Drug Abuse

CHAPTER IV

REALIZATIONS AND CONCLUSIONS OF THE 16 OF TABLE 1

Fear

Symbolism of Sex

Womb Substitutes

Sexual Problems

R's Fixation to the Womb

The Compact System of Rejection

Identification and Projection

FEAR

§ 34 The 16 cases said that they felt any fear-producing stimulus during their infancy and childhood as a direct threat to their existential identity/self-preservation. During Sessions, R2, R13 and R15 relived a childhood experience of becoming lost in the crowd. The extreme fear they felt was similar in quality to primitive terror (see types of fear immediately below).

Their intellectual development after childhood gradually helped the 16 specify some causes of their fears and decreased their intensity. However, for some of the 16, it was not unusual for insignificant stimuli to terrify them even after adolescence (RIO paranoiaclike and schizophreniclike state, p.49)

§ 35 Types of fear The 16 described different qualities of fear which I have classified as follows:

(a) Specific fear This fear occurs after expulsion-birth. It has specific causes which R is aware of (§ 119).

(b) Anxiety This agonizing fear is accompanied by a vague threat to R's existence. Its cause is unconscious (§ 120).

(c) Primitive terror I have used this term to characterize the chaotic terror which the 16 felt during their intra-uterine rejection and/or the rejection of expulsion-birth. Note: Though R7 and RI I experienced primitive terror, they could not tell whether it was during their foetal life, their expulsion-birth or immediately after birth.

§ 36 Further details on primitive terror

(a) When the rejecting womb messages-stimulil2 excite the Unwanted foetus' nervous system, they cause:

(i) A violent disturbance in the cohesion of his existential identity/self-preservation and/ or his sex identity.

(ii)   Primitive terror.

From Unwanted R's point of view, the tragedy of all this process is that although he feels certain he is about to die, death - which would release him from this state of terrifying chaos - does not occur. Instead, he remains trapped in this state as long as his nervous system continues to be excited by the rejecting womb messagesstimuli.

[In the author's opinion, limbic neurons begin functioning from foetal life. Thus foetal limbic neurons are capable of being excited by rejecting womb stimuli. (According to the experimental finding of W. B. Cannon, 13 excitation of limbic neurons produces fear.)]

(b) The stimuli which are produced in the foetus/new-born's external environment during his expulsion and immediately after his birth may also cause a violent disturbance in the cohesion of his existential identity/self-preservation and primitive terror. Note: The foetus' external environment during expulsion is the genital canal of his natural mother. The external environment after birth is the infinite chaos of the universe.

§ 37   As mentioned in § 32, the rejecting womb is intertwined with primitive terror. The 'memory traces' of the rejecting womb/primitive terror are preserved in a latent state by the neurons and may be reactivated after expulsion-birth by any rejecting stimulus. When reactivation occurs on a conscious level, R is aware that he is reliving the rejecting womb and primitive terror. Such a reactivation can occur only under conditions of autopsychognosia. When reactivation occurs on an unconscious level - as may happen in everyday life - only the primitve terror reaches consciousness. Thus, if the reactivation of the rejecting womb does not take place under conditions of autopsychognosia, only the primitive terror and not the experience of the rejecting womb is relived consciously (example R10 p.50).

SYMBOLISM OF SEX

§ 38 For all 16 cases of Table 1, sexual orgasm with a womb substitute symbolizes a return to the womb.

R3 and R13, Constantly Welcome, explain their'return' to the womb through sexual activity which resulted in pregnancy, thus: during their pregnancy, they identified simultaneously with their mother and with the foetus within them. In other words, they were the foetus in their mother's womb (p.63). For R3 and R13 orgasm is a temporary state similar to the conditions of pregnancy: during orgasm the same double identification as in pregnancy occurs.

Other examples of 'returning' to the womb through orgasm are those of R4, R l O,R 12 (§48), R 16.

§ 39 Security For the Welcome, the womb was the first safe environment. For the Unwanted it was relatively safe - as safe, that is, as the rejecting intra-uterine environment could be considered. Thus, apart from the pleasure it may give R, orgasm also offers him the'best obtainable security'.

§40 Immortality R1, R3, R4, R12 and R13 feel the need to perpetuate themselves. This need springs from their existential identity/self-preservation and can be realized only through the birth of descendants. Through sex, then, these individuals ensure not only security but immortality as well.

R8 also desires immortality, though on her own terms:   '9/10ths of my male descendants should be put to death and the remaining one used only for the perpetuation of the female sex.'

For R10 and R11, self-perpetuation is unthinkable. R10 says that she has 'not the least desire to perpetuate my shitty existence.' The thought of pregnancy horrifies R11; she feels that the foetus within her will be hideous.

