CHAPTER 6My study of psychology and my work in psychomotor therapy have shown me how difficult it is to define the ego. Sometimes it has seemed to fall under the category of controls and consciousness, sometimes under that of inhibition, and sometimes it has seemed that the ego functions to give us a consciousness of ourselves. I have believed the ego to be a process that develops gradually in a person as he matures, and yet young children have exhibited controls and consciousness and inhibitions which seem to contradict that belief. At one point I thought that the ego was represented primarily in what I call voluntary movement and that the id was operating in what I call emotional movement. What I have now is a set of concepts and processes that I loosely lump together as the ego. Perhaps they will become more defined as I write.
An analogy that has been helpful in my work is to describe and understand one aspect of the ego to be like the skin of the self, and in that respect to have a function parallel to that of the skin of a one-cell organism. The skin of a cell has the function or responsibility to hold in the matter of the cell and to hold out the rest of the world. However, it is not a matter of rigid control but of articulated surfaces which hold most of the world out and let some of it in. For naturally the cell needs to take in energy from the world and to know in what proportions either to let that energy get in or to pull it in. Thus the cell is a body of interactive energy systems contained and regulated by its skin. Perhaps the "ego" of the cell can be described as the interface on the body of interactive energy where it comes in touch with the world. Then in the human the ego could be seen as the psychic equivalent of that interface on interactive energy. The ego or interface or skin must be able to recognize and discriminate between those things in the outer world it needs and those it doesn't need and to control the quantity and timing of the incoming energy, for certainly if it opened its surface to a certain nutrient for an unlimited period it would burst. Therefore the ego needs discriminating abilities and timing abilities, that is, some capacity to measure quantity, quality and time.
If the single-cell creature has a complex interior with different processes going on within it in various locations, then the skin surface would have to be articulated to take in certain nutrients in one place and certain others in another place. Obviously then it would have to "know" something about interior processes as well as exterior elements so that it could assist in a more perfect match between the interior and exterior. It would possibly even have to know about the interactions of certain interior processes for some of them might have the potential to grow faster than the skin and to cause the entire organism to burst and to "leak" out of its skin and become indistinguishable from the outside. Then the functions of the ego would seem to include "knowing" something about its own over-all dimensions and something about its capacity for flexibility. Therefore it would have to know the difference between itself and other things--would have an identity. That is, ego processes are included in what we have called identity processes.
If that one-cell organism were "born" full grown, so to speak, it would not have to go through any developmental stages and be sure that its ego was pacing the rest of the organism properly. It could also then be assumed that the ego knowledge and functioning would not have to be learned and were therefore genetic. The learning would have been automatically passed on by the "parent" organism. Therefore one can surmise that at least some aspects of the ego are inherited.
Let us now turn to the human. The ego problems for the human are compounded at once if we are to follow out the two new statements we have arrived at so far. One, that the ego can be described or understood as the interface between interactive motor systems and the outside world and, two, that there are five interactive energy systems operating in the human.
When is the ego born? That is an interesting question, for both the sperm and the egg are temporarily viable single-cell organisms with a membrane which must include an interface and therefore by our definition must include some primitive ego processes. To speculate with that assumption one step further back would lead to the postulate that the interfaces on merging or matching surfaces of atoms which were involved in a chemical change would include something like ego processes for the interfaces would have to be able to discriminate, to make measurements, and judgments in some perhaps mechanical way. Poetically, knowing (or ego) is on the surface of being and being is interactive energy. What is the material world if it is not interactive?
We must begin with one form of interactive energy that is potentially articulable into five systems with their variations according to the structures they energize.
The basic interactive targets are: gravity and the ground, food and air, people, things, and symbols. It is easy to see how these targets can overlap, and indeed one of the problems of life and ego growth is distinguishing them and relating to them properly.
Perhaps one of the reasons that the distinctions can be confused is that the systems I have hypothesized are not absolutely separated. The brain works as a totality within which there are structural differentiations.
The ego must distinguish between all those systems and the environments or targets with which they engage. When the egg is fertilized, the two primitive egos unify to become one. While the growing and dividing cells have not yet individuated into systems and varying functions, the ego must reside on the interface between the cells and the uterine wall on a metabolic or chemically interactive and discriminatory base. When there is sufficient mass and complexity to the foots it begins to develop a reflexive motor system and therefore can respond to gravity. When there is sufficient cellular individuation to make distinctions between inner and outer, the outer skin surfaces must begin to develop sensory awareness and controls that are the beginnings of interpersonal and material manipulations. By the time of birth, then, the infant has quite a history of interactions: nine months of chemical, gravitational, sensory-motoric relationship with the mother via the womb. When the child leaves the womb, it has already learned to move its arms and legs, perhaps to grasp and manipulate the umbilical cord with its hands, perhaps to suck its own thumb, to feel the shape and limits of the womb with its head, hands and feet and all skin surfaces. When the child is born he is not complete and independent as was the one-cell organism in our original example. He still has a long distance to travel in becoming an independent, autonomous individual with a sense of his own identity. In other words the total person, or self, will learn or develop in the context of the world in which it finds itself. The organism and the ego can learn from interactions with the environment, ranging from chemical to behavioral to symbolic.
