We shall now work down the body again, as we did in the chapter on the segments, but this time looking only at the head and tail 'energy exchange' segments, which the Freudians call 'erogenous zones'. We add to these the heart segment, which also reaches out to exchange energy with the world.We shall describe the sort of character attitudes which accompany a serious block in each segment. In this way we will set up some caricature figures, stiffer and more one-dimensional than almost any real person, but from a blend of which, and influenced by armouring elsewhere in the body, our individual character is formed.

We call these attitudes character positions to emphasise the fact that, for most people, they manifest only at certain times and in certain conditions. Most of us are pretty healthy and creative in our best moments, though even at these times we may tend to show a certain style of creativity which reflects a favoured character position. We may be better at standing our ground than at flowing, for example, because of an emphasis on the 'holding' position, or we may be better at looking after than at being looked after because of unresolved oral feelings. At other, more stressful, moments we may get stuck in the less creative versions of these same character positions: compelled to try and hold our feelings in, perhaps, or feeling totally weak and unable to function independently.

All of this should become clearer as we go along. The main point is that each of us contains within us the potential for each character position, because they take their being from life experiences we have all had. The specific events of our individual lives, however, determine which one or two or three positions are strongest in us, because we have had the most difficulty crossing those particular developmental thresholds.

In each segment we can see two different kinds of block, one based on yearning and the other on denial of that yearning. To use an example from the last chapter, someone may be eternally looking for nourishment ('are you my Mummy?'), or, in a further act of repression they may be eternally pretending that there is no such need, and closing down their energy flow so as to numb their feelings. These repressed feelings will come out indirectly in one way or another, however, perhaps in the end as a physical symptom. In order to dissolve this 'denying block', it must turn back into a yearning' one; that is, the individual must become aware of the need they are repressing as the first stage towards letting go of it In this example, the hard clenched jaw must become a soft sucking one.

Character positions fall easily into two groups: those organised around armouring in the head, and those organised around armouring in the pelvis. Head segment characters tend to be under-grounded in their attitudes - 'up in the air' in one way or another - while pelvic segment characters tend to be over-grounded, rigid and immobile. The heart segment stands between these two extremes, and is concerned with facing.

The terms used for the character positions are mainly our own, rather than those used by Reich or by other schools of psychotherapy describing essentially similar ways of seeing character. We have developed new names because we see the orthodox ones either as abusive ('Masochistic', 'Passive Feminine'), confusing, or over-technical.

Boundary Position
Eye segment block: issues of existence
In the first days of our life outside the womb, we urgently seek contact with those who care for us, usually our mothers. We need to receive unspoken messages which tell us 'Yes, you're here, you exist, I recognise and care for you'; to see and be seen, touch and be touched, hear and be heard. The focus for this affirmation that we exist seems to be the whole skin surface of our bodies, and more specifically, the upper head and particularly the eyes.

We are not really describing anything mysterious here; you can see parents and babies instinctively drinking deep in each others' eyes right from the start, especially during feeding, and there have been several studies of how badly affected a baby is if the parent keeps turning their attention away. The same happens if she is not held and stroked enough - enough to feel real.

We depend utterly on this fundamental validation, and if we don't get it at the start of life through our eyes and skin, there will be a long-term incompleteness and fragility built into our bodymind development A part of our energy will stay back in those first days of life, still seeking that primary contact which says 'you exist'. This insecurity can be seen in the eyes of the adult, and sensed in their interaction with the world. At least part of the character will be built upon a basic uncertainty about their own wholeness and reality, and every crisis of life will be experienced as a threat to being.

If the person stays in the same family situation this lack of warm human contact in earliest infancy is likely to be continued in childhood, and may be reinforced by frightening or confusing experiences that need to be shut out of awareness. This kind of history puts a particular stress on boundaries. Do I have any? Where are they? These are very real questions for someone with a strong eye segment block. With a 'yearning block', someone will feel a lack of wholeness. They may experience themselves as 'in bits', fragmented, 'all over the place', liable under pressure to flee or fall apart- There will be a drive to find some form of the missing primary contact: 'I must see, 1 must understand', a compulsion to make sense of things, to find an answer. There will be a 'seeking', intense expression in the eyes, which can be frightening to other people whose own deep feelings are sparked off by this demand for contact.

Does this sound familiar? It is partly this need to understand which draws someone to read - or to write - about the structures of the bodymind. You may also recognise in yourself the 'denying eye block', which seeks to repress this frightening need for contact, understanding and validation. Its message is 'I can't or won't see or understand'. The fear of what's out there, or what's inside, is so great that the person closes down their perception in some way, clouds or fogs or confuses, 'goes away in the eyes' as Reich puts it.

A small example is the otherwise sensible person who 'just can't see' some area of reality. Because of our training, for women it is often mathematics or mechanics; for men, it is emotions. We can't understand it because it stirs up too much: we cannot bear to keep our attention on it and re-experience the anger, say, of being put down in childhood, or the anguish in our own heart. For many people, psychic and spiritual realities fall into this category: 'I won't look because there's nothing there.'