WOMB SUBSTITUTES

§ 41   The symbolism of sex constitutes unconscious knowledge for R. It 'activates' him imperatively in his everyday life since emotionally (though unconsciously) R remains the foetus who needs the womb.

R's unconscious, invincible need to return to the womb he knew, that of his natural mother, drives him to search for it constantly. In his search, R 'discovers' various womb substitutes.

The nature of R's relations with the womb substitute is determined by the quality of his relations with the womb.

R's relations with the womb substitute are a complex process characterized by identifications, projections, efforts to create conditions of complete womb acceptance, efforts to create conditions of womb rejections and so on.

Examples:

(a) R3 and R13, Constantly Welcome, endeavour to revive the ideal conditions of their intra-uterine acceptance through sexual communication with a womb substitute . (b) R10, Unwanted, tries either to create conditions of rejection or to create conditions of complete womb acceptance which, however, fail because the womb substitutes reactivate the rejecting womb.

(c) R4, Periodically Unwanted and Periodically Welcome, has a collection of rare coins and is willing to undertake any sacrifice to expand and enrich it. In R4's relations with his rare collection, there is an alternation of the following process: (i) The rare collection symbolizes the womb which R4 has at his disposal whenever he wants it. (ii) R4 identifies on the one hand with the womb and on the other with the collection which symbolizes foetus R4. Thus, just as he accepts the rare collection, so the womb accepts the foetus.

(d) R9, Unwanted because of his Sex, complains of being unable to penetrate a woman's vagina with his penis. He also mentions that he is intensely interested in mathematics. For R9, solving a difficult mathematical problem is almost the only way he can temporarily overcome his everyday agony caused by stimuli which reactivate the rejecting womb. Solving a mathematical problem gives R9 a momentary feeling of worth and arouses the vain hope that the womb will change its opinion of him: that he is useless and insignificant since he is not a woman, as the womb wants. But the womb remains relentlessly rejecting and castrating.

§ 42 When R discovers a womb substitute, the latter assumes supreme importance for him as it symbolizes security and perhaps immortality. He becomes fixated to the substitute: it alone gives his life meaning. Example: A house is engulfed by fire. Ignoring the danger, somebody throws himself through the flames to save a beloved person or object.

At first sight, this behaviour seems to contravene the law of self-preservation. Deeper analysis, however, reveals that the beloved person or object is more important than self-preservation: it symbolizes the womb without which self-preservation can be neither achieved nor perpetuated.

Usually there comes a day when the womb sustitute loses its attractiveness and causes R bitter disappointment. It is, after all, just a substitute and not the womb itself. R's disappointment is followed by fresh pursuit of his utopia. But despite all his efforts, R will never be the foetus in his mother's womb again (example R4 p.83).

SEXUAL PROBLEMS

§ 43 To the physical act of coitus the symbolism of sex adds emotional elements. For the 16, these elements are the basic cause of their sexual problems. In general, their sexual problems are characterized by:

(a) Difficulties in executing coitus.

(b) Abstention (temporary or permanent) from coitus and substitution with other forms of activity (example R1 p.58).

§ 44 The sexual problems of the 16 of Table 1.    In more detail there are: (a) Frigidity and/or abhorrence of anything related to sex.

(b) Highly unpleasant emotional-sensorial experiences during coitus, which intensify as orgasm approaches and result in the inhibition of orgasm and anxiety (RIO pp.3637); orgasm without pleasure; sobbing, depression and unpleasant physical symptoms following orgasm (R10 p.50); premature ejaculation without pleasure; fantasies (R4 p.65); and so forth.

(c) Various sexual activities: homosexual, masturbatory, sadistic, masochistic, activities involving fetishes, and so on (R12 § 48, R5 p.95).

(d) Obsessional acts. An illustration of (d) is the case of the 68-year old woman mentioned in § 122. Her sexual desires constituted internal stimuli which threatened to reject her existential identity/self-preservation: to have satisfied her sexual desires with real sexual activity would have been to risk shattering her self-respect (her existential identity/self-preservation). Thus the rejecting stimuli 'activated' her sexual behaviour in an obsessional way. See also R12's example (§ 122).

§ 45 Repercussions of sexual problems   The 16 realized that their sexual problems had repercussions on many of their everyday attitudes and activities - socio-political, moral, philosophical, scientific, artistic, religious, athletic and so forth.

Examples:

(a) R9's need to express and overcome his sexual problem through scientific activity (§ 41).

