Young children and animals are open to feelings of joy, and are known to literally jump for joy, but it is rare to see a mature or older person feel and act that way. In this blog, I explore how we can regain our natural ability to feel joy and be joyful, as well as what the impediments to feeling of joy are. Joy is a feeling (emotion) of great pleasure and happiness, and is one of four primary emotions (Joy, Fear, Sadness, and anger). Dancing may be the closest activity to being joyful, which is the reason why it is the natural activity at joyful occasions. Children do not need special occasions to be joyful. Simply allow them to be free in company of other children and joyful activity will soon appear When the pleasurable excitement mounts from the baseline of good feeling, one knows joy, and should it overflow, it becomes ecstasy.

Our behavior and expressions are controlled by a superego, with its lists of Do's and Don'ts and the power to punish if one violates its commandments. The superego is the internalization of the “dictatorial” parent, and it functions below the level of consciousness so that we are unaware of the limitations it imposes upon our feelings and consequently our actions are not the result of our free will. To feel joy and to be joyful requires one to be free – to expand and to move, and one cannot feel joy in a contracted state. Many adults are still afraid of their parents, even afraid to speak openly to them (due to earlier traumatic experience).

Chronic muscular tension in different parts of the body constitutes the prison that prevents the free expression of an individual's spirit. These tensions can be found in the jaw, the neck, the shoulders, the chest, the upper back and lower back, the legs, and pelvis. They manifest the inhibition of impulses which the person dares not express for fear of punishment, verbal or physical. The child who lives in this fear is tense, anxious and contracted. It is a painful state and the child will deaden himself to not feel the pain of the fear. Deadening the body eliminates the pain and the fear the “dangerous” impulses are effectively imprisoned – survival is thus assured but repression becomes the mode of life.

Every chronically tense muscle in the body is a frightened muscle, or it would not be held so tightly against the flow feelings and life. Looking at the body, one can evaluate the fear – if the body is very rigid, one can describe the person as being “scared stiff”. The fear has two aspects – a fear of letting go and surrendering to the body, to the self, and to life; and the other is the fear of death. Fear of letting go is also related to fear of insanity in that too much feelings may overwhelm the ego and result in madness. Fear of death is connected with a very early experience in which the child senses that it faces death, that it could die – death does not occur, the child recovers, but the bodily memory cannot be erased. The body memory persists in the form of tension, alarm and fear in the tissues and organs of the body, especially in the musculature.

Every chronically contracted muscle is an angry muscle, since anger is the natural reaction to forced restraint and the denial of freedom. If an individual is unable to get angry, he becomes locked in a position of fear – the two emotions are antithetical; when one is angry, one is not frightened, and vice versa. When a person is frightened, one can assume that he has an equal amount of (suppressed) anger in his personality. Expressing anger releases fear, just as crying releases sadness.

Wilhelm Reich in a seminar in his home (in 1945) stated that the neurotic personality only develops when a child's ability to express anger at an insult to his personality is blocked (Lowen). He pointed out that when the act of reaching out for pleasure is frustrated, a withdrawal of the impulse takes place, creating a loss of integrity in the body. That integrity can be restored only through the mobilization of aggressive energy and its expression as anger. This would reestablish the organism's natural boundaries and its ability to reach out again.

Every chronically tense muscle is related to sadness. There is also sadness at losing the potential for a state of pleasurable excitation. Crying is an acceptance of the reality of both the present and the past. When we cry we feel or sense our sadness and we realize how much we hurt and how badly we have been hurt. Crying can be blocked by chronic throat tensions and breathing. If crying is choked off, one can't breathe
One has choked off the flow of air by constricting the throat.

If one's throat is constricted, one has no voice. The regulation of our voice is exercised largely through the control of respiration. If we breathe freely and fully, our voice will naturally reflect our feelings. The ability to cry out and to speak out is the basis for an individual's sense that he has a voice in his own affairs. Prisoners and slaves have no voice in their affairs and are not free people. Children can also fall into this category if they have been so frightened that they cannot make a loud sound. Sound and feeling are closely connected, and we have learned how to control our voice so as not to reveal our feelings. We can speak in a flat and unemotional tone to deny feelings, a high pitch voice to hide the fact that feel down, etc.

Love has been described as the greatest and sweetest feeling, as the mystery which gives life its richest meaning. Love is a vital connection to a source of life and joy, whether that source is an individual, a community, nature, or the universe. [Healthy adult] Love is an opening up and expansion of the self to include the world – and thus is related to joy. But many people are fearful of surrendering to love, and this fear stems from conflict between the ego and the heart. We love with our heart but we question doubt and control with our ego. Heart may say “surrender” but ego says “be careful; don't let go; you will be abandoned and hurt”. The surrender to love involves the ability to share one's self fully with one's partner. Love is not a matter of giving but of being open, and openness has to be first with one's self, then with another. And longing for love is not the same as ability to love. A person who longs for love, when meets one who responds to his longing gets hooked on this person like an addict. The longing for love represents the unloved and unfulfilled child buried within.

