b. Why focus should be on the 41 coping mechanisms other than repression

The concept of repression is, at best, dubious. Even if present and even if in wide use, therapy focus on this mechanism is fruitless.

First, I remind you that the theory of repression is and was a theory of willed forgetting of memories or ideas. The claimed reason for repression was that the memory or idea produced unpleasant affect. By removing the memory or idea from consciousness, the resultant or accompanying unpleasant affect was prevented.

Footnote 84. f presented concepts are blatantly obvious contradictions, then the mind even as early as age two can recognize the fact of contradiction. Contradictions can also arise between one's inherent needs and desires and what is in-the-home accepted or sanctioned. The book by Mahler, Pine and Bergman (1975) is highly recommended.

Reich started his body-based psychotherapy as a way to get at the character. As he developed his Orgone theory, he changed his theory of the therapy from a way to deal with character to a way to de-repress blocked emotions (or blocked Orgone streaming if you prefer). His rationale is summed up in a series of diagrams he drew showing anger being prevented ways to vent and thus turning back on the Rousseauian natural self.

Let's suppose that one works in the therapy, or approaches the therapy, in the emotion-releasing paradigm of, after Reich, all the body-based psychotherapy modalities. Further let's suppose one is constricted in thinking about this emotion-releasing model to just anger, fear, and self-pity (weeping). In this model of human psychology, what has happened to learning? what has happened to thinking? what has happened to insight? what has happened to morality? to ethics? to esthetics? what has happened to temperament (James, 1880/1918)? what has happened to organic pathology of the nervous system (even as simple an issue as having pollen allergies impacts one's work and even one's place of living)? but especially, what has happened to the very real possibility (I would say, the fact) that Reich's developmental scheme is wrong?

Footnote 85. For argument's sake, let me grant Reich's model of human psychology and his idea of blocks to Orgone flow as being the essential element in human psychology. Here is what is missing from this picture: (1) what of the other over 549 emotions; do they have no effect and no relevance?; (2) what of the fact that Reich found that the method did not, in fact, cure (his 'bent tree' analogy)?; (3) what of all the other defense (coping) mechanisms that everyone else finds present in human psychology; they quietly disappear without comment; (4) what of the total lack of empirical evidence for Reich's anger postulate?; (5) what of evolution and genetics and the fact that they are missing from Reich's formulation?; (6) what of the reductionism contained in Reich's formulation, that his theory reduces human life to blocks or the orgasm reflex leaving no room for the immense variability that one finds in practice (7) what of Reich himself, being raised in a sex-negative (his term) patriarchal system, and yet claiming that he was orgasticly potent thus inherently saying that the theory either is false or does not work in the if->then axiomatic way that he postulated.

If Reich and his progeny are correct that emotional acting-in is somehow curative, then the therapy will do its work irrespective of any argument I have put forth that the relevant issue is cognition, not emotion. On the other hand if what I have put forth on the cognitive issue being central to human psychology and that the therapy simply facilitates one's ability to discover his own cognitive errors by removing habituated patterns of character that conceal the erroneous errors of thinking, then one has by utilizing the techniques put forth in this chapter on the cognitive work of self-therapy gained the benefit of both theories. Put briefly, the theory I have put forth in this book is a no-lose proposition.

If repression is real, important, and is addressed by the body-based psychotherapy; then you have that in hand. If repression is a false concept or is of marginal importance then by focusing on the postulated cognitive issues involved in psychopathology you have the best of both theories. You can't lose in thinking that thinking is the crucial issue. And, in our context here, thinking means focusing on at least a few of the more important of the at least 41 identified coping mechanisms other than repression.

c. The most important of the coping mechanisms in terms of self-therapy

Different people characteristically employ different coping mechanisms. Even within the same person, mood can change the prevalence of observed use of coping mechanisms. Moreover as the Reichian therapy proceeds, one can measure the change of character by the change in the use of coping mechanisms. What I am going to do here is highlight only the most important of the list of coping mechanisms (page 461). These are the ones that are most frequent and which will, by your learning them and learning to observe their use, provide you with the maximum benefit with the minimum of psychic cost.

Footnote 86. In using the word 'curative' I am aware that I am not addressing the argument put forth in a life-time's of writing by Thomas Szasz and his trenchant claim that we have erroneously medicalized choice and morality. To use the word 'cure' is to presume that psychology is a medical issue rather than a moral issue.

