that change we must find ways to work with that dilemma and the underlying oedipal conflict in the therapeutic endeavor to help a person gain a greater measure of fulfillment in his life.
Few books on psychology today are concerned with the oedipal problem. They don't deny its existence; they simply ignore it. On the thesis that we can be masters of our fate, each offers a recipe for the good life. You are told how to do if. how to be successful, how to be aggressive, how to fulfill your potential, how to be happy, etc. On a practical level the advice is sound in most cases. But the effect of these books upon people's lives is almost negligible. The problems of living seem to increase rather than decrease. The misery in people's lives doesn't seem to lessen. There does seem to be a malign fate operating in the lives of many people that psychology is impotent to change, a fate that is tied to the oedipal situation in their childhood.
The Nature of Fate
One of the themes of this book is that character determines fate. Character refers to a person's typical, habitual, or “characteristic” way of being and behaving. It defines a set of fixed responses, good or bad, that are independent of conscious mental processes. We cannot change our character through conscious action. It is not subject to our will. Generally, we are not even aware of our character because it has become “second nature” to us.
Fate, like character, can be good or bad. There is nothing in the definition of fate that implies a negative value. Fate is not synonymous with doom. True, it is man's fate to die, but it is also his fate to live. Webster's New International Dictionary defines fate as “that principle or determining cause or will by which things in general are supposed to come to be as they are or events to happen as they do; the necessity of nature.” Events happen as they do because of nature's laws. Thus, whether we call it fate, a law of nature, or God, we signify by these terms that events are part of a process that is beyond man's control. In Greek mythology, the fates were known as the Moiria. They were named Clotho (the Spinner), who spins the thread of life; Lachesis (Disposer of Lots), who determines its length; and Atropes (Inflexible), who cuts it off.
Destiny is often used as a synonym for fate, but the two words have slightly different meanings. Destiny is related to the word destination. It refers to what one becomes, whereas fate describes what one is. Fish are fated to swim as birds are fated to fly, but that is hardly their destiny.
Thus, it would be correct to say that it is my fate to be born as it is my fate to die, but my destiny was to become a psychiatrist. The first two are inherent in the nature of life, but not the third. Whether one becomes a king or a slave, a success or a failure, may be predetermined, but it is certainly not a necessity of nature. The oracle at Delphi did not foretell the destiny of Oedipus, which was to vanish from the earth and find an abode with the gods. He prophesied his fate, which was that he would kill his father and marry his mother. That, as we shall see, is a statement about the nature of things. Under certain conditions it is the fate of all men.
One of the characteristics of fate is its predictability. Those of us who do not believe in fate or oracles might think that the future is unpredictable. To some extent this is true, but there is a greater measure of predictability in life than most people realize. Prediction is possible wherever there are structures, for structure determines function or action. This concept is easy to illustrate. Because of its structure an automobile cannot fly like a plane. One can safely predict that it will roll on the ground. Because a human body has a certain structure, it can function in certain ways and no others. Although we can swim underwater, we cannot breathe underwater like a fish because we do not have any gills. A structure sets limits, which makes prediction possible. Thus, knowing the structure of government agencies, we can predict their behavior. Similarly, it would be safe to predict that, all other factors being equal, a one-legged person cannot run as fast as a two-legged person. The number of examples is limitless. Since structure determines behavior, it creates fate.
The important thing about this concept is that it applies equally to psychic structures and to character structures. If we know a person's character structure, we can predict his fate. Take the case of a person with a masochistic character that is structured in the body mainly as chronic tensions in the flexor muscles.5 Because of these tensions it is very difficult for him to express feelings easily. These tensions are especially severe in the throat and neck, strongly blocking the utterance of sound. The total pattern is one of holding in both physically and psychologically, with the result that such a person tends to be submissive. Since such behavior is predictable, we can say that it is his fate to be submissive.
If character determines fate, then we have to know how character develops. In 1906 Freud showed that certain character traits could be related to a child's experiences in early life. According to Freud, parsimony, pedantry, and orderliness were the result of a toilet-training program that fixated the child on the anal function.6 Other psychoanalysts established connections between other character traits and certain experiences involving the child's instinctual life. Karl Abraham pointed to an association between ambition and oral eroticism.7 These studies concerned specific character traits. The understanding of character as a total pattern of response was provided by Reich in his classic work Character Analysis.8 Reich described character as a process of armoring on an ego level, which had the function of protecting the ego against internal and external dangers. The internal dangers are unacceptable impulses; the external dangers are threats of punishment from parents or other authority figures for these impulses.
Later, Reich extended the concept of character armor to the somatic realm. In the latter, the armor is expressed in chronic muscular tension, which is the physical mechanism by which dangerous impulses are suppressed. This muscular armoring is the somatic side of the character structure, which has a psychic counterpart in the ego. Since psyche and soma are like the two sides of a coin, head and tail, what goes on in one realm also occurs in the other. Or, one can say that the muscular armor is functionally identical to the psychic character. Therefore, one can read a person's character from the expression of his body. The way a person holds himself and moves tells us who he is. Reich said the various character types needed to be more systematized. I did this in my book The Physical Dynamics of Character Structure, retitled The Language of the Body in the paperback edition.9 In this book I showed how the different characters become structured in the body through the individual's interaction with the family environment.
Broadly speaking, character forms as a result of the conflict between nature and culture, between the instinctual needs of the child and the demands of the culture acting through the parents. Parents as representatives of the culture have the responsibility of inspiring their children with the values of the culture. They make demands upon the child in terms of attitudes and behavior that are designed to fit the child into the family and the social matrix. The child resists these demands because they amount to a domestication of his animal nature. Therefore, the child must be “broken in” to make him part of the system. This process of adapting a child to the system breaks his spirit. He develops a neurotic character and becomes afraid of life.
The neurotic character is the person's defense against being broken. In effect, he says, “I will do what you want and be what you want. Do not break me.” The person doesn't realize that his submission amounts to a break. Once formed, his neurotic character constitutes a denial of the break, while his muscular armoring functions as a splint that doesn't let him feel the break in his spirit. It is like closing the door after the horse is stolen and then believing that the horse is still inside. Of course, one dares not open the door to find out. Then, by repressing the memory of the traumatic event, one can pretend that it didn't happen and that one has not been broken.
The repression jells the character into a structure, like an egg that has been boiled or a pudding that has been chilled. Prior to the act of repression the character is labile; it has not yet hardened into a fixed structure. This repression occurs in the process of resolving the oedipal problem. Thus, Reich says, “Character armoring is, on one hand, a result of the infantile sexual conflict and the mode of solving it.”10 Not only does the repression remove from consciousness all memory of the oedipal situation, but it buries with it almost all the events of early childhood. This is the main reason that most people remember very little of their