Introduction
"Mental capacity develops on the basis of the mind's recognition and awareness
of physiological function. The physical body is the prototype." (Gaddini)
This chapter brings together biological,
neurological, developmental and psychological theory to
extend and illuminate a concept fundamental to body
psychotherapy: the muscular system as the motoric ego.
Body psychotherapy has always based its understanding of
the psyche on a knowledge of physical function. As
developmental theory (itself a multidisciplinary field)
advances, this deepens and affirms the concept of a
body-mind. In the first two sections I have highlighted
key aspects of biology, neurology and development, that
reflect the current state of research and theoretical
modelling, drawing particularly on the work of Deane
Juhan in Job's Body: a Handbook for Bodyworkers and the
work of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, in her own words in
Sensing, Feeling and Action, and in Linda Hartley's
Wisdom of the Body Moving.
Tracing the evolution of the concept of muscle as the
embodiment of certain ego functions, the third section is
a concise history of contributions from Wilhelm Reich
through to the integrative model taught at Chiron. The
fourth section interweaves the theory from these
different disciplines into a series of reflections on
muscular themes, which reveal the paradoxical qualities
of both muscle and the motoric ego.
The full complexity of the parallel functions of ego
and muscle are explored at the end of this chapter. At
this point I want to make a preliminary comparison.
Muscle is the fundamental structuring, mediating,
enabling tissue in the body - it is nourished by the
organs, underpinned by bones, enveloped by skin and
connective tissue, and enlivened by the bodily fluids.
The infant and child's muscle is developed through
contact with the world, and in relation to space, and
objects. Ego, in the history of psychoanalysis, has been
conceived as a mental structure - defined in widely
differing ways - which reflects the individual's habitual
adjustment to the external world. It incorporates early
developmental experience (as introjected objects), and
holds at bay the drive demands of the id. It is the basic
premise of body psychotherapy that ego functions are
body-mind processes, with the cognitive element being one
side of the coin, whilst sensory, motoric capacities are
the other side. The health of the ego is manifest in
stability and flexible capacity; in its neurotic state
the ego capacities become rigidified, even frozen. The
fixed ego is reflected in character structure, and this,
as Reich pointed out, is directly embodied in the
musculature (and, indeed, throughout the body
systems).
The Biological Function of Muscles
Movement - muscle mechanics
- Muscle is designed for movement and is known as the
motor system. The qualities and tone of our individual
muscles are reflected in our posture and actions, from
the minutest movement to our broadest gestures. Muscle
accounts for 70-85 % of our body weight, and defines our
size, contour, and feel. In addition, the musculature
helps generate heat in the body: 70% of the energy
produced by the muscles is released as warmth which
permeates the body.
-
- There are three kinds of muscle: the muscle of the
viscera, known as smooth muscle; cardiac muscle; and
skeletal muscle. Skeletal muscle is known as striated
muscle and it consists of elastic fibres bound together
in bundles. These are bound together by a thick band,
usually spindle shaped and contained in a membranous
sheath. This sheath is extended at the end to form strong
fibrous bands known as the tendons which fasten muscles
to bone. In conventional physiology muscle are considered
to work in pairs, or groups of pairs: the prime movers
initiating or maintaining a movement and the antagonists
opposing or holding in check that movement. Movement
happens when one pair contracts,and the opposing muscles
lengthens.
-
Movement as Active Perception, Movement as
Cognition
- Animation - having the capacity to move - derives
from the Latin word animus, meaning consciousness.
- Muscle enables movement. Even sense organs, for
example the eyes, rely on the exquisite organisation of
tiny muscles to function effectively. Sight is affected
by muscles in and around the eye, the eyelids, forehead,
and tear glands, as well as the deep muscles at the base
of the occiput, and all the muscles which orient the head
in the direction of what is being looked at. Theorists of
embodied experience, Bates, Kelly, and Lowen believe that
myopia is largely the result of traumatized eye muscles,
and that when the trauma or conflict is resolved, the
muscle of the eye are then freed to develop and form in a
more natural, vital fashion". (Dycht, 227)In this sense
the capacity to look - to select and focus visually
&endash; is intrinsically connected to muscle and
emotion.
