The Voice of the Body

Alexander Lowen

• Publisher: The Alexander Lowen Foundation
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781938485053
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Psychoanalysis
• Index: Psychology

The Voice of the Body is the first publication in a single volume of Alexander Lowen's public lectures known as The Lowen Monographs. This historical collection of twenty-two lectures by one of the founders of contemporary body psychotherapy embodies the groundbreaking principles of Bioenergetics and Bioenergetic Analysis. Presented between 1962 and 1982, these lectures document the depth and breadth of Lowen's work not otherwise detailed in his published work. Poignant and relevant to the challenges of today's world, the topics include: Stress and Illness: A Bioenergetic View; Breathing, Movement and Feeling; Thinking and Feeling: The Bioenergetic Analysis of Thought; Sex and Personality; Self Expression vs. Survival; Aggression and Violence in the Individual; and Psychopathic Behavior and the Psychopathic Personality.

1

Stress and Illness: A Bioenergetic View

THE NATURE OF ILLNESS

This lecture stems from my interest in psychosomatic illnesses such as arthritis, ulcerative colitis, coronary heart disease, lupus erythematosus, psoriasis, migraine, etc. Over the years I have treated a number of patients with these diseases with some success. I have also had many failures which have forced me to think about the nature of these illnesses. One observation has impressed me. Some persons are more prone to somatic illness while others are more prone to mental illness. It appears that there is some degree of exclusivity between these two kinds of response to trauma or stress. On the other hand I have long maintained that all illness is psychosomatic since psyche and soma are only two different faces of an organism's functioning. This seeming contradiction can be explained by Wilhelm Reich's statement that psyche and soma are both antithetical and functionally identical. Their function is identical on the energetic level on which level we can best comprehend the body's reaction to stress.

That all illness may be seen as a reaction to stress is not a new concept. The role of stress in the etiology of certain chronic illnesses was beautifully shown by Hans Seyle, a pioneer in this field. However, to justify the statement that all illness is related to stress, we have to extend the concept of stress to include such situations as invasion by parasites or pathological micro-organisms and even accidents. For example, if a person sprains his ankle, he becomes ill (as opposed to being well) because the resulting swelling and pain prevents him from walking normally. The stress in this case is the sprained ligament to which the body reacts with swelling and pain. The accident is the stressor agent which produces the stress, which, in turn, causes the reaction we call illness. If the sprain is mild and does not result in swelling and pain, the person would not be considered ill.

Pathogenic bacteria are also stressor agents when they invade the body putting it under stress. In this case, too, the stress may be mild causing little reaction from the body. Or it may be fairly severe if the bacteria are virulent and result in illness marked by fever, inflammation and weakness. If the body can cope with the stress caused by a stressor agent without markedly disturbing its normal functioning, there is no illness. Illness in this sense is equivalent to dis-ease and represents a breakdown of the body's normal functioning. It always denotes an inability of the body to cope with a stress.

Here is another example. Recently I suffered from an attack of poison ivy. Of course, I wasn't attacked. I simply touched the roots of the poison ivy plant which exudes an oily substance that is slightly toxic to the skin. Both of my forearms reacted after several days with a rash, swelling and intense itching. Localized areas of inflammation appeared on other parts of my body which also itched fiercely. I finally had a shot of cortisone which quickly reduced the swelling but the itching diminished only slowly. The illness in this case was the body's reaction to the stress caused by the poison ivy exudate which was the stressor agent. The rash, inflammation and itching represented the body's attempt which was the stressor agent. The rash, inflammation and itching represented the body's attempt to overcome or remove the stressor agent and to repair the damage it caused. However, there have been other occasions when I was exposed to poison ivy and did not react with illness. In those cases my body coped with the stress without upsetting my well-being.

