as she peered into her alienated landscape.

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June 2020 Reich’s Phallic Character: The Manic Depressive – The Case of Delia

manic depressive

Delia, 40, has been called “high-strung” for most of her life; one might say she is “wired”. She expresses predominantly the manic side of this character type although she can fall into depressive episodes. She is known to over-talk, over-eat, over-shop, as she flits from topic to topic during conversations, and is chronically over scheduled. She moves from event to event, project to project — on good days. Delia thrives on impulsive ideas and manifests them quickly without sufficient contemplation, manifesting a textbook manic depressive personality.

Delia has a disorganized quality that permeates her life although she is perceived as functioning well at her job as a sales manager in a start-up.

She is excitable, eccentric and mimics a hot-air balloon that stays up indefinitely until she performs a crash-land. She experiences panic when her instability moves to a breaking point and she feels like she is spinning in circles. She has difficulty maintaining any type of schedule, tends to be undisciplined and “unregulated”, and is not likely to calm down unless she drops from sheer exhaustion. Over time this up-and-down process is wearing her thin as she unravels more with each bout.

She has been married for fifteen years and although he is patient with her ups-and-downs, she causes problems; her hyper-quality creates havoc as she moves about the house at record speed with a mile-long to-do list. She lapses into irritability; she is easily frustrated and impatient, and at times becomes caught in obsessive thinking that traps her in spirals as her thoughts take over and she becomes immobilized and confused.

Delia’s style is volatile. The chaotic elements spin her into a depression where life feels meaningless and empty, and her body becomes laden with exhaustion and pain from the extreme tension. Then she might stay in bed, tossing and turning, throughout her day, in a restless stupor.

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May 2020 Reich’s Phallic Character: The Chronic Depressive – The Case of Bob

chronic depressiveLife in Quarantine – the Global Pandemic

We are living and dying in the midst of an historic, once-in-a-century event — a global crisis, the proportions of WWII with stark reminders of the food lines and poverty of the Great Depression. Many of us are facing immediate financial ruin as businesses collapse, and jobs are lost; the anxiety of faltering resources pervade our consciousness.  We read the news and know we are tumbling into a free fall, over the cliff of uncertainty; the unknowable surrounds us, leading to chronic depressive tendencies.

We struggle through a multitude of feelings as they bounce off each other on our own psychic pool table. The early morning might elicit depression: “I will stay in bed, I feel too lethargic to move. I feel like I am sinking, I don’t want to face another day feeling low”; the next moment invites some energy with the thought of an inspired activity: “OK I am going to clean house today, or plant flowers in my garden, I will feel better if I do something, anything productive. I must stay in the moment”.

Mid-morning: “I need to sign in to my remote work as I am lucky to have a job”. Exhaustion sets in from Zooming. “I feel angry and irritable by late afternoon and my mate is getting on my nerves.” “You are too controlling, demanding – please stop and give me some space”. Tempers flare like sizzling fireworks only to fizzle leaving a kind of emptiness and feelings of abandonment. Later a realization emerges: “I could be alone going through this, that might be challenging too. Is it happy hour yet?“ “OK! I feel better, it is time to watch Netflix”. “I better turn off the TV that compels me to watch for hours.” “Time to sleep except I am up at 2:00 tossing and turning for what feels like hours – thoughts of everything crowd my mind. I am sick of staying home; I miss my extended family; I yearn to hug them. I feel a panic in the middle of the night, I have a cough –do I have the virus or is it my allergies?” Sleep deprived I start yet another day in quarantine. “I hope we continue to flatten the curve but the politics of all of this is making me crazy. I am furious at the government’s response – grrrh!” “One positive in all of this is I am perfecting my cooking, eating, cooking, eating, cooking, although it is exhausting – oh if only I could go to a restaurant and eat with others.” The beat of the quarantine goes on.

Depression

Many of us can be prone to chronic depression which may have existed all our lives. A few suffer from a biological, endogenous depression that therapy and medication can lift. Many have had significant trauma that has resulted in a lifelong battle with depression. Depression can manifest as lethargy, difficulty finding meaning and purpose, feeling waylaid through various significant periods in a life until the losses accrue, the missed opportunities pile up and strong depressive symptoms weigh us down; insomnia, a sense of hopelessness and helplessness to conquer rather than collapse in the battlefield. We may feel historic loss from early trauma that haunts us; a loneliness that is at the base of our existence.

This blog is about a character type called the Chronic Depressive which is a style that differentiates a situational depression as a character marker, from the tendency to exist in a semi-state of depression.

Bob has suffered depression all his life to varying degrees. He has been successful in his career as an engineer and advanced to managing ten people in a successful start-up.

He is married and has two children, 5 and 8, and enjoys family life, although at times he feels he doesn’t meet the expectations and lacks the energy to sustain all his commitments. He feels guilty with his wife and his kids. He simply can’t do enough and falters, feeling badly about himself. He is not measuring up.

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March –Reich’s Phallic Narcissistic Character: The Case of Mark

Mark, 48 moves aggressively in the world with a swagger. He wants what he wants when he wants it. He is an accomplished VP of sales in a successful start-up. Colleagues gravitate toward him, not for his intrinsic likeability but because he has a glow that they attempt to use to their advantage– he has charisma and is boastfully confident so they need to keep in his good graces. (Frequently some business cultures are based on using others for gain without the cultivation of more meaningful values.)

Mark is an opportunist who positions himself well and strives to maintain a top-dog position. He can charm a room with his blazing smile of perfectly aligned white teeth and trendy yet seemingly careless clothing.