-
- In the redefiniton of cognition by Maturana (Santiago
theory) it is conceived as an integral part of the way a
living organism interacts with its environment, including
the instinctive movements (reflexes) and responses. As
Capra summarizes it in The Web of Life, "in all these
cognitive processes, perception and action are
inseparable" "(Capra, 268). From a different base of
knowledge and experience, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, a
pioneering movement therapist, asserts:
- "movement is a perception....it is the first
perception to develop (the vestibular nerves, which
register movement, are the first to myelinate in utero)
and therefore the most important for survival;...as each
experience sets a baseline for future experiences,
movement helps to establish the process of how we
perceive;....how we perceive movement becomes an integral
part of how we perceive through other senses." (BBC,
114)
-
-
Metabolism - energy conversion
- Our musculature is the largest and most metabolically
active organ of the body. It metabolizes through
movement. Nerve stimuli cause the muscles to contract,
and this causes chemical changes in the muscle. This
combines with the flow of blood to the muscle bringing
nutrients, oxygen and hormones. Deane Juhan compares
muscle to liquid crystal because of its characteristic
capacity to change rapidly from sol (fluid, ie. flaccid)
to gel (flexed): its transformations produce a 'tapas' of
textures
-
- "concentrating on the muscles, I was amazed to feel
the change in pulsation when she simply imagined
moving.....it was during this exploration that I got the
sense of body as tapas and how assessing the muscles in
terms of different foods actually helped me as a way into
working. As I remember the image of her tibialis anterior
as uncooked aubergine, it is as if I am physically
feeling it again." (massage student, palpating
muscle)
-
-
- The process of shortening and lengthening affects the
muscles ecology by pumping fluids. When a contraction is
held for an extended period, the pump becomes a squeeze
and fluid delivery is decreased. This causes hormonal and
chemical deposits to build up. In addition continued
contraction of a muscle constitutes 'work' and therefore
uses energy: sustained tension is exhausting.
-
Neurological levels - an orchestration
- Muscle activity has the unique property of being
mediated by the voluntary nervous system, unlike other
organs and tissues, making it the closest of body systems
to consciousness. In fact the muscle system is a
convergence or coherence zone for all levels of brain
functioning, from automated reflexive responses to highly
tuned skills. The cerebellum (or brain stem) the oldest
part of the brain, is important for automated or
instinctual movements, such as sucking. It is heavily
dependent on sensory feedback. Meanwhile the basal
ganglia, within the brain stem, governs rhythmic and
ballistic movement. It is made up of different parts,
which keep each other in check. When dysfunctional it
results in wild, involuntary movements, or the opposite,
muscle rigidity and tremor.
-
- Meanwhile the cortex, the outer and most recent
evolutionary layer of the brain, relates to more complex
and less stereotyped muscle behaviour, such as manual
dexterity and speech. The supplementary motor and lateral
premotor areas - parts of the cortex - dominate when
conscious control is required, and can override signals
from the brain stem. On the other hand, once certain
skills are learned, or habits acquired, the cerebellum
and basal ganglia can take over these activities, freeing
up the cortex for other roles. Juhan highlights the
significance of these two motor systems - the alpha,
originating from the cortex, and the gamma, from the
brain stem - whose interrelationship, both sensory and
functional, underpins the complexity of our conscious and
unconscious movement. The need and capacity for
adaptation and expression in the variety and intricacy of
physical and emotional environments which humans inhabit
is reflected in the incredible range of the human
movement repertoire.
-
Proprioception - the instant 3-d map
- Proprioception means 'to receive oneself'.
Proprioception means 'to receive oneself'. Effectively,
groups of receptors act as an ensemble providing a
sensory map or picture of movement. Golgi tendon organs
measure tension values and effort. The muscle spindles
are sensitive to the slightest changes in lengthening or
shortening of the muscle, and the speed at which these
are occuring. Other receptors note joint position, and
changes in pressure in the body tissue. This map is
dynamic, dense, and detailed; it continuously records
changes in position, movement and tension of the total
muscular systemAll this information is integrated to
provide a substantial, three dimensional sensory picture
- like a felt hologram - which creates a background depth
which we experience as a sense of embodiment. By
contrast, states of dissociation and depersonalisation,
where 'reality' is felt as thin and alien, reflect
severely decreased integration of proprioceptive signals.
The extensive implications of the bodies' capacity to
internally represent itself - of which muscular
proprioception is a significant part - are currently
being integrated into neurology and cognitive psychology:
science is able now to provide the most detailed
explanation for how we feel and think through our
bodies.
-
- Although science is now catching up, Bonnie Cohen
confesses, "it is fascinating...and frustrating to me
that the sensations of movement and visceral activity
have been excluded from the "5 senses". As all sciences
are reflections of the socio-political -religous ideas of
their time, it is appropriate that the historical
repression of bodily sensation in Western Culture has
been transmitted as a matter of scientific fact." (BBC
114)
-
Learning and sensorimotor integration
- This sensory map influences the motor system in two
ways: adaptation/motor learning (long-term influences)
and immediate adjustments to movement. In addition to
proprioception, vision, hearing and cognition are crucial
to motor learning. Initially, vision may have a dominant
role over proprioception, ie. direct observation or a
visual image will accelerate the learning of a skill. But
once a movement is memorized the dominance of vision is
reduced in favour of proprioception. Experiences with
strong emotional significance are almost always
transferred from the short- to the long-term memory,
along with the muscle patterns they stimulated.