Note that there is always some delay between the exposure to a stressor agent and the reaction to the stress it causes. That needs to be explained. Have you noticed that when you are cut by a very sharp instrument, there is no pain at the moment of the trauma? The pain sets in seconds later. The explanation is that the injury produces a momentary state of shock in the organism. The pain supervenes only when the shock wears off and the body reacts with an exudation of fluid to heal the wound. The exudate slowly thickens and hardens to cover the break in the surface of the organism. Later it becomes a scab. In this situation, the pain is due to the pressure created when the flow of blood, fluid and energy meets the resistance of the break. Pain must be viewed as a positive life expression. There is no pain in death nor in dying. It is the struggle against dying that causes pain. To understand pain as the result of a vital force against a block or resistance, consider the pain of childbirth when the baby's head is pressing against an undilated cervix. A similar condition develops when a large and hard fecal mass is being pushed through a tight anal orifice. A block or contraction is not painful when no force or energy is directed against it. On the other hand, when there is no resistance to the force or energy, the result is a flow that is pleasurable. The best illustration of this concept is the phenomenon of frostbite. When a part of the body suffers frostbite, there is no pain. The pain supervenes when the part is being warmed. It is due to the pressure caused by the flow of blood into the frozen and contracted tissues. Thawing out a frost-bitten finger or hand must be done very gradually to avoid the extreme pain and the danger of damage to the cells from the pressure. The immediate reaction to every trauma is shock which may go so far as to result in a loss of consciousness. It is only as the shock wears off and the body reacts positively to the trauma that pain develops. The same thing is true of inflammation.

An illness must be viewed, therefore, as the body's attempt to restore its integrity following some trauma. I first heard this view expressed by my professor of pathology in medical school. I have since learned that it was the common view of nineteenth century medicine and stemmed from Claude Bernard's concept of disease as the outcome of the body's attempt at homeostasis in which the adaptive response to a noxious force is inadequate. I believe it is a basic medical concept. The word trauma can include any injury to the organism. It is equivalent to an overwhelming stress no matter what the nature of the stressor agent. If the body cannot arrive at coping with the stress, the illness will end in the death of the organism.

Stress does not necessarily result in illness. We are subject to many stresses in life which we can take in our stride. The organism is capable of handling the common stresses of its life situation without any disruption of its normal functioning. Every weight that one picks up produces a stress in the body yet we pick up heavy objects all the time without any problem. But sometimes the weight is too heavy or too awkward and we injure ourselves. In that case the stress was more than we could handle. It happened to me a short time ago.

I wanted to change the wheels on my car and so I applied the lug wrench to one of the bolts. Sensing that it was stuck I gave the wrench a strong upward jerk. The bolt held and the car almost came off the ground and I heard something in my back go c-r-u-n-c-h. I knew that I had damaged my back but I felt no pain and so continued to work. I loosened the bolts by kicking the wrench with my foot and so I was able to change all the wheels. When I finished, my back felt stiff but I was able to straighten up and move about without pain. I experienced some stiffness in my lower back for about a week but with the bioenergetic exercises it disappeared. About three weeks later, I felt very anxious in my pelvic floor with unpleasant, prickly sensations which were very uncomfortable. They left after a day and a half. Then several days later my hip began to hurt me.

For the next three months, I had pain in my right hip often shooting down my leg. It hurt whenever I moved my pelvis backward as in sex. The pain seemed to be localized deep in the right buttocks extending upward to the lumbosacral area. I had trouble turning over in bed. In the morning when I got up, I could hardly stand on my right leg. At times I walked with a slight limp. The pain and distress was always worse in the morning but doing the bioenergetic exercises relieved the pain and I could move about fairly freely. I continued to attend the bioenergetic exercise classes but I had to go easy. When the pain became strong, I would stop. I also had my regular massages but less frequently since it was summertime. On one occasion I had my masseuse dig into the right buttocks but the result was disastrous. For two days afterward the pain was quite severe. I had thought the maneuver would relax the tight muscles but it didn't. However, the experience convinced me that the deep pelvic muscles were in a state of spasm and they would need considerable time to relax. Actually, my whole right side was involved for there was a noticeably increased state of tension in my right side extending from the kidney area to the foot.

