the experience of horror (in childhood) makes one question one’s sanity. What one is experiencing does not make sense, it doesn’t accord with one’s image of reality which even a baby has on a biological level. To avoid the resulting mental confusion, one must dissociate and deny all feelings. As long as one sticks to logic, one is safe. But feelings are life, and one cannot fully avoid emotional experiences no matter how coolly one plays it. The narcissist faces the risk of being overwhelmed by feelings and going wild, crazy, or mad, should his defence of denial break down. This is especially true of anger. Every narcissist is afraid of going crazy, because the potential for insanity is in his personality. This fear reinforces the denial of feeling creating a vicious cycle.
Reading the above paragraph again in Lowen’s book today gave me more insight into my brother, who threatened to walk out on me last October when I got angry with him. It reminded me of terrifying incidents he faced in childhood and of how my father did pretty harsh things to him as a boy as his own childhood had been similarly harsh. I was in tears again last week after yet another conversation with my brother where we was working as hard as he could to split off all expression of emotion. I usually leave every interaction with him crying or disturbed in some way. Now instead of feeling angry I just feel really sad for him as I don’t ever think he will look at the roots of his own workaholism. Once again I shed heaps of tears after I got off the phone on Thursday. It is not that he is an unkind person either, all time the conversation revolved around helping my sister and I to get the best interest possible on the money Mum has left us.
It is now never the less a great comfort to me to be able to say I now know I am not crazy and I know why his side of the family have sidelined me before as well as other members of my family, looking upon us with such distain and disapproval due to our emotions. That said I am also aware of the charge of anger that I have carried which I know I inherited from my mother’s side of the family.
Collapsing into a state of helplessness may be one response to such terror or violence in childhood. Flight or fight may be two other responses but both the later would often be blocked by an abusive parents. Escaping or fighting back may be shamed or made impossible as was the case of Bill whose story Lowen covers in Chapter 7 of this book.
Bill did not feel any anger. He denied his anger, just as he denied his fear. Instead, he adopted an attitude of submission and attempted to understand the irrational behaviour of his father, and others, His submission to his father may have had a lifesaving value, but almost cost him his life. (Bill was later on nearly killed by a hitchhiker he and a friend picked up on the side of the road who began to attack them.)
Lowen explains how Bill then came to fear his own anger.
(he).. believed that if he lost his head he might kill someone. But to lose your head is equivalent to going crazy. Bill was terrified of the potential craziness in himself as he was of the craziness of others. When I made this interpretation to him he remarked, “Now I know why I became a psychiatrist.”
Not everyone will be able to contain their rage from such incidents, others will act it out. Lowen tells the story of David Berkowitz, the “Son of Sam”, serial killer who murdered 6 and wounded 7 others.
What then are the dynamics that precipitate a seemingly sane person into insane action? … there must be some subconscious force.. This force is the denied feeling of anger. Because the anger is denied, it is not experienced, which would give he person some control over it.
Many narcissists develop an ego unconscious split in these circumstance which means at times such subconscious forces can erupt and cause havoc or be projected on others. Such and effect is called flooding…. an overwhelming feeling or excitation which ..”(temporarily drowns us)…in the torrent of sensation. Imagine a river overflowing its banks and sweeping across the surrounding country side. In a similar way the gush of feeling wipes out normal boundaries of the self, making it difficult for the person to distinguish between inner and outer reality. Reality becomes confused and nebulous….. (there is a sense of) nothing solid to cling on to. The person feels ‘at sea,’ estranged.
Such estrangement is not dissimilar to dissociation although Lowen compares it to disorientation. The flooding of something we held down can make us dizzy, it may erase normal consciousness for a time. It may well be what we experience in a panic attack (repressed or split off lively life energy or anger). We can also be overwhelmed by pleasant sensations and if our sense of happiness or joy was also supressed or shamed in childhood we can begin to get fearful of insanity when we start to feel energised or even happy.
In the bioenergetic therapy Lowen used feelings which have been repressed or shut down are helped to liberate by the therapist who assists in the process so flooding and disorientation is not as intense as it would be if we were misunderstood or unsupported in the process.
The problem is that those damaged in childhood continue to carry split off emotions such as anger and sadness into adulthood, we may even attract relationships with others who act them out for us or vice versa, one partner can then pretend they are okay, it’s just their partner that is the problem.
Lowen points out in his book Narcissism : Denial of the True Self the connection between being called ‘mad’ (as in insane) when one is actually angry.
To say a person is mad may mean that person is either crazy or angry. What this tells us is that anger is not an acceptable emotion. Children are taught very early on to curb their anger; often they are punished if, in the course of an angry reaction, they hurt someone. Disputes, they are admonished should be settled amicably and with words. The ideal is to have reason prevail over action.
But conflicts can not always be settled amicably, with reasoning. Tempers may flare. I don’t mean one has to resort to physical violence to express an angry feeling. Anger can be expressed in a look or by the tone of one;s voice. Once can assert with feeling. “I am angry with you.” Some situations do call for the physical expression of anger. If violence is used on you it may be appropriate to fight back. Without the right to strike when one is hit, one feels powerless and humiliated. We have seen what that can do to the personality.
I strongly believe that if children were allowed to voice their anger at their parent’s whenever they felt they had a legitimate grievance, we would see far fewer narcissistic personalities. Giving a child this right would allow a real respect for the child’s feelings.
Lowen goes on to site an experience of watching a Japanese woman being hit by her daughter in anger. He explains how in Japan a child is never disciplined before the age of 6 because they are regarded to be innocent and such children don’t end up disrespectful or misbehaving. However when the right of angry expression is denied a child it has an adverse impact and then there are the parents who cannot express their own anger with a child in a healthy way and use punishment instead. Lowen doesn’t negate the need for discipline, only the use of power and control in the face of a child the parent does not have a healthy way of relating to and helping to develop emotionally.
Such repression of anger in a person in childhood means anger stays present in the person’s system much later in life. In his bioenergetic therapy Lowen helps patient to discharge repressed anger so that it does not stay trapped inside. However as he points out, the fear of ones anger and belief it will prove one is insane is a difficulty that many narcissistically injured person’s face on the path to healing.
For narcissists to know themselves, they have to acknowledge their fear of insanity and to sense the murderous rage inside that they identify with insanity. But they can only do this if the therapist is aware of those elements and is not afraid of them. I find it helpful to point out to my patients that what they believe is insane – namely, their anger – is in fact sense if they can accept it. In contrast, their behaviour without feeling, which they regard as sane,is really crazy.
The behaviour without feeling that Lowen mentions here in fact leads to the growing or development of what he calls a thick skin, a protective defensive layer which will allow no real feeling for self or others in those with a narcissistic defence,
such denial is achieved by deadening the surface to stimuli, its effect is to rigidify the ego. … the result is a diminishing of the ego’s capacity to respond emotionally to reality or to change reality in line with one’s feelings.. the ego’s safety lies in a deadened body, with little emotion. Yet this very deadening creates a hunger for sensation, leading to the hedonism typical of a narcissistic culture.
But true feeling is then increasingly hidden behind a façade and the building charge of need and hidden feeling is defended against. Thus addictions come to play a role in diverting attention from the truth.
By contrast those who develop a borderline defence to such negation actually become excessively thin skinned, unable to throw off hurts lodged deep inside from the past often from unfeeling narcissists. Their work is to understand the source of pain and not project it onto the present, understanding how deeply its roots lie hidden in an often unconscious past.
