Depression and the Body: The Biological Basis of Faith and Reality

[Turgon]

I read this earlier this year and found a lot of gems in what the author, Alexander Lowen had to say about depression and his ideas connecting it to faith and reality, really piqued my interest. I've dealt with depression on/off for years, with it lasting a few hours, while other times several months without reprieve. One of the main things I noticed when I started to really work towards giving up and getting a handle on a number of addictive habits over the years that temporarily provided either a numbing quality to what I was feeling, or the inverse, provided temporary sensation and feeling, was a realization of how numb and out of touch I was/and can often still be, with my body. That I spent so much time up in my head with racing thoughts or numbing out to gain some reprieve, that checking in with how I feel, and what was happening on the 'ground' was something almost new to me.

I've gone for somatic therapy in the past, and did the Rolfing 10 Sessions, and having to go through that provided a mix bag of deeper/richer feelings and sense of myself - which became connected with creating a sense of differentiation and boundaries with other people (albeit shaky and inconstant due to it being a new state of being and a number of narratives that get in the way) , while also "forcing" me to confront a lot of emotional pain and baggage that has been difficult to stay and work with.

Well anyways, one thing that I've gained from all of that, was that in order for me to actually create and maintain healthy boundaries and gain a deeper sense of my self, I have to work towards a better understanding and awareness of my body (which seems intrinsically connected with emotion), what my limits are, learning the signals and signs given and acting upon it rather than ignoring or denying it, but also how I feel at any given moment and making sure I'm giving myself an opportunity to express those emotions, either through physical activity, voicing it, working on something that I think is important, or simply acknowledging and giving myself space to feel what I feel - all of which is usually accompanied with richer sensation and feeling in the body.

So hopefully this helps provide additional insight into how depression operates.

Ch. 1 – Why We Become Depressed

Depression and Unreality

Being unable to respond distinguishes the depressed state from all other emotional conditions. A person who is disheartened will regain his faith and hope when the situation changes. A person who is dejected will spring up again when the cause of his condition is removed. A person who is blue will light up at the prospect of pleasure. But nothing evokes a response from the depressed person; often the promise of a good time or pleasure serves only to deepen his depression.

In severe cases of depression the lack of responsiveness to the world is clearly evident. The severely depressed person may sit in a chair and stare at nothing in particular for hours on end. He may lie in bed throughout a good part of the day unable to find the energy to move into the stream of life. But most cases are not so severe. The patients I have treated for depression were not so disabled. They were generally able to carry on with the routines of living. They had jobs they seemed to handle adequately. They were housewives and mothers who were performing the necessary activities. To the casual observer they appeared normal. But they all complained of being depressed, and those who lived with them and knew them well were aware of their condition.

(Continues to short synopsis' of four of Lowen's depressed patients)

What is common to these four cases and to all depressive reactions is the unreality that pervades the person's attitude and behaviour. The depressed man or woman lives in terms of the past with a corresponding denial of the present. Anne, for example, maintained the sense of rejection she experienced from her father through her own continual rejection of her body. Thus the past was perpetuated and the trauma of the past was inevitably reenacted in the present. Margaret persisted in denying her sadness, although there was no valid reason in her present situation to justify such behaviour. And David found the same morbid satisfaction in his continued isolation and loneliness that he experienced as a child when he closed himself off from his demanding mother. Of course the depressed person is unaware that he lives in the past, for he is also living in the future, a future as unrealistic in terms of the present as was the past itself.

When a person has experienced a loss or trauma in child that undermines his feelings of security and self-acceptance, he would project into his image of the future the requirement that it reverse the experience of the past. Thus an individual who experienced a sense of rejection as a child would picture the future as promising acceptance and approval. If he struggled against a sense of helplessness and impotence as a child, his mind would naturally compensate this insult to his ego with an image of the future in which he is powerful and controlling. The mind in its fantasies and daydreams attempts to reverse an unfavorable and unacceptable reality by creating images that exalt the individual and inflate his ego. If a significant part of a person's energy focuses on these images and dreams, he will lose sight of their origin in childhood experience and sacrifice the present to their fulfillment. These images are unreal goals and their realization is an unattainable objective.

The Pursuit of Illusion

Depression is common today because so many people pursue unreal goals that have no direct relation to their basic needs as human beings. Every person needs love, and he needs to feel that his love is accepted and in some degree returned. Loving and caring relate us to the world and give us the sense of belonging to life. Being loved is important only in so far as it facilitates the active expression of our own love. People don't get depressed when they are the loving ones. Through love you express yourself and affirm your being and identity.

Self-expression is another basic need of all human beings and of all creatures. The need for self-expression underlies all creative activity and is the source of our greatest pleasure. This theme was elaborated in a previous book (Pleasure: A Creative Approach to Life). Here it is important to recognize that in the depressed individual self-expression is severely limited to a small area of their lives, generally their work or business, and even in this defined area, self-expression is restricted if the person works compulsively or mechanically. The self is experienced through self-expression, and the self fades when the avenues of self-expression are closed.

The self is fundamentally a bodily phenomenon, and self-expression therefore means the expression of feeling. The deepest feeling is love, but all feelings are part of the self and can be appropriately expressed by a healthy personality. In fact the range of feeling a person can express determines the breadth of his personality. It is well known that the depressed person is closed off and that activating any feeling such as sadness and anger, which can be expressed in crying or striking out, has an immediate and positive effect on his depressive state. The avenues through which feelings are expressed are the voice, body movement and the eyes. When the eyes are dulled, the voice flat and motility reduced, these avenues are closed and the person is in a depressed state.