-
- Many motor activities do not rely on instantaneous
feedback but adjust to previous sensory input, stored in
the form of sensory engrams, in other words, habitual
patterns. Proprioceptive feedback itself is not
neccessary for us to carry out movement. Crucially,
however, in the absence of proprioception, the motor
system is incapable of controlling fine or new learned
movements, or of improving these movements. (78L) In
other words, for change to occur, sensory feedback is
vital. The body needs to know itself, in order to
transform fixed patterns.
-
- "Learning is the opening of ourselves to the
experience of life. The opening is a motor act; the
experience is interaction between motor and sensory
happenings." (BBC, 118)
"Voluntary" is relative
- Adaptation (survival) and expression are an emergent
property of neural processes becoming synthesised through
the muscular system. In evolutionary terms, muscle links
us with animals, which, like us, can run, bite, grip,
communicate through vivid language of movement and
expression. But development of the neo-cortex also means
we can suspend, suppress and distort or reformulate
instinctual behaviour. A clash of needs and perceptions
internally may create manifold and contradictory mental
and muscle impulses.
- I could not tell I had jumped off that bus,
- that bus in motion, with my child in my arms,
- because I did not know it. I believed my own
story:
- I had fallen, or the bus had started up
- when I had one foot in the air.
-
- I would not remember the tightening of my jaw
- the rage that I'd missed my stop, the leap
- into the air, the clear child
- gazing about her in the air as I plunged........
- Sharon Olds, 53
-
-
- To the extent that there is integration between
systems, we have the symphony of grace, purpose,
congruence. Failures of integration - from normal to
extreme - diminish our sense of ourselves and reflect our
painful, complex and individual circumstances and
history.
-
- Although we talk of 'voluntary' muscles, and the
cortex is associated with 'conscious' activity, these
assumptions are misleading. Learned behaviours are
initiated and controlled by engrams or gestalts, memories
of how specific actions have felt. "These sensory
memories function more like blueprints, or templates,
than they do like a linear sequence of commands....each
quantum of engrammatic memory contains the whole of a
particular movement [...] stored as an image or
outline." (Juhan, 289)
- We may think we are choosing an action deliberately,
but how we actually act is the sum of our history. And we
can perform quite significant and complex actions whilst
being unaware that we are doing so, like the driver who
is surprised to realise he has navigated his way to a
particular place whilst his mind was 'elsewhere'.
Development
Developmental Stages
- Muscle is literally developed through contact with
the world. In the beginning the uterine environment
offers the baby resistance to its own movement, as well
as offering the experience of the mother's movements.
This is followed by birth which requires powerful
physical effort and an immense act of will on the part of
the birthing child. "As the head of the birthing child
pushes into and through the birth canal and the tail of
the spine and the feet respond by pushing against the
contracting walls of the womb, the push of the head
transforms into a reaching through to the new world
outside." (Hartley, 53)
-
- The development of voluntary - as opposed to
reflexive - muscle activity happens in a precisely
differentiated sequence. Learning gross and fine motor
control takes place intensively in the first seven years
- sucking, manipulating objects, rolling, crawling,
walking, speaking, writing - but continues to be refined
throughout latency, adolescence and adulthood.
-
- When the bare feet of the baby beat across the
grass
- The little white feet nod like white flowers in the
wind,
- They poise and run like ripples lapping across the
water
- Lawr.38
-
- Muscle, brain and ego development are inseparable,
and depend on sensory and relational (human) feedback:
"the greatest sensory motor organisation occurs during
adaptive response....each adaptive response leads to
further integration of sensations....[and] leaves
the brain in a more organised state." (March, 54) The
acquisiton of new skills leads to a sense of mastery, and
an increase in the capacity for reality testing, which
strengthens the ego. Common phrases about being able to
"handle" life, or "get a grip" or "put the best foot
forward", and "take a step in the right direction" sum up
our intuitive understanding of this connection.
illus.ground1.tif
-
- Knowledge is only rumour until it is in the
muscle
- -New Guinea proverb
-
- Challenge and new input are vital to further
development. However, trauma and high levels of stress
reduce the sensory field, which is a key integrating
system. Deficits and traumatic interactions appear as a
disturbance or imbalance in tonicity of specific muscle
groups, which affect the final shape, movement, and style
of the adult body.
