Excerpts from “Fear of Life” by Alexander Lowen, M.D., Collier Books:
The neurotic individual is in conflict with himself or herself.
Neurotic character has a broken spirit and a fear of life
In adapting a child to the culture, sometimes the parent breaks the child’s spirit.
Central issue of cultural adaptation is control of sexuality.
When the ego and the body pull apart to the point where there is no contact, the result is a psychotic break.
Experiencing the pain of rejection of a parent is so overwhelming one locks it away instead from consciousness.
The neurotic conflict is the desire for love and the fear of it.
Child represses sexuality when feels caught in triangle with his or her parents.
Frustrated parent generally turns to the child of the opposite sex for sympathy and affection.
To be sexual is to be alive and to be alive is to be sexual.
Perfect children are not real, they are not alive.
Awakening of sexuality in child is then followed by latency period until puberty.
Some parents project their sexual guilt onto their children.
If child frightened of parent, there will be tension in the child in the pelvic floor.
Superego of child replaces child’s sexual awareness and child over-identifies with the threatening parent.
Parent’s biggest weapon against a child is the withdrawal of love.
Tension becomes chronic beyond conscious awareness.
Repression bonds the person to the traumatic situation.
No person is free who is tied to a defensive position.
Change must start with self-acceptance.
Neurotic body armor created from chronic muscular tension.
Sexual jealousy of parent of same sex toward child.
Therapeutic task is to expand a person’s capacity for excitation and aliveness.
Compulsive person tries to execute change but often simply becomes all the more compulsive.
In his or her heart every child loves his or her mother. There can be hate that overwhelms the love, but the love is still under there in the person and it cannot be extinguished.
We protect ourselves against heartbreak by not loving, and we protect ourselves against death by not living.
We become unconscious to our pain.
Parents project sexual guilt or anger at rivalry with child onto the child.
Love can’t be earned. It should be I love you, not I love what you are doing!
Once we give up our true selves to play a role, we are fated to be rejected because we have already rejected ourselves.
The cost in energy in playing a role is great.
The role is structured in the body.
Crying is the most primitive mechanism the body has to relieve tension and pain.
Real love is offered without conditions.
A child sometimes has to believe love can be earned, because without that hope life is unbearable.
The self is the body including the brain. It is the body acting independently of the ego.
Sexuality is the key to being.
One lives with regard to the body
When a woman is secure in her womanhood, a man’s accepting it is just icing on the cake.
Men turn to women for affirmation of their masculinity and blame them when they don’t get it. They should get affirmation from other men.
Neurotics try to change themselves using willpower but this makes them more neurotic.
Emotional health comes from self-acceptance and self-awareness.
Spontaneous responses bypass the ego.
Breathing activates feelings.
If person is frightened of feelings, he or she won’t breathe naturally.
Neurotic is as much afraid of living as of dying.
Son needs to be successful to make mother and father proud but feels guilt over surpassing father. Afraid of father’s unexpressed anger. May psychologically castrate himself by becoming a “doer.”
In our attempts to eliminate the valleys of experience we eliminate the peaks. We flatten life out so it rolls like an assembly line in a manufacturing plant.
Sex has been commercially exploited.
Sex in our time has become a production, not a creation.
Always strong tension in the back of the neck, trying to assert control and not “lose one’s head.”
As the body becomes more alive, memories can be recalled.
Children can be driven to near insanity by parents who are sexually seductive and rejecting at the same time.
Intense sexual excitation overwhelms a child’s ego.
Overeating reduces sexual excitation.
RD Laing wrote about adopting a false self to adapt to false realities.
The neurotic is on guard against himself or herself.
Repressed anger and sadness both need expression.
Every chronic muscular tension of the body is connected to fear, anger or sadness.
Getting in touch with body reawakens memories.
Ego defense system built to deny one’s trauma acts like a magnet to attract similar trauma.
The body is life oriented and seeks excitement.
A healthy ego can be momentarily flooded with feelings without being in danger.
Fat is accumulated energy.
All tensions block impulses.
Children know when they are not loved, but they need denial and illusion to survive.
If mother and father sexually fulfilled in marriage, children aren’t confronted with Oedipal situation.
Parents use children in power struggles against one another.
Not good when ego turns against the body.
An ego not sensitive to the body is like the rider of a horse driving it into the ground.
The egos of modern men and women are more involved in their relationships than their hearts are.
Children quickly pick up parents’ attitudes toward sex.
Authority of a parent directs, but power of a parent controls.
Greater the facade the bigger the inner emptiness.
We sacrifice pleasure, integrity and peace too often for money and success.
Life is a journey, not a destination.
Body armoring process is not willful, it is a way of avoiding pain.
By reducing intake of oxygen we dampen metabolic fires and lower our energy level.
Failure is the best teacher.
