What happened in Robert's childhood to account for his emotional deadness? Like Margaret, he was an only child. His mother, however, doted on him when he was young. Although his parents were not rich, he was dressed in very expensive clothes, which were always kept clean. He said that pictures showed him to be an adorable little boy. His biggest wrongdoing was to get dirty. He was immediately washed and his clothes changed. He was never beaten. Punishment for any transgression took the form of shame and the withdrawal of love.
Robert related that as a boy he had the fantasy that he was not the child of his parents. He said that they really wanted a girl. He imagined that someday his true parents would discover him. This feeling of not belonging arises whenever there is a lack of emotional contact between parents and a child. In Robert's case his parents also felt that he didn't belong to them. They said he was different from them. Robert explained his feeling by the fact that his mother and father were so close that he felt on the outside. “I felt that I would pound on the door and say, ‘Let me in.’ At other times I felt I would run away and find my true family.” It may be recalled that Margaret had a similar feeling of being an outsider and not belonging to her family. She discovered later that the apparent closeness of her parents was more of a facade than a reality. What was the situation in Robert's family?
Robert described his mother as an amazon driving wild horses with whips. Though she was not pretty, wore glasses, and was socially uncomfortable, she had made a splendid marriage. His father, he said, was handsome, charming, and very much sought after. He was a winner, a man bound to succeed. Robert recognized that his mother was ambitious. He said, “She tried to project an image of refinement. Her parents had been farmers. She wanted to show that she was the best wife for my father, that their union was the perfect marriage.”
She also tried to project the image of being the perfect mother. To fulfill that image Robert had to be the perfect child, which he tried to be. But perfect children are not real, that is, not alive. Real children get dirty, make messes. To keep his mother's love Robert had to become an image, a statue or a mannequin. And for the same reason the father wasn't real either. Who can be a real man to a perfect wife? Robert has no memory of his parents ever fighting. Even as a child Robert sensed that the family situation had an air of unreality. To whatever degree he felt alive, he couldn't be their child. He could belong only by being unreal himself.
It would be a mistake to think that there were no passions in this family. Robert never talked about the sexual life of his parents, but they must have had one. He never mentioned any sexual feelings he may have had as a child, but he must have had some. He had repressed all memories of his early years. That repression went hand in hand with the deadness of his body. The information he related to me was mostly secondhand. However, we do have some evidence of the existence of an oedipal situation. Robert said that as a boy he had fantasies of winning his mother and trouncing his father. In his fantasy his mother preferred him to his father. Another significant piece of evidence is the fact that Robert did trounce his father. He said, “I have outshone him to a point where I am ashamed of it.” Actually his father never proved to be a winner. It was Robert who became the big winner in the world and who fulfilled his mother's ambitions.
However, there was a price attached to this victory. That price was the loss of his orgastic potency, namely, the ability for a total body surrender in sex. Robert's sexuality was limited to his genital organ; the rest of his body did not participate in the excitement or the discharge. His inability to give himself fully to his sexual feeling was due to the rigidity and tension in his body, which was also responsible for his emotional deadness. Whether the emotional deadness resulted from a fear of sex or whether his orgastic impotence was caused by his emotional deadness need not be argued. The problem had to be worked out simultaneously on both levels, the sexual and the emotional. On a deeper level, both represented a fear of life.
Robert, however, was unaware of any fear of sex or of life. Fear, being an emotion like any other, is equally suppressed in a state of emotional deadness. This makes the problem very difficult, since all one can go on is the absence of feeling. For example, Robert had no recollection of any sexual feelings for his mother. He couldn't imagine such feelings, for he found his mother sexually unattractive. He did not recall ever seeing her naked, nor ever having had any curiosity about her body. He does remember that one night he decided to listen at their bedroom door, but he was quickly discovered and sent to his room. He did not associate this incident with sexual curiosity. Evidently his curiosity was crushed very early. When he was three he had occasion to see a little girl being bathed, but he was berated for looking.
Because Robert doesn't remember, it cannot be assumed that he had no sexual feelings as a child. Since such feelings are normal, it must be assumed that they were strongly suppressed and the memory of them repressed. This assumption is supported by the severity of the muscular tension and bodily rigidity that are the means of suppression. In discussing this matter Robert remarked that cutting off feeling was a common maneuver he used whenever someone hurt him. He cut off all feeling for the person and “cut” the person as if he didn't exist. He said that it was a tactic used against him by his mother and that he used it against her in return. As I see it, mother and son were engaged in a power struggle in which seduction and rejection were the means of control. His mother doted on him, dressing him as Little Lord Fauntleroy, to use his words, but she also “cut him off” whenever he didn't do what she wanted. He did what she demanded, but he also rejected her sexually.
There is another aspect to Robert's problem. His bodily rigidity must be interpreted as a sign that he was scared stiff. I worked with him long enough to know that it was true. But, he didn't feel it. Of course, being emotionally dead he didn't feel much. Nevertheless, it was necessary to find out of whom he was afraid and why.
Robert says that he was raised as Little Lord Fauntleroy. I saw him as a prince. His mother took the role of the queen. The situation would require that his father be the king, but he didn't carry off that role. Instead of being on top, he pushed his son into that position. The boy was to achieve what he couldn't. The prince was to take his place and become king. But, much as the father may have desired to see his son outshine him, it was only natural that he would also feel resentful and angry at being displaced and downgraded. When two males compete for the same female, the fight can be deadly. But a son is no match for a father and is terrified to make a real challenge. He must back off, admit defeat, and give up his sexual desire for his mother. He accepts psychological castration and, thereby, removes himself as a competitor and threat to his father.
The oedipal situation is now resolved. The boy can grow up and conquer the world, but on a sexual level he still remains a boy. Robert was aware that on one level of his personality he still felt immature, not fully a man. Emotionally, he remained a prince.
In a subsequent chapter I will discuss the treatment of the oedipal problem. First we need to understand the problem both as a cultural phenomenon and as the result of family dynamics. In the next section we will look at the Oedipus legend in some detail to see how closely these cases parallel the myth.
The Oedipus Legend
Oedipus was a prince, the son of Laius, king of Thebes. When he was born, his father consulted the oracle at Delphi about his son's future. Told that when the boy grew up, he would kill his father and marry his mother, Laius, to avoid this calamity, had the boy staked out in a field to die of exposure. Oedipus was saved by a shepherd who took pity on him and brought him to Corinth, where he was adopted by Polybus, king of Corinth, who raised him as his own son. Because his foot was inflamed from being tied to the stake, he was given the name of Oedipus, which means “swollen foot.”
When Oedipus grew to manhood, he, too, consulted the oracle at Delphi to learn his destiny. And he was told that he would kill his father and marry his mother. Since he believed Polybus to be his father, Oedipus decided to avoid the fate predicted by the oracle by leaving Corinth to seek his fortune elsewhere. On the road to Boeotia he was accosted by a traveler who ordered him out of his way. A quarrel ensued, and Oedipus struck the man with his staff, killing him. Not knowing who his victim was, Oedipus proceeded to Thebes. When he arrived, he learned that the city was being terrorized by the Sphinx, a strange monster with the face of a woman, the body of a lion, and