Although the child is learning about all five interactive processes simultaneously, there is an obvious developmental sequence that must be followed. While those higher developmental sequences are not yet mastered the child must depend on outside forces, namely its parents, to augment, complement and supplement its own still inadequate ego processes. I am suggesting that the parents, and at first particularly the mother, are to be understood as a neural or ego extension of the child. The ego, then, must be able not only to learn, but also to be somewhat parasitic or dependent on others while not losing its own potential for independence and autonomy. To some extent the ego already had such a relationship with the womb of the mother. Now, after birth, the relationship continues between the ego and the mother and father, and more interpersonal than the impersonal and chemical relationship it had previously. I begin with the relationship with the womb to demonstrate the continuity of slowly diminishing dependency on aspects of the environment that the child and the ego of the child experience.
In terms of the order of this book we are reexamining the needs of the child but now with the addition of concepts of the ego, interactive energy and identity process to ideas of memory, learning, relating, individuation from the universal, and development of the symbolic from the motoric. The orchestration and control of all these factors is under the responsibility of parents, teachers and society in that order. The parents' task of guiding a child's development so that he will be able to relate successfully to the world he lives in is an undertaking worthy of an artist of the highest caliber. The complexity and interrelationship of the various developing processes in the child must be monitored by a parent who himself is changing and growing at his own speed.
Let me quickly sketch out the process of sequential development of the ego of the child and then I would like to point out some hypotheses regarding ego malfunctions. The first task of the ego of the child is to gain, or rather to assist the interactive process to gain, a satisfactory and satisfying relationship and control over the metabolic and reflexive
processes and interaction with the world of food, gravity, and ground. To put it more simply, the child has to learn how to eat, to control his sphincters in the process of elimination, and to master the skill of locomotion in a gravity field with the ground under his feet. All of this is learned in conjunction with reflexive processes that do most of the actual coordination. There seems to be relatively little that the ego must "do" in the realm of reflex vegetative interactive system besides deciding "when" to chew and swallow food, with a little addition of "how," and little else. While the infant is gaining mastery over this universe, the parent is filling in by feeding the child, cleaning up after him when he still cannot and should not be expected to control his sphincters, picking him up and carrying him about while he cannot yet walk.
As the child learns to do those things for himself, he gains a sense of accomplishment and a sense of identity from the approval he receives from his parents. If for some reason he does not succeed or is not permitted to succeed by overly solicitous parents, he suffers an ego distortion, an interactive energy distortion and an identity distortion. I point this out to show the complex nature of single events and the implication this has for the therapist.
If we return for a moment to the illustration of the ego as a skin or membrane around the interactive living process of an individual, then we see those parents who refuse to permit the child sufficient opportunities to develop his own ego insisting on remaining a part of the child's "skin" or ego neural processes. The child and the parent then can not separate from each other sufficiently to become autonomous individuals. The ego malfunction that the parent produces in the child is reflective of and complementary to the ego malfunction in the parent himself. Unless he succeeds in overcoming the infantilizing effects of the overly solicitous parent, the child is condemned to remain at the level where relating is still consuming and where his ego is not differentiated from his parents.
The next stage in the development of the child is his learning to control and master the realm of the interpersonal and the energies and behaviors of that interactive system. This stage presents the child with the opportunities and the internal capacities for achieving his interpersonal needs with his parents, his siblings and his playmates. His sexual and his aggressive energies come to the fore in this stage and he must learn to use them, limit them and control them with the aid of his parents. He is also still somewhat faced with his needs for support in a physical as well as emotional way, he still has to deal with nurturant and consumptive needs, but now in a more personal interactive way than in a primitive metabolic way. He learns then to distinguish between his mother as the deliverer of food and the food itself, and to see her as a person who provides him with emotional and personal satisfactions. It could be said that his ego in this stage needs to learn to discriminate all the various targets for his interactive and interpersonal energy. Without adequate ego discriminations his interactive energy would blindly attach to any and every target as it appeared. He must also learn to tap the full range of his sexual and aggressive energies and find their limits. It is most important that they be tested in concrete behavioral interactions.
The final stage of ego development deals with the handling of interactive energy which relates to material objects and symbols. This is the level at which eye and hand control, speech, creativity and value judgments are developed. This stage ties in with the producing and approving mentioned earlier in the identity process. The competency in work and in the manipulation of ideas and symbols increases one's capacity to satisfactorily engage in the world of objects and ideas and to gain mastery of both. Again it is the parent's job to help the child to engage in this growth and to help him make realistic discriminations regarding his efforts and his results. This process goes on throughout schooling and is overseen by teachers, religious figures and the society in general.
Ego Deficiencies
My experience indicates that if the parents have not done their job properly, the child does not complete the development of his ego and that he has, in a sense, a gap in the skin of his ego which permits too much energy either to flow in or to flow out. All deficiencies of interactive needs will be reflected on the developing ego. For instance, if the child is not permitted to develop his own capacity to support or protect himself, his ego will include the strength of others as part of his own interactive equipment. In the event that his parents go away or die while he has not yet acquired this capacity, he may undergo a great shock which can be experienced on three levels. On the ego level it can be experienced as a great rush of stimuli coming from the outside world which overwhelms him and which he cannot control or master. On the interactive level he can experience the frustration of an interactive need and know the pain and anger which it engenders. On the identity level he can experience the failure of his own competency and judge himself inferior and also experience the shock of the sudden absence of a pole-star figure which is severely disorienting. The parents, then, are not just "out there" to a child who is growing. They are also very much within his growing ego, and it is their job to see to it that the child learns to take over gradually in his own ego their temporary functions. This task, precisely what is undertaken in psychomotor therapy sessions, can be described as an attempt to satisfy interactional needs and to develop ego discriminations and controls, identity, competency and interior orientation positions by using the good parent figures, teachers and mates to provide the appropriate response at the appropriate time.