Tone
- Tone means pitch or tension, and refers to the
resting state of muscle: it expresses the readiness of
the muscle to act, to respond, to relate. Hypertonus
refers to highly toned or tense muscle; hypotonus refers
to low tone, or slackness. illus.bab1.tif Tone is a
product of the interplay of : the health and maturity of
the organs; the quality, or lack, of dynamic support; the
child's degree of mobility; and continuity of or
interruptions to meaningful emotional contact. Tone
develops from using the muscles and for this the infant
requires motivation, desire, and attention. The dynamics
of meeting, overcoming, yielding to gravity and balancing
resistance - gained through play with others and
exploring a diverse and structured environment - are
vital food for the developing muscles. The weight of the
body being moved through space becomes the resistive
force which increases the strength and support of the
larger, more powerful muscles.
-
- "Postural tone begins to develop in utero....after
birth, the tone continues to be a response to gravity and
is further modified by the way we are related to
physically, perceptually and emotionally. Tone is
relative and is reflective of the interaction between
one's inner and outer environment." (BBC, 125)
-
Flexion/Extension
- Flexion is the characteristic state of the infant in
utero, where the flexor muscles on the front of the body
are toned so that the body is curled up. Outside the
womb, the developmental thrust is towards extension, with
the extensor muscles of the back gaining tone until the
point when the infant can fully arch. This basic process
overlaps with the gradual individuation of flexion and
extension in each limb. This develops through the
emergence of the reflexes, equilibrium responses, and the
acquisition of motor skills. A balance between flexor and
extensor muscles is reflected in good overall tone and a
sense of being grounded. Too much tone in flexors either
manifests in the tendency to curl up, or in a
compensatory attitude in the extensors, a braced
attitude.
-
- Flexion and extension underlie our most basic
expressive movement patterns. Flexion suggests
containment, contraction, closing, hiding, protecting,
retreating, defending.
- Extension implies expansion, opening, reaching,
pushing, showing, exposing, moving outward/ toward.
(illus.dance2.tif)
- Flexion...... Extension
- You lie, snail-like, on your stomach - The authentic!
It rolls
- I dare not speak or touch, just out of reach,
beyond
- Knowing too well the ways of our kind- running feet
and
- The retreat, the narrowing spiral stretching
fingers
- Wendy Cope, 'Depression' Denise Levertov,
'Matins'
-
-
The Psychological Function of Muscle
-
A Historical Perspective:
Wilhem Reich - Muscle armour and character
- Wilhelm Reich, the father of body psychotherapy and a
major influence on the development of bodywork, was the
first to postulate a direct connection between
musculature and psychological function. "Muscular
rigidity....represents the most essential part of the
process of repression ....and is the basis of its
continued preservation." (FO, 39) Muscle rigidity became
known as armour, and its function, according to Reich,
was to bind or block "basic biological excitations", such
as anxiety, hate or sexual feelings. It is the functional
equivalent of the ego's binding of unacceptable impulses.
Its origin is in the infant or child's habitual
inhibition of impulses and expressions of feeling in
situations of unpleasure, typically the disapproval of
its parents and significant others. The child learns to
tense the muscles to hold back the movement or feeling -
whether it is a facial expression, or an undesired
behaviour - and when this is done repeatedly, the
muscular holding pattern becomes chronic and unconscious.
Reich's emphasis was on repression, but of course, the
muscular responses to neglect are equally imprinted,
often as collapse, as undertoned muscle.
-
- The muscular inhibition of an impulse is a concrete
and visible manifestation of the parental or
environmental prohibition. It is the physical
manifestation of the process of introjection. (Johnson,
p.68)
-
- Reich characterised muscular armour as being divided
into seven horizontal segments, from the ocular segments
to the legs, depending on the emotional function of each
area. He also recognised how an individual's muscular
armour carried the nuance and idiom of his sense of
identity. He described a patient whose "reserved
countenance...noble stride and... patrician bearing" was
very striking. Reich told him that he was playing the
role of an English lord, and this led directly to the
patient's revelation of a long-standing fantasy that he
had an aristocratic lineage, in contrast to his status as
the son of "an insignificant Jewish merchant". (FO,
194-5) In this example the identity has a defensive
function correlative with the patient's attempt to remain
"above it all", ie. on top of his feelings. Today we
might also note that the fantasy is also an effect of
internalised anti-Semitism. "Every muscular rigidity
contains the history and meaning of its origin."(FO
)
-
-
- The direct manipulation of the muscles, including
pressure on muscle insertions, became an intrinsic part
of Reich's characterological work. Supported and
interwoven with verbal analysis, this helped support
vegetative changes, cathartic release - such as sobbing
or shouting - and softening and enlivening of the
musculature. Reich's language of therapeutic "attack" and
"breaking down defences" comes across today as
inappropriately aggressive, but the basic principle of
addressing muscular armour as part of a broader
therapeutic endeavour has had a far reaching
influence.