On a wider scale, the denying eye block puts people severely out of touch with the world and with other humans. They feel 'cut off', 'unreal', but may well be giving out conscious or unconscious messages of 'stay away'; a coldness and an invisible wall which is their response to intolerable fear.

Fear is very much the key emotion with the boundary character position: fear of being overwhelmed. of exploding or imploding, of one's fragile foothold on existence crumbling. A source of denying eye blocking is very often the need, as a child, to escape adult scrutiny, to not be seen into. There is a lack of fundamental confidence which means a natural boundary between inside and outside fails to develop, so that a harsh and exaggerated cut-off is created in its place.

A good sign that we are occupying the boundary position is if we become confused about what is outside and what is inside. Perhaps we find ourselves seeing other people as feeling angry or afraid when that is what we are feeling, or perhaps we let other people's ideas take us over and dominate our own sense of things. Or maybe we mix up one kind of reality with another, mistaking our own energy for some sort of psychic or science-fiction 'attack' from outside.

All these experiences are seen in orthodox psychiatry as reflecting 'schizoid' character Structures. This is not the same thing as 'schizophrenia' but, one might say, a very mild version of the problems for which that label is used. These are the sorts of experiences described so well in R.D. Laing's earlier books, like The Divided Self. In a sense, though, Laing perpetuates the split he describes by writing only about the mind, and not the body. This is one boundary that tends to exist very strongly in such characters.

Eye segment blocking makes it hard to live in the body - one form it can take, as we have already noted, is the 'ivory tower' intellectual. It also makes it hard to achieve wholeness; the bodies of people with strong boundary characters often have an unfinished or unintegrated look to them - different parts may give contradictory messages. Sometimes there is a childlike, undeveloped physique, perhaps the large head and spindly neck of the baby who in essence is still present still seeking wholeness and validation. Someone really stuck in the boundary position will give off a deep sense of 'wrongness' with their bodymind; other people will instinctively tend to avoid them, which of course reinforces their isolation and fear.

Another form which this 'flight from the body' often takes is an extreme sensitivity to, and interest in, the 'psychic', 'spiritual' realm. However, because the boundary position is severely undergrounded, the very real sensitivity is quite undiscriminating. Genuine contact gets mixed up with complete fantasy, often projecting the person's own feelings and sensations 'out there' on to other people or 'spirits'. The awareness of energy, however confused, is real and strong; in particular, the boundary character will often be strongly conscious of the energy field surrounding the body - the 'aura'.

It is important to see how the needs and concerns of the boundary position as with every other character - are basically quite rational and universal. Every baby passes through a phase of contacting the world and other people through eyes, ears, nose and skin, and a phase of setting boundaries, making a sense of self which is secure against outside invasion or 'leaking'. Every adult can develop out of this 'eye energy' a creative enjoyment of looking, thinking, discovery, eye contact, flirting, visions, inspiration and meditation.

What we are calling an eye block, a boundary position, is a state where someone has not yet fully managed to create a basis for this adult creativity. They are still partially stuck in an early childhood crisis, and are reducing adult experience to these terms. By their very over-sensitivity, though, they are many of our artists, our mediums, our prophets, our seers.

Exercises to give a direct experience of the character positions necessarily involve working with another person, since the positions are fundamentally about relationship. If you have a friend with whom you feel happy to try it, then the following exercise should put you in touch with your boundary material (for the idea of these exercises and some specific details, we are grateful to Helen Davis):

Exercise 15
Person A, stand with your back close up against a wall, pressing yourself against it and coming up on tiptoe, so your whole posture is 'up and away'. Open your eyes very wide, breathe high in your chest, without ever fully emptying your lungs. Person B, stand a few feet away, and holding eye contact slowly advance on A.Person A, experiment with saying things like 'No', 'keep away', and so on; let yourself go into the feelings that come up.

After a few minutes stop, make contact with each other's real self, perhaps by hugging and talking for a minute, and try the exercise in reverse.

Oral Position
Jaw segment block: issues of feeding and support

The primary infant experience connected with our mouths is breast or bottle feeding. At its best this is an experience of profound contentment and pleasure, the nearest thing to getting back inside the womb, reuniting with the mother's body. That floating, drifting, relaxed dreaminess is often maintained long into childhood with thumb sucking, comfort blankets and so on. It is also a crucial component of our adult well-being. If all goes well we grow up with the secure conviction that the universe can nourish and support us, that there will be good times, that life is fundamentally possible. This conviction enables us to move out effectively into the world. We can mobilise our energies because at other times we are able to let go and be supported.

For very many people, though, the weaning process and infant feeding will have been disturbed and damaged in some way. This is not really anyone's fault - there is so much guilt in this area. It is very hard - though not totally impossible - for us as parents to give our children more than we had ourselves; the mother or father with distress around feeding issues will have difficulties in making their own child feel secure.