Some Concepts of Impotence and Omnipotence
The diagrams used on the chapter on interpersonal interactive energies shed some light on the processes of omnipotence and impotence as they apply to psychomotor therapy theories and practices. If the developing ego of the individual is described figuratively as appearing on the interface of interactive energy as it searches for appropriate and satisfying targets and relationships, it is possible to show how the egos and actions of the parents help shape or distort the ego of the growing child.
[Figure 6-1, p. 119]
I must point out the limitations of such a diagram to emphasize the great variations that might exist within such a seemingly static relationship. For instance, the innate outward drives of the interactive energy are not shown here, nor is the potential variation of intensity of those drives due to genetic factors. By that I mean that some individuals may be born with stronger or weaker interactive drives (aggressive, sexual, social, for example) than others, including those in their own family. There is also the genetic variation within the structure of the ego itself. An individual may have a comparatively limited capacity to inhibit or modify his interactive energies. Also the ego, in order to do its work properly, must be able to perceive, and there is genetic variation among egos which results in varying capacities to perceive interactive events of any kind.
Concept of Linearity (re: omnipotence)
In watching certain structures in the process of doing therapy I have come to believe that some interactive energies, when stripped of their interface of ego processes, seem to move in a linear or limitless direction. I am reminded of the enormous power of the nuclear explosions that occur when the coherent structure of the atom is destroyed. The analogy is striking for couldn't it be said that nuclear explosions occur when the ego interface of the atom's structure is destroyed? To follow the analogy a step further, stable interactions occur when interactive energy and its ego interface are intact, and unstable energy dispositions occur when the balance between the interface and the interactive energy within is destroyed. However, some nuclear explosions can be harnessed and made productive. Is it possible, then, to harness and direct for productive ends the psychic energies by loosening some ego controls for limited times, or perhaps to over-impose ego controls for opposite reasons at other times? It is conceivable that this is an accurate description of what sometimes occurs in a structure. Those individuals who have constricting egos are helped to loosen them somewhat within the control of a structure, and those who are apparently unable to regulate their interactive energy can be helped to reapply ego controls. Let me continue with another analogy for linearity. With our emphasis on ecology at the present time I am reminded of the fantastic multiplication of rabbits in Australia when they were introduced to that continent. If I remember correctly there were no natural enemies of that species and soon they seemed to be overrunning the entire countryside. That event seems to describe what I mean by the linearity of interactive energy without its ego interface. The energy keeps moving on a straight line towards infinity until it meets up with some kind of limit-setting controls. Those rabbits would have reproduced forever until the natural limits of food and space imposed their effect. The ego has evolutionary values, for its interface seems to direct the interactive energy to more balanced interactions and choices resulting in more mutual satisfactions and more developing complexity and structure in the universe rather than to linear destructiveness and selfishness. That is an interesting concept that is arising. It would seem as if the ego interface recognizes others like itself or at the least recognizes and is able to relate to others whereas without it there would seem to be selfishness and destruction. Ego processes then would lend toward community and mutual growth, whereas ego-less processes would tend to move towards that negative entropic state where all things eventually run down.
To sum up, there seems to be interactive pressure experienced by the individual that would seem to be capable of moving in the direction of infinity were it not for the intervention of outside limiting forces. These forces are then internalized by the ego and used to control the interactive energy.
Consider the little child who is just beginning to feel the sense of his own power. He turns to his mother and says, "I can do anything, I can beat up anybody in the whole world, I can make anybody do what I want them to do. Everybody has to listen to me." Of course a certain amount of this muscle flexing is important for the proper release of his energy store. But it is important that he also be allowed to experience the limits of his energy in situations that would allow him to test his actual powers. Too much of a squelch and he will withdraw from even touching those energies that proved so disastrous to his self-esteem, too little and he will have an inflated sense of his limits and boundaries. If our boasting little child above were unfortunate enough to have his father die in an accident when the child was developing his aggressive and sexual drives, a number of things might happen to him psychically. Since that little boy would not yet have gained any way of measuring what he actually could or could not do in a reality sense, it would not necessarily seem impossible to him that he did not somehow kill his father. Remember that a child of the age that could speak and say what that little boy was saying could already handle the world of symbol and symbol manipulation quite well. When he was boasting, it would not be terribly unlikely that he was also capable of imagining precisely the conditions under which he would be ruling the world. No doubt, if asked he could describe what he would do, what he would look like, what he would have others do, etc. All those things could seem as real to him as if they were actually occurring. (Remember that humans do have the capacity to treat symbols as if they were real.) Now to the extent that he believed that he actually did kill his father he would be suffering from an "ego break" which would have many implications. One of the functions of the ego is to measure one's own energy potential and to measure the energy potentials of external events. To the extent that one assesses one's energy as infinite, one's ego is no longer fashioned by concrete reality interactions but by fantasized events. I use the following design to demonstrate this.