-
The Biodynamic model:
The startle reflex and the somatic compromise
- Boyesen recognised the activation and incompletion of
the startle reflex as an important pattern underlying
habitual muscular contraction. (see Bones chapter) The
inhibited reflex results in contractive patterns retained
as micro-gestures. This is the startle remnant, which
co-exists with the maintenance of a tendency to hold the
diaphragm in an inspiratory tension, and other vegetative
holding patterns, to create what Boyesen called the
somatic compromise. In extreme cases, the gesture, such
as ducking the head, and moving the shoulders forward to
protect the heart, is visibly reified in the
musculature.
-
- Boyesen emphasises that the failure of the parental
environment is a key factor in the development of the
somatic compromise. Both Reich and Boyesen focussed on
the effects of repressive parenting on children, but paid
less attention to the infant's need for holding, before
they have attained significant voluntary muscle activity.
Falling anxiety - which can relate to the absence of good
enough psychological as well as physical holding - can
set up some of the deepest patterns of underlying
muscular rigidity. David Boadella writes, "how we handle
the infant in these first early hours and days
establishes basic patterns in how he holds his body, his
muscular organisation as he resists and opposes or
surrenders to gravity." (Life, 59)
-
The Motoric Ego
- In the biodynamic model the musculature became more
broadly associated with ego function and self-regulation:
"the ego regulates the id's vertical upsurge by means of
the horizontal counterforce of the bodies' musculature".
(Clov,INN) The muscles are seen as a structural
container. 'Horizontal' functions are to do with agency,
the ability to translate ideas into action, to
interacting in and with the world. The muscular system
embodies the 'motoric ego' . The 'vertical', embodied in
the alimentary or 'id-canal' is the instinctual force of
feeling and impulse. Ideally, vertical and horizontal
work together in 'dynamic equilibrium', creating
psychological, physical and energetic balance, reflected
in good muscle tone. As Boadella phrases it, "the inner
organ language of the vegetative system" is integrated
with "the outer muscle language of the muscular-skeletal
system" (Roots, 17) This constitutes ego-strength, a
psychological term to which Gerda Boyesen gives a
physiological dimension.
-
- Where the ego has a pseudo-strength - ie. the person
has a capacity to act, and to do, but little sense of
sponteneity or meaning - this is reflected in rigid
muscles. There may be heavy armouring in places of the
body to which expression has been denied. By contrast,
the ego weak person is overwhelmed by the feelings and
impulses of the id, and has difficulty containing the
charge or bringing it to fruition in the world. He or she
is ungrounded, finding it hard to focus and identify
needs, and easily thrown off balance. From Lilemor
Johnson, Gerda learned about the underdevelopment of
muscle which relates to problems in early development,
and this is reflected in the ego weak person's flaccidity
of muscle and tendency to collapse. Low muscle tone is
related to over-active or compensatory fantasy; high
muscle tone is related to control.
- [extend Johnson?]
-
The Bodynamic concept: muscle as a resource
- At the Bodynamic Institute in Denmark, Lisbeth
Marcher has integrated Reich's and Johnson's discoveries,
with an in-depth understanding of psychomotor
development. She emphasises that sensory -motor
development takes place in relation to people and the
environment. For the growing infant and child, each new
level of development, new motor capacities provide
possibilities for new sensory experience, new
perspectives, and new possibilities for interacting with
the world. In addition, for the ego to develop, "the
child needs to acquire forms for the containment of
energy, for protecting the self against overwhelming
external stimulus and for distancing the self from
internal stimulus that cannot be regulated." (Marcher,
59) Muscles are thus understood as being a resource which
enable motor activity, containment, self-regulation and
reality testing.
-
- The sequence of muscle development is quite specific,
and Marcher has developed a diagnostic technique called
'body mapping', which consists of testing the major
muscles for their hyper or hypo responsiveness. It is
based on the notion that muscles have a dual response to
stress, becoming either hyper- or hypotonic. If a
stressor is relatively light or comes at an age where
there has been sufficient development , the muscle is
likely to become hypertonic. If the stressor is
relatively massive, or is premature for a child's
developmental stage, the muscle will be hypotonic. The
distribution of muscular tonicity, its pattern and degree
reflects each person's complex and unique history
-
-
Chiron - an integrative model
- Working directly with muscle takes many forms - the
use of movement, direct palpation, observation of posture
etc. Within body psychotherapy, biodynamic massage is
unique as a system of formal bodywork, using a table and
a structured set of techniques. This naturally creates a
different perspective and context from the larger scale
and variety of movements witnessed in, for example, dance
movement therapy, but it brings into focus parts of the
body, such as the face, for close detailed work. At
Chiron, biodynamic massage is taught as part of an
integrative psychotherapy training which draws on the
theory and practice of Gestalt, developmental models,
Reichian, Jungian and Object Relations. This offers the
potential to work with the client lying on the mattress,
standing, moving or sitting. But the emphasis in the
training is on understanding the client's habitual fixed
relational postures and how these impact on the therapist
through direct observation and bodily resonance
(countertransference). In this sense, muscle carries the
charge in the transference-countertransference
relationship.
