The mother had reprimanded her daughter for being such a "conformist." Her daughter vehemently denied that she was a "conformist" and the fight followed. "But she is a conformist," the mother in the next booth said, "she does everything her friends do."

What the mother did not realize was that she and her daughter had different definitions of the word "conformist." To the mother it means: doing what everyone else does. To the daughter it means: doing what your mother tells you to do.

Footnote 69. I used to use a therapy technique which I found to be so dangerous that I no longer use it. The technique was to sit the patient on the floor in front of a low table. I asked the patient to let himself feel as though he were a young child. I then watched the face and the body language to see when the patient had "regressed" as much as he could. I then put a glass on the table and in the sing song voice of a parent to a child, said "Here's you milk, dear." As with any child, my patient would shortly start playing with the glass (I was standing behind him or her). At the right point I would approach the patient (from behind) and scream "I told you not to play with your milk." It was very effective in producing fear, even terror, as the patient responded as a little kid with a big parent standing over him and screaming. I stopped using this scene when one of my patients was thrown into a full-blown schizophrenic attack in response to the scene and I had to spend the whole rest of the session bringing her out of her schizophrenic decompensation.

The mother was right to say her daughter was a conformist and the daughter was right to say that she was not a conformist. They had a fight over a difference in the definition of a word; but neither of them was aware that the whole of the conflict was simply over the meaning (definition) of a word. This example is just to emphasize that this conflict of concepts, the adult concept versus the child concept, does not stop; it continues up to the mid-20s when the child's brain finally reaches its adult form.

Yes, that's right, the human brain continues to develop and rewire into the mid 20s. The last part of the brain to mature is the prefrontal cortex that deals with logical thinking, evaluation of the nature and importance of feelings, long-range planning, and interpersonal empathy. Teenagers are impetuous and generally operate with short-term goals because their brain is not yet ready to think otherwise.

Now with that immature brain and with a massive lack of knowledge, the child is tasked with making sense of adult statements. Mostly, adult statements to a child are pure gibberish or are just plain wrong. Yet the child is supposed to make sense of them and, inherently, does try to make sense of them. But most of the conclusions he draws, most of the concepts he forms, are wrong and neither he nor his parents know that the concepts are wrong.

In time, if the concepts are concepts about things, reality may correct the wrong concepts. But if the concepts are about people, no such reality correction is possible. People are so variable, one to another, or one over time and circumstances, that the concept(s) once formed sets in (into the subconscious) and becomes solidified in the character.

There is no issue of repression, or even, directly, issues of other defense mechanisms; it is simply knowledge that the growing child employs in the same way he employs any other knowledge.

Just as I employed the mistaken idea of the eventual size of my penis as an adult and had no conscious memory of the incident (until I recalled it by the memory technique presented below), so there are for all of us a host of mistaken ideas which we have incorporated and retained as elements of our character.

Footnote 70. Recent research has shown that the brain continues to mature until about the age of 25 (Strauch, 2003).

c. About the relationship of the two

I've taken quite a few pages to get here, so let me review. Character is the result of the unrecognized basic assumptions about the self, the world (of things and people), and the relationship between the two.

Given who I am and given what the world is, now how can I operate in that world? This is the last but most important step in structuralizing the character. It is at this point that the defenses come forcefully into the picture. That is not to say that defenses are not employed all along the way, it is only to say that this final step cannot be accomplished without the wholesale use of defenses.

As I will discuss in greater detail in the following section on defenses, defenses are the method the mind uses — and inherently so — to solve logical contradictions. An easy example: (1) I am competent and (2) I don't understand people. Now if I am competent then how can it be that I don't understand people? To not understand people is to be incompetent in at least one area of living. So how can I be both competent and yet be incompetent at the same time? It is a logical contradiction. The defense of partitioning solves the problem for me. I am competent (with things) and I am incompetent (with people). All I have to do (in my character) is to break the world apart into the logical categories of things and people and then I can retain my assumption of competence by saying that while I am competent, people are unpredictable and thus the issue of competence no longer applies.

Footnote 71. Later in this chapter I will come to call these "coping mechanisms" rather than "defense mechanisms." The idea of 'defenses mechanisms' is a highly theory-dependent concept. All that theory sub-structure and super-structure is unnecessary once one comes to regard these mental operations as means whereby the person copes with his environment.

Since most of the concepts the child forms are erroneous (by reason of an immature brain, inadequate knowledge of language, and inadequate general knowledge) contradictions between concepts are numerous. The greater the number of contradictions, the more complex the character and the more it tends to be present in layers. It is also the case that the method for resolving contradictions is heavily influenced by the child's native IQ. More intelligent people have more complex character systems because they are more able to solve contradictions in ingenious ways.