Surrender to the body is the surrender of the ego in favor of identification with the body and its feelings. We live in a narcissistic culture in which success seems to be the meaning of life. One's identity is often tied to one's activity rather than one's being. In our narcissistic culture “surrender” is equated with being defeated, but it is really the defeat of the narcissistic ego. Without surrender of the narcissistic ego, one cannot surrender to love. Without such a surrender joy is impossible. Surrender does not mean the abandonment or sacrifice of the ego. It means that ego recognizes its role as subservient to the self – as the organ of consciousness, not the master of the body (Lowen). Surrender means letting the body become fully alive and free. It means allowing the involuntary processes of the body, like respiration, and full freedom of action. It means surrendering to the illusion of the power of the mind. Surrendering to the body is not something one can do. Doing is the opposite of surrendering. Doing is an ego function whereas surrendering to the body requires abandonment of the ego. The surrender to the body is associated with the giving up of illusions and coming down to ground and to reality. The individual who is strongly connected to reality is said to “have his feet on the ground”. To be grounded means to feel one's feet on the ground. Grounding is an energetic process in which there is a flow of excitation through the body from head to feet. When a person is grounded, he is connected to reality.
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Culture developed as man moved out from a purely animal state and became self-conscious. This move, from 4 legged stance to an upright posture, lifted man above other animals and also in his mind above nature. He, thus gained control over nature, and by extension over his own nature, and has thus alienated himself from nature and his activities have become destructive to himself and to nature. Man has gained power and is hung up on it, and our culture is driven by it. As we gain more power, our pace of life increases to a point where our bodies cannot keep up – if we relax for a few minutes it is only so we can run faster. This situation cannot be sustained, and our bodies cannot tolerate it for long. Man needs to Identify and harmonize with nature, with one's environment and with members of one's community. Man needs to surrender to and identify with nature, which is the surrender to life process in the body, to feelings, and to sexuality. Flow of excitation in the body creates sexual feelings when it flows downward and spiritual feelings when it flows upward. This action is pulsatory and cannot be any stronger in one direction than the other. Sexuality does not mean sex any more than spirituality means going to places of worship. Sexuality is the feeling of excitement in relation to a person of opposite sex, and spirituality refers to feelings or excitement in relation to nature, to life, and to the universe. The key to transcendence of the self is the surrender of the ego. The surrender of the ego allows the person to turn inward, to hear the voice of nature (God). To surrender the ego and to close out the noise of the external world, one needs to shut off the flow of thoughts, which is called the stream of consciousness. The stream of consciousness ceases when one goes into a state of deep body relaxation in which breathing is full and deep. When this is done a sense of peace takes over the body – consciousness is not dimmed. One is fully aware but the awareness is not focused – one is not unconsciously poised to meet a danger.

Reference
​Lowen, A. (1994). Joy - surrender to the body and to life. New York, NY: Penguin Compass.

Why do so many relationships end up in breakups, separation, and/or divorce? Why is it that in many situations when we love our partner, they don't love us; and when they love us, we don't love them? Why is it that every relationship promises to be different, but it ends up being very similar to the old relationships? Why do we repeat our patterns – like a broken record?

Neurochemistry of Love - Testosterone and Estrogen are the primary sex hormones. Adrenalin is a  hormone that is released in the body of a person who is feeling a strong emotion (such as excitement, fear, or anger) and that causes the heart to beat faster and gives the person more energy. Dopamine – The dopamine system is strongly associated with the reward system of the brain. Dopamine is released in areas such as the nucleus accumbens and prefrontal cortex as a result of experiencing natural rewards such as food, sex, and neutral stimuli that become associated with them. Serotonin is one of love's most important chemicals that may explain why when you’re falling in love, your new lover keeps popping into your thoughts. Oxytocin (The cuddle hormone) is a neurotransmitter in mammals. Oxytocin is normally produced in the hypothalamus and stored in the posterior pituitary gland. It is the hormone of Love! Vasopressin is another important hormone in the long-term commitment stage and is released after sex. Oxytocin and Vasopressin are attachment and bonding hormones.

Neuroscience of Love - When a person falls in love, at least 12 areas of the brain work in tandem to release euphoria-inducing chemicals such as dopamine, oxytocin, adrenaline and vasopression. The love feeling also affects sophisticated cognitive functions, such as mental representation, metaphors and body image. Other researchers also found blood levels of nerve growth factor, or NGF, also increased. Those levels were significantly higher in couples who had just fallen in love. This molecule involved plays an important role in the social chemistry of humans. You can just be a loving person for your brain/body to function this way, albeit to a lesser extent!

Prerequisites for healthy development of an infant – D.W. Winnicott wirtes: “The mother gazes at the baby in her arms, and the baby gazes at his mother’s face and finds himself therein . . . provided that the mother is really looking at the unique, small, helpless being and not projecting her own expectations, fears and plans for the child. [Otherwise] In that case, the child would find not himself in his mother’s face, but rather the mother’s own projections. This child would remain without a mirror, and for the rest of his life would be seeking this mirror in vain.” Winnicott in this quote tells us why we seek partners who seem to “approve” us and make us feel “good”, “desirable”, and “wanted”, but we are never satisfied and/or our seeking ends in failure.