-
Muscular Themes
- The following is a brief summary of themes, many of
which have already implied in earlier sections of this
chapter.
-
Agency/Intentionality
- Intention, from the Latin, in-tendere - to stretch
toward
- Muscle tone and quality reflects ego capacity to the
degree that we are organically organized for any given
activity. This means being able to focus our attention
and intention on an activity and feel adequate to the
task. Muscles reflect our sense of purpose, or lack of
purpose.
-
- illus. meliss1.tif
-
I ate the day
- Deliberately, that its tang
- Might quicken me all into verb, pure verb.
- H 92
-
- We can use brisk muscular activity - walking,
cleaning, exercise - to shore up the ego in times of
strain. Taken to an extreme, physical activity for its
own sake can be mechanical, even robotic. When activity
is disconnected from an inner source, we refer to 'going
through the motions', a phrase associated with a person
who is in shock or severely depressed. Or we may see it
as manic activity, a flight from the internal world.
-
- Optimally, muscle is a vehicle for expressing and
fulfilling our selves:
- The hands that hammered in those nails
- emptied that kettle one last time
- are these two hands
- and they have caught the baby leaping
- from between trembling legs
- and they have worked the vacuum aspirator
- and stroked the sweated temples
- and steered the boat....
- Rich, 9
-
-
Body Image, Identity and Identification
- The mental image, or topography of the postural model
of the body is continuously being constructed and
destroyed. (Schilder,Levy 9)
-
- It is not the body-object described by biologists
that actually exists, but the body as lived in by the
subject. (Beauvoir, 1953, 69)
-
- The muscular system carries our ego identity in the
broadest sense. How we use our muscle, our characteristic
posture, gait, gesture reflects and communicates a great
deal about our gender, class, race, culture, and
lifestyle, as well as our developmental history. Embedded
in our muscles are all the skills, habits, expressions
and defences we have acquired. The range of our learning
includes normal development skills, such as feeding, and
walking; specific skills - such as weaving, carpentry,
juggling, driving; character attitudes, such as defiance
or deference; patterns stemming from trauma, including
birth trauma; and identifications made with others.
-
- Psychological identification happens to a significant
extent through mirroring or mimicking another's physical
stance and movements, or echoing their shape or rhythm.
Identification is one of our earliest expressions of an
emotional tie with another. It may be deliberate and
purposeful - as when learning a skill - or it may be
unconscious, stemming largely from emotional needs or
defences. It is a major psychological tool of the human
species, enabling us to survive, to understand others,
and make connections with families or groups that we use
to define ourselves.
-
- I stamp like the bear I call like the wind of the
thaw
- I leap like the sea spring-running.
-
- My sun-struck daughters splutter
- and chuckle and bang their spoons:
-
- Mummy is singing at breakfast and dancing!
- 20C 267
-
-
- Identification has many aspects to it but to
understand how muscles are involved in this process, it
is useful to compare the phenomena of imprinting in
animals. Imprinting was studied by Konrad Lorenz, who
observed that when ducklings hatch they respond to the
first thing that moves - in this experiment, him - follow
it and treat it as mother. He found that if he
reintroduced them to the real mother, they still
continued to treat him as mother, and carried on copying
his movements.
-
- Identification complicates identity because it is
multiplicitous, generating layer upon layer of history
and potential. illus. head1.tif From object relations, we
derive the understanding that it is not just individual
figures that we internalize but actually relationships
between ourselves and others. For example, a girl bullied
by her elder sister may identify with her (identification
with the aggressor), and carry in her body both the
frightening object and the frightened one (herself). The
sister's movements of swaggering, threatening, hitting
are remembered internally as a particular set of
movements, while the experience of being the victim is
held in a feeling of being paralysed. Later in life,
moving in a certain way may be unconsciously associated
with power and danger, whilst being still - for example,
on the massage table - may be associated with
hiding.
-
- The concept of body image explored by psychologists
and psychoanalysts comes over as rather static, and
overly visual. But it has highlighted our culture's
narcissistic obsession with the body, and the body as
battleground for control between, for example, a mother
and daughter. It has been usefully taken up in art and
movement therapy, as well as body psychotherapy, as a way
of helping the client access and represent feelings about
themselves.
