Armoring
Elsworth Baker, M.D.
Excerpted from Man in the Trap
The American College of Orgonomy

Armoring develops as the somatic aspect of repression and always involves groups of muscles that form a functional unit. Thus, a child turning his rage at unkind toilet training into an anxious effort to please his demanding parent will contract the muscles of the buttocks and the pelvic floor. The armor, resulting from a fear of punishment, is assumed at the expense of id (instinctual) impulses, and contains the very rules and demands (Footnote 20) that led to it. The ego seems to be strengthened, because some of the instinctual energy pressures are held down by the armor. But actually, the armor prevents stimuli from the outside world from reaching the organism in their natural profusion, and therefore makes it more difficult to continue training in other areas. In the long run, repression (armor) is not a true solution but only an expedient that serves later as the basis for neurotic conflicts and symptom formation. That is, it does not allow a sex-economic regulation of energy, and tension continues to increase.

According to Reich, (Footnote 21) character formation depends upon:

1. The time at which an impulse is frustrated, i.e. early or late in its development. The earlier the frustration the more complete is the repression. Early frustration (of aggression and pleasure in motor activity) leads to marked impairment of the total activity, and later to reduction of working ability.

2. The extent and intensity of the frustration-whether it is repressed or unsatisfied and the severity of either.

3. Against which impulses the central frustration is directed, i.e. the stage of libidinal development reached at the point when inhibition (armor) is exacted.

4. The ratio between frustration and permission.

5. The sex of the main frustrating person.

6. The contradictions in the frustrations themselves (e.g. in masochism, exhibition is encouraged at the anal level but punished at the phallic level).

All of these prerequisites for illness are set within the individual's society as well as within the individual himself. It is, of course, the design of his environment that dictates how much education, what sort of morality and what degree of gratification an individual may realize within the limits of his natural potentialities. In order to prevent neuroses in the future, individuals must be allowed to develop character structures with enough flexibility to give them the sexual - and social mobility needed for keeping an economic energy level in the organism.

An impulse that has fully developed can never be completely repressed. Thus, if the child is allowed to reach genital primacy he will survive fairly well regardless of future environmental restrictions. A development just short of genital primacy produces an impulsive character, where the individual's impulses have met with a sudden, unaccustomed frustration.

Armoring develops in an orderly fashion, depending on the need to conform, and is segmental in arrangement. It contains the history and meaning of its origin. If it is due to traumatic events, it contains the memory of the events.

For example, (Footnote 22) during therapy a forty-year-old woman repeatedly saw a mental image of a woman and man. She hated the woman but did not know why. She saw herself with them at three years of age. She got in bed with the man but was convinced they were not her parents. At times, she would see the man and woman on a porch at a party and thought they might be neighbors she had been left with. Gradually the woman became clearer and she experienced great hatred for her, wanting to kill her. At this point she became very excited, lying on her back and kicking, pounding, and screaming in a typical childish temper tantrum.

She had an urgency to know more, to solve the situation. The temper tantrum was repeated two or three times and she felt somewhat relieved. Following this she went home with some continued anxiety and fear of death, which gradually developed into a fear of being choked to death. She did not want to remain alone and was anxious throughout the night. In the morning while making the beds, she visualized two eagle claws clutching at her throat and became frightened when the claws turned into hands choking her. When she tried to get up after lying down on the bed to compose herself, she could not walk because her legs were too weak. She called for an appointment and I saw her soon after.

When she came in she looked very bad. Her color was gray, and her expression could be described only by saying that she gave me an uneasy feeling of death. Soon after she lay on the couch I became aware of the smell of death. She described what had happened at home, and I saw that her chest was moving very little. I mobilized it somewhat and then grabbed her throat. The picture of the hands came into her mind and she panicked and began to choke (I had touched her throat only momentarily). She could not get her breath and was becoming cyanotic, so I pried her jaw open and gently massaged her neck. She soon began to breathe, although she was rather exhausted and greatly frightened.

This event, she said, went back much earlier in her life. She was in her crib and a woman was choking her until her tongue was hanging out. Her mother kept coming into her mind, although not in the visualized scene. Shortly, she screamed, "The hands again," and choked once more. After this was relieved she choked again with her tongue out. She became cyanotic and was with difficulty that I got her to breathe; her eyes were sunken in her head and she looked as though she were dying.