Another basic need of all human beings is freedom. Without freedom, self-expression is impossible. But I do not mean just political freedom, although this is one of its essential aspects. One wants to be free in all life situations – at home, in school, as an employee, in social relationships. It is not absolute freedom that is sought, but the freedom to express oneself, to have a voice in the regulation of one's affairs. Every human society imposes some limitations on individual freedom in the interest of social cohesion. Such limitations can be accepted, however, only if they do not unduly restrict the right of self-expression.

The depressed person is imprisoned by unconscious barriers of “shoulds” and “shouldn'ts” which isolate him, limit him, and eventually crush his spirit. Living within this prison, he spins fantasies of freedom, concocts schemes for his liberation, and dreams of a world where life will be different. These dreams like all illusions serve to sustain his spirit, but they also prevent him from realistically confronting the internal forces that bind him. Sooner or late the illusion collapses, the dream fades, the scheme fails, and his reality stares him in the face. When this happens, he becomes depressed and feels hopeless.

The Inner Directed Person

From the viewpoint of the tendency to depression, people can be divided into two categories, the outer and the inner directed person...

Broadly speaking, the inner directed person has a strong and deep sense of self. Unlike the outer directed person his behaviour and attitudes are not easily influenced by the changing patterns of his environment. His personality has an inner stability and order and rests on the firm foundation of self-awareness and self-acceptance. He stands on his own two feet and knows where he stands. These qualities are lacking in the person who is outer directed. He shows strong dependent tendencies, requiring others to lean on emotionally. Then, when their support is withdrawn, he becomes depressed. He has what is called an “oral” character structure, which means that his infantile needs to be held, to be accepted, and to experience body contact and warmth were not fulfilled. Feeling unfulfilled, he has no reason to have faith in himself or in life.

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When a person becomes depressed, it is a clear indication that he has not been standing on his own feet. It is a sign he lacks faith in himself. He has sacrificed his independence for the promise of fulfillment by others. He has invested his energies in the attempt to realize this dream – the impossible dream. His depression signifies his bankruptcy and disillusionment. But when properly understood and handled, the depressive reaction can open the way to a new and better life. Depression as a Stepping Stone (to Soul Growth)

Many people are helped to overcome their depression by therapy – therapy that helps the patient get in touch with his feelings, his inner being. This, in turn, helps him regain a measure of self-possession and independence. In the process it reorients him to the personal self. When successful, it finishes by restoring an individual's faith in himself. If he is to overcome his depressive tendency, he must end by becoming an inner-directed person.

Ch. 2 – Grounding In Reality

Elation and Depression

Since the depressive reaction is what brings a person into therapy and is his main complaint, we tend to overlook the fact that it is generally part of a cycle that consists of a high and a low. In most cases the depressive reaction is preceded by a period of elation, the collapse of which plunges the individual into depression. If we are to comprehend fully the depressive reaction, we must also understand the phenomenon of elation.

The signs of elation are not difficult to discern. The elated person is hyperactive, his speech is more rapid, his ideas seem to flow freely, and his self-esteem is conspicuous. Further development of this phenomenon leads to the condition of mania. Psychoanalysis has long been concerned with the problem of mania and depression. Otto Fenichel sees the depressive reaction as being primary, which it is historically. He says, “The triumphant character of mania arises from the release of energy bound in the depressive struggle and now seeking discharge.” Seen from the point of view of the ego, there is some validity to this interpretation. In the depressed state the ego is tied to the collapsed body, having been overwhelmed by feelings of hopelessness and despair. It struggles to get free, and when it does, it rises triumphant like a gas balloon released from the hand of a child, becoming steadily more inflated as it goes upward. There is an increase of excitation in the manic condition, but this increased excitation or energetic charge is limited to the head and to the surface of the body, where it activates the voluntary muscular system producing the characteristic hyperactivity and exaggerated volubility. This direction of flow, upward rather than downward, does not lead to discharge, which is a function of the lower end of the body. It serves instead to focus attention on the individual and represents an attempt to restore the sense of infantile omnipotence that was prematurely lost. Fenichel recognizes the illusive character of mania, saying, “The mania is not a genuine freedom from depression but a cramped denial of dependencies.”

Every depressive reaction rests on the loss of a mother love. I shall discuss this aspect of the problem in a subsequent chapter. Here it is important simply to know that this loss has not been accepted as irrevocable. The hope of restitution, generally unconscious, provides the motivation for the upward swing of energy, which results in elation. Unfortunately, the elated individual is unaware of the dynamics of his reaction and of the fact that he unconsciously regards the people around him as substitute mother figures who will love him, take care of him, and even feed him. Their initial interest in him appears to support this transference. But as his elation grows, people are disturbed by it and withdraw. There is no possibility of their satisfying his unconscious expectations, and sooner or later the elated individual will feel rejected. Then the bubble of self-confidence and self-esteem that accompanied the feeling of elation will collapse and a depressive reaction will ensue. The collapse is a bioenergetic phenomenon. The energetic charge that had overexcited the peripheral structures retreats to the center of the body, the region of the diaphragm, stomach and solar plexus. The omnipotence of the ego changes to impotence. Through no effort of will can the depressed person continue to mobilize himself.

People who suffer depression have unfulfilled oral needs – to be held and supported, to experience body contact, to suck, to receive attention and approval, and to be warmed. These are called oral needs because they correspond to that period of life, infancy, when oral activity dominates life. This is the same as saying that these individuals were deprived of mother love or of the fulfillment that a secure and unconditional love could provide. If this deprivation determines a person's basic character structure, that structure can be described as an oral personality. In the adult these unfulfilled needs are revealed by an inability to be alone, a fear of separation, excessive talking or other activity, boasting or other maneuvers to gain attention, a sensitivity to cold, and a dependent attitude. If the deprivation is less severe, we say the individual has oral traits or an oral tendency in his personality.

