Mary Lou MacIlvaine, Ph.D.
Holistic psychologist
in San Diego (in Kensington) near the 8 and the 15.
(619) 501-0334
Understanding the basic processes of life
makes every day experience simpler and more rewarding.
Call Dr. MacIlvaine at (619) 501-0334
20 years' experience helping people enjoy life more.
Special abilities based on knowledge of the biology and biophysics that underlie emotional issues.
(Aerial view of my office, in lower right corner of the picture.)
What is Emotional Armoring?
"Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains." -Rousseau. Wilhelm Reich, M.D. showed how these "chains" are made up of emotional armoring. Armoring creates distortions in our bodies as well as our behavior. Almost no one is free of this.
Great novelists describe characters physically, giving readers the sense of character distortions: the person who draws in his breath, the angry man with a tight jaw, or the stubborn person with a stiff neck. This is emotional armoring.
Emotional armor converts free laughter into a cackle or twitter. It may cause a woman to speak in a little girl’s voice. It distorts emotional expression and makes behavior stereotyped. Emotional armor most often shows in muscle tension, but is also revealed in glazed eyes, in excessive body fat, rigid thinking, or a rigid character. It is a trap to which we gradually become accustomed. Life becomes narrower and duller.
Reich viewed all living beings as pulsatile. In mammals, there are individual pulsations encompassed within the whole-body pulse of energy charge and discharge. The heart pulses, the lungs pulse, the gastrointestinal tract pulses, etc. Armoring narrows pulsation down from full aliveness to living (in the worst case) at a level of mere existence. The heavily armored individual fears expansion, and pleasure gives him anxiety.
Emotional armor blocks the flow of natural impulses and bends them to new purposes. Just as light is bent when it hits glass or water, armoring bends core impulses into another direction. Consider the natural aggression of a child. Repeated punishment causes repression and emotional armoring – and the child’s natural impulses turn into spite, hatred, sneakiness, and other secondary impulses. These in turn are disguised by superficial compliance, politeness, or other cover-ups. Core impulses of love also become distorted. Reich viewed personality not in terms of id, ego, and superego, but in terms of one’s core, the secondary layer, and the superficial layer.
Reich’s orgone therapy starts by treating character as it is revealed in the superficial layer. When that is uncovered, one deals with the secondary layer. Then, if the person is freed of their secondary impulses, one finally arrives at the core, the natural person. In the course of therapy, all human emotions are elicited, although, of course, there is no hint of any kind of sexual process between the therapist and patient.
What is different about holistic therapy?
Emotional issues are rooted in our bodies as well as our minds. Each person’s character structure has developed to maintain a level of emotional repression that has been comfortable, even though it can restrict energy levels and happiness. There is a time and a place for holding back ones energy. However, because our vital energy is identical to our sexual energy, constrained energy always, in some way, interferes with full sexual functioning.
“Love, work and knowledge are the well-springs of our being.
They should also govern it.” -W. Reich
For an illustrated introduction to orgone therapy, click here.
Sexuality
Orgone therapy changes a person’s body as well as their feelings and values. When armoring loosens, people give way to an increasing flow of energy through all parts of their lives. Naturally, this vitality enlivens sexuality. People develop stronger sexual sensations, deeper emotional contact with partners, more physical and emotional expressiveness, and a rational sense of protection of this aliveness. Progress in sexuality occurs all along as people function at gradually higher levels.
Optimal sex is part of optimal health. Both thrive on the increased ability to feel deep, tender love and yield to intense erotic sensations, leading to involuntary convulsions of the whole body – and loving gratitude. The function of the orgasm is to discharge excess energy. Although orgone therapy aims toward a comprehensive approach to sexuality, quick fixes are sometimes possible, to everyone’s delight.
For an illustrated discussion of sex therapy, click here.
Emotional Armoring
We are sick because of the way we grew up. When children hold back from expressing “unacceptable” or painful emotions, they must contract the muscles that would have expressed those feelings. When holding back becomes habitual, emotional armoring is in place. Then, without emotional release, chronic anxiety sets in.
The “nice little girl” who never gets angry and the “brave, strong boy” who never shows fear and sadness have both lost the full and rational expression of natural emotions. Rigid muscles and attitudes keep them from feeling intense emotion and organ sensations.
Armoring results in dullness, numbness, suffering, blaming others, and destructiveness. It clouds perception, thought, feelings and self-expression. It undermines general health by restricting the flow of life energy and blood to needy tissues. Emotional armoring is the crucial, overlooked factor in health.
Armoring constricts energy directly, but it also consumes energy to maintain the constriction. With release of armoring, new energy is available for life, work and love.
The Science
Orgone therapy has its roots in biology and biophysics. Wilhelm Reich discovered that Freud’s libido is a specific biological energy. His years of clinical and laboratory research revealed that emotions, sexual feelings, and all life processes are expressions of what he called orgone energy (organism energy).
Reich showed that pleasure involves outward movement of energy, whereas fear and misery are felt when energy moves back toward the core of the organism. The shift between expansive pleasure and contracted anxiety reflects actual lengthening and shortening of autonomic nervous system fibers.
Expansion is a parasympathetic function, contraction sympathetic. This healthy ebb and flow constitutes the pulsation of natural organisms. With emotional armoring, the pulsation gives way to chronic contraction. Chemical imbalances also result from armoring, we suspect, because they tend to normalize as therapy progresses, allowing for gradual reduction of medication.
Web: emotionalcontact.com
sextherapysandiego.com
Email: nature808@yahoo.com
Phone: 619-501-0334
Comparing Services
| Individual therapy treats a person’s own psychological functioning and provides the best opportunity for dealing with character and emotional armoring. |
| Sex therapy includes knowledge about sexual functioning, anatomy, expectations, etc., often with homework assignments to try new behaviors. |
| Couples’ therapy focuses on communication, power-sharing, perhaps affairs, money, in-law, or parenting issues. |
| I also provide Child Psychology for children's behavioral issues, especially regarding pelvic or sexual concerns. |
Services:
I don’t prescribe medication. However, I coordinate treatment with psychiatrists or other physicians who prescribe antidepressants and anti-anxiety medications. I provide equal access to treatment for people of all persuasions, orientations, and ethnic identities. I work with personality disorders if the person is cooperative with treatment. I don’t treat groups or provide court-mandated therapy or other coerced treatment.
(619) 501-0334
Dr. Mary Lou MacIlvaine, Ph.D.
Holistic orgone therapy by mind-body psychologist
Also see listing on Theravive.
Located in the Kensington area of San Diego,
off Adams Avenue and I-15