(b) R 1's effort to solve his sexual problem through political activity. (c) R4's division of sex into 'pure' and 'dirty' sex (p.69).

(d) R4's everyday agony which stems from lack of emotional fulfilment in sex (pp.7476).

(e) Worth noting is the sexual-moral attitude of all the women of Table 1, except R8, who feels they are'whores'. Each one gives her own interpretation of the word:

R3 feels like a whore because she makes love with many men.

R6 feels she is a sinner (whore) because she still exists and is not a male.

R7 feels like a whore when she establishes sexual relations for social or financial gain. R8 says: 'Men have succeeded in giving the most atrocious of meanings to the word "whore". "Whore" means a woman lower than scum. Through this term of abuse men try to demolish the personality of women who refuse to become their docile servants or exclusive property. Beneath the weight of heredity and the social code, women have been obliged to include the word "whore" in their vocabulary. And unfortunately women feel like whores, even for the most trivial reasons or the slightest deviation from the narrow path carved out for them by the social code. For me the word "whore" doesn't exist.'

R 10 feels like a whore because she has genital organs.

R 11 feels like a whore when she reveals her sexual desires.

R 13 feels like a whore when she makes love with a man who doesn't love her.

R14 feels like a whore when she makes love with any man she can find in the hope that he will accept her.

R 15 feels like a whore because she feels no emotional or physical excitement when she makes love.

R16 feels like a whore whenever she is humiliated for reasons which may or may not be related to her sexual activity.

How many generations of liberated women will it take before the 'memory traces' of the 'whore' have been erased from all their female descendants?

R'S FIXATION TO THE WOMB

§ 46 From the moment R's existential identity/self-preservation is created through the union of the spermatozoon and ovum of his natural parents - it is at the mercy of its external environment.

After his expulsion-birth, R unconsciously (and sometimes also consciously) feels permanently insecure. Thus, in various ways, he constantly endeavours to create around him conditions of security. The form this endeavour takes is moulded by the factors mentioned in § 24, 105, 106 and the symbolism of sex. Thus, for both the Welcome and Unwanted the womb constitutes the permanent base of reference.

Note: The experience of expulsion-birth and/or the 'castrating' behaviour of the mother and/or father may traumatize a Welcome R just as severely as an Unwanted R, and leave its 'memory traces' in his nervous system. Various stimuli which incline towards reactivating or which do reactivate these 'memory traces' cause mental disturbance (examples R 1, R5, R 12 § 48 & § 122).

§ 47 Repercussions of fixation of the Welcome to the womb

(a) Welcome R is fixated to his natural mother (and/or the other womb substitutes) because she symbolizes the womb, the place where he had once experienced ideal secu rity. For the Welcome infant (and later the child) the mother's presence is vital: just as she had protected him in her womb from the dangers without so she will protect him now from new dangers by taking him in her arms. She is to be constantly by him, exclusively his, her attention for him alone. Father, siblings, as well as other persons in the environment who remove her attention from him, unconsciously and sometimes also consciously become objects of hatred.

(b) When a rejecting stimulus tends towards reactivating the rejecting womb, Welcome R reacts with unconscious and sometimes also conscious aggressive behavious: his rejection, for example, by a womb substitute provokes aggressive behaviour towards the substitute and/or the environment and/or himself.

(c) When a stimulus tends towards reactivating the accepting womb, Welcome R responds with reconciliatory behaviour towards the stimulus and/or the environment and/or himself.

(d) Welcome R feels an incessant, unconscious desire to return to the womb, which intensifies each time a rejecting stimulus excites his nervous system.

(e)   When the rejection of expulsion-birth is reactivated, it gives rise to an existential problem which is exteriorized as psychoticlike S & P (example R 13 § 129).

(f) Sexual problems (§ 43, 44).

§ 48 R12's realizations    R12, Periodically Welcome, made the following realiza tions:

(a) Ejaculation during the sexual act with a womb substitue fulfils his desire to return to the safe womb as some of his cells (spermatozoa) 'return' to the uterus of the womb substitute. Said R12: 'In sex I take the path of my expulsion-birth, but in reverse. In so doing I return to the secure womb.'

(b) When internal stimuli (emotions, thoughts) or external stimuli cause him rejectioninsecurity, the desire to return to the womb instantly intensifies. The result is that he feels the need for sexual activity at the most inapproriate moments of his everyday life. (c) The symbolism of sex makes him feel that if he should ever lose his sexual capability he would lose everything in life. Sexual impotence would mean that there would be no way of 'returning' to the safe refuge whenever he were in danger. It would also mean forfeiting the chance of achieving immortality.