Of course, the parents may have real problems in their own life, or simply too much to do, distracting them from giving full attention to the baby. Their own instincts may have been distorted by bizarre 'expert' theories of when and how to feed. The birth of more children may speed up the weaning process together with the closely related process of 'standing on your own feet', which is often beyond what the child can handle.

The 'oral yearning' character position, then, seeks to be fed. The whole message emanating from the person is 'feed me, hold me up'. There is often a sense of physical weakness; a thin, stringy, weedy body like a plant deprived of light, which has bolted and stretched itself out - the child eternally reaching to be picked up and cuddled. Less commonly, there is the fat oral character, with a jolly grin concealing their resentful, sadistic determination to chew up and devour the whole world.

With the oral position there is almost always an aggressive edge, a profound bitterness. Why won't people look after me? How can they expect me to fend for myself in this cold, cruel world? Can't they see how important and special I am? In the oral position, we tend to be 'on strike', withdrawing our labour from life in the hope that people will see how unfairly we are being treated, Sulking, in other words!

The infantile nature of these attitudes is very obvious, and often very irritating, Part of the irritation, though, is that we are uncomfortably reminded of feelings we have ourselves, Rare is the person who, as a child. felt fully satisfied and nurtured; who spontaneously initiated their own weaning and every other stage of their independence; who truly feels they have had enough. When we refer to feelings as 'infantile', we must remember that they are fully appropriate for infants to have: we did need looking after, we were special and important.

Many of us, in order to survive, have developed a 'denying oral' block, contradicting our needs. We present clenched teeth, stiff lips - the Clint Eastwood, 'strong silent type'. Here is a fundamental stance of 'I won't' - eat, cry, ask, speak, get angry - give myself away as needy and yearning.

Alongside oral blocks we often notice an irritability that is both emotional and physical - a peculiar hot prickliness to the skin, and a general difficulty in becoming comfortable. It is as if the person's teeth are being set on edge, and teething can be a very serious factor in developing an oral position. Suppressed anger commonly comes out in 'biting', 'sharp-tongued' speech. There is a big overlap between weaning, teething, standing and learning to talk, often with a lot of tension around trying to ask for or demand the feeding we need, trying to articulate the unfairness we are experiencing.

The child may grow up to be a smooth, glib talker, with many rationalisations for their dependence on others - a 'sponger' or a con artist. Or - and sometimes at the same time - she may be caught in a trap, since expressing the rage she feels just makes adults withdraw even more, so that she feels forced to 'bite it back', 'swallow it down'. Stammering is one possible result of this contradiction - 'I can't (mustn't) say what I want to say' - so is tight-lipped silence. The discomfort already referred to may mean 'It isn't right!'

You may have already noticed how people often react against their real character so as to conceal it; what we can call a 'flip' into a polar opposite position. With the oral position, there is often a tendency to become a 'compulsive carer', someone who looks after everyone in sight - whether they like it or not. We can recognise this attitude by the absence of openhearted love. People in this position are often the social workers and official carers from whom everyone runs a mile! What such people need to recognise is that in caring for others they are secretly acting out what they want for themselves, yet their caring is undermined by the concealed aggression and resentment of the oral position.

Oral blocking, as we have said, makes it difficult to feel fundamentally secure in the world. While the boundary character often feels unreal, in danger of annihilation, the oral character is here and real, but often terribly lonely, empty and cold. 'Empty' is the key word: an inner gulf, an absence of energy for self-starting or carrying through projects. No petrol in the tank; no milk in the tummy! Most of us have at least occasional experiences of this state.

An oral block will interfere with creative enjoyment of activities like eating, drinking, talking, kissing, singing. We will either dislike them, or compulsively over-indulge them - always the two fundamental tactics for dealing with any kind of stuckness. The yearning oral character can try to fill herself up with almost anything - food, drink, TV, music, drugs, sex, ideas, or looking after other people!

When oral energy is freed, it expresses itself creatively in an appetite for life, a capacity for gusto and enjoyment including, but not restricted to, the sorts of oral activities described above. Often there is a genuine eloquence, which can serve other functions than wheedling. In particular there is a genuine concern with justice, that no one be left out or rejected, and a true capacity to nurture others, based on a sense of security in yourself.

Exercise 16
To experience your oral position, work with person B standing on a chair, and person A reaching up to them with their arms and their whole body - again, tending towards tiptoe. Breathe fairly deeply, one breath at a time, with pauses at the end of the inhale and the exhale. Person A says things like 'Please', 'Play with me', 'Feed me', while person B experiments with 'No', 'Not now', 'Leave me alone'. After a while stop, make contact, and reverse roles.

Control Position
Heart segment block: issues of validation

A good experience of the oral position means that we have felt enough support from those caring for us to move forward into a more independent role in the world. Small children want to start playing 'away from' their parent - but still in visual range, with the sense of being seen and validated: 'Did you see me on the swings, dad?' Support is still crucial, but less direct than in the oral stage: the child is being held, not by the arms of the carer, but by their attention and their acknowledgement of the child's experience.