​Psychology of Love - A Child (Infant) must experience predictable presence of primary care taker to feel safe and protected. Child (Infant) must experience unconditional love, acceptance, empathy, and nonjudgmental presence of primary care taker to feel that he is worthy of love, he is worth it, he is good, and he is OK. He then believes there is benevolence (goodness) in the world, and people are generally good. The infant splits the object toward whom both love and hate were directed, in two. The good object (idealized) representation is important and is necessary to go on in life. The bad (frustrating, repressing) object is further split into two, namely the repressive object, and the exciting object. Ego identifies with the repressive object (anti-libidinal self), and keeps the original object seeking drive in check. Ego also identifies with the exciting object (libidinal self) and seeks exciting objects in the world. It is the idealized object that many seek initially in their relationships (infatuation stage), which is soon replaced by power struggle (acting out of anti-libidinal self). Some are lucky enough to transcend the power struggle stage and enter the “co-creativity” stage.

Fear of Intimacy - Love is not only hard to find, but strange as it may seem, it can be even more difficult to accept and tolerate.  Most of us say that we want to find a loving partner, but many of us have deep-seated fears of intimacy that make it difficult to be in a close relationship. Fear of intimacy begins to develop early in life. As children, when we experience rejection and/or emotional pain, we often shut down. We learn not to rely on others as a coping mechanism. After being hurt in our earliest relationships, we fear being hurt again. We are reluctant to take another chance on being loved. If we felt unseen or misunderstood as children, we may have a hard time believing that someone could really love and value us. Or if we do believe they love us, we find all kinds of reasons why they are not the “right” person for us.
It is painful to love someone when they don't love us. This is more familiar to us, but painful nonetheless. This is about re-experiencing the pain of deprivation from early contact and holding. It is much more painful to be loved – to open ourselves to love, be vulnerable, and let go of our defenses. This is about re-experiencing the pain of heartbreak (if we risk going there). Our defense mechanism may respond with rejection (rejecting the loving object). This is also much harder to perceive and imagine. There may be a tendency of wanting to pull back and go away, to feel weird in your body, to feel shame, to contact in our chest, etc.

A Neuroscience Perspective - Brain is shaped by experience. A new experience results in formation of many neural connections that result in adaptation and response to the experience. Thus our brain is formed (wired) by our experiences starting from our early formative years. Every time a given experience is repeated the corresponding neural networks are strengthened. This statement is a direct corollary of Hebbian axiom which says that the neurons that fire together wire together. Brain can be thought of as an information processing organ (an organ of compare and contrast), in the sense that when faced with a stimulus, it performs very fast correlation-like operations with what it has stored in memory to find the closest match to the stimulus just encountered. The correlations are performed with stored events that are more emotionally significant. Emotional significance is marked by Amygdala – an almond-shape set of neurons located deep in the brain's medial temporal lobe (one in each hemisphere), very close to Hippocampus which manages organizing, storing and retrieving memories. In humans and other mammals, this subcortical brain structure is linked to both fear responses and pleasure. Amygdalae therefore assign emotional significance and information to stimuli. Once the closest match is determined the emotional response will essentially be the same as the response corresponding to the past experience (existing wiring in the brain) with some modifications. This is how we repeat our past. Freud called this phenomenon “Repetition Compulsion”, or the compulsion to repeat past trauma.

An implication of the above assertions is that we unconsciously seek to repeat what is known to the brain. Thus we unconsciously seek similar relationships to the ones we have experienced before. And what is even more astonishing is that even if the relationship is inherently different, our behavior will resemble the past relationships (activation of the same neural pathways), thus changing the new relationship, in essence, to be similar the ones we have experienced in the past. After all, that is all that our brain knows! In psychological terms this is known as projective identification. It means that we may project the image of a past relationship onto our current relationship and the partner may identify with the image and act it out – resulting in repetition of the past! This happens since brain will try to compare the current relationship to what it has stored in its neural connections, and respond in the same way. Projection identification then is brain's attempt to adapt to a new experience based on what is learned in the past. This is the reason why our relationships turn out to be very similar to the old ones, as much we try not to repeat our pat “mistakes”!

Donald Kalsched (Trauma and the Soul) writes: The act of loving is a terrible risk for everyone, and especially for people who have grown up in emotionally impoverished environments. To really love someone (without symbiotically attaching to them through identification), is to risk losing them, precisely because we live in an insecure, unpredictable world in which death, separation, or abandonment is an ever present reality.
 
Erich Fromm (The Art of Loving) writes: Infantile love follows the principle: I love because I am loved! Mature love follows the principle: I am loved because I love! Immature love says: I love you because I need you!Mature love says: I need you because I love you! Fromm also writes: Paradoxically, the ability to be alone is the condition for the ability to love. This is the case since if one has the ability to be alone, one will not seek love in order to fill a void due to early deprivations, but will seek it in order to live a more fulfilled and a more pleasurable life.

Many men report that they feel alienated, alone, remote from the world, disconnected from their families and the community at large. They simply feel lost, and are seeking new images of masculinity that can support them in a return to feeling, aliveness, and a connection to nature, our bodies, our children, women, and other men. Some men turn to women for solutions, but often this creates different sort of problems such as codependency, and isolation from other men.