[Figure 6-2, p. 123]
The child can now assume that he has the power to destroy anyone in the entire world and he may take two different pathways to realize this power. He may ascribe to his fantasy and imagination infinite powers and live in a psychotic world of his own, or he may grow up seeking in concrete reality just those powers of control and destruction that he imagined he had. The second would at least keep him sane, if not far more dangerous, and would demonstrate that he knew the difference between fantasy and reality and that he was attempting to place under his ego control those energies which in fantasy he had at his disposal. He would continue his attempt to accrue all the power he could--even to the point of trying to rule the world--until he came across some concrete limiting agency. The average person faced with the circumstances surrounding the little boy does not grow up attempting to rule the world. However, all of us do have the innate capacity to attempt world rule but are restricted by the limitations imposed on us by reality. Most individuals seem to take the less taxing pathway of retreating to a world of fantasy. Those individuals who do seem to go toward world rule may simply be trying to become whole and integrated. That is, they wish to have their egos become as large in reality as they are in fantasy and thereby to become whole in one sense. However, these people could be extremely dangerous, for their aggressive drives would not have been sufficiently capped and they would be relatively unconcerned for the feelings or needs of others.
Part of the surge of power that results from the ego break can be described as the interactive energy released from its hold by the death of the father and the as yet weak ego of the child. This aggressiveness can be understood also as the search for strength and power that would compensate for the protection loss that the child experiences with the loss of the father, who had provided him with security, protection and warmth, as well as limitation for his aggressive energies. With his father gone he must "become his own father." This demands a build-up of strength on either the fantasy or the reality level. If he finds those strengths within himself and not in some surrogate figure in the real world he will cease directing his interactive energy toward the outside world and direct it towards himself, making of himself his own pole-star figure as well as his own interactive target. This can isolate him from relating while making him very strong in certain rigid ways. It can also give him identity problems.
If the child is frightened by the intense surge of energy he experiences at the death of his father, he may experience the shock of the ego break as "I can't handle myself; I am going out of control." This feeling of going out of control could be compounded by a sense of disorientation at the loss of his pole-star figure father. If his ego collapses from the onslaught of his internal energies, then he may also be incapable of controlling or deflecting the external energies directed at him. That is, his limited capacity for protecting himself, or controlling energy input, may also collapse with the loss of the protection of his father. He may experience the world as rushing in on him like a tidal wave, overwhelming him with stimuli and energy which he cannot handle. It is possible that while one form of his interactive energy is surging out producing an ego break, the world is bursting in through that break. It could be seen that the very coherence of the self of the child would be put to the test just as the cell would be put to the test if its outer membrane were ruptured.
There could be factors other than the death of his father which contribute to a child's emotional disturbance. He might have deficient genetic material, his father may have been insufficient as a limiting, protecting, or orienting figure, or there may be deficiencies in surrogate figures who might have made up for the absence of the father.
Now the "healthy" child who tried to realize the power potential evoked by the death of his father can be diagrammed as below.
[Figure 6-3, p. 126]
The obvious phallic symbolism of the diagram was relatively unconscious but includes the idea that such a child would also experience the amplification of his sexual energies without the limiting effect of his father. The important fact to consider is that the ego remains intact in this diagram, albeit somewhat enlarged. However, if the child does indeed test his interactive powers in reality and learn to apply his energies toward the common good, such amplification on one's life forces can be used for good effect.
The diagram below for the child who was frightened by the surge of his own aggressive energies, experienced a consequent ego break because he could not handle those energies, and who was unable to control the energies bursting in from the outside due to the disappearance of his father as a protecting figure would demonstrate both omnipotent fantasies and impotent sensations.
[Figure 6-4, p. 127]
The child's sense of his ego boundaries becomes broken, and he is unable to differentiate himself from either everything, "I am everything, I am the world," or from nothing, "I am nothing, I don't exist." The child's ideation and fantasies would very likely show symbolically his concern with his seemingly enormous powers and the enormous powers of the outside world breaking in. Some of these feelings are reconstructed by the adult client in a structure and they can lead him to wish for a more protected time, perhaps when he was an infant or a foots within the womb. In this structure he can gain a definite sense of his boundaries which gives him a feeling of security on which to build. Returning to the womb could also have implications such as dying or merging with the universal, and it is important to understand the wishes of the client doing the structure to make certain that he is not using his fantasy to reinforce self-destructive drives.
I must point out the complexity of each event and each choice that is made in a structure. Everything that is done is done by the request or the permission of the client. Nothing is forced on him; he is always in control of his own structure and what goes on in it unless he moves in a very obvious self-destructive way or moves in such a way as to endanger anyone else in the group. At such times the leader or therapist must assess what is going on and then decide whether or not to intervene. The psychomotor therapist, then, must be well trained as well as a sensitive, responding and caring person. Someone reading portions of this book might see the sense of a single interaction and then without examining the complexity of the event or circumstance that he and someone else find themselves in attempt to apply that single description to their interaction. Obviously this is not to be done. Also, obviously, all the deciding and judging that a therapist makes has to be rapid and based on much experience with the client and with many other clients. He cannot stop the therapeutic process for long periods of time while he ponders the implication of the last thing that was done in a structure.