Oral needs unsatisfied in childhood cannot be fulfilled in adult life. No amount of substitute mothering can give a person the security he failed to get in childhood. As an adult he must find this security within himself. No matter how much attention, admiration, approval or love one gives the oral personality, it does not fill his inner emptiness. This fulfillment can be achieved by an adult only on an adult level; that is, through love, through his work and through his sexuality. The dream that one can reverse the past is an illusion.
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In a healthy person there are no mood swings of elation and depression. He always has his feet on the ground – the base line from which he operates. He may become excited by some event or prospect which brings the energy strongly into his head, but his feet never really leave terra firma. His feeling may be one of pleasure or even joy, but rarely is it one of elation. If the event or the prospect proves ultimately disappointing, he may be saddened, somewhat dejected, but not depressed, He does not lose his ability to respond to new situations, as the victim of a depressive reaction does.

When people swing between highs and lows, it indicates that bioenergetically they have lost the sense of their feet resting or standing on solid ground. I think the same could be said of a culture that swings between highs and lows, between an overoptimistic enthusiasm that all its problems will be easily solved and the despair that they are insoluble. If people keep their feet on the ground, they can view their problems realistically, seeing that they are mountainous but knowing that human beings with faith have moved mountains.

I have spoken of a depressed person's falling into a hole in the ground. Actually the hole is in his feelings or, more precisely, in his body. The hole in one's feeling is the sense of inner emptiness of which many individuals complain, notably people with an oral character structure. The hole in the body is a lack of sensation in the belly. I described earlier in the case of the oral character how the charge retreats from his head end to the center of the body. It doesn't flow through that region into the lower part of the body. It is held in the midsection out of fear – an unconscious fear – that there is no ground to rest on, nothing or nobody to hold or support him if he let's go. As a result of this holding, the lower part of the body is energetically undercharged, which contributes greatly to the sense of insecurity. And the belly containing the guts also lacks feeling or charge. When feeling is absent there, it is as if one didn't have any guts when it came to standing on one's own feet and taking a position in life. The empty belly, the deep fear that one lacks “guts”, or that one will not be able to stand up in a crisis is a gaping hole in the personality.

In Japanese thinking, the belly is regarded as man's vital center. It is called hara. As Karlfried Durckheim points out, the Japanese “realize that life on earth both in its need and its fulfillment can be rightly achieved only if a man does not fall out of the cosmic order and if he maintains his contact with the great original unity. Enduring contact with it is shown by the man who keeps his unshakeable centre of gravity in that centre which is hara... According to the Japanese, if a man has hara, it means he is centered. It also means he is balanced both physically and psychologically. A balanced person is calm, at ease, and as long as he remains that way, his movements are effortless and yet masterful.


One may well ask: Why is the belly so important? The answer is that it is the seat of life. Literally one sits in one's belly and so one has contact through it with the pelvic floor, the sexual organs and the legs. If one pulls oneself upward into the chest or the head, this essential contact is lost. The upward direction is toward consciousness and the ego. In a culture which overemphasizes these values, the correct bodily posture is belly in, chest out. In ancient mythology the diaphragm was equated with the surface of the earth. Everything above the surface was light and therefore conscious. Below the surface was darkness, which represented the unconscious. The importance of the belly and the significance of hara is that only if one is in one's belly, feeling-wise, is the split between consciousness and the unconscious, between the ego and the body, between the self and the world avoided. Hara represents a state of integration or unity in the personality on all levels of life.

A person who has hara is, of course, an inner-directed person with all the appropriate qualities. Actually, hara represents an even higher state, one of transcendence in which an individual, through the full realization of his being, feels himself part of the great Unity or Universal. Such a person has faith not as a matter of belief, which is a function of mind consciousness, but as a deep inner conviction which he feels in his guts. Only such a faith has true sustaining power. This view makes us realize that real faith cannot be preached. It can be gained only by experiences which read into and evoke full gut sensations.

Grounding the Individual

Grounding is a bioenergetic concept and not just a psychological metaphor. When we ground an electrical circuit, we provide an outlet for the discharge of its energy. In a human being grounding also serves to release or discharge the excitation of a body. The excess energy of the living organism is constantly being discharged through movement or through the sexual apparatus. Both are functions of the lower part of the body. The upper part is mainly concerned with the intake of energy either in the form of food, oxygen or sensory stimulation and excitation. These two basic processes of charging up and discharging down are normally in balance. Within the body there is an energetic pulsation; feeling moves upward toward the head when we are in need of energy or excitation and downward toward the lower end when discharge is necessary. If a person cannot adequately charge up, he will be weak, undercharged, show lack of vitality. If he cannot adequately discharge, he will be hung up. One gets hung up on some illusion and is unable to come down to earth until the illusion collapses. But one will not stay down unless one is grounded in the function of discharge.

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The process of grounding an individual is therefore a process of helping him complete his maturation. In the course of the years while the person had grown physically, he had remained immature emotionally. He had not learned to stand on his own feet, for he still expected too much from others. His belly wasn't full because he kept waiting and hoping for others to fill it for him. This was his unreality. But no one can be his surrogate. He must do it for himself, albeit with the help of a therapist. {And/or a network}

How is this done? In bioenergetic therapy we start with breathing just as the Oriental or the yoga does in his practice. Breathing holds the secret of life, for it provides the energy through the metabolism of food to keep the flame of life burning....