Through the kinds of experiences we - hopefully - have at this stage, we are learning about 'other minds': learning that other people exist, that they have roughly the same kinds of experiences we do, and that we can project ourselves imaginatively into their experience as they can into ours. Through play - especially play in which we are held in the parent's gaze, and play in which we ourselves 'control' and 'manipulate' the parent ('Now you be the baby, and you're sad because the mummy's not there, and then I'm the mummy and I come back...') - we develop a sense of 'mental space', of an inner world, and that other people also have inner worlds. Through adults' support of our play and fantasy, we learn to engage with an interpersonal reality.

What can go wrong at this point is that, instead of our experience being supported, it can be denied. The important adults don't join in with us, don't let us be at the centre of a playful interpersonal space. This may be simply because they are themselves tired, drained and emotionally preoccupied. Or they may have a compulsion to dominate, 'You will do what I say and like it'. Or often they are caught up in a mistaken kind of caring, which is deeply undermining of our reality: 'You don't really mean that, dear'; 'Of course you're not sad, nothing to be upset about'; 'There's mummy's brave boy'... All these sorts of interactions masquerade as contact, but are actually profoundly out of contact with the child's true experience.

These reactions to our need for supported play hurt our heart. It becomes bruised, frozen, withered, numbed. On another level, it also damages our cognitive development, and prevents us, perhaps permanently, from learning about the existence of other selves - from learning to empathise. Ultimately, we may give up on any expectation that contact with other people will be possible, that anyone will see and hear and touch our reality. Yet we still have needs, of course; how are we to get them met?

Really only two techniques lie open to someone whose heart and mind have been blocked in this way. We can seek to dominate other people, by physical force or by force of will; or we can seek to seduce and manipulate them. (These options each relate to another later character position, as we will see.) Underlying either strategy is a fundamental lack of belief that other people are real, that they have feelings and needs, experience pain and pleasure. It is as if we have been stranded on a planet of androids, and have to learn the codes by which they can be controlled and made to serve us. This is the aspect of the control position which has led some therapists to label it 'psychopathic': if other people are androids, we can feel free to cheat them, hurt them, even kill them.

This belief stems, of course, from feeling treated like an android ourselves; it stems from other people's apparent lack of belief in our reality. We are seeking revenge. (We are also stuck in repeating what was originally an age-appropriate need to be in charge and the centre of attention.) And yet there is no satisfaction in that revenge: our victories over others are without savour, because they fail to meet our underlying yearning for empathy, for heart-to-heart contact, for the recognition of our needs. If we deny that yearning, we are left with the option of hiding ourselves behind a 'false self', an outer persona which acts at being caring and loving and good, while inside we are silently saying to ourselves 'keep quiet, don't show anything, keep your head down, stay safe...'

The jammed-up heart of the control character usually manifests physically as a sense of bulkiness and inflatedness in their upper torso, especially in the yearning version: their chest is pushed-out in a dumb-show of domination, like a cartoon sergeant-major or society dowager. They are often fleshy in a rather smooth way, and there can be a shark-like mirthless grin permanently in place. Mussolini's bodily appearance is an exaggeration of the control position.

But of course very few people in this position are Mussolinis, or psychopaths. More generally, they are struggling with difficulties around making contact and directly expressing need: sometimes closer to recognising other people as real, sometimes further away. Creative use of control energy comes out in leadership, in being able to take responsibility for group needs. Control characters can be wonderful hosts, the life and soul of the party, able to remember everyone's name and favourite food; they can be charismatic performers, basking in the love of the audience and able to repay that love by making everyone feel good. The potential downside of this is the contempt that leaders or entertainers can feel for the crowd; the cold calculation behind the host or hostess's smile.

The heart centre plays a very special role in the human energy system: in many ways we could see all of the character positions as representing different ways in which the heart tries to express itself. So the control character with their locked-up heart is wounded in a very deep place. But always, the wound represents the potential for growth: people whose energy focuses in the control position are people whose energy focuses in their heart - people with 'big hearts', with the capacity for big expression, the capacity to look after others, to have 'the whole world in their hands'. What is often harder for them is to be looked after themselves: to balance out their bigness by daring to feel small.

Exercise 17
Person A stand with knees bent, leaning forward from the waist with back arched so that head is upright; arms stretched forward in front of you. (This is very uncomfortable. If it feels easy, you're not doing it right.) Person B stand in front, just out of reach. Person A tells B what is happening for them - e.g., 'my back's hurting' - and person B systematically denies everything they say - e.g., 'No it isn't, you're fine'. Continue for as long as you can bear it, then make contact and reverse.

Holding Position
Anal block: issues of self-regulation

Now we move to the other end of the torso, and the other arena of our energy-exchange with the world: the pelvis. Here the next big issue that creates character arises around learning to control our own bodily functions, in particular those related to what we take into and out of our bodies. For most of us the key event is toilet training; learning to recognise the sensations of full bowel or bladder, and to respond in the appropriate way at the appropriate time and place.