There is a particular structure or structure device which can be valuable for those clients who feel that they are being overwhelmed either by their feelings or by the other members of the group. The structure utilizes symbolic limits and the ideas of "play" and "magic." A circle is drawn around the client and an invisible shield raised from it to surround the client from all sides and from above. I sometimes set up this structure in a pretended playful mood and include the idea of using magic to protect the individual. This structure is not done in lieu of the parental support structure but follows it so that the symbolic extensions of the protection have been preceded by the concrete motoric experience of the protecting parents. The protective shield can be understood as an externalization of the parents' own protective ego processes which can be seen to screen, deflect, modify and inhibit external stimuli directed at the client. When the circle has been made and the screen erected, the client can be told that it is a magic screen that represents his ego and that it can prevent people and feelings from bursting in. Of course this is not done with psychotic patients, or at least not at a time when psychotic patients cannot differentiate between magic and reality, and play and reality. It is more often done with neurotic or normal clients, and the reactions to it are interesting and striking.
The client may or may not assist in the erection of the screen depending on where he is or what he is feeling. Sometimes the outline of the screen can be made concrete by lining pillows along the circumference of the circle. Again, this structure focuses on the client's capacity to control the energy input from the environment.
As an illustration I would like to describe the first time that I used this device of the screen. Let the reader recognize that since there was not a tape recorder running at the time, nor a movie camera, nor did I make special efforts to record this not knowing I would ever want to refer to it, this description is based on my memory of it alone. At some future time I would like to be able to present to professional audiences an actual filming or videotaping of a structure so that the total interaction with all its elements and complexities can be captured and analyzed.
This particular client was female, a professional actress and dancer, attractive, in her late twenties or early thirties, and unmarried, she had attended several weekend workshops previous to this time, so I had some understanding of the central issues that were concerning her and making it difficult for her to perform successfully and to be as comfortable as she wished socially. When it was her turn to do a structure, it was fairly late in the course of the workshop and she stood up saying in effect that it was really necessary for her to "go" now because all the previous structures of the day had "gotten" to her and she felt all pulled apart and vulnerable. She had her arms wrapped around her body, was holding herself tightly and was slightly stooped over. She opened her eyes only intermittently, and she mentioned that she found it difficult to open them, particularly standing as she was now in front of the entire group. She said she felt like hiding or making people stop looking at her or becoming invisible. She said she was feeling some panic and a great deal of anxiety. As I recall this particular case, there were some clues which indicated to me that the first step should be a control step rather than an expression step. In previous structures she had shown a tendency to symbiotically blend with her positive figures and to move in a direction toward fusion rather than clarification of feelings and figures. That is, the usual objectivity that I find necessary for a client to maintain in a structure was not always apparent in her case. My analogy for a client in a structure is that of a deep-sea diver. The client has got to have sufficient ego awareness "manning the pumps on the surface," so to speak, while he makes the deep-sea dive to explore his unexpressed interpersonal interactive energy. If there is no one on the surface manning the pumps then the client is not in a good position to do a structure for there is no one "watching and knowing and learning" to gain all the value of the structure, and the structure is something that he lets happen to him rather than something that he is "doing". The client is then giving up too much of his autonomy and is indicating a willingness to move toward dependency and passivity.
When I perceive in a client this ego deficiency, I request that he do an exercise in conscious voluntary movement, which tests the capacity for controlling the body while "turning off" the emotions. This is not to say that I have a tendency to move away from strong emotions and their expression in a structure, for that is the energy of a structure and without strong emotions being used and clarified there would be little growth and change as a result. However, there are situations when the goal of the client apparently is not so much to learn and know and grow from the experience but more to swim in the primitive experience without learning to glean anything from it, a kind of move toward omnipotent emotionality. This exercise measures ego controls and willingness and capacity to modify interpersonal interactive energy. Some clients, when they attempt this exercise, report tremendous conflict in the form of an inner dialogue. One voice says "You'll never get me to do it ," and the other " I will too, you'll do what I say."
To return to the description of the structure, the client had had some very successful experiences with the protective and nurturing positive mother and father figures in previous structures, and the way she was holding herself seemed to indicate that she needed either to hold or be held and that the structure should be directed toward filling this need. She seemed to me to be able at this point to use the type of structure based on the concept of the ego as skin. Her body posture indicated to me her need for this protective envelope of a membrane. Either she could have gone to the parents and they could have embraced or she could have attempted to do the protecting herself. I gave her the choice after describing to her the structure I had in mind. She agreed to explore the circle and shield. The circle was set up and the shield described and its powers to inhibit penetration outlined.