To achieve this state of unity and self-realization, one's breathing must have a deep abdominal quality. The inspiratory wave starts from within the belly at a place the Japanese call the vital center of man. As it moves upward to the throat and mouth, it produces an inhalation. The expiratory wave proceeds in the opposite direction and results in an exhalation. These waves can be observed passing through the body either as full and free or as restricted and spastic movements. Each area of tension blocks the wave and distorts the perception of the pulsation. One can find such blocks extending from the head to the feet.

To show how they disturb the natural breathing pattern, I shall describe a few of these blocks. If the belly is held flat and the buttocks tight, there is little abdominal involvement in the breathing movements. Breathing is either thoracic or diaphragmatic with little involvement in the lower part of the body. These muscular tensions developed in the abdomen as a means to curb sexual feelings, to control the excretory functions and to diminish the pain caused by a persistent crying that failed to evoke a positive parental response. Diaphragmatic tensions which developed as a result of fear also cause the lower ribs to be elevated. This has the effect of splitting the unity of feeling within the body by creating a ring of tension around the waist.

The upper half of the body has its own specific tensions which interfere with natural deep respiration. A rigid chest wall will reduce sensation in this part of the body, specifically those sensations and feelings associated with the heart. When the heart is enclosed in a rigid thoracic cage, one's love is not free, it is restrained and confined. Muscular spasticities in the shoulder girdle, which inhibit the natural movements of reaching out or striking out, also affects one's breathing. They prevent a deep expiration, which would evoke sensations in the pelvis, by hanging the individual up (as if in a coat hanger) and holding against the normal breathing-down phase of the breathing cycle. Shoulder tension's also raise the body's center of gravity.

Most important here are the tensions in the muscles of the throat and the neck. These tensions develop to block and inhibit crying and screaming. By constricting the passageway for air, they reduce the oxygen intake and and lower the organism's energy level. Throat tensions frequently extend upward into the head and mouth because they are also part of a general inhibition of sucking. The mammalian animal is by nature a nursing and sucking creature. In breathing we suck in air. I have found in my work with patients that any disturbance in the normal sucking pattern is reflected in a disturbance of the breathing pattern.

Finally, there is a ring of tension encircling the base of the skull. In the back of the neck these tensions can be palpated in the spasticity of the small occipital muscles. In the front of the head they can be palpated in the tightness of the musculature that moves the jaw. These tensions affect the motility of the jaw, which is held in either a retracted or protracted position. Each of these positions has a specific meaning: The retracted jaw denotes an inhibition of self-assertion, the protruded jaw is defiant and unyielding. Since the jaw tensions include the internal pterygoid muscles, which insert into the base of the skull, this ring of tension is actually a layer that blocks the flow of feeling from the body into the head.

There are other patterns of chronic muscular tensions which disturb the respiratory waves and block the full and free flow of excitation in the body. Spasticities in the long muscles or the back and legs create an overall body rigidity which impedes the flow of excitatory waves. In other cases there are areas of collapse in the body where a pattern of rigid holding has broken down under stress. These areas of collapse are powerful barriers to the flow of excitation and feeling.

Every therapeutic approach that aims to ground a person must effect a significant release of these muscular tensions. In bioenergetic analysis this is done by bringing a person into contact with his tensions, that is, helping him to perceive them. One can ask a patient to make certain expressive movements which would activate the immobilized area, or one can put selective pressure on the tense muscles to produce an immediate release. Next, the patient must become aware of the meaning of these tensions: (1) what impulses or actions are unconsciously restrained by the tension, (2) what role does the tension play in the energy of economy of the body – that is, how does it act to limit feeling and excitation – and (3) what effect does it have on behaviour and attitudes? If these tensions are to be released other than temporarily, insight into their origin is necessary. A patient should understand the relationship of his bodily attitudes – his tension patterns – to the experiences of life, especially those of his childhood. Finally, some degree of abstraction must occur. The impulses blocked by the muscular tension should be allowed expression within the controlled setting of the therapeutic situation. Thus patients may be encourage to voice their negativity or scream their hostility against their parents when such actions are pertinent to their feelings, with the condition that such a behaviour is not to be acted out in real life.

I do not want to give the impression that the therapeutic work of grounding a patient is limited to the physical aspect of his problem. The psychic aspects require as much attention as their physical counterpart. Roughly speaking, I would say the therapeutic time is equally divided between these two sides. Every valid modality of psychotherapy has its place in the armory of a good therapist. Bioenergetic analysis is distinguished by the fact that it is body oriented, which provides a visible and objective basis for both its diagnostic observations and therapeutic improvements.

 

[Turgon]

Continued...

Ch. 3 – The Energy Dynamics of Depression

The Suppression of Feeling

We do not express all our impulses all the time. In the course of growing up we learn which to reveal and which to hold back. We also learn when certain impulses can be expressed and also the proper manner of their expression. The conscious holding back of an impulse is done by the voluntary muscular system of the body, which is under the control of the conscious mind or ego. It occurs at the surface of the body just before the impulse is released in action. Actually the muscles that would be involved in expression are set to act but are blocked by a command from the mind. The inhibitory command does not affect the other components of the impulse. We remain conscious of the desire in touch with the feeling, and aware of the thought. It is only the action that is blocked.

The suppression of impulses is another matter. All components of an impulse are blocked when suppression occurs. The word “suppression” means that the impulse is pushed down under the surface of the body, below the level at which perception occurs. One is no longer conscious of the desire or in touch with the feeling. When the memory of thought of the impulse is pushed back into the unconscious, we speak of repression. Memories and thoughts are repressed, impulses and feelings are suppressed. The suppression of impulses is not a conscious or selective process like the act of holding back their expression. It is the result of the continual holding back of expression until that holding back becomes a habitual mode and an unconscious body attitude. In effect, the area of the body that would be involved in the expression of the impulse is deadened, relatively speaking, by the chronic muscular tension that develops as consequence of the continual holding pattern. The area is effectively cut off from consciousness by the loss of normal feeling and sensation in it.

