How can wife-battering be stopped?

It cannot be stopped by EFA, unless in conjunction with therapy. Sado-masochistic dynamics are too intricate, and the breakdown of anger into violence has gone too far.

The only use for EFA in this circumstance is in dealing with the feelings of a wife who has left a husband: counselors in halfway houses for such women have been frequent attenders at EFA courses. What disturbs these counselors most is the way many women go back to the abusing husband again and again. This is often masochism—which the counselors can easily see. But it is sometimes genuine love and sexual attraction-which the counselors often have difficulty in acknowledging. In either case, EFA can work best with the woman's anger if it is there already in some form. Unfortunately many counselors are operating with an ideology: the abused woman should be angry. No doubt. But sometimes she is not. It is one of the most damaging mistakes in counseling to assume that everyone has anger to burn. Whether they do or not is a question of character structure. The basic principle that EFA works to help the expression of whatever emotion is already present, can be followed in all work with abused wives. The counselor has to put aside expectations, and do a good job of helping the woman express her grief, anger, or fear—in the order in which they present themselves. The woman has had enough of not having the order of her feelings respected. The good counselor knows this.

How does EFA handle phobias?

There is a division of opinion in psychotherapy about phobias. On one side are those, mainly behaviorists (but recently joined by practitioners of "neuro-linguistic programming") who see each phobia as a specific problem to be worked on in isolation. On the other side are those, mainly practitioners of various psychodynamic approaches, who see the phobia as a symptom of a larger disturbance, or as a displacement of another, deeper fear. I belong in the second camp. But the first, or mechanistic, camp has on its side the fact that its methods usually work— for a while. A person may be bullied out of a phobia by the use of punishment; bored out of it by desensitizing or deconditioning; or have its cognitive elements smoothly tied together by the conjuring trick of "re-programming." But it usually comes back within a few months, or a new phobia takes its place—which can then be mechanistically treated again in isolation. The problem becomes like a Hydra, the serpent with many heads which grew a new one each time one of them was lopped off. Only, the second camp would maintain, if the body of the Hydra is dealt with, will the heads stop being replaced. This may be a matter for therapy. But in EFA terms, the body of the Hydra is fear itself- though the heads are angry.

In other words, the phobia is a reduction of the fear to a narrow focus which is obsessive and rage-like. Remember the example of the man in the lumberyard. He seems to have had a phobia of snakes. He therefore pounded a harmless snake to death. Since he eliminates all snakes on sight, he will hardly be able to explore the origins of his fear. Though not all phobias lead to outbursts of rage or attack, many do. An example might be a man who is phobic of homosexuals, because of a deep fear that he might be one himself, who takes any opportunity to attack a weak homosexual and beat him up. Even where the phobia does not seem to contain an element of anger, when a person is asked to describe the object of the phobia an angry expression may appear. In another case the person may break out into a cold sweat and "freeze." But this is, I maintain, largely a fear of his or her own anger: it is as if a layer of fear covers anger which in turn covers fear.

Take agoraphobia, the fear of crowds. The agoraphobic will be afraid to leave the house. But she (agoraphobics are usually women, as paranoiacs are usually men) will often, when questioned, reveal quite a contempt for crowds. They jostle, they smell, they are crude and mindless. As the agoraphobic talks about crouds, anger may begin to emerge—and the fear of her own anger. Or take a phobia about dirt. What is the facial expression of the woman scrubbing the sink for the tenth time, or the man putting on rubber gloves to take out the garbage? It is one of disdain and disgust, in which fear is visible in raised eyebrows, but anger is visible in tight jaw and snarling lips.

Even basic EFA procedures are thus a help with phobias, because eventually they bring out the anger as well as the fear. Ideally, these can be dealt with in order: first anger, then fear.

The more angry the person can consciously become with the object of the phobia, the more the way is cleared to find out what the deep fear is about—although this is an issue for therapy, since it may be mixed in a complex tangle of longings and deprived needs. It is as if once the Hydra's angry heads are encouraged to lunge out far enough, the poor fearful body becomes exposed.

Can EFA help with the consequences of sexual abuse?

This subject is topical, because of the increasing attention given not only to the victims of sexual assault or rape, but to the victims of sexual abuse within families. At the beginning of the century Freud was considered to have a dirty mind because he showed interest in his patients' stories of sexual abuse by relatives, notably of girls by fathers. Freud, at least, took these stories seriously, but he considered most of them to be fantasies expressing disguised incest wishes. In recent years, in a period of greater outspokenness and unremitting research into sexuality, it has become clear that most such stories are not fantasies but truth. This is no surprise to any therapist who works intensively with the emotions of troubled people. I would estimate that three in ten of my female clients have been in one way or another sexually abused by fathers or elder brothers, as have about one in twenty of my male clients.

In the case of rape, attention is being rightly given to ways of supporting victims and rendering the aftermath less traumatic. The emphasis is on reassurance. But this cannot be enough. I have had no experience with "rape relief centers," but in therapy I have had several women work through the emotional consequences of rape in the past. Women who have already established a solid sexual life at the time of the rape adjust better to their anger than those less experienced—in the sense that although their anger may be strong, it does not necessarily become evoked by all men. But where rape is the first, or one of the first sexual experiences of men, the rage is more diffuse. As always, it is a matter of how far the rage is focused. In some cases it is retroflected: the woman blames herself, and her femininity, for seductiveness. This blame must be turned outward, to the person who has abused her, even if this is a person who "should" be loved, such as a relative.

The most damaging situation occurs when the rage is diffuse, a mixture of fear and anger at men and at sexuality itself, which is then repressed. On the surface the woman becomes compliant, even seductive, and highly interested in seeking out sexual encounters—but underneath she is repressing a generalized rage, she is manipulative of men, her sexual seductiveness is a testing maneuver, and she experiences no deep genital pleasure. Physically, the abdomen and pelvis are tight, and nervous or jumpy when touched, with the breath kept high in the chest. In therapy, the first emotion to come through, when the controlled exterior cracks, is crying; but rage is not far behind. The emotional and physical picture is similar in most cases of sexual abuse within the family, but there is more to work through: the woman's self-confidence has often been crushed by the brutal and systematic exercise of power by a man whom she has wanted to love.

It is worth remembering that while the use of EFA methods in these cases to focus anger may bring out many horrible and upsetting details, and at the time it may seem as if all hope of the person being able to re-establish a loving sexuality is lost; in fact, the opposite is true. Bringing out rage at a specific man clears the way for the appreciation of other men who are different. There is no need for a deliberate reminder, "Not all men are like that." The realization will come on its own. As always, it is the repression of emotion which is most dangerous. It is rather like the process when you meet a new person, "A," who reminds you strongly of another, "B." This will occur every time you meet. But once you tell "A" he or she reminds you of "B," the similarity fades. Suddenly you are aware of "A" in his or her own right, and the presence of "B" falls away. When a woman has been abused by "X," it is only when her anger at this man has been fully brought out that she begins to be confident that "Y" and "Z" are not "X." Again, the key word must be focus: the anger has to be directed at "X" and at no one else. To encourage a generalized anger at men, sex, or the world, is both morally irresponsible and emotionally damaging.

When a boy has been abused sexually by a man, the situation is similar, but with the added problem that if the boy becomes diffusely angry (or represses anger) at all men, this makes it impossible for him to become fully a man.