-
- Arnold Schwarzenegger articulates the narcissistic
attitude: You don't really see a muscle as part of
you....the bicep has to be longer, or the tricep
thicker...You look at it and it doesn't even seem to
belong to you. Like a sculpture, you form it.
(Schwartzenegger, Wood, 122)
-
Instinctual Patterns and Archetypes
- Not all fixed patterns are limiting. The reflexes
which makes you put your hands out to break a fall, or
which enable you to swallow, or which sustain uterine
contractions during labour are part of our human
inheritance. They can be considered the physiological
equivalents of psychological archetypes, deep patterns or
imprints which connect us to our species and are
intrinsic to survival and reproduction. A physical reflex
may constitute a literal response to a tangible event, or
it may appear as a form of memory (often a traumatic
memory), or as a symbolic communication. Examples such as
feeding, gagging or birth reflexes carry powerful
object-relational dynamics, often embodying deeply
unconscious statements of relationships and
orientation.
-
Contact/Grounding/Reality Testing
- "The beginning of the loss of reality testing in
schizophrenia lies in a patient's misinterpretation of
sensations arising in his own body." (FO, 24)
- Contact and grounding in body psychotherapy are
synonymous with having a felt (proprioceived) awareness
of the body as an object in space and time. If we think
of an animal say, a cat &endash; its well-toned muscles,
orientation, balance, quickness of reflex etc are all
part of its very refined and acute ability to be in its
environment, in reality. The opposite of this is the
psychotic state, where the person's internal state can be
wildly deconstextualised, in a literal sense; they are
thrown off balance, can't feel the ground under their
feet. One way of bringing someone back to the present if
they have been lost in a memory, or intense emotional
state, is to get them to walk, to pick up an object and
bring their attention to the physicality of the
experience.
-
Flexibility/Responsivity
- "Muscle is the tissue with which we surely feel the
present moment. Bones grow over decades, connective
tissue tends to change over months or years.But muscles
can go through contraction, extension, and holding all in
the course of moments" RN
- Muscle is contractile and excitable and therefore
instantly responsive, enabling us to move and react with
skill, speed, and sponteneity. We have seen how muscular
stiffness (armour) indicates an emotional inhibition, but
hyperflexibility can represent the opposite polarity,
"passivity and a highly emotive consciousness", a lack of
internal structure and rapidly fluctuating ego states.
(Maps, 38) Muscle has the function of stabilising the
flow of energy, whether it is conceived of as metabolic
or psychic energy. The musculature regulates through
movement, or contracting against the impulse - hence the
function of exercise, or compulsive actions or gestures,
such as foot tapping, in 'using up' or 'diverting'
psychic energy.
-
Containment/ Boundaries/ Interface
- Muscle provides shape and structure in the body,
defining and making boundaries between sections of the
body, and between the individual's internal structure and
the outer world. The muscular mass can provide a sense of
substance and structure beneath the superficial boundary
of the skin. Likewise, Reich described the ego as a
"buffer in the struggle between id and the outer world".
The denser the musculature the more the potential impact
absorbtion (this is not just about physical density, but
tone, structure et).
- "The ego is as strong as the amount of energy it can
meet without there being shock". (Gv, 39)
-
- The musculature provides a crucial container for
binding and organising energy, and its capacity to do so
is reflected in the tonus and differentiation of the
muscles. Recently developed somatic trauma work uses as
one of its tools, a deliberate conscious toning (tensing)
of muscle. Muscles relate to specific activities &endash;
reaching, kicking, turning the head to see etc, which can
be strengthened or relaxed to the point where the tone is
optimum for it to contain the impulse (rather than
repress, collapse or dissociate from it). It is the
embodied contact (proprioceptive awareness) with the
muscle and its function that supports the psychological
attitude &endash; for example, sitting up straight,
immediately changes the sense of self
-
Expression/Communication/Character
- "Words can lie. The expression never lies.Although
most people are unaware of it, it is the immediate
manifestation of character" (Reich 19 73: 171) Or as it
is put in NLP "you cannot not communicate." The totality
of muscular patterns, both chronic and temporary,
conscious and unconscious, creates a constant stream of
information and communication. For example, we sense
whether someone's smile is genuine or not. This is
possible because involuntary expression is activated
subcortically (in the limbic system), whilst deliberate
expression is activated through the cortex, or 'higher'
brain. The genuine smile actually engages an additional
set of muscles around the eyes, and we intuitively know
that "smiling with the eyes" indicates a deeper level of
feeling than a smile which looks "plastered on." Despite
the musculatures capacity to inhibit impulse, it
represents as it conceals, it expresses as it defends
against, and it conserves as it wards off feeling. Like a
symptom.