Mark has a wife, two kids, a home in a posh neighborhood; he has all the trappings of ultimate success. He has succeeded because of his strong energy system, drive and discipline. He is heading for a fall, though, as his attitudes of grandiosity and inflation give him a false sense of untouchability, as if he can get away with anything, soaring above the clouds without consequences. However, he recently spread himself too thin by purchasing a vacation home while making poor investments, causing him anxiety, an unusual state for him to experience.

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Cultivating Clear Eyes

Eyes in orgonomyOrgonomy is a mind-body approach to health. Allopathic medicine (in some quarters) is shifting toward embracing this paradigm, as physicians understand that diseases emanate from a complex interactional mind-body field rather than being limited to a silo of discreet symptoms.

In Orgonomy, we outline a map of the body as it correlates to character structure, and each area – eyes, mouth, cervical, chest, diaphragm, belly and pelvis – has its own functional capacity to open or close its gates to the movement of energy (including sensation, perception, capacity for movement and release) throughout the body.

We designate this map as the seven segments of armoring and describe how each segment acts to either fulfill or limit our capacity to experience aliveness and pleasure; depending on how armored (tense, unyielding, slack) each segment is (see blog Reich’s Understanding of Character and Body Expression, August 30, 2017).

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Reich’s Understanding of Character and Body Expression

Character and Body Expression

Reich discovered, through years of working with patients as well as methodical research, that “…the psychic structure is at the same time a biophysiological structure which represents a specific state indicative of the interplay of the person’s vegetative forces.” 1

What does this mean and how do we apply it to our lives?

In Orgonomic therapy we work to disrobe, if you will, the character — layer by layer. That means the therapist observes, points out, and explores with the client the way — the style that defines how the person engages within himself and the world. How do these character attitudes manifest and shape his total expression and are they effective or problematic? Our job as clinicians is to release our client from the severely limiting character traits that are defensive in nature, learned as a way to cope with early and later life challenges. Although the defenses ‘worked’ to some extent, they become liabilities with negative repercussions increasing with age if not altered.

For example, if a client habitually withdraws as a way to cope with life, that defense is unmasked and deeper feelings are released that have been bound in layers of armoring (the term Reich coined to describe character and biophysical defenses). Then the client learns a more effective and expansive way of relating by developing skill in self-expression rather than relying on retreat. Another example is if a client is emotionally controlling with outbursts of dramatic expression that dwarf the other; that habit is sheared away such that deeper feelings that drive the dramatic display are revealed and new ways of relating are instated. Harshness in style and tone is a sign of character and biophysical armor.

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Touch in Psychotherapy

Touch in psychotherapy has been a controversial topic. This is a very complex discussion as there are many considerations to balance.

First though, let’s discuss a basic misconception still prevalent within vast swaths of psychotherapists and medical professionals, as well as society at large, for that matter. Namely, the mind/body dichotomy and it is still alive and well within psychotherapy since Freud. Wilhelm Reich bridged the scientific and theoretical gap between mind and body elegantly. Reich, through years of clinical experience with patients, and a legacy of scientifically validated laboratory experiments, documented how patients’ psychic conditions were reflected in medical conditions and how physical conditions were mirrored in the psyche.

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Reich’s Concept of Contact

My blog has focused lately on a delineation of armoring and the seven segments of armor. I will move on to another relevant concept and how Reich’s Concept of Contact has contributed to the field of psychology and psychiatry. Elsworth Baker in Man in the Trap aptly describes contact: “Contact requires movement of energy above a certain minimal level plus excitation. Where the organism is free of blocks there is a free-flowing plasmatic movement which gives rise to sensations (organ sensations) and a three-dimensional perception of the body.”

What does this really mean in our daily life? When we feel in contact with another, there is an exchange of energy, feeling, body sensation and excitation. An interesting personal, psychological, political or philosophical conversation can engender an experience of contact. Our cognitions, feelings, and body sensations intertwine and we feel ‘alive’ in the interaction. It can be a simple discussion between two people about prosaic items, like plans for dinner, an event you are going to, or a project you are taking on together, and you enjoy the mutual contact and exchange.Reich’s Concept of Contact

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Reich’s Map of Body Armor: Pelvic Segment

We have arrived, in our delineation of the segments of body armor, at the final, seventh segment: the pelvis. Once the other six segments have been opened, releasing the pelvic segment will allow us to experience a complete flow of energy and circulation from the top of our head through to our feet. Energy can circulate and be released through work, pleasurable activities, exercise, and sexual expression. The pelvis should be flexible, mobile, and move with ease so that it can allow energetic movement rather than become a block to expression. This openness from head to toe creates a sense of well-being, health, ease of movement, and relaxation. Relational intimacy also increases as our expressions flow more freely and we can make good contact with others.body armor

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Reich’s Map of Body Armor: Abdominal Segment

 

Reich delineated seven segments of armor. As a review of my prior posts, we have covered the ocular, oral, cervical, thoracic and diaphragmatic segments. The remaining two are the abdominal and pelvic segments. At a point in the therapeutic process when all these segments have been sufficiently opened, the energy can be released effectively throughout the body, and particularly in the lower half. Reich called this energy economy in that energy is created and released efficiently. This supports a healthy mind/body because tensions and stasis that build up are released regularly through the open channels of all the segments. With the opening of the final, pelvic segment, sexual contact becomes more gratifying, with full surrender and release of the body’s excess energy. This allows for expansion, deep relaxation, and complete pulsation within the autonomic nervous system (ANS).

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