The deadening of part of the body has an effect on its overall functioning. Each area that becomes deadened reduces the vitality of the whole organism. It limits to some degree the body's natural motility, and it acts as a restriction on the function of respiration. Thus it decreases the organism's energy level and indirectly weakens all impulse formation.

In situations where the expression of an impulse would evoke a threat to a child from his environment, the child will consciously try to suppress that impulse. He can do this by decreasing his motility and limiting his breathing. By not moving and by holding one's breath one can cut off desire and feeling. In effect, in a desperate maneuver to survive, one deadens the whole body. If this deadening goes far enough, it produces the schizoid personality I have described in a previous book. This personality is extremely prone to depression for this very reason. In the schizoid personality all impulse formation is diminished.

A child will also actively suppress an impulse when it becomes too painful because of continued frustration. A child who has lost his mother in a crowd, for example, will cry from the pain of the loss, but he will not or cannot cry indefinitely. After a time he will stop because the pain is too intense and the effort too exhausting. We are assuming for our discussion that no one comforts the child. In his exhausted state the child becomes numb. But the numbness will pass, and when it does, the child will cry again if he has not found his mother. Each time, however, the crying will become progressively weaker. It is a desperate situation for a child who is left alone to cry could die.

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The suppression of feeling creates a predisposition to depression, since it prevents the individual from relying on his feelings as a guide to behaviour. His emotions do not flow in sufficient strength to give him a clear direction; that is, he lacks what it takes to be an inner-directed person. He loses faith in himself and is forced to look to the outside world for guidance. He was conditioned to this by his parents, whose love and approval he needed. As as adult he makes every effort to gain love and approval from the outside world and he does this by proving that he is worthy of the response he seeks. The effort will be a tremendous one, for the stakes are high, and the individual's total energies will be mobilized and committed to this undertaking.

Suicide and Negativity

When a person commits suicide, it means he cannot live with himself. He can no longer endure the negative and hostile feelings within him, and he cannot express these feelings except through some destructive act. This is why murder and suicide often occur together, the murder, of course, before the suicide. One of the effective ways I have found to help a potential suicide is to point out that his act is partly directed at me, that it is a way of getting back at me for my presumed failure. This approach often angers the patient and then the hostility comes out against me in a less self-destructive way.

But is not the emotional dying of the depressed person a similar rebuke? Depression like suicide can produce a great deal of guilt in the family of the depressed person. It can also be viewed as a cry for help. “Look! I can't seem to do it for myself anymore!” However, if we are to help the depressed person, it cannot be done by being supportive while his underlying negativity is left untouched. One cannot give him the love and approval he lacked as a child. To pretend to do so is unreal and he will remain in his depressed state if only to prove to you that “You, too, have failed me.”

On the conscious level the depressed person is saying, “I can't respond” while proclaiming at the same time his desire to get well. In his unconscious there are deeply buried resentments which add up to an I won't respond.” Being unaware of these resentments, he cannot express them. On the surface he presents himself as a person who would do anything to get out of his depression. But he is like a swimmer with an anchor attached to his leg. No matter how hard he struggles to rise to the surface, the anchor drags him down. The suppressed negative feelings with their accompanying guilt are like the anchor in analogy. Release the swimmer from his anchor and he will rise naturally to the surface. Release the suppressed negative feelings in a depressed person and his depressive reaction will be over.

Are there suppressed negative feelings in every case of depression? My unequivocal answer is yes. These feelings could be demonstrated in every case I have seen. Demonstrating their existence, however, is very different from releasing them, and only their release has a positive effect on the depressive condition.

The presence of negative feelings in a person's unconscious is responsible for the collapse of his self-esteem because they undermine the foundations of a solid self-awareness. Every depressed person has previously operated on the basis of a denial of negativity. He has invested his energy in the attempt to prove himself worthy of love. Whatever self-esteem he built up rested on perilous foundations. The collapse was inevitable. At the same time, the energy that went into the effort to realize the illusion was diverted from the real goal of living – pleasure and satisfaction in being. The process of energy renewal which depends on pleasure was greatly weakened. In the end the person finds himself without a base to stand on and without the energy to move.

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Physicists define energy as the capacity to do work and measure it by the work done. The work involved in the living process, however, is not mechanical. The energy of life is used for growth, reproduction, excitability and emotional responsiveness. It is at work throughout the animal kingdom, moving organism's toward the fulfillment of their needs and toward self-expression, which leads to creativity and pleasure.

Since the organism is a self-contained system, its ability to function effectively depends on its state of excitability or, if you wish, aliveness, although excitability is the preferred term. Within the limits of its biological structure, an organism with more energy has a higher level of inner-excitement. It moves more quickly than others of its kind, is more alert and more responsive. It is also better coordinated in its movements and is therefore more effective. The higher charge is manifested in the brightness of its eyes and the motility of its body.

Excitement and depression are opposite qualities. When a person is excited, he is not depressed. When he is depressed, his level of inner excitement is reduced. In elation and mania the level of excitement flares briefly but fades quickly too. A healthy person can sustain his level of excitement at a fairly high pitch. The metabolic fires burn with a hot flame and the brightness of the flame remains relatively constant. We cannot ignore the fact that it takes energy to keep these processes going.

Energy moves into an organism in the form of food, air and exciting stimuli. It is discharged in the form of movement or other body activity. Input and output are always in balance if we consider growth as one aspect of body activity. If the input is diminished, the output falls off. But it is equally true that if the output declines, the input is spontaneously lessened.