All this was repeated again and she grew very panicky. She was not able to talk and tried to write a message in the air. When I gave her a pencil and paper - she wrote that she couldn't talk; I told her she wasn't expected to, she was too young. This seemed to relieve the intense fear and she came out of it again. The choking episodes were repeated, probably a dozen times. Then, she began to call for her husband and said she wanted some one to bold her and love her. I called him and in the meantime sat holding her arm and reassuring her. Finally I felt she had had enough-it seemed to go on indefinitely. I got her to dress and sit up and she had another attack. Then her husband came and held her and reassured her. She had one further attack and he suggested taking her out to dinner to get her mind on other things. I concurred.

Although anxious and uneasy - she had no more attacks, and as the day wore on she felt much better and sobbed with relief. She was afraid to go home and insisted that her husband lie down with her when she did get home. The next morning she called to say that more had come up. She was sure she had been thrown to the floor and made unconscious when she was choked. During the night she had felt she had been losing consciousness.

The following day I saw her again. She said she had had the impression of a child being thrown to the floor against the wall, and added that she had always had a tender spot in the right parietal region of her head. One winter it had bothered her so much that she had consulted a physician, telling him it was driving her insane.

She had mild choking spells this time, but they were easily stopped and she was able to keep her mouth open and so prevent cyanosis. A picture of a man over her crib came up. It was a man, a dark man, who choked her and not the woman, although a woman was there. It seemed to have happened in the daytime. "I hate the man," she said, "I could kill him." For several sessions after this time the picture of her mother hitting her with a frying pan came up and mild choking attacks continued.

Convinced of the reality of these incidents, she asked her mother about them. Her mother told her that she was illegitimate and that during the pregnancy she had tried unsuccessfully to induce an abortion. After birth, she had induced her lover to get rid of the baby, and he had choked her and left her for dead. On another occasion the mother had hit her with a frying pan and knocked her unconscious.

It is in this way that single traumatic events are contained in memory, in the body's armor and reappear as the organism is mobilized. But no memory is present if the armor is the result of attitudes in the parents. The most malignant to overcome are the implied, unspoken prohibitions imposed gradually at each stage of development.

The specific purpose of the chronic muscular armor is to hold back and assist one to conform and thus reduce anxiety--to hold back unitary moments (emotion) and in the deepest sense to prevent the orgasm reflex, which allows complete giving or surrender to biological emotions. The armor says "no" to this surrender. Emotion must be taken literally as "moving out," and a natural emotion includes the moving-out of the whole organism as a unit. That is, the whole organism normally takes part in all emotional activity whether pleasure, rage, or anxiety. The two basic movements are outward to the skin and environment (aggression), which is expansion or pleasure, and movement inward to the center (withdrawal), which is contraction, pain, and anxiety. (Footnote 23) Movement into the musculature allows the organism to fight with rage or flee with fear.

Armoring first occurs in the diaphragm in an inspiratory contraction (Footnote 24) where holding is most effective, but the basic conflict involves the pelvis (Oedipus conflict). Therefore the pelvis is always last to be dealt with in therapeutic removal. If the pelvis were to be freed first the individual could not handle the sexual impulse and either confusion and disintegration would follow, or else earlier problems would be carried into the sexual life (especially) sadistic impulses). One exception is in depression, where the low energy and great inhibition make early freeing of the pelvis safe.

Armor, may be identified by an increased sensitivity to touch (ticklish instead of pleasant) except in heavily armored individuals where only touch is felt. Seven segments can be differentiated in the armor. Each segment includes the whole cross section at that level of the body, so that there are several rings at right angles to the spine. In addition to the rings of armor, one will usually, find that one side of the body, left or right, is more heavily, armored than the other. The underlying cause here is not yet understood, but it has nothing to do with right- or left- handedness. Adler speaks of the male side and the female side; and Deutsch points out the good right side and the bad (sinister) left side. The seven segments of armor (Footnote 25) are the ocular, oral, cervical, thoracic, diaphragmatic, abdominal, and pelvic. They are usually freed in that order except that the chest is most often mobilized first so that it can be utilized to build up energy in the organism and provide additional inner push to help in both revealing and removing other blocks.

Each segment responds as a whole and is more or less independent of other segments. But this independence should not be taken too rigidly, since we are dealing with a total organism which functions with an interdependence of all segments. Any one segment may fail to respond completely until further segments are freed.

