Childhood

Many lives in this character were marked by traumatic births, illnesses, or early affective separations, where primary needs were interrupted—whether due to conflicting emotions in one of the parents or situations of anguish caused by physical, emotional, or economic precariousness.

Let’s look at this childhood report:

When the protection of breastfeeding ended, I began to have frequent throat infections with significant increases in fever. When I was nine months old, they took me to a specialist who thought he discovered a “shadow in my lungs.” According to his diagnosis, he recommended the appropriate treatment. In the opinion of other professionals at the time, however, it was too aggressive for a child under one year of age.

Three months after starting it, I developed a severe reaction consisting of asthma and a pimple-like rash all over my skin and scalp. My mother says that sometimes she had to take

me out on the balcony to breathe when I was suffocating and that, for several years, I would have bronchitis and difficulty breathing again. Every time I caught a cold, which apparently happened frequently, I remember growing up with the awareness of being sick, weak in health.

The early days were truly anguishing for my parents, who feared for my life. And I think it is from those early days that I have recorded my mother’s words: “Poor thing,” “What a pity for a son...,” loaded with grief and accompanied by overprotection that has helped me so little in my self-esteem.

R. D. Laing points out, in his concept of ontic insecurity, the intense contraction in the absence of essential handles—those hands that calm and offer the essential shelter to the extreme vulnerability of the baby.

As E. Erikson pointed out, how necessary physical contact is in the first steps of existence! Necessary to breathe calmly and in cadence, to feel that there is a place to live and be received, welcomed.

The arms and hands are the original home of an essential anchorage where we feel safe and perceive and internalize, in the whole organism, a basic experience of trustworthiness.

The weight that basic acceptance must have to configure in the entrails a feeling of confidence in life is inexorable. The loss of primary nurturing contact establishes radical anguish, the nameless emptiness, which entails anxious attachment and a paralyzing, avoidant anxiety.

From the “collision,” the crash, the original protective amphora is broken and the anxiety of abandonment is established. It is the floating fetus in the infinite universe of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The Nest

By interrupting the first links in the cycle of satisfying needs, helplessness creates the spiderweb of basic insecurity and hopelessness.

The first contraction of maturation will give way to a “dissolution,” an emptying of oneself, where dissociation and alienation crystallize. The internal explosion creates a fissure, an unbridged division of shores, teeming with antagonism. The fear of life takes shape.

I learned to take refuge, to dive into the geography of the nest, safe from imagined nightmares. I learned to rise in clouds full of games and fantasies. I developed the

imagination to infinity. I envisioned magic carpet flights from my solitary refuge, close to my mother’s busy movements. She worked, she sacrificed, but where did her thoughts go?

When my father arrived in good weather, he would talk with his children, sit us around the table, and tell us stories from his trips, and it was fascinating to listen to him. I loved his narratives, his encounters with ghosts, with witches that appeared at night and disappeared in front of him after giving him a secret message of life. There, I told myself that I wanted to behave very well, follow the rules of the house, study hard, make my bed, because I thought that would put him in a good mood, and he wouldn’t hit us then. I loved him deeply. There was a lot of uncertainty and anxiety about how he would arrive... Good luck? There was the possibility.

One of the wounds of the future Social 6 boy or girl is the absent father—an absence that can be physical or emotional. In some cases, their hugs didn’t reach. In others, we have observed a rigid, severe, moralistic, controlling, invasive father. Sometimes, with physical or psychological abuse.

How important is the father’s embrace, his hand! A presence that provides a sensation of “backbone,” a column that vertebrates the child’s maturation process.

They populate the paternal reality of this typology: prolonged absences or excessive work dedication; absence of affective responses; silence; excessive norms; a high level of demand, which leaves the boy or girl in a state of diminishment and undervaluation; or hyper-moralistic and even abusive behaviors (which generate fear of punishment, shame, and humiliation). This is how the wound caused by the absence of the father is generated in these “children of silence.”

I don't remember moments of closeness, warmth, or welcome from my father; rather, I remember demanding phrases and attitudes, his look, and his serious face when he wasn't pleased with what I was doing. Sometimes, he would stare like that; other times, he would leave angrily, and at other times, he would hurl insults. I do not remember moments of satisfaction in his gaze towards me... (L.I.G.)

A woman shared her experiences with her father like this:

Sometimes, he would start screaming frantically; other times, he threw objects or broke something. Worse than the slap was the threat. Always the threat. Also, his favorite phrase: "Be careful!" I don't remember caresses or affection. He recently told me that children make him nervous, that they make him impatient... Anything in daily tasks or in the house that didn't fall into his forecast or didn't fit would lead to responses of anger and annoyance. In the end, the fear of my father and the fear of life mixed within me. (S.)

Along with the wound of the "absent" father, there is that of the overprotective mother. The "colleagues" of the Enneatype note that high doses of fear toward the essentials of life are present. It is an alert injection not only for specific inoculated phobias but also for a diffuse and permanent fear, a non-specific distrust, which generates a constant state of anxiety.

These are the shared experiences of the bond with the mother: "Be careful with this, with that... When you cross the street, watch where you're going. Be careful, be careful... Ufff." Always be careful! The maternal disposition includes emotional coldness, an emphasis on action rather than direct affection, a distance where the child does not feel seen. Feelings are thus blocked:

You have to endure, for peace, say a Hail Mary; You have to sacrifice, it's better to keep quiet, think carefully before you speak, it's better that they don't see what you feel, you have to settle, life is hard.