Most movies and TV shows portray men as heroes and thus many men identify with image of the hero. Consequently most of us (men) have attempted to live our life as some type of masculine hero. It has also been ingrained in men that they need to be heroes in order to gain intimacy with women. There is of course the allure of power and invulnerability in adopting the image of the hero, but there is also a heavy price to pay: alienation, isolation, stress induced physical or mental illness, injury and even death may be possible outcomes. Many men become codependent – that is habitually taking care of others at their own expense just to be a hero in order to seek acceptance and affection. As a result many men become workaholic, numb, and addicted to excitement in order to compensate for numbness, addicted to substances and sex, and finally they may lose their soul.

Let us define the soul as the mysterious quality that animates dead matter and makes it alive – and connects us to mother earth. Many men feel disconnected from an authentic spiritual source of aliveness (connection to mother earth). Having lost our souls we become at best unhealthy and at worst highly destructive to the lives of men, women, and everyone around us. Many men do not feel the loss of their souls until they find themselves in a hospital after a heart attack.

From a very early age boys are taught to be “tough and rough”. Boys are weaned earlier than girls. Boys are touched less than girls (by significant caretakers). Boys are more likely to be held facing outward toward the world and others. Girls are held inward, toward security, warmth, and comfort of the parent. Boys are taught that feelings are not masculine. Boys are taught that they must forego pleasure and endure pain to be a man. Men are taught that they should suffer alone and in silence – hence they cannot become vulnerable in presence of women. Boys are forced into contact competition (various contact sports).

Biology has not been very kind to boys and men either! Boys tend to lag four to six months behind girls in their development. Boys crawl, sit, and speak later and tend to cry more during infancy. Nature makes more genetic errors in the makeup of boys resulting in more birth defects (absence of redundancy – YY vs XY Chromosomes). Boys are more prone to schizophrenia, mental retardations, autism, hemophilia, muscular dystrophy, stuttering, other speech disabilities, dyslexia, etc. All and all, there are about two hundred genetic diseases that affect only boys.

Men perform much more hazardous jobs compared to women. More than 100K veterans of Vietnam war committed suicide (twice the number that died in battle). Wars may finally end when society begins to hold the security and lives of young men to be as sacred as those of women. The highest mortality rates in US are found among timber cutters (90% male), power line workers, insulation workers, garbage collectors, and miners (85% men), and farmers (79% men). Until recently 90% of peptic ulcers were found among men, as well as significantly higher rates of heart disease. Men's life expectancy is 8 years less than women (but this is changing!). Women enter psychotherapy and visit physicians more often. Men are twice as likely to commit suicide or have serious mental and emotional problems following divorce compared to women.

Society also accepts violence perpetrated against men as men are primary objects of violence in our culture. Men comprise 80% of homicide victims, 70% of robberies, and with exception of rape they comprise 70% of all aggravated assaults. Violence against men is a form of entertainment. Boxing, football, hockey, and car racing are examples. In the Vietnam war, men were killed 8K to one over women. In films and television, more than 90% of the characters who die are men. Boys are encouraged to compete for the purpose of winning, while competition in primitive societies was for enhancing skills and not winning.

Absence of Fathers – Fathers have been exiled in the post industrial age. During the pre-industrial age boys worked with their father on the land and identified with them. In our post-industrial age when fathers have to leave home to work in factories or offices, boys are left with their mothers and consequently identify with their mothers. This identification results either in formation of a hypo-masculine (effeminized) man or the hyper-masculine (hero) man. As more boys are brought up by women, fear of women and male passivity seem to be growing, possibly resulting in violent acting out. In absence of their fathers, and in  search of male identity boys may join violent gangs.

Boys fill the absence of father by becoming mother's little man, someone she could lean on, confide in, even flirt with in some cases. The boy becomes the codependent son, metaphorically mother's lover and ultimately her victim. The boy identifies with mother, and sees his masculinity in terms of differences between his sexual organ and that of her mother, and not the similarity between his sexual organ and that of his father. Boy then needs to prove his “manhood” by engaging in, at times, indiscriminate sexual acts. He needs to have sex to feel he is a “man”. His sexual activities are disconnected from his heart feelings. He does not know how to relate to women in mature ways.

Urbanization has also disconnected many men from their more traditional “earthy” masculinity, aggravated by the absence of father in the post-industrial age. Industrial society damages men and causes the “psychological depletion of men in urban settings … While urbanization appears to sponsor male passivity, it has the opposite effect in regard to women and spurs their liberation.” (David Gutmann) 

Men have been encouraged to repress their anger or transform it without expression, while feminist movement has encouraged women to express their anger. Repressed anger, when finally emerged, can be expressed violently or in self destructive ways. We must own our anger embrace it with respect, as men's anger has a very healthy component. When we see oppression and injustice anger is justified. When we see environment being destroyed by greed or ignorance, anger is justified. When we see violence perpetrated against women, other men, and children, anger is justified. Without proper expression of anger joy is not possible.