For example, deep holding may not appear in the throat until the pelvis is reached. With each release of a segment, armoring in earlier segments will recur and require further attention because the organism is not used to movement and tries to return to its former immobility. It must be gradually accustomed to free mobility.

In schizophrenia and epilepsy one may find little muscular armor, the armoring being largely in the eye segment. When this segment is freed the organism, unable to stand the increased free energy, contracts lower down and builds up a muscular armor. This in turn must be broken down. In certain cases, usually where more highly charged emotions are concerned, the organism, apparently unable to find a suitable equilibrium by armoring, withdraws energy from the part involved or even from the whole musculature. Such a withdrawal of energy is known as anorgonia.

It is important to determine the main character trait or attitude of the individual (the red thread) (Footnote 26) because he will react to all progress through this trait and it soon becomes the main character defense. The trait may be socially acceptable (modesty, shyness, reserve, aggressiveness) or socially unacceptable (dishonesty, cheating, etc.). For example, a modest person will react to every advance modestly and never enthusiastically, while a cheat will try in every way to cheat you of success.

The principle of therapy is quite simple: merely- to remove the chronic contraction which interferes with the free flow of energy throughout the organism and thus restore natural functioning. In practice it may be extremely difficult and complex. There are essentially three avenues of approach, the importance of each depending on the individual case although all three are a necessary tool in every therapy,. They are (1) increasing the inner push on the organism by building up its energy by breathing, (2) directly, attacking the spastic muscles to free the contraction and (3) maintaining the cooperation of the patient by bringing into the open and overcoming his resistances to the therapy and the therapist. This last is extremely important because the patient will in every way try to maintain his immobility and try desperately not to reveal himself. It may seem incredible that the patient who wants to get well fights so fiercely against therapy but behind this is intense fear of expansion and movement. He may do this so skillfully that it takes time and much ingenuity to unmask his methods. He may overtly cooperate beautifully, even bringing out emotions that please everyone but the whole thing may be meaningless from a therapeutic standpoint. One can never work mechanically but must watch the needs of the patient by observing his bodily expression and by sufficient contact to allow yourself to feel what he is trying to express or even hide. When the patient begins to feel his own restrictions and gains sufficient contact with his organism so that he knows what he is holding back he can be very helpful in his therapy. His lack of contact is one of the most difficult problems to overcome. This is dealt with under problems of contact.

Breathing may in itself overcome minor holdings and does help to reveal and overcome more severe blocking. The patient is asked to breathe fully without forcing and to allow himself to develop a rhythm which soon becomes easier and freer. In most patients this will soon produce tingling in the fingers and lips. If this breathing continues, the sensation increases to strong and sometimes painful currents resembling sensations from an electric current. The fingers stiffen and begin to flex and become immobile. This may continue until the whole arm is involved and eventually the chest and face. At this point the patient can stop his breathing only with difficulty and the situation becomes dangerous to life. The contraction must be overcome. This is done by stopping breathing and manually mobilizing the fingers and arms.

Classical medicine calls this stiffening of the fingers and arms tetany and explains it as over-oxygenation with lowering of the alveolar carbon dioxide resulting in alkalosis and diminution of ionized calcium. We look upon it as contraction against the movement of energy which is beyond the individual's tolerance. That this seems reasonable is found in the fact that later in therapy patients may breathe as much as they like with no contractions. These may reappear after each breakthrough to a new level.

Following release of the fifth or diaphragmatic segment, soft breeze-like sensations will be felt moving down the body. These are pleasant and give a three-dimensional perception of the body. They are called streamings. The chronic contraction of the skeletal muscles can be worked on directly, the organs and tissues only indirectly. To mobilize a chronically contracted muscle one must first increase the contraction to a point which cannot be maintained. The muscle thus overstrained must relax. This is done by direct pressure on the inner muscle with the thumb, by irritating or stimulating it, such as by tickling or pinching. Direct pressure is the usual and most effective means. One will find near the insertion of the muscle a very sensitive spot where contraction is greatest and it is here that the muscle responds best to the stimulus. Pressure here will relax the whole muscle. These points have been called trigger points in classical medicine, where sometimes they have been injected with Novocain to produce relaxation. Of course the muscle will only contract down again unless the emotion (and ideas) that is being held back is released. For this reason groups of muscles that form a functional unit in holding back emotions are worked on together. Occasionally one muscle in this group may act as a trigger, causing the whole group to respond.

Anxiety is the basis for repression and is behind all contraction. If it were not for the anxiety the emotion would not be

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