Acquiring these skills is a great milestone in our development, and can go along vvith a tremendous new sense of power and worth as we are gently encouraged and praised by the adults around us. It's part of identifying with our own bodymind, and its natural processes and rhythms. More often, though, the impatience, distress and disturbance of adults interferes tragically with this development, damaging - perhaps permanently - our sense of power, rhythm and timing.

We must remember that there is an innate pleasure in moving our bowels and emptying our bladder when we are ready to. Many adults find this hard to accept, because their own contact with this part of their body has been so much injured. It's a pleasure both of letting go and of pushing out, which in adult life translates into qualities like groundedness, decisiveness, certainty, balance. The muscles of the pelvis and buttocks are, during the same phase of childhood, learning to ground and balance us as we begin to stand, walk and run.

All of these amazing processes can be wrecked by the effort of massive tension demanded in forcing a too-young child to control their bowels and bladder. The pressure of fear, the desire to please one's parents, push the child into tightening up the whole pelvic floor, the buttocks and thighs, saying 'no' to her own natural functions. Along with this goes the message that her insides, her body contents, are bad and must not be shown to the outside world - the belief, in fact, that she is 'full of shit'.

The messages given by bad toilet training are drastically contradictory, and the child can easily become totally confused. If I shit at one moment they praise me and tell me how wonderful it is; the next moment they shout at me and tell me it's nasty! This gives rise to two simultaneous reactions: that it's my fault and I have to try harder to please everyone; and that it's their fault and I hate them.

Remember that small children have a positive, proud attitude towards their shit and piss, an attitude that will later be transferred naturally to other functions, other products of their inner process. But if this possessive pride is attacked by adults' incomprehensible anger, that person may well start to despise themself and all their inner experience; or may become compulsively self-centred, unable to share themself with others. Shame and self-contempt are often part of the holding character which has become stuck around anal issues - and 'stuck' is a particularly apt word here.

Another important factor is likely to be rage against adult prohibition and control. The rage itself will be controlled, held in the tight muscles of buttocks and thighs, shoulders and neck - 'my anger is nasty, like shit, and must be contained'. Anger turned inwards often becomes directed at the self in the form of guilt - this is the emotional correlative of physical holding, the person 'feels like shit', like dirt, worthless, foul.

The unsatisfied need, then, is to let go and to push. It can emerge as adult messiness of all kinds - untidiness, a rushed and confused life style, bad timing, missed appointments. Associated with some of these, there is often a concealed and passive spitefulness emanating from the blocked rage, taking the form of letting people down in various ways, failing to meet commitments.

This may be concealed under a thick layer of fawning niceness which is a common feature of the holding character: 'greasy', 'oily', 'arselicking'. It is as if the holding character is smearing shit all over themselves and us, in an attempt to please which is equally a concealed attack. In this position, we don't expect to be liked. We try hard to appear likeable, with our unreal, constipated smile, but people are not taken in and we end up being unlikeable.

The denying holding character manifests in compulsive, rigid, over-controlled attitudes - what we call 'tight-arsed'. The rage has been more or less successfully bound inside as a layer of rigid muscle; the person is being a 'good boy' or a 'good girl', but at a tremendous cost in lost spontaneity and self-regulation. Everything is done by the clock, by the numbers, by the book, by the timetable: 'it's one o'clock, so 1 must be hungry'. Again, spitefulness can come through in concealed ways: the petty bureaucrat who sits heavily on his office potty and finds devious ways of saying 'no'!

A strong holding position often goes along with heavy, wide body, especially weighty around the shoulders and thighs, and a short neck. There is a tendency for the eyes to retreat into the head within bony, cavernous eye sockets, part of the overall sense of deep suffering often conveyed by the holding character's face. Along with this there is a great strength to endure this suffering, which is composed of desperation, self-hate and hopelessness.

Even a badly-stuck holding character will often be very well-grounded; a good, hip-swinging dancer. A successful integration of the themes of holding and control give to the personality a capacity for effort which is enjoyable rather than compulsive, Energy can be held and used; there is a quality of determination, patience, taking your time, working with the material world rather than against it - a willingness to get your hands dirty.

There is also genuine compassion and service, related to the fullness (full heart) of the holding position. Such traits can often be seen, at least in embryo form, in people with anal stuckness - especially the capacity for effort and service. Praising and encouraging these qualities can be very important in developing that crucial, missing sense of self-worth -'my insides are okay!'

Exercise 18
Person A sit on a chair, with the whole body constricted and held, head pulled in to the shoulders, and breathing constricted. Focus on the inhale and don't completely breathe out. Breathe into the belly rather than the chest. Person B stands by them and alternates between statements like 'Come on', 'Please', 'There's a lovely boy/girl', etc.; and statements like 'Ugh!' 'That's horrible!' 'How could you!' Again, try to let yourself go into the feelings that come up.

Thrusting Position
Pelvic block against softness: issues of assertion.

The traditional psychoanalytic name for this position is 'phallic', which comes from the Greek word for 'penis'. In many ways this is seriously misleading, since what is being described is a quality shared equally by girls and boys, though with different effects on the adult character. It arises from the widespread sexist attitude that only those with penises can, or should, thrust.