When we do not own (contain) a feeling, we will either repress it or act it out. Similarly, when men do not own/embrace their masculinity, they become either hyper-masculine (hero image – acting out), or they become hypo-masculine (repression). The heroic male in quest of strength cut away his softness, with it, he also lost sensitivity – Life was diminished and feelings became less rich. The soft male, in cutting away his hardness, lost his fierceness, his capacity for committed action and success in the world. Men must individuate and become their true selves which may not conform to any societal value.

Unless a man is in contact with his own essence – his masculine soul is incomplete. He can become like a vampire, sucking energy out of women because he does not have the ability to nourish himself from his inexhaustible depths. To the extent that we lack a solid connection to a depth of soul within, we seek it outside. When we believe we cannot be loved for who we are, we try to be a hero to save and rescue “her” and therefore gain her love and affection. Reconnection to our depths requires non-heroic attitudes: surrender, sensitivity, humility, and a willingness to leap into the unknown.

Men in their old days – Elder (wise) men are precious assets to our society. An elder man who is connected to his depth is a man of inestimable value. He can temper the aggression of younger men. He knows that the wounds of war never compensate for its glory. He knows that the gleam of marketplace cannot compare with the beauty of nature's wonderful fabric of life. He is a peacemaker. An elder (unwise) man who is still caught in hero image, may long to reclaim glories through the actions of younger men. These are old men who are quick to send young men to war. These are old men who devour non-renewable resource of our planet with no thought for future generations. Men are not merely seeking the lost father in their lives. They are hungering for soulful elders. The elder can plant the seed of soul in a young man. He is closer to death, closer to the mystery, and further from the illusions of youthful endeavor and heroic visions. He can become soul-father to younger men. We are hungry for a connection to elder men, so we now seek them out. We also seek connection to the elder within – a guide and counselor in our lives.

Resources:
The Knight with rusty armor (Robert Fisher)
Knights without armor - A guide to inner lives of men (Aaron Kipnis)
Fire in the belly - On being a man (Sam Keen)

When we look closely at our life we may notice that many events seem to repeat, many relationships seem to resemble the last one. It seems like aspects of life repeats akin to a broken record. Why? Do we really have choices in our behavior, or do we seemingly behave in preprogrammed ways?

To answer these questions we need to review how brain works. Brain is shaped by experience. A new experience results in formation of many neural connections that result in adaptation and response to the experience. Thus our brain is formed (wired) by our experiences starting from our early formative years. Every time a given experience is repeated the corresponding neural networks are strengthened. This statement is a direct corollary of Hebbian axiom which says that the neurons that fire together wire together.

Brain can be thought of as an information processing organ (an organ of compare and contrast), in the sense that when faced with a stimulus, it performs very fast correlation-like operations with what it has stored in memory to find the closest match to the stimulus just encountered. The correlations are performed with stored events that are more emotionally significant. Emotional significance is marked by Amygdala – an almond-shape set of neurons located deep in the brain's medial temporal lobe (one in each hemisphere), very close to Hippocampus which manages organizing, storing and retrieving memories. In humans and other mammals, this subcortical brain structure is linked to both fear responses and pleasure. Amygdalae therefore assign emotional significance and information to stimuli. Once the closest match is determined the emotional response will essentially be the same as the response corresponding to the past experience (existing wiring in the brain) with some modifications. This is how we repeat our past. Freud called this phenomenon “Repetition Compulsion”, or the compulsion to repeat past trauma.

An implication of the above assertions is that we unconsciously seek to repeat what is known to the brain. Thus we unconsciously seek similar relationships to the ones we have experienced before. And what is even more astonishing is that even if the relationship is inherently different, our behavior will resemble the past relationships (activation of the same neural pathways), thus changing the new relationship, in essence, to be similar the ones we have experienced in the past. After all, that is all that our brain knows! In psychological terms this is known as projective identification. It means that we may project the image of a past relationship onto our current relationship and the partner may identify with the image and act it out – resulting in repetition of the past! This happens since brain will try to compare the current relationship to what it has stored in its neural connections, and respond in the same way. Projection identification then is brain's attempt to adapt to a new experience based on what is learned in the past.

How can we then avoid repeating our past? The answer to this question is quite simple! I mentioned above that brain is shaped by experience. Thus if we have a new experience in which we do not respond in the old ways, then new pathways in the brain are formed that conform to this new experience. As this experience repeats newly formed neural connections get stronger until they become the dominant connections in the brain. However, this change usually occurs in therapeutic settings in which the therapist, aware if his own counter transference and internal processes, can present the client to a new relational experience and, resist and not identity with the projected image by the client. Thus it is primarily within the therapeutic relationship that change occurs. This also means that the therapist must have done his/her own work, otherwise there is high likelihood that he/she will either identify with client's projected image (projective identification), and/or project his own past onto client (countertransference).

Healing can also occur in our day-to-day relationships as well, if we are aware of our internal processes, and become aware when our partner is projecting an image onto us (reacts to us in a programmed way based on his/her past). When we resist the temptation to identify with the projected image or project our own, and when we can be lovingly present and nonjudgmental, when, we are aware of our self and maintain a strong sense of self, we then pave the way for healing and change. Over time, as this process repeats our parter experiences a different reality from what he/she is used to, which will result in formation of new neural pathways (healing). 