-
Conflict/Splitting/tension
- "Sometimes the [...] impulse and the
inhibition of the same impulse can be localised in the
same muscle group [....] the conflict between
impulse and defence, with which we are so familiar in the
psychic realm, has a direct correlation in physiological
behaviour. At other times, impulse and inhibition are
distributed among various muscle groups" WR 330
- Muscles are constructed to work around tension,
operating in complementary or opposing pairs. Feeling our
muscles can give us the experiential sense of dynamism
and division, force against force, as in wrestling or
struggling against another, or ourselves. As we are
jammed in internal conflict, the stuckness is palpable in
the knots and tensions in our musculature. Muscle has a
paradoxical function: it 'pulls us together' - organises
us into a familiar pattern, including energetic
withdrawal and binding of anxiety, rage, sadness - even
as its tension embody our splits.
-
- "There is constriction around my neck and in a
diagonal line down my back. By holding certain of my
muscles, I literally seem to create the physical
sensation of being split off from myself.....And now...I
feel a different kind of muscular patterning. I feel
excited and can feel the muscles around my chest extend.
The muscles in my face which control smiling are starting
to contract.
- I wonder is there any part of my experience which is
not expressed with my muscles?"
- "I notice I am straining muscles around my diaphragm,
contracting muscles in my neck and high up next to my
occiput. Its a feeling that I want to batten everything
down .......I want to grasp the truth with my
muscles."
- "I feel this deep sense of habit in my muscular
patterning, the sense of wanting to withdraw, and hold
and contract while pushing and straining. Its all a
muscular trip. I have the image of a friend smiling and
feel something happening in my heart, and my face muscles
contract and extend into a broad smile. My diaphragm
flutters, my throat constricts again. There seems to be
no ending."
-
-
Synthesis/ Integration
- "The rhythmicity of one's movements, the alternation
of muscular tension and relaxation in movement go
together with the capacity for linguistic modulation and
general musicality" (Reich, CA, 345) Just as the
musculature can reflect the strain of holding together
conflicted parts, so too it can embody through an
individual's grace, and intricacy of movement an
extraordinary synthesis of sponteneity and acquired
skill.
- O body swayed to music, oh brightening glance
- how can we know the dancer from the dance?
- In a therapeutic context there may be a 'coming
together' in the client, visible in the musculature as a
deepened breath, aliveness and congruence in their
presence - a 'bodyshift' equivalent to, and sometimes
accompanied by, a conscious insight.
-
Muscle and Ego: Parallel Functions
- Unusually, rather than just using
psychological/analytical models and clinical experience
as the basis for defining ego, I have tried to extend the
notion of ego by deepening my understanding of neurology
and physiology, particularly of the muscle. Of course the
totality of ego functions depends on the body as a whole
- it arises out of the interaction of multiple systems.
But the biological and developmental function of muscle
has important parallels with ego, and I believe the
concept of the motoric ego is sufficiently robust to bear
expanding.
-
- Muscle is the system we think of when we talk about
the body working. In psychoanalysis "working through"
implies the ego's struggle to integrate. Both muscle and
ego go through stages of profound change between foetal
life, infancy and adulthood : a development which is not
just a growth in size, but the evolution to a more highly
organised state. The adult ego of the mother or her
substitute 'holds' the baby while it progressively learns
to hold itself; the earth/floor or parent holds the baby
as it lies until it is able through rolling, crawling and
finally standing to hold itself up against gravity.
-
- The analyst Micheal Balint, who was influenced by
Reich and Ferenzci, and who articulated the difference
between benign and malign regression, noted the parallel
responses of ego and muscle to the viscissitudes of life.
"When the strain is too great, the child has two ways of
recovering his balance. Either his ego may be overwhelmed
by the growing excitation and a state of panic sets in,
which then finds relief in an outbreak of affect and
unco-ordinated movements. Or else it will do its utmost
and call up all his energies to stem the excitation. The
first method resembles a clonic, and the second a tonic
spasm [...] these two modes of reaction are the
ego's primal forms of defence."
-
- Muscle and ego both have a characteristic capacity to
divide against themselves in order to hold a peripheral
structure together, and protect a deeper structure. As
Nick
Totton puts it, Reich's discovery was that "the
ego[....] pits muscular energy against itself -
using muscular tension to inhibit muscular impulse." The
capacity of the ego/muscles for "interrupting, holding back
[...] can be a deliberate temporary reaction or it
can be a chronic fixed habitual pattern which is outside
awareness. The first one is an important source of
creativity (Jung's opus contra naturam). Its the latter
which Reich considered to be the root of neurosis." (Soth,
17)
Roz Carroll - contact: thinkbody@lineone.net