In my work as a therapist, it is rare that I have only one (character) diagnosis for a patient. To date the record stands at six distinct and operative character structures in one person. The most common number is three.

Before I turn to the issue of "character as destiny" let me point out that I have gotten here without ever invoking drives or energies or instinctual conflict or other of the paraphernalia of Freud or Reich or Lowen or Boadella or Keleman or Kurtz and Prestera or Kelly. Just looking at the nature of a slowly developing cognitive animal has provided an explanation of character, its development, its vicissitudes and the place of defenses (except repression).

Footnote 72. Obviously a simplified example. Other issues like narcissism and injustice collecting can well enter the picture. I can solve the issue of other people by projection, as Bergler points out, and hold that I am, in fact, competent with people but they are devious and therefore set out to hurt me for the very reason that I am competent. I can then employ the defense mechanism of either reaction formation or counter and enjoy my interpersonal injury as proof of the validity both of my competence and the perfidy of other people.

Footnote 73. The one author I can recommend is Totton. He is the author or coauthor of several books, all of which merit reading.

4. On Character As Destiny

It is difficult to communicate in words, absent personal revelation or experience, quite how pervasive character is. Freud, famously, said "biology is destiny" referring to gender; to this I would counter that character is destiny.

Without reservation, everything you are and do is a function of, a consequence of, your character. It determines the type of work you seek, the romantic attachments you seek, your style of dress, your preferences in food and music and leisure, the presence or absence of hobbies and your involvement with that (those) hobby (hobbies), your style of parenting, your choice of friends, your religion or lack thereof, your general demeanor, your relationship to your parents and siblings, your reading, television watching and movies (liked or disliked), your politics (Redding, 2001; Block & Block, 2006), your goals (mainly your long-term goals), your philosophy including ethics and morals, your attitude toward money (save or spend), your attitude toward going to a dentist, your concern with your appearance, all your many interpersonal attributes (e.g. self-sacrificing, stubborn, suspicious, trusting, gregarious, quiet, etc.) and even, to a not insignificant degree, your health (Rossi, 1993).

Is there anything I have left out? Well, include it. I simply over looked it; but it is included.

Oh, by the way, it even effects your choice of dream symbols and the general nature of your dreams. I have two favorites to illustrate the principle.

This female patient brought in a dream where she was standing on the top of a tall hotel building in Las Vegas looking down at the people splashing around in the pool. Her husband was with her but he seemed uninterested in the pool scene. She was not afraid of falling nor did she have an impulse to jump.

Just abstract and you have her character right before you. Her sense of superiority (looking down on the ordinary people), her sense that her superiority was such that anyone connected with her was thus also raised to the heights (her husband). Other people do not realize the extent of her superiority (her husband did not look down). She is confident in her being above everyone else (no fear of falling or impulse to jump). Other people are frivolous (splashing in the pool) but she is above such mundane matters. She knows how to enjoy herself properly (she is in Las Vegas) but she has no intention of taking any chances (she does not see herself gambling, rather she is at the top of the hotel).

It is all there, in a nutshell as the phrase is.

Now a very different dream but one that strikes closer to our subject. This from a patient in Reichian therapy.

He had been making good progress in the therapy. Not so much progress that it worried me; I was comfortable with his speed. Then he brought in the following dream.

He is driving down an elevated freeway. Suddenly there is an earthquake and part of the freeway in front of him collapses and disappears. He makes a U-turn onto the freeway in the opposite direction. He reaches an exit ramp and pulls off. He then drives into a fenced in area like a parking lot and turns off the motor. He then just sits there until the possible earthquake is past.

In all my years as a therapist I have never seen a clearer resistance dream. He is making progress (driving down the freeway), but his whole life is changing (the earthquake) and ahead is real danger (the road has collapsed). So he wants to go back to an earlier place in his life (the U-turn) and get away from the danger of progress (exit the freeway). He wants a safe and quiet period (the fenced in lot) where he can rest until the danger is over (turn off the motor).

It was nine months before he brought in another dream that said he was ready to being progressing again.

Footnote 74. In Reichian therapy, if a patient is progressing too rapidly he is put on vacation from therapy for six months to a year. Recall: ALWAYS TOO SLOWLY. The subconscious is a homeostatic mechanism with far more power then the conscious and far greater access to the body. If it gets too upset by the impact of the therapy, it can react by causing physical illness (I make it a practice to always get a medical history in the first session) or it can create massive levels of upset in the person's life causing loss of a job (and thus a way, for money reasons, to quit therapy) or a break up of a marriage. The job of living is living. Therapy that gets in the way of living is bad therapy. Whether therapy is done in a professional office or is done by ones self at home, if it gets in the way of living it is bad therapy.