That's how it was with mom: put up with my father's anger, having his children hit, not saying anything, not making the other angry, crying where they don't see you, not showing your pain, not giving your opinion because you could be wrong, you behave well and don't talk, be quiet, well-behaved, you have to obey your dad, he does know, he's right, we have to put up with it, we have everything, we don't lack anything, daughter.

These messages burn into the organism, leaving embedded "crystals" that prick every time certain feelings appear.

In my case, my mother's phobia of spiders became omnipresent. Any instance of trust in divine providence vanished. My mother's prayers, voices of fear and anguish, implored a "No," that nothing bad would happen, no punishment from God the Father. They were sentences in black, in the negative; of penance, supplicants.

Another person shares a scene with his mother:

Since I was little, I have felt insecure, unprotected everywhere, with a feeling of helplessness, with adults who could protect me but in whom I could not blindly trust, who could turn their back on me at any moment or whom I could feel rejected by. Playing with older boys sometimes meant being hazed: something that happened to me since I was three years old.

When the older ones hazed me in all kinds of ways, and I went home crying, I would get scolded by my mother, who would even hit me again: "It's your fault for playing with kids who aren't your age." (U.T.)

Guilt, contraction, and blockage. Seriousness that contains pain. Armoring. Empty of himself, assuming clothes that are not his size, but of another, unattainable. But there is no other choice than to put them on to be accepted and loved.

Garments of deadly ideals (of resignation, endurance, and sobriety). About dead uncles, priests, teachers... about how to function and how to be.

The exit to the world

The way out of the nest, schooling, is full of submission, authoritarianism, demand, silenced voices, uniformity, imposition of rules, and more rules of conduct and blind obedience. The encounters with the world are sentences about good and evil, codes of correctness or incorrectness, and survival through the effort of adaptation and adherence to duty. The teachers and the Church were in charge of ensuring the realization of a life "as God commands," being "as it should be." Without realizing it, or rather hiding it from myself, I became a slave to iron rules, a slave to duty. I had to do so many things and in so many ways that I ended up exhausted, contaminated, stuffed, stuffed with burdens and demands, direct or subtle, under the threat of not only humiliating punishment (like the ones at school) but also a crushing blanket of guilt for causing disappointment.

The coincidence in these schooling patterns is almost unanimous.

I was a good student, never the first, so as not to stand out, I kept myself in an honorable second or third position, which was less exposed. He even let me win so as not to be the first. I was terrified of the abuse of power by the teachers, the classmates, the bullies in the class; I felt afraid, powerless. I was a mess in class, and over and over again, I listened to mocking comments from the teacher, feeling humiliated and ashamed. And then the Church and the all-seeing eye of God, which judges everything with electrocuting severity and hellish punishments.

One person commented:

My first duty was to go to Heaven, which was so important that I thought that one way to fulfill it was to die as a child, since my father had told me that children always go to Heaven. But the church had other duties that allowed fewer shortcuts, like going to mass every Sunday and on holy days. (J.Z.)

I include again a personal contribution:

The Church and its representations flooded my being like fiery tentacles. Thus, divine punishment emerged, the omnipresent eye that sees everything, the final judgment, original sin, the everlasting and ancestral guilt.

Gestalt perspective of the genesis and psychodynamics of the subtype

A few brushstrokes, to finish, from the gestalt perspective, on the genesis of this character. As originating mechanisms, we can think of:

• Assumed introjects, of the type: "I can't trust myself," "if I go out of the way, I am guilty," "the correct things are the greatest," "you have to be correct," "you have to know how to make an effort," "only if I comply with what is ordered, I will be safe," "better shut up," "I don't know," "better to control," "better not to let myself be seen, better to pretend," "better to endure," "better to adapt even if I don't like it," "in case of conflict, I have the odds to lose"...

• Corresponding projections, such as: "Be careful! Danger if they see me transgressing, if I am not correct," "the authority is in control," "if I do not comply, they can punish me," "it is dangerous to let go, letting go," "it is less dangerous to blame me than to attack"...

• From such introjects, with their corresponding projections, retroflections of what could come from one's own spontaneous feeling in most situations are derived. This leads to somatizations: expressive rigidity, anxiety, shrinking…

• The interruptions of the spontaneous infantile flow could have resulted not only in an expressive inhibition of the impulses (interruption of the cycle of satisfaction of needs) but even reached desensitization to such impulses (the cycle doesn't even start up).

A character with paralyzing doubt and fear of the unknown is crystallizing. A good worker, compliant, the tendency is to impose routines (ritualizing), and rationalizing, seeking security in knowledge, with mistrust and even ignorance of intuition.

Mechanisms:

• Introjects such as: "Careful! Make sure you don't make mistakes," "stick to what you already know," "examine carefully all the pros and cons," "don't rush," "better stick to what is established," "when in doubt, abstain," "do your duty and you will feel safe," "knowing is a source of security," "if I maintain my criteria, I am strong"...

• Corresponding projections: "There are many who do not know; I can help them," "the unknown, the changes, can be dangerous," "others are lost because they do not abide by what is correct," "whoever demands decisions from me is dangerous," "if I do the right thing, I can feel safe in front of others"...

• Retroflections derived from such introjects and projections: inhibition of carelessness, confidence in one's own feeling, shrinkage.

• The interruptions can also reach here not only the expressive inhibition but even the desensitization to the spontaneous impulses themselves.