I didn't go to a doctor because I don't believe they understand the nature of lower back pain. Since I was not incapacitated I was reluctant to put myself in their hands. I do not like to surrender the responsibility for my body to anyone else. As long as I could move about I trusted that my body would heal itself. Further, I am not terrified by pain for I recognize that it is part of the healing process. However, when the illness continued without major improvement, I did see two chiropractors. Given the sound I heard at the moment of the accident, I thought it likely that I had slightly displaced a vertebra. The first man did some tests which indicated to him that I may have herniated the disk between L4 and L5. He did some gentle maneuvers while I was on the chiropractic table, but I seemed to get most relief from the application of heat to the painful area in the buttocks. I felt somewhat better after the treatment but the pain returned the next day. I did not follow up the treatment with him despite his suggestion that I do so. His diagnosis was that I had a case of sciatica due to pressure on the sciatic nerve. I agreed with his diagnosis. And, since the sciatica continued, I saw another recommended chiropractor one month later. He confirmed the diagnosis but he located the lesion, slipped disk, between L5 and Sl. His maneuver was to push the right side of the pelvis backward which produced a slight clicking sound. I felt a little better after this treatment. He, too, counseled further treatment which I did not pursue.

I kept doing the exercises and having my massages and the sciatic pain lessened. In October, I saw Dr. McIntyre and he told me that he had heard from some orthopedic men that the pressure on the sciatic nerve which caused the pain in the leg was due to a spasm of the glutens medius muscle which compressed the nerve as it passed through the sciatic notch. That was where I always felt the most pain. He said that it was advised that one bend forward, straightening the knees to stretch the hamstring muscles. This is similar to the bioenergetic exercise I was doing. I had felt all along that I needed to pull the pelvis backward to release the spasm and this is what the bending forward exercise accomplishes. But it was in the act of sex that I felt something let go as I pulled the pelvis backward. This had been the position of most pain previously. From that moment on I have been completely free from any pain in my back, buttocks or leg. In fact I feel freer in that region than before because of the attention I was forced to give to it.

Thinking about the event that caused my sciatica I realized that it was not simply an accident. I knew better than to do what I did. I knew that my legs should be bent to take the pressure when lifting a weight or exerting an upward force. I could only conclude that my action was designed, unconsciously, to injure myself. Why? Well, despite all the work I had done with my body bioenergetically, I was somewhat out of touch with the tension in my lower back. The injury focused my attention on that area, as I mentioned above, and made me work more intensively with it. And it also made me more conscious of my tendency to force situations. I am predominantly right handed and right sided. The pain in my right leg forced me to put my weight on my left leg which helped to balance my body and my personality. Not all injuries turn out to have such positive benefits but then, most people are out of touch with their bodies and their personalities. Most people are terrified by pain and so avoid every painful situation. They do not appreciate that pain is a positive response of the body to stress.

When the body is overpowered by a stressor agent its first reaction is shock, which consists of the withdrawal of energy and blood from the surface of the body, the skin, mucous membranes and striated musculature. The shock can be localized, as in the case of a small cut, but most often it is a general reaction. This withdrawal of energy explains why hair can turn white after a shock. The hair becomes dark again when the energy returns to the hair follicles. This sequence of shock, (withdrawal of energy) and rebound, (return of energy) is characteristic, I believe, of the onset of all illness. It is seen most clearly in the common cold. My colds often start with a sore throat (upper respiratory inflammation). I treat it by going to bed and sweating it out. I take some aspirin, drink hot tea and cover myself well. As the sore throat subsides I develop a head cold which may run for a couple of days. And “run” is what my nose does before it dries up.

Two factors always operate to produce a cold in me. The first is tiredness. If I chill off when I am tired, I catch a cold. This does not happen when I am rested. Tiredness indicates that my resistance is low; it means that my energy is temporarily depleted. The second factor is stress. The stress could be due to a physical chill (exposure to cold), an emotional chill or an extra exertion like a speaking engagement. What about the role of the cold virus? I believe that the virus is present in the body at all times following our first exposure to it as infants or children. Normally, it is not active. One's resistance is high, we say.