(d) His mother's autocratic behaviour and sexual taboos castrate him psychologically. The mere thought of having heterosexual contact is enough to render him impotent. His heterosexual experiences are very painful as they always lead to the ridiculing of his manhood and, for a brief moment, severe schizophreniclike-paranoiaclike S & P. Finally, he decides to ignore women. But the environment, ever hostile, intensifies his insecurity and sexual desire. Faced with no other alternative, he turns to homosexuality where the male partner, in not being a woman, cannot castrate him. He feels his manhood only when he has active sexual contact with a man. To the passive partner he projects his mother. In this way he acquires the sexual capacity to 'return' to the womb.

Note: During passive homosexual activity, R12 identifies simultaneously with the existential identity of his active partner and his mother.

(e) R12 finally added: 'Except for the painful moments of my mother's sexual activity, I felt welcome within her womb. But the effect of those moments, and of her sexual taboos generally, was to forbid my return to her. If I had slept with my mother, I wouldn't have blinded myself as Oedipus did. On the contrary, the experience of making love with her would have shown me the right path to the much-desired womb.' Note: R12's mother revealed tome that, since adolescence, sex had terrified her. After she was married, her attitude towards sex deteriorated. When she was pregnant with R12, her husband insisted on having sex with her and this upset her greatly. When R 12 was growing up, she tried to impart to him her abhorrence of sex.

§ 49 Repercussions of fixation of the Unwanted to the womb

(a) Unwanted R is both dependent on his natural mother (and/or the other womb substitutes) and extremely aggressive (unconsciously and sometimes also consciously) towards her as he considers her directly responsible for his tortured life (R 10 p.27)

(b) After expulsion-birth Unwanted R is 'activated' in the following ways:

(i) He projects the womb's rejections to the external environment and feels that everyone and everything reject him. Within a labyrinth of conflicting emotions he tries, like the 'wandering Jew', to express the agony of his inner world and the need for a little warmth in a refuge which will welcome him or at least not drive him away. He maintains the hope that some day the rejecting womb will change its attitude towards him and become accepting. Thus, with great hesitation, he decides to risk his 'return' through sex. A vain hope. With horror he reconfirms that the womb remains implacably rejecting, an unremitting hell ... And his wandering continues without respite.

(ii) When the external environment is accepting, Unwanted R often tries (unconsciously and sometimes also consciously) to create conditions of rejection as these are the only conditions he is familiar with: only under such conditions does he feel that he 'exists' (R 10 p.40)

(iii) Periodically Unwanted R4 endeavours through sex to revive the few moments of calm in the womb which occurred between the emotional disturbances of his pregnant mother (R4's description p.79).

(c) Reactivation of the'memory traces' of the intra-uterine rejection of Unwanted R's existential identity/self-preservation and/or his sex identity gives rise to an existential and/or sex identity problem which is exteriorized as psychoticlike S & P (§ 127 -133).

THE COMPACT SYSTEM OF REJECTION

§ 50 The autopsychognosia sessions show that the rejecting-psychotraumatic stimuli which excite R's nervous system during his foetal life, his expulsion-birth and after birth, become associated and form a compact system of rejection. This system may be excited after expulsion-birth by any stimulus (even the most insignificant) provided the stimulus contains even the slightest element of rejection.

The excitation of the compact system of rejection by a rejecting stimulus produces unconscious and sometimes also conscious fear and tends towards reactivating or actually reactivates on a conscious level the primitive terror of the rejecting womb (§ 37).

§ 51 Psychotraumatic or rejecting stimuli These are:

(a) The stimuli which reject, or which reactivate the rejection of, R's existential identity/self-preservation and/or his sex identity.

(b)   The stimuli which incline towards reactivating this (or these) rejections (§ 96). Basic rejecting stimuli These are:

(a) During foetal life: the womb-mother's rejection of the foetus' existence and/or sex (intra-uterine rejection).

(b) During expulsion-birth:   the process of expulsion-birth may be one of rejection (rejection of expulsion-birth).

(c) After expulsion-birth:

(i) Abuse of the child by the mother (and/or father).

(ii) The overprotective-castrating behaviour of the mother (and/or father) towards the child, be it boy or girl, is of a rejecting nature as it alienates-inhibits the child's existential identity. We are all familiar with parents who know it all, who alone make all the decisions and who impose their will on the child. Under such conditions, the child's existential identity is superfluous. This overprotection inclines towards reactivating or does reactivate the rejecting womb.

Note: The cause of the mother's overprotective-castrating behaviour is her insecurity. Unconsciously and sometimes also consciously the mother is traumatized-terrified as a result of personal experiences. She identifies with her child and tries to protect it as she would protect herself. If the mother has sexual problems, her behaviour towards the child becomes more alienating-rejecting (example R12 § 48).