She said, "Now what?" I said, "Now test it, see if it works. Have people move toward the shield and see if it stops them. Group members were directed by her to come toward the circle and then were to be "bounced off' by the invisible shield. As each individual group member did so, she became excited by seeing them unable to get beyond the shield and she grew delighted and wanted to test it again and again, she had every member of the group including myself walk toward her and then bounce off when he hit the shield. She began to look and behave in a more relaxed manner. She stood straighter and did not hold herself any longer. She had on dark glasses and was able to take them off once she experienced the effectiveness of her shield. This indicated that she now could open her eyes without feeling as if the world were coming in on her. In reference to this it should be noted that both her mother and her father had too soon placed her in a position of responsibility for the younger members of the family. She was expected to help care for and rear them much too soon and experienced very little of her mother or her father as protective or supporting figures. Both parents in some measure had turned toward her for support. More importantly, both parents made it clear to her from a very early age that they, individually (they related to her not as parents together for they had a poor relationship with one another, but individually, as peers and fantasy lovers), found her very attractive sexually--which she was. Thus when she felt the world coming in on her, she felt the threat of sexual invasion, followed by sexual guilt, and beneath that a profound nurturant deficit which found expression in conscious and unconscious wishes for symbiotic union. You can see the number of different directions a structure could have taken. It could have followed the direction of the interactive energy and clarified the need, organ of expression and target and un-fused the differences between oral nurturance and sexual relations, etc. I point this out to indicate that there is no one single way to work in a structure and that individual therapists might take entirely different areas to emphasize and to work with or the client might just as effectively see what was going on and choose one area to work with over another.
Now that she could open her eyes, the world no longer rushed into her through her eyes. Here the ego was represented by the very skin of the eyelids. If they were closed the stimulus was turned off. Now she could open her eyes and still hold off invasion because she had internalized control of the magic shield. Perhaps she could also open her eyes because she no longer was experiencing the shame and guilt of the sexual aspect of the invasion. She may have been guilty for her own wishes to take the world in sexually. (In subsequent workshops we dealt with her sexual omnipotence.)
The experience of seeing the people bounce off the shield at first delighted her and then puzzled her. Was it fair or all right for her to bounce people off when they wanted to come to her? The crucial question of the rights of the individual! As I recall, either we set up good parents or I voiced the opinion of the good parents that she had the right to keep people out of her ego or her life if she wanted to, that nobody had the right to come in on her when she didn't want it, that no matter how much anyone "needed" her in any way that did not give him the license to invade. This made her cry for it reminded her of specific events when she was psychologically and perhaps literally invaded (by a recent lover), she got very angry. We dealt with that anger by having an accommodator role play the negative contemporary, that is the negative aspects of her lover and begin to move at her in an invading way. The client found herself unable to fight him off and began to collapse. Before she collapsed completely, however, we had the good parents fight off the invader. The client then wanted to be held by the good parents, and it was decided that they would hold her without piercing or entering her circle. They reached in with her permission and put their arms around her. After she was comforted for a period, she wanted to test her own ability to control the approach of the group. This time she wanted to see if she could direct the individual group members toward her and stop them by a command or a gesture rather than depend on the shield to bounce them off. She practiced this for a while with individual
group members but it was pointed out to her that she almost permitted each person to cross the line of the circle before stopping him. This she now understood as a wish on her part to be invaded which she demonstrated in the guise of testing the control she had over when to stop the invader. This was good learning for it pointed out very graphically to her that even when she was in complete control she tended to invite or risk invasion.
Now she wondered if perhaps she let some people get closer because she wanted really to be close to some people. This reminded her of her negative contemporary who had been fought off by the parents, and she now wanted to see if she alone could defend herself against him. She thought for a moment as she conjured up the memory of the event and then with some fear directed the group member who was playing the negative contemporary to come after her and to repeat plaintively that he needed her. She at first hesitated and then pushed him away. Then, when she directed him to be more forceful, she successfully directed more anger at him without being overwhelmed by her feelings or by his proximity. She then wished to be close to a positive contemporary figure. The group member playing this role moved toward her as she indicated, and she instructed him to stand on the outside of her circle and hug her while she stood on the inside of the circle. She held him for a period of time in a loving embrace and then said that she wished to feel the experience of being in her circle.
She decided to move about in her circle, and she moved in a comfortable and somewhat sensual way saying that she felt "inside" her body. When asked what she meant by that, she said that she did not know how to explain it except that it was a new and pleasant sensation and that she felt comfortable being in her body and that she did exist in her body and that she could feel it and that it felt good. Perhaps I pointed it out to her, or perhaps she began speaking about it or feeling it herself, but she began to move her hands over the skin of her face and her body and feel as if she were within her skin and that it was her boundary. The client began to speak in a tone of wonder and pleasure about her feeling that she was inside her body and that she ended where her skin ended and that nobody could get into her or at her or overwhelm her if she didn't need it or want to invite or permit it. The world seemed a safer place to her, the sounds of the world were not hostile, invading sounds, and the sight of people was not embarrassing, or invading, but pleasant. She felt that she was a distinct person and saw others as distinct people. She felt the structure was over and wanted to leave the circle. The problem then was what to do with the circle. When she stepped out of it, was she going to walk away from her ego? She decided to place the pillows one at a time against her body and then to put them to one side not in a circular order. Each pillow individually was touched to a different part of her body, and by this "magical" act she took on the powers or the qualities of the pillows, and the pillows were permitted to become just pillows again and placed against walls and on chairs.
"Magic," if handled properly, has seemed to me to be a useful tool in a structure. Of course I do not mean magic in the usual sense but more in the sense of investing a symbol with magical powers and then internalizing those powers or using them in some concrete graphic way.
The result of the structure was that she found energies or systems of thinking within herself and systems of behavior within herself which she could use toward controlling the energy input of the world.