Ch. 5 – The Psychoanalytic View of Depression

For an infant the loss of a mother is the loss of his world, of his self, and, if definitive, of his life. Should the infant survive, it is because the loss was not definitive; sufficient affection and care were provided to maintain a minimal or certainly less than optimal functioning. The factors here are quantitative. How much is lost depends on the degree of deprivation of loving contact. In this situation, where some part of the self is lost, the child's developing ego will strive for wholeness and completion on the mental level. To do this he must deny the loss of the mother and the self and regard the crippled state of his bodily functioning as normal. The crippling is then compensated by the use of willpower, which enables the individual to carry on, but this way of functioning is no substitute for feeling and aliveness. The denial of the loss forces the person to act so that the loss will not be acknowledged. He will therefore create the illusion that all was not lost and that the lost love could be regained if he only tried hard enough to be different.

No alternatives are available to a child. In the absence of full mother love he cannot attain the full aliveness and functioning of his body. In his helpless and desperate state grief is meaningless. It will become meaningful later when his helplessness and desperation are diminished – that is, when he grows up and gains a measure of independence. But to grieve over the loss of mother love will not restore an adult's bodily functioning. Since the loss is irrevocable – that is, one cannot find another mother – one can grieve for it endlessly. What is important is to rebuild the self, to develop the full functioning of the body, and to root oneself into present reality. What an adult can grieve for is the loss of his full potential as a human being.

Any therapy that is to be more than temporarily effective in the treatment of depression must aim to overcome the crippling effect of the loss of love. It cannot really do this by replacing the lost mother with a surrogate in the form of the therapist. Actions such as holding the patient, comforting him, and reassuring him of support have tangible but momentary benefits. The patient has passed the stage of childhood, and to treat him as a child ignores the reality of his being. The unfulfilled child in him must be recognized but its demands cannot be satisfied. The emphasis must be on the crippling of his bodily function. For that is the reality of his being. To overcome the crippling, many modalities of therapeutic intervention may be employed – dream analysis, fantasy, body movement, and so forth – but the objective of the treatment must not be confused. Above all it is important to understand the form of the crippling in each case, for only so can its effects be ameliorated.

...

Psychoanalysts have also been aware that underlying the depressive tendency is a conflict of love and hate for the loved object, always the mother but frequently also the father. Karl Abraham believed that the paralysis of feeling in the depressed person was due to equal feelings of love and hate blocking any movement. The hatred is repressed and turned inward against the self, and in this process it forms a negative layer over the feeling of love, which cannot then be expressed. In suicide the self-hate is acted out, but this action also contains the unconscious wish to destroy the person responsible for these feelings.

Love vs. Discipline

Neither permissiveness nor a rigid discipline is the answer to our difficult times. Since the emphasis in modern psychology is on the individual, the responsibility for order and morality must also rest with each individual. A self-discipline must replace an outmoded authoritarian discipline. This is in line with self-awareness and self-expression, which necessarily include such concepts as self-possession and self-restraint. The parent who exercises self-discipline will encourage his child to develop the same function by allowing the child to take increasing responsibility for the satisfaction of his needs. The underlying concept is self-regulation, which starts in the earliest infancy with what is called demand feeding. The child who is self-regulating will gain faith in his own body and in his bodily functions. He will become a person who is inner-directed and capable of self-discipline.

Self-regulation differs from permissiveness in important respects. It does not represent an abandonment of parental responsibility, which is often true of permissive parents. Rather, the parent who believes in self-regulation has the responsibility of being “there” for the child whenever the child needs him or her. This is especially true where the mother breast-feeds the child. Such responsible behaviour is fulfillment not permissiveness. Another difference is in the nature of the functions involved. Self-regulation is primarily concerned with bodily functions: The child is allowed to determine when and what he will eat within the limits of the food available, he determines when and how much he will be held within the limits of the mother's available time, he is not forced to develop sphincter control over his excretory functions until he is physically and psychologically ready, which in the average child occurs between two and a half and three years of age. Self-regulation accepts a child as he is, a new-animal organism; it allows him to be who he is, a unique individual; it does not approve of the “anything goes” philosophy.

Self-regulation does not mean that a parent should not lay down rules or set any limits on a child's actions. Such a position would lead to chaos. A child looks to his parents for guidance and leadership. Rules and limits are needed if a child is to know where he stands. But the rules should not be rigid nor the limits inflexible, since they are designed to further the child's security and not to deny his freedom. Above all the rules cannot be arbitrary; they must have a direct relationship to the way the parents live – that is, the parents should abide by the same basic rules they impose on their children. It should not be a matter of one rule for the parents, who have power, and another for their children, who lack it.

If parents have faith in their way of life and if their way is a life of faith, their rules and limits will reflect that faith. This statement raises the question: What is faith? Which I shall discuss in the following chapter. Here I can simply say that every act based on faith is manifestation of love and that every act of love is an expression of faith. Children are aware of these important values and respect them, since they are essential to their emotional growth.

A loving parent is neither permissive nor disciplining. He may be described as an understanding parent. He understands the child's need for unconditional love and acceptance. He also understands that it is not a question of words but of feelings expressed in action. A child needs physical intimacy with both parents. He needs body contact, especially during infancy – he needs to be held, to be cuddled, and to be played with. This need should be fulfilled primarily by the mother, but the father's part in providing body contact, if secondary, is not negligible.