In conclusion, I need to mention that any conscious attempt to oppose our fate (our predicatable behavior) will fail as I have indicated in a past blog. It simply will result in the strengthening of the same neural pathways that we intend to oppose or change. Change occurs through acceptance.

“It is only by making the past alive again for a person that a true growth in the present is facilitated. If the past is cut off, the future does not exist.” ― Alexander Lowen,  Bioenergetics

Why are we chronically unhappy? When I speak to practically anyone around me, I hear unhappy voices, see grim faces, and contracted bodies. Most people today complain of being unhappy and not satisfied in life. Of course everyone's ego ideal is to live a happy life and to “live life to the fullest”. But the illusion of a happy life seems to elude most people.
What is happiness? We can say that we are generally happy when we feel pleasure in our body. Pleasure is feeling which like all other feelings is felt in the body. It is related to expansiveness and openness. Are we then incapable of feeling pleasure to a large extend? The answer based on what people say regarding being unhappy must be “No”! People seem to be able to sense excitement which results in very short lived sensation of pleasure. Excitement is a sensory phenomenon that diminishes shortly after excitement ends.

People seek excitement and thrill in order to feel some level of aliveness in their bodies. We live in a narcissistic age, in which image is more important than reality (it may even replace reality), consequently our true self is denied, and replaced with an image. If we deny our true self, we also must by very definition deny our feelings as feelings are perceptions of emotions that originate in our body – our true self.

We also had to cut off our feelings as children when our heart was broken through many disappointments, rejections, and loss of love by our significant caretakers. The narcissistic identification with an image and denial of our true self also serve to compensate for the shame of not being seen for who we were and consequent rejection and heartbreak by our caretakers. Having to deny or cut off our feelings all that is left is excitement which gives us a passing moment of feeling “something” which quickly fades. The more alive we are the more we feel, and conversely the more we feel the more alive we are. Dead people have no feelings.

Having suffered many rejections and heartbreaks, we become fearful of life and aliveness. Being alive means feeling our emotions, but this will take us back to when we suffered heartbreaks which are too painful to bear. We thus develop a fear of life and living. We seek refuge in our head and deny our body, and focus on achievements, power, money, thrills and excitements, push ourselves to the limit until life breaks us down (heart attack, cancer, auto-immune diseases, etc). We have thus failed! Ironically it is this failure that may provide us with the possibility of recovery. For some this breakdown occurs too late, making it very hard to recover. For some the breakdown provides a moment of self reflection and change in the direction of life. To paraphrase John Pierrakos, MD (co-founder of Bioenergetic Analysis): One of most important tasks of therapy is to help our clients before life breaks them down.

To regain our ability to feel pleasure and the capacity to live a happy life, we need to recover our body. We need to breathe, open and soften the thoracic cage which keeps our heart in isolation in order to protect us from heartbreak. If we don't breathe, we won't feel. Dead people do not breathe and do not feel. Suppression of feelings occurs through chronic contraction of musculature responsible for expression of those same feelings. Thus, we also need to release the tension held in our tight musculature which contains a record or our traumas and heartbreaks. Earlier I pointed out that pleasure is related to expansion and pain/anxiety to contraction of body and musculature. The converse must also be true, in that our capacity to feel pleasure is greatly diminished if our body is tight and contracted.
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I will end this blog by quoting Alexander Lowen MD (founder of Bioenergetic Analysis): “We deaden our bodies to avoid our aliveness, and then pretend to be alive to avoid our deadness.”

by Fate is defined in dictionary 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.” One of essential characteristics of fate is its predictability. Prediction is possible wherever there are structures, since structure determines function or action.

Personality (character structure) is one such structure, which is formed as a result of conflict between culture and nature, between the instinctual needs of the child and the demands of the culture acting through parents. It is maintained by chronic contraction of musculature in the body. Chronic tension in the musculature reflects superego inhibition against the expression of certain feelings. In the beginning the tension was consciously created to block the expression of an impulse that could evoke a hostile response from our parents. Thus the fate of person can be predicted from their character structure.

Can we escape our fate? The short answer is no! We cannot escape our fate for as long as our character structure remains fixed, our fate remains inescapable. Any attempt therefore to alter our fate is doomed to fail, and must fail as I will explain below. A primary goal of therapy therefore is to get the client to stop struggling against himself (fate). But by struggling against our fate we will ensure that our fate is fulfilled. We can only change our fate by accepting it. Ironically acceptance allows our fate (character structure) to change.
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In 1949, Donald Hebb, a Canadian neuropsychologist, wrote what has become known as Hebbian axiom: “Neurons that fire together wire together.” Each experience we encounter, whether a feeling, a thought, a sensation—and especially those that we are not aware of—is embedded in thousands of neurons that form a network. Repeated experiences become increasingly embedded in this network, making it easier for the neurons to fire (respond to the experience), and more difficult to unwire or rewire them to respond differently. Brain is thus shaped by experience.

Alexander Lowen, MD, the founder of Bioenergetic Analysis is interviewed with Frank Hladky, MD. I am fortunate to have been trained by Dr Hladky and to have participated in workshops given by Dr Lowen. 