In subsequent workshops this client indicated, both by her behavior and by her words, that a real change had occurred in her as a result of that particular structure which, of course, had been led up to by previous structures. She reported that she was working more in the theater and performing with greater ease, that her interpersonal relationships were less overwhelming and that she had more control of her feelings of panic and anxiety.
Thus in my view one of the important results of her structure was that she became able to handle the world through her own efforts. Of course, earlier structures had helped to bring her to that point. It is also true that there will undoubtedly be future structures in which she may need to rely temporarily on the good parents, but that is done only to give the "child aspect," or memories of one's self, the opportunity to experience what it might have been like to have these good parents and then to assist the "child" to grow and do for himself what was being done for him.
Dealing with the Spill from the Ego Break
Whenever there is an ego break, there always follow the problems of omnipotence and impotence, plus the releasing of the interpersonal interactive energy into other systems.
Thus in the event of an ego break the problem of limitations must be handled. I have found that those clients who have lived successfully through an interactive event that permitted the release of excess aggressive or sexual energies--for instance, where there have been deaths in the family or symbolic unconscious seductions in the family that led to fantasies of aggressive or sexual omnipotence--have not become psychotic but do have a somewhat unrealistic assessment of their powers. Those individuals usually have come to enjoy their sense of added power, and when the time comes to limit them in a structure, there can be quite a conflict. This is a very complex problem and I should take some time to outline the various aspects of it. On the one hand those individuals might show some pride in and even depend somewhat for their identity on assessments of their own power. On the other hand they might be extremely guilty or ashamed of their assumed power and find a lot of discomfort in the use of it or the contemplation of it. Some may find it impossible to use their power in any realistic way in the world and others may find it impossible even to think of using those energies without experiencing anxiety or guilt. Some may express or acknowledge the sense of omnipotence only in some indirect or symbolic or unconscious way. However the omnipotence is experienced, when the structure moves toward limiting that power, even those clients who began the structure choosing to be limited in either their sexual or aggressive energies find they have a tremendous drive to express and realize their omnipotence in a motoric, direct emotional way.
Let us take a more specific example, that of a young man training to be a psychotherapist, a person with a high level of conscious understanding and awareness of himself. He was married, although the marriage was not considered by either him or his wife to be at all successful and was well on its way toward dissolution. His relationship with his mother involved her excessive preoccupation with his marital satisfactions, implying specifically his sexual satisfactions. Mother was fairly seductive to him when he was a child. She dressed in front of him, asked for his assistance on snaps and bra straps, and gave him baths until he was ten years old or older. On both the conscious and unconscious levels, the client felt that his mother was entirely available to him sexually, and his fantasies always included her in bed with him. Father was, paradoxically, the more passive parent, even though the mother's appearance and behavior were femininely passive. The client wanted the father to be more aggressive and obviously capable of relating to the mother in a sexually satisfying way. There was nothing this client wanted more than to be free of his fantasy relationship and his real relationship with his mother, both of which interfered far too much in his life on all levels. Yet when the good parents in the structure stood in front of him in an embrace and said that they loved only each other sexually and that neither would direct any sexual behavior to him, he smirked and said to the mother, "I can have you anytime I want you." His attempts to separate the mother from the father were intense on both a physical and a mental base. That is, he attempted to figure out ways to overcome the obstacle of a mattress folded in half that was placed in front of him as a buffer between himself and his parents, a usual practice for this type of structure. He tried, for example, to climb over the mattress, to break it apart, to break through it, and to go around the ends, as well as many other imaginative and cunning solutions to gain access to the mother. He worked at it as if his life depended on it but was relieved when he could not succeed. However, the structure was not over. When he was offered his positive contemporary figure to be his own lover, he was obviously disinterested in her. I suggested that he turn back to his interest in his negative mother (in order to utilize the sexual interactive energy that was not moving toward his contemporary), who was now separated from the negative father. I directed her to behave seductively toward the son as he had described his real mother doing, and he readily went to her. Parenthetically, I was actually hoping or expecting him to limit his own responses to his seductive mother for this is what occurs in the majority of cases when such fantasies are permitted to be played out. The client usually makes one or two steps toward the parent offering herself sexually and then retreats. This is not what happened at this time. He gladly moved into her open-armed embrace and looked at me and said, "Should I go on?" I fully expected him to retreat at any moment and said, "Sure, go ahead." He embraced her and then said, "I feel like lying down with her." Once again I reassured him that it was all right to go ahead since I was sure he would pull back at any moment. He continued however until he was half-lying on her with one leg over her. At that point I realized he was not going to stop his action, and to test my conclusion I suggested that he lie on top of the mother with his legs between her separated legs. This he did readily and then made no move to pull away. I waited perhaps ten seconds and then intervened and said, "As both the group leader and as good father I cannot let you fuck your mother. Get off." Now he was ready to do battle on another level, and demanded, "What's wrong with having your mother sexually anyway?" Now the encounter was with myself as group leader and with him as himself. We were no longer playing our roles within the structure, but he still had to be limited. I was adamant that he would not have his mother in any group of mine.