A loving mother is one who gives of herself, her time, her attention, her interest. Because of her love she doesn't begrudge the time spent with her child or resent the child's demands for attention. When a patient says, “What's the use of reaching for Mama? She was never there,” he means that she wasn't there for him. Her attention and her interest lay elsewhere. To know how much love a mother has for her child, one need only know how much time she spends with him and how much pleasure he gives her. The pleasure a mother has with her child is exactly equal to the pleasure the child has with his mother. This principle of reciprocity underlies all true love relationships. Love is based on pleasures shared. The pleasure of each person increase the pleasure of the other until the feeling between lovers is one of joy. This is how a mother-child relationship should be. It lacks this joyfulness when a mother manipulates a child for her own selfish or egotistic ends.

Loving parents want to see their child happy. This is their main concern. They want their child to enjoy his life, and to the best of their ability they will try to provide him with the pleasures he seeks. This attitude and the feelings that accompany it give a child faith in life – first faith in his parents, then faith in himself, and finally faith in the world. Parents can do this for a child if they, themselves, have faith. But so few people do. Our culture mitigates it. We talk of love but we worship power. We even lack faith in the power of love itself.

 

[Turgon]

Ch. 7 – Faith

The Importance of Faith

If we attempt to understand the human condition in terms of objective, scientific concepts, we leave out of our consideration a whole realm of human experience which, because of its subjective significance, profoundly affects human behaviour. The relationship of one man to another, of man to his environment, and of man to the universe belongs to this realm. Religion developed out of man's need to comprehend these relationships, and we cannot afford to ignore them because they carry a religious connotation. We need not be afraid of this religious connotation, if we do not bind ourselves to accept the tenets of a specific religious belief. In trying to understand man's relationship to himself and his world we cannot dismiss the concept of faith.

Faith belongs to a different order of experience than knowledge. It is deeper than knowledge, since it often precedes it as a basis for action and will continue to affect behaviour even when its content is denied by objective knowledge. Prayer is a good example. Many people have prayed for the quick ending of the war in Vietnam or for the safe return of a loved one or his recovery from illness. Now, most of those praying knew the prayer would be ineffectual in producing its desired objective. However this knowledge did not stop them, for their prayer was an expression of their faith. They sensed that its expression had a positive effect and that through it they were better able to go on. To pray it is not necessary to believe in an omnipotent deity. The power of prayer lies in the faith of the person uttering it. It is said that faith can accomplish wonders. We shall see that there are good reasons for this belief.

Prayer is not the only way to express faith. An act of love is an expression of faith, perhaps the most sincere that one can make. In the act of loving one opens his heart to another and to the world. Such an action, filling a person with inexpressible joy, also leaves him vulnerable to a deep hurt. It can be done, therefore, only if he has faith in the common humanity of man and in the common nature of all living things. The person who has no faith cannot love and the person who cannot love has no faith.

Power Versus Faith

People who put their trust in power never seem to have enough to provide complete security. This is because there is no such thing as complete security. And our power over nature or our own bodies is strictly limited. Hitler sought to dominate the world through power and to create a Third Reich that would last a thousand years. His dream collapsed in ruins in twelve years. The trust in power to guarantee security is an illusion which undermines true faith in life and leads inevitably to destruction. Besides the fact that one can never have enough power, there is also the possibility of its loss. Unlike faith, power is an impersonal force and not a part of a person's being. It is liable to be appropriated by another person or another nation. Since people covet power, the man who possesses it is an object of envy. If anything, he cannot rest secure, since he knows that others are eternally scheming or manipulating to wrest his power from him. Thus power creates a strange contradiction: While it seems to provide a degree of external security, it also creates a state of insecurity both within the individual and in his relation to others.

...

In my previous book I showed that the pursuit of power limits the experience of pleasure, which “provides the energy and the motivation for the creative process.” Power expands the ego since it enhances the sense of control, which is a normal ego function. But in weaker individuals the sense of power may easily overinflate the ego, producing a dissociation of the ego from the spiritual values inherent in the body. These include the sense of unity with one's fellow man and with nature, the pleasure of spontaneous responsiveness, which is the basis of creative activity, and faith in oneself and in life. Since these values are inherent in the living process, they belong to the sphere of the body not to that of the ego. There is an antithesis between these values and those belonging to ego functions. The ego values are individuality, control and knowledge. Through knowledge we gain more control and become more individual. And his knowledge serves to strengthen his faith in life, not to undermine or deny it.

The true individual, in contact with his body and secure in his faith, can be trusted with power. It will not go to his head because it does not play a significant role in his personal life. He can take it or leave it. He will use it but not abuse it. On the other hand, the person who believes in power and relies on it will become a demagogue (or demigod) who can only act destructively, not creatively.

The Psychology of Faith

Another aspect of our changing culture is the increasing individualization and isolation of the average man. Individualization and isolation are not the same thing, but they have moved along parallel paths. In proportion, as man has become more conscious of himself as a unique being, he has cut the ties that bound him to his community. He has been able to do this by having more power at his command; power to move about more freely, to communicate over greater distances, to command services or to buy necessities and so forth. He still remains as dependent on his community as primitive man was, but he doesn't feel his dependence. He doesn't think of himself as being part of a larger order upon which his survival depends. He knows the community is there, but he sees it only as a matrix for his personal self-realization. We are taught not to destroy the goose that lays the golden eggs, but we are told that the eggs themselves are up for the grabbing. In a society that promotes the philosophy of each man for himself, the sense of community does not exist as a potent force.

...

True individuality can exist only in a community where each member is responsible for the group's welfare and where the group is responsive to the needs of each member. In a community a man's individuality is determined by his personal value to the group. In a mass society it is determined by the power of his position. Thus true individuality is a measure of one's participation and not a reflection of one's isolation.

....

