When something painful happens in childhood, we deny our feelings. This stops the flow of life force, stagnating energy and creating places of frozen energy in the body. All bodies have a typical way of defending or armoring themselves against these painful early-childhood feelings. So our bodies can show us the main issues we are carrying for transformation.
In the mid-1960s, Eva met and later married Dr. John Pierrakos, a psychiatrist and co-creator of a school of therapy known as bio-energetics. The teachings from the Guide helped transform his work in bio-energetics into Core Energetics, which developed the teachings about character structures.
They are a tool we can use to read the body’s messages about a person’s needs for love that have not been met. When the body is fully seen and accepted, a deeper level of healing happens. This information should not be used as ammunition for criticism.
Each of the five character structures, or body types, reflects a pattern of frozen emotions and rigidified thinking, or images, typical of arrested development, or trauma, at each of the five primary developmental stages. Following is a very brief overview of the physical and emotional attributes of each:*
Character Structures
Schizoid
Age of Wounding
• Before birth or early infancy.
Trauma
• Hostile/rejecting mother; Unwanted and doesn’t want to be here
Physical/Energetic Patterns
• Energy gives out easily; Elongated, disjointed, ungrounded; Left-right asymmetry.
Life’s Work
• Pull one’s life together; Join the pieces; Organize and fully manifest creative and spiritual core qualities; Surrender to being a human.
Oral
Age of Wounding
• During breast feeding period; Early childhood.
Trauma
• Abandonment; Deprivation
Physical/Energetic Patterns
• Tires easily, headaches; Undercharged, thin, elongated body; Chest collapsed; Slumped shoulders; Fallen arches; Undercharged legs; Not muscular.
Life’s Work
• Stand on one’s own two feet; Learn to nourish self and give to others.
Masochist
Age of Wounding
• Autonomy stage (age 2).
Trauma
• Smothering mother; Forced feeding and evacuation; Humiliated and shamed about bodily functions; Little attention to emotional or spiritual needs; Independent self-expression blocked.
Physical/Energetic Patterns
• Energy stagnant, held; Earth-bound; Muscle-bound; Heavy set; Rounded back, heavy shoulders.
Life’s Work
• Develop creative self-expression.
Psychopath
Age of Wounding
• Early individuation (ages 1-2), age of natural narcissism; Later (ages 3-4) if seduction by parent has sexual aspect.
Trauma
• Seduction-betrayal; Seductive parent results in child choosing specialness over real needs, feelings, sexuality.
Physical/Energetic Patterns
• Energy in upper body, with especially strong charge in head; Big shoulders, narrow waist or hips; In women, may reverse to weight in pelvis and thighs; Ungrounded, unbalanced.
Life’s Work
• Feel self as part of humanity, releasing the specialness that sets one apart from others.
Rigid
Age of Wounding
• Genital stage (ages 4-5); Strong re-emergence of conflict at puberty.
Trauma
• Sexual rejection results in splitting of sexuality and heart feelings.
Physical/Energetic Patterns
• High energy; Integrated, harmonious body; Intellect and will active; Strong boundaries; Heart is defended.
Life’s Work
• Bring feeling and compassion into life activities; Connect heart and sexuality in romantic relationship.
*Introduction to Core Energetics; Susan Thesenga, April 1998.
Everyone contains aspects of each structure because we all experience many of the same hurts. The fragmenting from pain is more heavily pronounced in the Schizoid, but everyone has split off child aspects. The nonfulfillment of needs that the Oral is most impacted by, is also common to us all.
The withholding due to our negative intention, which shows up strongly for the Masochist, is a universal Lower Self response. And the push-pull dynamic from rejecting the one you love shows up in the Psychopathic dance with seduction and betrayal, and the Rigid’s struggle to open their heart when their sexuality is turned on.
That said, most people’s bodies more strongly reflect the characteristics of one or two of the structures, depending on the age at which the most wounding—and therefore defending—occurred.
What these body types are revealing are the distortions. If we look a bit deeper, we can see the essence each one is holding. We want to hold a space for who we really are, having compassion especially as we go into dark places. The question we are always asking is, “What are we hiding?” A big belly may be hiding creativity. Collapsed shoulders may hide a tender heart.
The essence beneath the body armor:
Schizoid | Spiritual connection, intuitive.
Oral | Intelligent (strong mind, articulate), sensitive, empathetic.
Masochist | Big heart, giving; creative, fun-loving; persistent, hard working.
Psychopath | Courage, love, leadership.
Rigid | Passion, leadership, commitment, clarity, endurance.
We can also look at how our body structures relate to our primary essence or Personality Type:
Reason Type | Experienced loneliness, rejection: Schizoid, Rigid
Emotion Type | Experienced abandonment, lack of touch: Oral
Will Type | Experienced mastery of things due to wounding in later development: Masochist, Psychopathic
We know that when an event happens, people interpret it differently based on their own stuck energy. This explains why siblings often have differing responses to the same parent. When we don’t feel our feelings, we carry this waste into the next life.
We also know this stuck energy manifests as illness in our bodies. Without movement, life does not exist. Muscles, for example, atrophy quickly without movement. Health issues in our bodies then are an effect, and not a cause. Answers from the Guide revealing the deeper origin of specific health concerns can be found under the topic Body & Health at www.theguidespeaks.com.
Healing is all about freeing up stuck energy and returning to our original divine self, which is love. But the Guide teaches that in intimate relationships, the love force can’t grow when separated from sex and eros. This bumps up against society’s taboos about the erotic sexual force, and has lead to over-development of intellectual areas instead of nurturing our ability to learn to love.
Distorted sexual feelings—which were only distorted because they were denied—must be faced to change. They are often hidden under hostility, which is hard to face because it contradicts the Idealized Self Image. Indeed, hostility is often more accepted in a family than pleasure, so pleasurable feelings are often buried deepest. We must unfold all of these layers.
As babies, all experiences are physical because there has been no mental or emotional development yet. So everything that happens in a person’s life will be recorded, so to speak, in the memory tracks of the physical body. This includes the attachment of the pleasure drive to painful experience.
Our adult sexual experiences will then show us the way in which energy was first blocked. Because due to this cross-wiring, in order for the life force to be pleasurably activated during sex, the destructiveness must be re-experienced. Therefore the original conflict—as well as the resolution—shows up in sexual fantasies, which are needed for sexual pleasure and release. Approaching healing by looking through the lens of sexual fantasies is an efficient way to uncover our deepest wounds. It is also very sensitive and sacred work.
Learn more in The Pull, Chapter 5: Pleasure: The Full Pulsation of Life, Chapter 6: The Forces of Love, Eros and Sex, and Chapter 7: The Spiritual Symbolism and Significance of Sexuality; and in Doing the Work, Chapter 12: TAKING THE LONG WAY HOME | Doing the Work.
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