Once children have developed some sense of holding themselves up and grounding through the buttocks and backs of the legs, they can start literally and symbolically pushing themselves forward. As mobility develops, so does the need for recognition and praise, the desire to assert yourself, to take up space, to show off. Direct sexual exhibitionism is very much part of this: children of four or five are sexual beings, often very hotly so, and need acknowledgement especially from their parents, on whom such feelings will largely be focused. More generally, there is the need to have a say in things, to have some sense of power and autonomy: bed-times, TV, playing outside are all typical opportunities for assertion.

What so often happens is that adults treat this natural and healthy assertiveness as 'badness', 'wilfulness', 'impudence'. There may even be a conscious intention to crush and overpower the child's will, to frighten it into submission. The classic form of this happens when the father is himself locked into a thrusting position, so that he sees any assertiveness and independence on the part of his children as a threat to his identity, and reacts with physical or emotional violence, the belt or the vicious put-down.

In this situation the child will generally submit - there is little alternative. But built into their character from then on will be a quality of hatred and revenge that subtly flavours everything they do. A 'yearning thrusting' character will, as an adult, be competitive, pushy, achievement-oriented - a career man or woman.

This is most often a middle-class position; working class people who are unable to use their angry energy for worldly success throw their weight around on the domestic, social and sexual fronts instead, or become involved in the machismo of the underworld. Many of these attitudes are strongly encouraged in our culture, primarily in men; thus they are transmitted to the next generation, as a compulsively thrusting and authoritarian parent represses their child's independence and sets them up for the same script.

The ability to push and thrust with the pelvis - in a soft and feeling way - is essential to satisfying sex for both women and men; and the corresponding life capacity is equally important In the thrusting-block character position, there is an overlay of hate and fear in such pelvic movement, a fear of collapse (in the face of adult power), leading to an attitude which Reich called 'genital revenge'. If the person is a man, then they may be a rapist, overt or indirect, if a woman, what men call a 'ballbreaker', using sex to humiliate (though men often use this label to attack any woman who scares them with her healthy sexual assertiveness). The soft easy thrust becomes a violent harsh movement - 'screwing'.

Sexually speaking, the yearning thruster will be a Don Juan character who uses sex to 'score'- for conquest and ego satisfaction rather than pleasure and melting contact. Similar attitudes will colour their attitude to life in general - enjoyment takes second place to status. Our culture tends actively to encourage such distortions in men, to the extent of seeing them as intrinsically manly, macho, butch. A woman or girl who shows such traits vvill often be met with disapproval and invalidation (tomboy', 'unfeminine') even though the thrusting may be entirely healthy, the natural urge for assertiveness and achievement.

The body type that goes with the thrusting character is quite highly rated in our society: it tends to be large, well-muscled, energetic, athletic - at any rate in milder versions of the block. The stronger the block, the more the body tends to be rigid, musclebound and overcharged. Someone who denies their need to thrust will necessarily have a rigid body and character, often sex-negative, self-righteous and moralistic. This is a different strategy for genital revenge - 'stamp out this menace!' The absence of pleasure is even clearer with these compulsively 'good' people. Thrusting characters often suffer from 'stress-related ailments', because they put themselves through so much stress.

The creative side of the thrusting character is its energy, drive, courage, physical and mental elan; its willpower and discipline. The distortions stem from insecurity, from the fear of being smashed down which is hidden under an exaggerated 'strength', able to brook no equals, let alone 'superiors'. In its obsession with rank, pecking order, competition, and in its assumption that every situation must involve a winner and loser, the thrusting block is clearly a central factor in patriarchal society.

Exercise 19
Person B stands on a chair; person A stands looking up at them, legs braced stiffly, jaw stuck out, chest stuck out, fists clenched. Use your breath to puff yourself up. A says things like 'No', 'I won't'; B says 'Oh yes you will', 'You better had', 'Do what 1 tell you', etc. After a while, make contact and reverse.

Crisis Position
Pelvic block again opening: issues of contact

This is what psychoanalysts call the 'hysteric' character; just as 'phallic' comes from the Greek for penis, 'hysteric' comes from the Greek for womb. Again this represents a social reality, for in our culture there is much more scope and acceptance for women in the crisis position than there is for men. All children however, boys as much as girls, have to confront the issues around pelvic opening, which arise when self-assertion begins to encounter the reality of another person, and of the social world.

A fundamental fact about human beings is that they have gender. In our society, gender has a very particular set of meanings attached to it. Saying that someone is a man or a woman, a girl or a boy, is doing much more than stating what is between their legs. It establishes a whole set of expectations about their appearance, their range of movements and sounds, their activities, their attitudes, their personality, their 'nature' - it is not too huge a simplification to say that our society splits the range of human behaviour into two halves, allowing one half to males and the other half to females.

We can't go into the possible reasons for this process here, beyond pointing out that most societies, perhaps all, do something like this, though they often give very different contents to the male and female halves. From the point of view of a small child, coming face to face with this reality for the first time, its implications are disastrous.

