The Betrayal of the Body. Dr. Alexander Lowen M.D.

incorporation of the male ego by a female produces a witch. The witch upholds the view of the male ego that the female body is an object to be used sexually. Thus, the witch turns against her own body and gloats over its sacrifice because it represents the debased aspect of her personality. At the same time, she compensates for this debasement by elevating her ego image to that of the superior nonconformist who has rejected the old morality.

      The demonic drive of the witch also aims to destroy the male ego. By turning against her own femininity, the witch negates the role of love in sex and mocks the male who seeks her. Barbara's sexual submission reflects her contempt for the man. She is, in effect, saying, “I am nothing and you are a fool to want me.”

      The man who takes possession of a debased object wins a Pyrrhic victory. He is degraded in the eyes of the woman. Thus, Barbara took revenge upon her father, who had participated in the humiliation of the female.

       FIG. 3

      In making her unconscious childhood adjustments to her life situation, she could not have foreseen that the witch's revenge against the male would rob her of all feeling, or that by dissociating from her femininity she would be stuck with a “deadened” body and unable to respond to love. Barbara was left without a self because her body belonged to her mother and her ego to her father. As an adult, she came to realize that she was cheated, but she could not renounce the witch as long as she unconsciously accepted the value of her ego image and rejected her body.

      Barbara was both the witch and the victim, both the demonic ego who demanded the sacrifice of the female body and the submissive body terrified of the sacrifice. Such a split produces two conflicting identities. The split in Barbara's personality could be expressed in terms of life and death. To save her ego she had no choice but to give up her body. Submitting to her parents’ values meant turning against her body, but by this maneuver she assured her survival as well as her sanity. As a child she had to incorporate her father's image of the female (to which her mother assented) and to fantasize that this life-negative attitude had some sublime meaning.

      The sacrifice of the body in the schizoid personality is a symbolic act—not that many of these unfortunate beings do not make the literal sacrifice of suicide. Barbara's sacrifice consisted of the rejection of her body, the withdrawal of feeling from it, the denial of its significance as an expression of her being. But her conflict remained alive because her body remained alive and acceded to the symbolic sacrifice only under protest. In this struggle the body has an ally in the rational part of the mind, which, while helpless to overcome the demonic force, is nevertheless strong enough to bring the patient to therapy.

      The next case illustrates the split of identity in an individual whose personality was more intact than Barbara's. Henry was a highly successful man in his fifties who consulted me because of a lack of pleasure and satisfaction in his life. He had worked hard and had “made it,” but something was missing. “Money is no object,” he said in discussing the fee, but money couldn't help him. His success had brought on feelings of depression, the beginning of a stomach ulcer, and a strong desire to “get away from it all.” He thought only of the time when he would retire from business, but he had a presentiment that this would be no solution. He was constantly faced with problems which, he said, he could handle if they came one at a time, but all together they were too much.

      Describing his youth, Henry said that he had been regarded as the black sheep of the family who would not amount to much. Then one day he resolved to prove that he could succeed. He did, but success brought new challenges and further responsibilities. It wasn't easy to quit. What does one do after one quits? Much as Henry complained about his problems, he was excited by the opportunities they presented. Having committed himself to success, Henry had to go on being successful. This is quite a burden to carry, since success permits no letdown or release except through failure.

      Henry's decision to undergo analytic therapy lightened his burden. Some of the burden was shifted to the therapist, and Henry felt better and freer. When I pointed out to him how much he had neglected his body, he was impressed. He made up his mind to devote more attention to his body, and this helped him temporarily. Henry had both the will and the strength to make a significant effort to change his pattern of behavior, but he could not sustain this effort. Actually he regarded therapy as another challenge, to which he responded with his characteristic determination. Thus, therapy itself became another burden.

      One day as Henry sat in my office discussing his problems, he let himself go more than usual. His head dropped to one side, his face sagged, he looked very tired, and his eyes had a defeated expression. He looked as if he had been beaten, but didn't know it.

      Henry had an ego image of himself as invincible, which denied the inner reality of his feelings. It was not that Henry believed that he would always win. He was simply determined that he would never lose or be beaten down. Yet, physically he was a defeated man who refused to accept defeat. He was defeated in his attempt to find a personal meaning in financial success. He was in despair over his inability to find any pleasure in life. He had come to therapy to avoid the feeling of defeat and despair, but he had to accept these feelings to find himself.

      Henry's body was more alive than Barbara's. His musculature was better developed, and his skin had warmth and color. He had severe muscular tensions, which produced a bowing of the back, so that he was hunched forward and had to make an effort to straighten up. His neck muscles were very tense, and his neck was shortened. He had great difficulty in breathing under stress and he showed his respiratory difficulty in the tendency to blow the air out in expiration. He was also a heavy smoker. The tension in his body musculature was so severe that it bound him as if by chains. He was struggling against inner restraints of which he was unconscious, but committing all his energies to success in the outer world. Thus, he was split between the ego image and the reality of his body, between the outer aspects of success and achievement and the inner feeling of defeat and frustration.

      Henry's problem could be superficially understood in terms of his neurotic drive for success. In his unconscious mind, his body was a beast of burden to be harnessed to the demands of his ego. The body experienced these demands as a yoke which deprived it of freedom and denied it pleasure and satisfaction. Henry's body, unlike Barbara's, fought back. However, to the degree that he was out of contact with his body and unaware of its feelings, Henry showed schizoid tendencies. The sacrifice of his freedom was not made for financial success, as Henry believed, but for the image of success he had formed in his youth. To mobilize the body for the satisfaction of a real need (hunger, sex, pleasure, etc.) is to use it, while to subvert it for the fulfillment of an ego goal is to misuse or abuse it.

      Henry's problem was not as severe as Barbara's. He grasped and accepted the relation between the self and the body. Barbara could only concede a possibility, “If you say so!” Henry recognized that he had to release the muscular tensions in his body and he attacked this problem with an intensity that increased his tension. Barbara sensed the immobility of her body, but felt helpless to do anything about it. Barbara experienced her body as alien to her personality; she even expressed the wish not to have a body, which she viewed as a source of torment. She had been willing to sacrifice her body to satisfy the witch in her. Henry, on the other hand, accepted his body, but misused it. He subjected his body to his egotistic demand for success, hoping thereby to gain his freedom; but when success failed to produce freedom Henry realized he needed help.

      The schizoid conflict is a struggle between life and death and can be expressed as “to be or not to be.” By contrast, the neurotic conflict stems from guilt and anxiety about pleasure. This is not to say that the schizoid is free from such guilt and anxiety, but in his personality they are subordinated to the imperative need to survive. The schizoid personality pays a price for his existence: that price is the surrender of his right to make overt demands on life. The surrender of this right leads necessarily to some form of sacrifice, such as was seen in Barbara's case, and to an existence which finds its only satisfaction in negation. The negation of life in any form is a manifestation of a schizoid tendency, and in this sense, every emotional problem has a schizoid