Alexander Lowen (December 23, 1910 – October 28, 2008) was an American physician and psychotherapist. A student of Wilhelm Reich (an associate of Sigmund Freud, MD) in the 1940s and early 1950s in New York, he developed bioenergetic analysis, a form of mind-body psychotherapy, with his then-colleague, John Pierrakos (February 8, 1921 – February 1, 2001). Lowen was the founder and former executive director of the International Institute for Bioenergetic Analysis in New York City.

Born in New York City, Lowen received a bachelor's degree in science and business from City College of New York, an LL.B and a J.S.D (a doctorate in law) from Brooklyn Law School. His interest in the link between the mind and the body developed during this time. He enrolled in a class on character analysis with Wilhelm Reich. After training to be a therapist himself, Lowen moved to Switzerland to attend the University of Geneva.

Lowen lived and practiced for the majority of his life in New Canaan, Connecticut. He suffered a stroke in July 2006. The Alexander Lowen Foundation was founded in April 2007 to continue his legacy. Lowen died on October 28, 2008 at the age of 97.

Narcissism
The term Narcissism is derived from the Greek mythology of Narcissus. Narcissus was a handsome Greek youth who rejected the desperate advances of the nymph Echo (Greek mythological symbols). As punishment, he was doomed to fall in love with his own reflection in a pool of water. Unable to consummate his love, Narcissus pined away (grieved) and changed into the flower that bears his name, the Narcissus.

The term narcissism means love of oneself, and refers to the set of character traits concerned with self-admiration, self-centeredness, self-regard, and grandiosity. The name was chosen by Sigmund Freud. The definition of narcissism that I present in this blog is based on the work of Alexander Lowen M.D. (1985). Lowen (1985) sees both psychological as well as cultural aspects to narcissism. Narcissism, on a psychological level, denotes an exaggerated investment in one’s image at the expense of the self. Narcissists are more concerned about how they appear than what they feel. On a cultural level Lowen sees narcissism as a loss of human values, a lack of concern for the environment, for quality of life, and for one’s fellow human beings.

The narcissism of the individual parallels that of the culture, in that we shape our culture according to our image, and the culture in turn shapes us. Lowen further states that in his forty years of practice (prior to publication of his book on narcissism in 1985), he has seen a marked change in the personality problems of people consulting him. The neuroses of earlier times represented by guilts, anxieties, phobias, or obsessions are not commonly seen today. Instead, he states, he sees people who complain of depression, lack of feelings, an inner emptiness, a deep sense of frustration and unfulfillment. This absence of guilt and anxiety coupled with lack of feelings give one a sense of unreality about these people. Their performance – socially, sexually, work seems to be too efficient, too mechanical, and too perfect to be human. They function more like robots than human beings (Lowen, 1985).

Postmodernism
Postmodernism emerged from critique of modernism. Thus the best way to understand postmodernism is by first explaining modernism. The modern era began in late 17th century, with the appearance of artisans and entrepreneurs in the cities. This period coincided with the beginning of capitalism. Modernism ended sometime in 1960s. Postmodern era essentially started in 1960s, although elements of it can be traced back to earlier in the 20th century. Many argue that the main difference between the two eras has to do with question of unity, wholeness and totality. People in modern era were searching for some kind of totality, a unified way of describing the world, a unified set of values, culture, and life style.

According to most postmodern theorists not only have we lost the possibility of totality in our lives, but we no longer care about it. Today totality has disappeared so completely that we don’t even remember that it was ever possible! Most of the ideas that we study in schools were created during the modern era. So we are still taught that we ought to have a feeling of wholeness in our lives, or that we have to have an image of the world in which all the pieces fit together.

Most postmodern theorists however, believe that the loss of totality (grand narrative) is a good thing. Quest for wholeness or totality will no longer result in fascism or other dictatorial forms of governance, as wholeness and totality no longer exist. For example the grand narrative (totality) for Hitler was the supremacy of the Germans and the Aryan race and their destiny to rule the world. The notion of postmodernism put forward in this blog is that which is presented by Fredric Jameson (1991). Jameson still finds value in talking about totality. His point of view is that totality is still a good idea, because we should try to understand how all the pieces of our world and our experience fit together.

During the modern era production lagged behind consumption. Factories struggled hard to produce what consumers demanded. There was a need for more educated people to streamline production, and make factories more efficient. Modern culture had respect for universities, science, and scientists. There was a relentless search for totality in modern times, a totality that could solve modern problems, and can make sense of the world. Modern art also reflected this search for meaning and totality. However, starting in 1960s, due to tremendous advances in forces of production (more modern factories, better tools, etc), consumption began to lag production. Thanks to advances in the forces of production there was in increase in surplus value, or simply profit. This increase in profit then was partially spent in advertisements to increase consumption to further increase profit. The culture of postmodern capitalism transformed from valuing scientific research and endeavors to a culture of consumption. Madison Avenue turned into a force that shaped our lives while it encouraged consumption. Thus was created a culture around consumption (postmodern culture), which now shapes our lives and behavior to a great extent. This is the essence of Jameson’s perspective.