A little girl, even today, is asked to accept that she is cut off from the world of power and freedom offered to her brother - and usually represented by the father. A little boy is asked to accept that he is cut off from the world of warmth and softness usually represented by the mother (an important way in which this is expressed is that he 'can't have babies'). Each is presented with huge deprivations and huge compensations, but the whole issue is handled indirectly and inexplicitly, and is coloured by adults' own, often unconscious distress about gender.

The issue is also tied up, both developmentally and by its nature, with that of opening up to loving and pleasurable contact other human beings. The self-asserting little child focuses its erotic energy on the close adults around, usually its parents. The parents themselves have succumbed to gender roles, and are openly or unconsciously telling the child to conform. They do this at the same time as, and partly through, openly or unconsciously reacting to the child's intense sexual energy, either pushing it away or encouraging it - often both at once!

One powerful way of describing all this is to use Freud's term, the 'Oedipus Complex'. This focuses on the issues of power, possession and jealousy in the classic nuclear family. It describes very real events, though in a way that does not sufficiently question gender stereotyping or bring out the underlying issues of social conformity. This is the point at which the child is about to emerge into the social world; its acceptance of gender conventions, and all the subtle seductions and abuses which they imply, is the price of entry.

It's no surprise that a child faced with these vast ramifications, with this elaborate combination of carrot and big stick, will generally react with some degree of panic. The core of this will be what we can describe as 'biological' panic, a response to the opening-up of energy that accompanies the 'first puberty' at around five or six. This involves an increase in charge, similar to that of the teenage 'second puberty', of which anyone will be aware who is around young children with open eyes.

Surrender to pleasure, to the streaming of energy in our bodies, is for almost all of us accompanied by anxiety and fear. We want to open, yet are desperately scared to, Instead we react with some version of freezing or exploding, fighting or fleeing, under- or over-activity; with a frantically erotic style of being (the yearning block) or with retreat, denial of sexual feeling altogether.

For a very large number of children, this natural response gets very much amplified by the interference of adult sexuality. The innocent erotic energy of children at this age can produce sexual excitement in a lot of grown-ups whose own sexual development has been damaged. We are finding out in this decade just how many children have been sexually abused by adults, often during this first puberty but sometimes much earlier. The natural anxiety of opening-up then becomes a fully-fledged panic, as the, child is forced to deal with experiences that are wholly inappropriate for them.

This adult invasion can take very subtle forms as well: it is often an atmosphere of flirting and seductiveness, rather than any overt physical act. The child knows in her bodymind what is going on, but has no way of verbalising it even to herself. Both physical and emotional interference plug into the general sexual violence' of the situation - the child is being pressurised in many ways to fit his or her erotic energy into the straitjacket of socially accepted gender roles.

The 'crisis character' is a component in all of us, though usually stronger in those who have had to deal with a heavier dose of sexual abuse, physical or emotional (the holding and boundary positions seem the other response to abuse). As we have said, its main tactics are freezing or exploding - opposite ways of trying to flee an intolerable excitement

These responses generally get submerged in children. After the flurry of sexual charge and interest at about five, six or seven, they enter a 'latent phase' of apparent asexuality (in our culture at least) until puberty recurs in the form of physical sexual maturity. But the sexual attitudes which then emerge are essentially re-emerging: they were formed during the 'first puberty', on the basis of how the child's already existing character armour confronted the issue of pelvic opening in the context of adult sexual pressure.

In adults, the crisis position tends to sexualise every issue because it is tied to a development phase which is itself sexual. The process is often unconscious, but it can be very obvious to other people as a sort of continual seductiveness in the person's behaviour and body language, or conversely as an 'uprightness', an extraordinary heightened sensitivity to sexual implications which makes one scared of offending them with quite innocent remarks. Both attitudes can even appear in the same person at the same time.

It's clear that these are attitudes traditionally validated in women, either separately or in combination: the virgin and the vamp. They mask panic, and represent an inability to surrender to deep sexual feelings for fear of being overwhelmed and losing control (which may literally have happened in childhood abuse). At the same time, there is a strong need for sexual contact, so there is often a teasing, flirting tone, not necessarily conscious - an exaggeration of healthy playfulness, 'sexiness', foreplay, dressing up, dancing. all sorts of creative and enjoyable behaviour which is 'sexy but not sex'. What's missing is relaxation and commitment: the opening block sets up a constant yes/no/yes/no pattern, again traditionally seen as 'feminine'.

But men are as likely as women to occupy the crisis position - perhaps more often in a pseudo-thrusting form. The yearning version will thus be an ersatz macho posturing. all leather and heavy metal, while the denying form might be hysterical puritanism. The only socially viable way for men to express the full crisis character is in the gay subculture.

What makes the crisis position recognisable is its air of panic, of high charge. Everything is life or death. There is often either a theatrical exaggeration to the person's style, or a deathly stillness which is equally theatrical. The body type that develops with a strong crisis position is less clearly defined than in some other cases, but in one way or another it tends to give a strongly sexual impression, which may be attractive or repulsive - or both - to other people. Crisis characters often stir people up, this being their unconscious intention as a way of sharing the panic around, camouflaging their own terror and excitement.