I wish to point out that the limiting must be done whether it is on a structure level or on the reality level, whether it is on a behavior level or on an ideational level. The client was vehement in arguing for the custom of incest on a philosophical level and saw nothing intrinsically wrong with it. He ignored for the moment the obvious havoc that the realistic possibility of his sleeping with his mother was playing with his marital life. His strong belief in his omnipotence was demonstrated by his tenacity in holding to the ideas and fantasies of sleeping with his mother which included his philosophical argument for incest. The client fought for the mother both on the physical and on the ideational level and said, "What do you mean I can't have her. I had her all my life. She's mine and always will be."
A client may experience separation from the target of his omnipotence as being separated from his life. He will not give up this target easily, yet it is most important that he does. Limiting the child in reality at the age of four, or whenever his aggressive and sexual energies are at the stage which is ripe for clarification, exercise and limits, is relatively simple compared to attempting that limitation years later after a lifetime of habit of feeling and behaving as they have grown accustomed to. It takes a strong leader to impose those limits both in the role playing aspects and in reality, for clients will not hesitate to attack the leader on an emotional and personal level when they are being restricted by him. Even though the client may very much want those limits imposed, at the same time he will fight desperately to maintain the past pattern of feeling and behaving. If the limitation is successful and the client accepts the limits on the physical and ideational level, then the leader has to face the consequences of that loss of omnipotence and loss of target, however misplaced.
In the case I am describing, I spoke to the client in the combined role of therapist and good father, telling him in effect that no matter how many times he may have felt he could "get" his mother in the past I simply would not allow him to do that any longer with this mother, and I indicated the negative mother in the structure. I expressed anger at the negative mother for having been seductive and "threw her away" to model for the client the anger that should have been directed at the mother for behaving in such a way that contributed to marital and sexual difficulties. "But I want her," the client said. "I'm sorry but you can never have her," I replied. The client then began to feel grief at the loss and began to cry. The good parents held him while he cried and the good father emphasized his strength and assured the client that he would always be there. After he stopped crying, the client felt some need to be nurtured by the good mother, and that was done. He then wanted to see the good parents together and demanded that there be no space between them. If there was any space separating them, he attempted to widen the rift physically but was prevented from succeeding. Then he wished to return to his positive contemporary, and this time he embraced her with a great deal more interest and motivation. Still, he was not done and found that he was growing angry at his negative mother. He expressed his anger to his mother and that changed his level of relationship once again with his contemporary. While he was with her, he commented that he found himself thinking of his mother and that the two figures seemed somewhat merged in his mind. I suggested that the two figures stand one behind the other and that he consciously attempt to separate them. The client noted that it sent shivers up his spine to see the two of them like that and said that it was just the way it was in his mind. I said, "Sort them out. Pull them apart and away from each other." This he did and then pushed the negative mother far away from him and said, "Go away and don't interfere in my life." Then he returned to his contemporary figure with more commitment of feeling than ever. Following an embrace with the contemporary he felt that the structure was over.
I can report on the follow-up with this client. He commented that his relationship with his wife had improved and that his work had improved in important ways. He was in therapy on a one-to-one- basis and in these sessions had developed new perspectives on some of the feelings brought out in the structure. He had discovered also many new feelings and patterns of behavior that had not appeared before which gave him a different understanding of the energy distributions within himself. Previous to this structure he had not been able to express openly many of the feelings that came out during the structure. In terms of this chapter his structure highlights the emotional investment in omnipotent feelings even if these feelings are not at all acted on or experienced fully in reality. The structure formation permits the feelings to come to the surface and then to be clarified, limited and dealt with. If not dealt with, those feelings remain in a state of frozen potentiality, for this client commented that in reality he found it difficult to let loose either with his aggressive feelings or with his sexual feelings. Yet paradoxically when those sexual feelings were released in the structure they moved swiftly and inexorably toward the mother and there was great investment in their fulfillment and great pain in their limiting. Again, paradoxically, following the limitation those energies were more available on a reality level than they had been previously.
Other clients might have responded differently than the one described even had they had similar histories. It is possible that another person might become compulsively interested in having sexual experiences with older women without feeling any satisfaction or pleasure. Others might do the same with pleasure but without the ability of having relations with women of their own generation, making it impossible for them to marry and have a family of their own.
Without going into any further detail it should be clear to the reader that this type of formulation permits a frame of reference within which certain moves can be made with a sense of direction and purpose. That is, the formulation that the ego is similar to the skin of the self with feelings and energies flowing in or out, permits plans of action for therapeutic interventions and structures that clarify complex emotional relationships and behavioral patterns.
To sum up, the ego appears to be those processes within an individual which permit awareness of one's shape and energy distribution and potential and awareness of the energy distributions and potential of the outside world. In other words the ego processes include that of perception both within and without, with concomitant access to energy and motor systems that can modify the direction of interpersonal interactive energy. So with all the interactive energy and motor systems we must include the ego processes which perceive, oversee, modulate, modify and perhaps inhibit those interactions. If the ego controls are partially dislocated or stripped away, the released energies burst into the direction of infinity and omnipotence. The ego which is stretched to shapelessness by the onslaught might identify itself with the universe rather than with finite individual figures. The energies that are loosed are rarely available on the reality level but seem shunted to the bodiless inner screen of fantasies and dreams. This particular shunting action includes the emotional phenomena of guilt, shame, self-punishment, suicidal feelings, and the depletion of energy. In the next chapter I will explore those phenomena under the heading of the superego or the species ego.
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