(iii) The demands of the social code also alienate R as they impose their will on him.

(iv) Other rejecting stimuli of the external environment (a strong earthquake, for instance).

§ 52 People become parents before they have solved their psychological problems, many of which they are in any case unaware. In other words, although they are unprepared for procreation, people procreate. In addition, they are ignorant of the fact that basic elements in their behaviour have a negative-morbid influence on the development of their children's personality. Below are some of the factors which are responsible for misunderstandings between R and his parents and which constitute a source of unconscious and sometimes also conscious conflict between them.

(a) Convinced that their children have the same problems they had at their age, parents try to solve their children's problems in accordance with their own experience and mentality. Note: The Sessions proved their conviction to be fallacious.

(b) As a rule, parents are ignorant of their children's problems. Out of fear and 'respect', the children do not dare confide in their parents and discuss their problems with them.

(c) Parents usually undertake tremendous sacrifices for their children and expect recognition and gratitude in return. They do not realize, however, that even for the slightest reason their children may feel rejection, unbearable alienation and castration - symptoms which leave no room for gratitude.

(d) The Unwanted form a special category of people who are 'activated' by the unconscious desire to avenge the hateful womb which persecutes them almost incessantly in their everyday life.

(e) The father's sexual conquest of the mother or vice versa is interpreted emotionally by R as his parents' rejection of him. The rejection is exacerbated by the appearance of baby sister or baby brother, ie. the fruit of the paternal or maternal conquest. All 16 cases of Table 1 mentioned that they were severely traumatized when they discovered that their parents had sexual relations.

IDENTIFICATION AND PROJECTION

§ 53 Two basic neuronal mechanisms which play a very significant role in R's'activation' by stimuli are identification and projection. These two mechanisms are established according to laws analogous to those which govern the formation of Pavlov's conditioned reflexes.

§ 54 Identification   This is the property of R's nervous system to combine the emotional-intellectual-motor image of his own existential identity with the image of another person's existential identity. The images of the two existential identities coalesce and symbolize the same individual.

'I identify with B' means either (a) 'What I feel, I think B also feels; what I think, I think B also thinks; how I behave, 1 think B also behaves' or (b) 'What I think B feels or thinks, I feel or think too; the way I think B behaves, I also behave' (example R4 p.87).

§ 55 Projection   This is the property of R's nervous system to project the image of B's existential identity, as he (R) has subjectively formed it, to C. The two subjective images of the existential identities coalesce and thus what B symbolizes for R, C also symbolizes for R. Also, as B'activates' R, so in the same way C'activates' him.

§ 56 Functioning of identification and projection    Identification and projection function unconsciously and correlate two or more persons, beings, environmental conditions, a person with an object, a person with an animal and so forth.

Examples:

(a) R15 identified with her little dog to the point where, when the dog disappeared once, she stopped eating. As she said, she 'had to' share his probable hunger (who would feed the dog?).

(b) The subjective correlation of R10's school and university exams with the rejecting womb (p.46).

(c) R4's identification with the coins in his collection (§ 41).

How strongly the mechanisms of identification and projection function depends on how far the images which are identified or projected coalesce. Thus, identifications and projections may range from partial to almost absolute.

Worth noting are the simultaneous double or multiple identifications and/or projections, eg. R3's (and R13's) double identification during her pregnancy with her mother and the foetus within her womb (§ 38), R 10's multiple projections (p.53). Conclusion: During wakefulness and dreams, the mechanisms of identification and projection are 'activated' unconsciously by various stimuli. Thus, R's everyday emotional life may be stereotyped repetition, on an unconscious level, of the intra-uterine experience and/or the experience of expulsion-birth.

§ 57 Identification, projection and womb substitutes The mechanisms of identification and projection result in, among other things, the production of womb substitutes. A womb substitute may be any person, animal, object, and so forth, which unconsciously symbolizes the rejecting or accepting womb.

The most basic womb substitute is the natural mother or the woman who takes the role of the natural mother. The emotional image of the father may also symbolize the rejecting or accepting womb, that is, the father may also become a womb substitute (example R10 p.36). The emotional images of the mother and father - form the foundations on which the edifice of the other womb substitutes is built.

Note: The mechanism of identification can turn R himself into a womb substitute (see torturers § 118, R10 masochism p. 42; R10 sadism p.45, R10 depression p. 47).

 

12 The foetus feels the rejecting messages-stimuli as coming from his external (intra-uterine) environment.

13W. B. Cannon, "Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage", New York, 1929.

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