We can think of the energy in a crisis character slopping around the body looking for some other lodging apart from the genitals; any other form of excitement is preferable, safer. So the crisis character mimics all the other character positions - which can be very confusing for therapists! In particular, someone deeply involved in the crisis position often comes over at first as a vulnerable 'schizy', boundary character. In fact crisis characters are quite tough, though they may not feel it There is a special relationship between these two extremes of the character range, of head and tail, and energy can swing powerfully between them.

The underlying strength and resilience often gives people the idea that a crisis character is 'pretending', could 'pull themselves together if they just made an effort'. In a sense they are pretending, but the pretence is an involuntary reaction to deep panic. The panic is completely rational in origin: dangerous and scary things did happen. Freud worked with extreme crisis characters who experienced 'hysterical paralysis' with no physical causation: a pretence in one sense, but outside any willed control or awareness. Often, though, the game-playing is both conscious and unconscious: panic and anxiety fog the ability to look coolly at what one is really doing. It can be amazing how a crisis character in a state of chaos can 'snap out of it' when asked.

Yet crisis characters can play games for very high stakes. Living permanently on their nerves and by their wits, out on the edge, they develop a strange sort of coolness. Like combat veterans, someone constantly in the crisis position learns to live with terror. It is likely that almost everyone who works in a directly life-threatening occupation is either a thruster, testing and proving themselves, or a crisis character fuelled by their own panic.

It is when we are occupying the crisis position that we tend to create bodily expressions of our conflicts: the well-known 'hysterical symptoms' which mimic physical illness to act out an emotional state. Yet is there a real distinction? More and more we see all physical illnesses as the expression of a conflict, a life crisis which is potentially healing. Perhaps crisis characters, with their penchant for melodrama and stageyness, are simply the ones who get caught at it - accidentally-on-purpose!

There are many attractive and creative features in the crisis character. Perhaps the most obvious is their sexiness, but more generally there is their fun and excitement, the lively energy and 'game-for-anything' attitude, together with the subtle and perceptive understanding of roles and rules (the better to break them). These qualities contribute a great deal of spice to life.

Perhaps the greatest contribution of the crisis attitude in us all is its refusal of patriarchy, and of the gender roles forced on us. Crisis characters may find some weird and exotic modes of rebellion, but rebel they do! At root, what they are demanding is very simple: the right to choose. To choose what sort of sexual contact they have; to choose to be playful and childlike, not always urgent and direct; above all, to choose not to be abused.

Exercise 20
This is the hardest position to act out, but try the following: A stands still, breathing into their pelvis with the emphasis on breathing out, while B alternates between trying to attract them - 'Come here', 'I want you', 'Aren't you sweet' etc. - and rejecting them once they respond: 'No, no', 'Not like that', 'Come on, that's enough'. A, try to let your whole body really respond to each message; B, let yourself be fully seductive, and then switch into complete coldness. After a while, make contact with each other before you switch roles.

Open Position
No permanent blocks: issue of surrender

If, as a child or as an adult, a person can work through their panic about opening up to contact as well as all the other issues of growing up that we have described, then they may be able to experience semi-permanently what most of us only touch at our best moments: a true acceptance of reality and pleasure, a surrender to their own nature and to that larger Nature of which we are part.

This is what Reich described as 'genitality' or 'orgastic potency', and it is hard to separate from the capacity for surrender to full orgasm, which in turn enables us to let go of the frustrations and pains of daily existence and refresh ourselves in the sea of infinite joy.

'Genitality', though, involves a lot more than lovemaking. It is one of many names that people have given to a human condition which is, so far, quite rare: a sober, easy, relaxed and flexible attitude to life, an approach that doesn't struggle with impossibilities, but joyfully accepts the real state of affairs - including that person's own quirks and limitations! We call it 'enlightenment', 'self-realisation', 'sainthood' - whatever we call it, it's remarkably hard to talk about, especially for people who experience it only occasionally.

Perhaps the most important thing about this open state is that it can't be pinned down; its essence is to be mobile, responsive to a moving reality. Thus an 'open character' is not permanently without blocks: armouring appears in reaction to events and disappears again as the individual breathes, lets go, cries or laughs or yells or yawns, struggles or accepts - and moves on.

While we are in the open position - and all of us experience it from time to time - we have access to the full range of powers and capacities appropriate to each character position described above. We manifest these qualities creatively; we can see, think, feed, enjoy, relate, hold on, take our time, assert, reach out and open up, because we are secure in our right to exist to be received, to be validated, to value ourselves, thrust ourselves forward, and choose the contact we have with others. We have the right to be fully human.

There is a special relationship, as we have said, between the open character position and the heart. It is the heart which must be open, and which fills with the sweet richness of love. The open heart represents that wholeness and unity of the bodymind to which we have referred; which is one way of saying what so many mystical and initiating traditions have always taught - that the heart is the key to liberation.

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