Jameson (1991) contends that modernity believed that it could represent reality in simple literal signs (ways of describing real world objects, in which signifier is the form of the sign and signified is the content of the sign.) and was troubled by the possibility that these signs might not have actually represented any reality beyond themselves. Postmodernity no longer worries about this, as it assumes that signs exist by themselves, detached from any external reality.

Today’s most images and objects are “simulacra” or copies of the past originals. Thus we observe cars that look like those of 50’s, but totally unrelated, clothes that look like those of several decades ago, but unrelated. Within each postmodern cultural artifact (buildings, songs, films, etc), signs are thrown together in random ways. They come and go for no apparent reason. The best way to understand these ideas is to turn the TV on, and the cutting edge of postmodernism can be clearly seen in “infotainment”, and “infomercials” in that we are not sure if we are watching news or an entertainment show or a commercial.

An important perspective of postmodernism can be observed by studying postmodern art, which is a term used to describe an art movement which was thought to be in contradiction to some aspect of modernism, or to have emerged or developed in its aftermath. The following pictures of shoes of Van Gogh and the shoes of Andy Warhol depict the differences between modern and postmodern art very clearly. The first and most evident in Warhol's shoes is a new kind of flatness or depthlessness, a new kind of superficiality in the most literal sense, perhaps the most important formal feature of all the postmodernisms. One can also observe certain lack of feelings in the Warhol’s shoes, albeit it might be aesthetically pleasing. While Van Gogh’s shoes tells a story. His painting conveys certain feelings. Van Gogh's painting conveys a life style, and history behind the shoes as they are depicted. It notifies us of the possible pain the owner endured, given how worn out the shoes are.

 Modern people felt “feelings”. Their experiences were connected to their inner states, even if their inner states were confused and problematic. They struggled to connect their experiences to each other. Postmodern people are not concerned or disturbed by such issues. Rather than having “feelings”, they merely register disconnected “intensities”. Everyday life itself has its own psychedelic intensity. The more intense the rush, the more “cool” it is. There is something erotically satisfying about the images that play around us. The intense rushes climax quickly, yet the process seems to be eternal. We crave for more, like addicts. It is my belief that the postmodern man who, for the most part instead of having feelings and emotions has sensations of various intensities and through commodity fetishism increases these sensations. He is the agent of reproduction of this stage of capitalism. Postmodern man is a perfect consumer of ideas and commodities in the vast and ever changing spatial postmodern plane, in which past, present, and future all coexist together (fashion of yesterday becomes that of today, etc). This is how late capitalism reproduces itself (cycle of capital through consumption). Postmodern man rejects history and lives on a flat (spatial) ever changing plane. Postmodern man must become empty internally needing constant excitement to feel some aliveness. This excitement may come through consumption of aesthetically pleasing objects. But the excitement wears out and emptiness sets in again, requiring more excitement, and the process repeats.

Based on the way Lowen (1985) defines narcissism, it is easy to conclude that the postmodern man is the narcissist, devoid of feelings, with a sense of emptiness, and heavily invested in, and identifying with an image. The mode of production of late capitalism has created the postmodern culture which shapes the behavior of the individuals in our culture (narcissism), and in turn the individuals reproduce the culture which reproduces the mode of production. In summary, narcissist is what late capitalism needs in order to reproduce itself, and thus to survive, and in turn narcissist is reproduced by late capitalism through its postmodern culture. We conclude this section by paraphrasing Marx who says: Our lives are shaped, above all, by the mode of production that exists in our society. The mode of production means the various tools available to produce goods and services (human labor, natural resources, technologies, investment capital, etc.) and the way we organize those tools. This includes the way we organize ourselves when we use the tools, the way we relate to each other as producers and consumers of goods and services.

The situation however, is getting more dire as we are beginning to enter the post-postmodern era. Postmodernism deconstructed all rules, regulations, ideologies, belief system, "religious morality", etc (Jacques Derrida). The psychological correlate of post-postmodernity is autistic existence. Thus we enter an autistic age (not related to autism spectrum disorder). This is the age of isolation and disconnection. Art and architecture (according to Jameson, and Jean Baudrillard and other postmodern theorists) is at the forefront of the change. While places in Vegas that are simulacra of the past bring people together - Venetian, Paris, Flower garden of Belagio, the Forum shops, the new post-post modern architecture of Chrystal Shops or City Center are designed to pull people apart. One hardly runs into anyone in Chrystal Shopping Center, while there are many people there. In Mandarin Oriental hotel the lobby is on the 20th floor. The new hotel lobbies contain essentially nothing, in contradistinction to the postmodern architectures. The entertainment has instead shifted to the rooms. We should expect many more psychological disorders stemming from this stage of development of capital. Instead of creating simulacra for people to adopt and buy, or for people to congregate around, post-postmodern capitalism allows each individual to select his own unique style which may or may not be a copy of the past (simulacra), thus tailoring the production directly to the individual, resulting in ever more consumption of useless goods.

References
Derrida, J. (1980). Writing and difference. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
Jameson, F. (1991). Postmodernism, or, the cultural logic of late capitalism. North Carolina: Duke University Press.
Lowen, A. (1985). Narcissism denial of true self. New York: Simon & Schuster.