The appeal of every religion is the feeling of community it engenders. A religious person feels himself part of a community of man, to belong to the community of nature, and to participate in the community of God or the universe. And every person who feels this way is a religious person, whether or not he is a member of a religious group. The strength of every religion lies in the degree to which it fosters a sense of responsiveness and responsibility in its adherents. All religions have emphasized this personal factor in man's relationship to other men, to nature and to God. The effect is that the spirit of community is furthered at the same time as the sense of individuality is enhanced. By the same token, every individual who has a sense of his personal responsiveness and responsibility can be said to be religious.

Ch. 9 – Getting In Touch With Reality

“Reality” is a word that can have different meaning for different people. Some may see it as the necessity to earn a living; others may equate it with the law of the jungle – the strong survive while the weak die off – and still others may regard it as a life free from the pressures of a competitive society. Although there is some validity to each of these world views, what we are concerned with here is the reality of the self or inner world. When we say a person is out of touch with reality, we mean he is out of touch with the reality of his being, The best example is the schizophrenic who lives in a fantasy world and is unaware of the physical conditions of his existence.

The first step in the treatment of depression is to help the patient get in touch with the reality of his body. The degree of his depression is a measure of how much he has lost his self-awareness as a bodily person. In this respect he is like the schizoid individual, who however denies the reality of his body in contrast to the depressed person, who ignores it. The inescapable reality of life is that the person is the body or that the body is the person. When the body dies, the person dies. When the body goes “dead,” that is, when there is no feeling, the person ceases to exist as an individual with a definable personality. Another quote from Betrayal of the Body will make this clear: “It is the body that melts with love, freezes with fear, trembles in anger, and reaches for warmth and contact. Apart from the body these words are poetic images. Experienced in the body, they have a reality that gives meaning to existence. Based on the reality of bodily feelings, an identity has substance and structure. Abstracted from this reality, identity is a social artifact, a skeleton without flesh.”

Being in Touch

As long as a person is out of touch with his body, he is bound to the loss that produced this state. His every effort has the unconscious motivation of reversing the loss. He will create illusions to deny the finality of his loss, but by the same maneuver he prevents the loss from taking its proper place in the past so that he can function as a responsible adult in the present. An illusion prevents the person from being in contact with reality, specifically, the reality of his present body, and thus perpetuates, the sense of loss. I think this explains why so many people suffer the fear of abandonment or the anxiety of being alone.

If a therapist cannot give a patient the love he lost as a child, he can help him regain his body. This doesn't diminish the pain; it may in fact become temporarily more vivid, but it is no longer a pain that threatens the integrity of the individual. He accepts the loss and by doing so becomes free to live fully in the present. Instead of trying to reverse the loss by getting love, he directs his feelings to being loving or giving love. This change of attitude is not dictated by reason (we have been told about the importance of loving since we were children – generally to no avail) but by the needs of the body. A body seeks pleasure and it finds its greatest pleasure in self-expression. Of the many avenues of self-expression, love is the most significant and most pleasurably rewarding. Being in touch with the body is being in touch with the need to love.

...

I have heard so many patients say that as they got in touch with their bodies they would then do the job their mothers failed to do. They are eager and willing to assume the responsibility for their own well-being. They do not look to others to give them a feeling of aliveness or a sense of self. But what is even more important is the fact that this new sense of responsibility is not limited to the self but extends to the world.

Responsibility is, as Fritz Perls observed, the ability to respond with feeling. It is not equivalent to duty or obligation, for it has a spontaneous quality that is directly related to the degree of aliveness or openness of the organism. It is a bodily function because it requires feeling, and in this respect it differs from duty, which is a mental construction independent of feeling and may often direct one to act contrary to his feelings. Thus responsibility is an attribute of a person as a body – as a somebody in contrast with the person who is a nobody. Being somebody – being in touch with the somebody one is – automatically makes one a responsible person.

Ch. 10 – A Faith in Life

The feeling of faith is the feeling of life flowing in the body from one end to the other, from the center to the periphery and back again. When there are no blocks or constrictions that disturb and distort the flow, the individual experiences himself as a unity and as a continuity. The different aspects of his personality are integrated, not dissociated. He is not a spiritual person as opposed to a sexual person, nor is he sexual on Saturday night and spiritual on Sunday morning. He doesn't talk from the two sides of his mouth. His sexuality is an expression of his spirituality because it is an act of love. His spirituality has an earthly flavor; it is the spirit of life that he respects as it is manifested in all earthly creatures. He is not a person whose mind dominates his body nor is he a body that has no mind. He is a person who minds his body.

But equally important is his sense of continuity. He derives from the past, he exists in the present, but he belongs to the future. This last though may seem strange to those who follow the current fad of thinking that it is only the here and now that counts. But my thought came from the idea that life is an ongoing process, a continuous unfolding of possibilities and potentialities that are hidden in the present. Without some hope for and commitment to the future one's life would come to a standstill, as happens with depressed people. Biologically every organism is committed to the future through the germ cells he carries in his body.

The sense of continuity is also horizontal. We are connected energetically and metabolically with all living things on the earth, from the earthworms that aerate the soil to the animals which provide our daily food. To feel this sense of being connected and to act in accordance with it is the mark of a man of faith, a man who has “faith in life.” One's faith is as strong as one's life because it is an expression of the life force within the person.

People with a true faith are distinguished by a quality we all recognize. That quality is grace. A person with faith is graceful in his movements because his life force flows easily and freely through his body. He is gracious in his manner because he is not hung up on his ego or his intellect, his position or his power. He is one with his body and, through his body, with all life and with the universe. His spirit is lighted up and glows with the flame of life within him. He has a place in his heart for every child, for each child is his future. And he has respect for “the elders” because they are the source of his being and the foundation for his wisdom.

 

[kalibex]

Thank you for recommending this book with this posting, Turgon.