It generally takes several days after exposure to the stressor agent for a cold to develop. What is going on in this time? Some might say that it is a period of incubation. I think I can offer a better explanation. The “cold” begins with a chill and ends in a heat. The chill is an actual lowering of the body temperature. The body may then respond with a fever to overcome the chilling. I try to raise my body temperature by external means. The chilling of the body results from the state of shock, the withdrawal of blood and energy from the surface of the body, including the mucous membranes of the upper respiratory tract. The cells of this mucous lining become contracted and frozen. In the body's rebound from the state of shock, blood and energy flow back into the mucous lining of the throat “exploding” the frozen cells. (The burning pain of a severe sore throat is like the burning pain of a frost-bitten finger when it is warmed too quickly.) They disintegrate and are replaced by new cells. The detritus has to be removed which creates the often purulent discharge. The death and disintegration of the frozen cells is somehow related to the proliferation of the virus.

Seen in the light of the above, a cold has two stages. During the presymptomatic days the tissues are in a state of freeze and the body in a state of shock. Then a thaw sets in, symptoms appear and the nose starts to run. It is similar to the spring thaw of a frozen stream. Freeze and thaw correspond to shock and rebound. Have you noticed that when a cold has run its course you feel renewed? In part this is due to the rest enforced by the cold, but the energetic rebound from the shock also plays a part. If one aborts the symptoms, one risks to remain in the tired state and be vulnerable to more serious illness.

The common cold offers much to the student of psychosomatic illness. For one thing, there seems to be an inverse relationship between catching cold and becoming depressed. I used to catch cold easily but I rarely got depressed. The common element in both the cold and the depressive reaction is a state of energy depletion (tiredness, exhaustion). But why one person catches a cold while another gets depressed in this condition is a question I will answer later. The other interesting aspect of the common cold is that it rarely affects schizophrenics. In fact, when one of these individuals develops a cold, it is a sign of improvement in his state of mental health.

The explanation for the schizophrenic's seeming resistance to the common cold is that he is in a perpetual state of shock. I have previously described his condition as “frozen.” Thus, he doesn't react to the cold or a chill as other people do. This was clearly illustrated by a young woman who had walked through the snow-covered streets of New York to my office wearing a pair of canvas sneakers. They were soaked and her feet were blue from the cold. She didn't sense it because she was numb to her body and in her body. She was frozen. She ended in a mental hospital with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Another person in her situation would have ended in a general hospital with a diagnosis of pneumonia. When a schizophrenic person begins to thaw out from his generalized freeze, that is, become more responsive, he develops the symptoms of a cold when be becomes tired and chilled.

THE NATURE OF STRESS

In the preceding section I spoke of stress in general terms. If we are to apply our bioenergetic understanding to the relation of stress to illness, the former term should be defined energetically. But first, let us look at its common usage which derives from mechanics. In physics, stress denotes the operation of a force which subjects a body or object to strain or deformation. Harold G. Wolfe, whose book Stress and Disease was published in 1953, defines stress as “the interaction between external environment and organism.” The strain is the effect upon the organism. He then says, “The magnitude of the latter and the capacity of the organism to withstand the strain determine whether or not there will be re-establishment of homeostasis or a ‘break,’ with disruption and death.”¹

For Wolfe, the nature of the organism's reaction to stress was determined by its past experience. Thus, one person may react to overwhelming stress with arthritis while another may develop ulcerative colitis. A slightly different view was expressed by Hans Seyle, who was also studying the organism's reaction to stress. He believed that the organism's reaction to stress was non-specific; that is, the organism reacted the same to all stressor agents regardless of their nature. This reaction consisted of a hyperactivity of the adrenal cortex, a shrinkage of the thymus and lymph nodes and the development of gastric ulcers. He named this response the alarm reaction. Accordingly, he defined stress as a body state “manifested by a specific syndrome which consists of all the nonspecific induced changes in a biological system.”² I do not see a basic disagreement between these two views. I believe that there is both a non-specific and a specific response to stress. One can focus upon either aspect.

Seyle's view of stress described above pictures it as a negative phenomenon. Bu...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface to First Edition
• Lectures
• Chapters