Before I start on this list, I want to issue a caution. I will discuss this at greater length in the TECHNIQUE section (starting on page 418) of this chapter, I want merely to mention it here as a precaution. The tendency of anyone seeking to understand and correct himself is to make changes whenever he locates a mistaken or non-functional aspect of himself. DON'T DO IT! The goal of self-study is to gather data. I repeat: the goal of self-study is to gather data. If you volitionally make changes in yourself all that you will accomplish is to hide the issue (what Freud termed: symptom substitution). As I discussed previously, character is destiny. Your character is pervasive in all the big and little things in your life. If you stomp on one manifestation, you will simply be missing the other manifestations.

On the other hand if you simply collect and collate data, you will, in time, simply change at the character level and it will be permanent and pervasive. This is just a heads up, I will spell this out in the section on technique.

In this section, I will present only the most important coping mechanisms. In the technique section I will discuss how to learn to watch for your use of these mechanisms and how to manipulate the data.

i. projection

To project is to place your own state into another person. By use of the word 'state' I mean ideas, opinions, moods, desires, intentions, feelings, expectations, intentions or, in general, any other mental content. Projection is ubiquitous.

ii. introjection

To introject is to take a perceived or imagined or hypothesized aspect of another person and put it into your self.

Empathy is a sophisticated form of introjection where one judges or imagines another person as having a certain feeling state, one introjects that feeling state and then responds to the other person from the point of view of having that feeling state.

iii. reaction formation

In reaction formation one converts something into its opposite. The choice of what-is-the-opposite-to-what is a matter of some subtlety. I will address that question in the technique section.

iv. life-style repetition compulsion

There are two forms of the repetition compulsion. The statement of the life-style repetition compulsion is one of the few coping mechanisms that has an exact definition. That definition is: any condition that has been experienced for an extended period of time comes to be regarded as the natural, the normal, the to be expected.

You can read an example of the life-style repetition compulsion in the story of Betty that I presented in Chapter one (page 7). For example: "her preferences... were either of no consequence or were wrong... Betty soon stopped trying to form her own judgements... she grew to ignore any desires of her own."

Betty's desires, her likes and dislikes, were always ignored and thus she came to regard her own desires as of no consequence. As her mother treated her, so she treated herself. Because of the life-style repetition compulsion, in life as an adult Betty would display an indifference to her clothes; she would have little preferences in food; she would rather be directed than make a decision; she would be generally passive; she would — and this is the most important issue in life style repetition compulsions — be anxious if she had to depend on her own decisions.

Footnote 87. The mechanism of 'counter' is very close to reaction formation. The subtle distinction is not relevant to our discussion.

Footnote 88. Freud did not draw this distinction. However, the psychodynamics of the life-style repetition compulsion and the incident repetition compulsion are sufficiently different that a distinction is important.

Footnote 89. Yes, one could also say that this was an issue of incorporation or of identification, but life-style repetition compulsion is a wider concept than are incorporation or identification.

v. incident repetition compulsion

An incident repetition compulsion is the repeating, in symbolic form, of an incident wherein you, as a child, did not get the desired result.

As you study yourself, and if you do it with appropriate dedication and focus, you will, over time, find that incident repetition compulsions are found repeatedly. Unraveling your incident repetition compulsions is arduous work. The degree to which the incident is symbolized makes discovery difficult.

Another sticking point of significance about the incident repetition compulsion is that it can never be satisfied. Even if one were exactly to replicate the initial scene and get exactly the response one initially sought, the incident would not be closed. Even though the scene is exact, you wanted the response when you were seven (to give it an arbitrary age) and getting it at 25 does not (internally) make the scene complete. But, more than that, the scene can never even be exactly repeated. It happened when you were seven and replication at 25 is not an exact replication.

I'll make up another 'patient' story to illustrate the point.

Mark liked to play baseball. Generally he was not that good at it, but that did not stop him from enjoying his time in the field and his time at bat. Then there was that one play; that one time that he caught a ball that, he thought, no one would ever have guessed he could do. He expected everyone to be very impressed by his special accomplishment. What he got was just one of the other kids saying: "hey, good catch."

Now he did not continue through life playing baseball. To the contrary, since he was not that good at it, he soon realized that he was not a sought-after player and he turned to other activities. As far as his parents knew, he "simply lost interest in baseball."

Footnote 90. Contrary to what Reich, Lowen, and some of the other body-based therapists have written, the most important emotion is anxiety. Humans do more to avoid anxiety than any other emotion or feeling.

But baseball was only the setting for the incident, the essence of the incident — the plot of his life's novel — was that you do things that other people expect can't be done and you don't get the recognition for it.

There is much more to say about this mechanism, but I'll hold that off in order to start the techniques section. We'll come back to Mark.