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It is easy! But nearly impossible, so it seems.
"Central issue of cultural adaptation is control of sexuality...
...Greater the facade the bigger the inner emptiness.
We sacrifice pleasure, integrity and peace too often for money and success.
Life is a journey, not a destination.
Body armoring process is not willful, it is a way of avoiding pain."
Though this reads like fortune cookie wisdom, but it cannot be denied... R&R ;-)
...Greater the facade the bigger the inner emptiness.
We sacrifice pleasure, integrity and peace too often for money and success.
Life is a journey, not a destination.
Body armoring process is not willful, it is a way of avoiding pain."
Though this reads like fortune cookie wisdom, but it cannot be denied... R&R ;-)
Not into this stuff.......
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Fascinating selections. My faves:
We protect ourselves against death by not living.
We become unconscious to our pain.
We protect ourselves against death by not living.
We become unconscious to our pain.
Very interesting historical relic (1980). The main problem with Freud and Freudians is that they were all privileged upper middle class toffs who only studied the middle class and then had the audacity to extend their theories to the working class. They had no contact whatsoever with working class people (the vast majority of the population) - and thus had no clue whatsoever as to how they operated psychologically.
The contemporary view (based on 3 decades of mainstream epidemiological research) is that the primary source of emotional instability is income inequality.
All epidemiological research shows that the number one determinant of an adult's lifespan, physical health and emotional stability is the mother's income and stress level during pregnancy and the child's first three years of life.
The mechanism involved is called epigenetics - the modification of gene expression via environmental influences. A single gene has the potential of expressing itself via numerous enzymes - and all these enzymes are set prior to age 3.
A secondary influence on personality is genetically inherited temperament. The tendency towards an anxious/avoidant temperament is passed done genetically in families. It's not caused by upbringing.
After 33+ years of practice, I have found that it's pretty difficult for parents to fuck kids up provided there is good nutrition and a stress free environment during pregnancy and the first three years of love.
The only 2 exceptions I have found is where there is a breakdown in attachment (the mother-child bond) during infancy. And where a person experiences specific trauma - either physical or sexual abuse - during childhood.
The contemporary view (based on 3 decades of mainstream epidemiological research) is that the primary source of emotional instability is income inequality.
All epidemiological research shows that the number one determinant of an adult's lifespan, physical health and emotional stability is the mother's income and stress level during pregnancy and the child's first three years of life.
The mechanism involved is called epigenetics - the modification of gene expression via environmental influences. A single gene has the potential of expressing itself via numerous enzymes - and all these enzymes are set prior to age 3.
A secondary influence on personality is genetically inherited temperament. The tendency towards an anxious/avoidant temperament is passed done genetically in families. It's not caused by upbringing.
After 33+ years of practice, I have found that it's pretty difficult for parents to fuck kids up provided there is good nutrition and a stress free environment during pregnancy and the first three years of love.
The only 2 exceptions I have found is where there is a breakdown in attachment (the mother-child bond) during infancy. And where a person experiences specific trauma - either physical or sexual abuse - during childhood.
Correction - I meant to say first 3 years of life, not love.
OK libby, more stuff I’ve never had occasion to read.
“Once we give up our true selves to play a role, we are fated to be rejected because we have already rejected ourselves.”
I picked this one because it looks non-falsifiable. In both the corporate and political world I’ve seen smooth schmoozers who can’t possibly be portraying their true selves. Yet some of them succeed through to retirement. Does that mean their true selves are phonies?
“Son needs to be successful to make mother and father proud but feels guilt over surpassing father.”
Maybe that’s true of some but I don’t think it is of me. I was the first one on my father’s side to have gone to university and if measured by the professional jobs I’ve had, in that sense I probably surpassed him. Though until this moment I’d never thought of it like that. But I never felt any guilt as it just seemed the way of 20th century immigrant families. The first and often second generations would start working early and hard to provide a better life down the road for the coming generations. In some sense I was just playing the role they laid out for me.
Interesting points though.
“Once we give up our true selves to play a role, we are fated to be rejected because we have already rejected ourselves.”
I picked this one because it looks non-falsifiable. In both the corporate and political world I’ve seen smooth schmoozers who can’t possibly be portraying their true selves. Yet some of them succeed through to retirement. Does that mean their true selves are phonies?
“Son needs to be successful to make mother and father proud but feels guilt over surpassing father.”
Maybe that’s true of some but I don’t think it is of me. I was the first one on my father’s side to have gone to university and if measured by the professional jobs I’ve had, in that sense I probably surpassed him. Though until this moment I’d never thought of it like that. But I never felt any guilt as it just seemed the way of 20th century immigrant families. The first and often second generations would start working early and hard to provide a better life down the road for the coming generations. In some sense I was just playing the role they laid out for me.
Interesting points though.
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