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Boundaries, Structure, Defence and War These interests came together in the Spring of 2002, when I made plans to teach a course in London called Boundaries, Structure, and Defence. It was to run from September 2002 to May 2003. I had no idea that this would be exactly the time period during which the debate about going to war in Iraq, and of course the war itself, would be taking place. We have since heard from various sources that US leaders had been intending to attack Iraq for some time, and that the tragedy of September 11 was the ‘excuse’ they were looking for, so the debate was already in the air, though not yet in the public domain. The course ran for six weekends. On the Saturdays we studied the body systems which most specifically embody these themes, using the Body-Mind CenteringR approach, and explored the psychological themes and personal meanings expressed through them: how the skin, cellular membranes, fat, muscles, lymph and nervous system may be used to give us different senses of boundary, containment and defence; and how bones and connective tissues provide inner structure and form, the solid-fluid architecture of the body. The Sundays were devoted to the practice of Authentic Movement; this was a time to deepen and integrate the work done the day before, as well as an opportunity to learn the art of clear and compassionate witnessing as taught within this discipline. Because of the events that were unfolding during this time I could not help but reflect on how the themes we were addressing at a personal level might also relate to the drama of the debate about war in Iraq. I would like to offer some of my personal reflections; I have no answers, and this is just one perspective, but I hope it might stimulate you in your own thinking, feeling and embodiment. Weekend 1: Primary Boundaries - Skin and Cellular Membranes The focus was on embodying the different layers of the skin and the cellular membranes through touch and movement, and on becoming conscious of where our awareness is when making contact with another. We discussed the nature of primary boundaries and explored personal experiences of this. When the surface membrane is not intact, if it is too rigid, too permeable, unclear or absent to awareness then an essential layer of protection and a place of healthy interaction with the world is compromised. We must seek deeper within our tissue layers for a sense of boundary and interface. At a personal level, the woundings of invasive or neglectful care, trauma and an emotionally unsupportive environment, in utero, infancy and childhood, can damage the experience of primary boundary. As a result, the sense of containment, differentiation and integrity, and the ability to make healthy contact is damaged. Multiplied within cultures, these effects create groups and nations who lack a sense of basic integrity and security, who will need to develop other means of defence to protect their boundaries. Primary woundings are readily reactivated with subsequent trauma or invasion. The tragedy of 9/11 seemed to constellate such a retraumatisation for the people of the US in particular, and the world at large, and a defensive response was perhaps inevitable. Around the time we met for this first seminar, September 2002, discussions about going to war in Iraq were hitting the news. Weekend 2: Protective Layers - Fat and Muscle As our explorations took us deeper into the body tissues, we came to experience different qualities of boundary and interface as we embodied subcutaneous fat and skeletal muscles. For some for whom the fat is present, it might be experienced as a soft, nurturing cushion; it might evoke a sense of sinking into a warm, maternal holding environment. Warmth, energy, and an insulating padding which protects and creates a fluid sense of boundary might be experienced here, when the fat is embraced and embodied. When skin and fat are not embodied, embraced within our awareness, we may descend directly into the muscle layers where a different quality of boundary is created. We all use our muscles to some degree, and in different areas of the body, to create defensive boundaries. Wilhelm Reich and his followers based their therapy on the way we somatise character in defensive patterns of muscular armouring3. We need this to some degree, but when excessive, muscular tension (hypertone) creates a too-rigid interface which interferes with healthy interaction and contact. Too little muscular tension (hypotone) will leave us feeling too unboundaried and we will have to seek even deeper for protection, or will be left feeling too vulnerable and undefended. When someone is in a tense, contracted state the nervous stimulation to the muscles is set too high, and their reflexes will be easily triggered by a small addition of stress - a ‘knee-jerk reaction’ as it is commonly called. The events of 9/11 split the whole world in a way that no event in our current times has done; after the initial shock, it opened the hearts of many who focused love and compassion towards the grieving community. For others it stimulated a knee-jerk reaction - a sort of ‘he hit me so I’ll hit him back’ response. An organism - individual or group - already on a state of high alert is usually not able to take the space needed to reflect and reach for other courses of action, but will be compelled to react in this way. Weekend 3: Lymphatic System and the Immune Response It was December 2002 and we came together to study the lymphatic system and immune response. Embodying the lymphatic system through touch and movement, boundaries could be experienced with greater clarity and spaciousness, free from conflict. This practice reminds me of the master of Martial Arts who does not get into fights because s/he is so clearly embodying healthy boundaries, so integrated and self-contained, that conflict is not invited. We explored how stress affects the immune system: As mentioned earlier, when under stress the body switches to the sympathetic ‘fight-or-flight’ mode; this supports B-cell antibody-immunity - the attack on the enemy without. The internal processes of digestion, repair and recuperation are supported by a parasympathetic state, which also supports T-cell activity. When in the sympathetic mode of attack, T-cell activity is diminished; it is the T-cells which initiate, maintain and control an appropriate immune response. They maintain the internal ecology through rooting out damaged and infected ‘self-structures’ (cells), attending to the balance of our internal ecology. The balance, or lack of it, within the autonomic and immune systems, can be felt to relate to psychological patterns of protection and defence, physiological and psychological patternings each influencing the other. During this time, talks were intensifying. Blair was trying to persuade Bush to follow the UN procedures, and the weapons inspection process needed more time. Bush and his colleagues had their own agenda and did not want to take more time. I began to wonder about the UN’s role as the immune system of our collective body. The immunological surveillance cells which patrol the body’s tissues, seeking out harmful pathogens and initiating the process of their containment and destruction, clearly reflect the attempts of the weapons inspectors to seek out WMDs. The UN tried to work through strategies such as negotiation, diplomacy, restrictions and sanctions - in short to contain and render harmless the ‘pathogen’ of Saddam’s regime. In the end they failed. The guns and bombs were brought in before the surveillance team could complete its work, and so it was rendered ineffective and redundant (just as the immune system might be after chemotherapy or radiation treatment, for example). The credibility of the UN itself may have been damaged through this process. And what about those miracles of the immune system, the memory B- and T-cells? It seems to me they were not given enough of a chance in this situation. I longed to have the elders, those who had negotiated through intractable conflicts in the past, brought in. Could someone like Nelson Mandela have provided a wise and impartial voice, borne out of his own experience, to oversee the discussions, or the Dalai Lama, for example? Or could the learnings from peace talks in Northern Ireland, largely successful, have more fully informed the process? These voices were not invited in, not even considered I imagine. The memory B- and T-cells, those elders who carry knowledge of the battles that went before, were incapacitated by the reflexive stance that had already been taken. What did not happen at all in the discussions amongst the western leaders was a moment of reflection on what our part in the conflict may be. All evil was projected out onto the enemy - first Bin Laden then Saddam Hussein - God was assumed to be on our side, and no-one dared to look at whether, within all of the atrocities committed, there was a message which needed to be heard. There was no inner reflection, digestion and integration of the shadow - only the imperative to destroy it by destroying the enemy who carries the projected evil. As we know, this is not unfamiliar within our Judaeo-Christian history; it is as if a part of the collective regressed to a more primitive stage of consciousness which had dominated our culture some centuries ago. The mentality of the Inquisition had returned. This can be seen as an expression of an immune system out of balance through prolonged activation of the sympathetic nervous system, no longer able to attend to the ‘housekeeping’ functions of maintaining the internal milieu in healthy balance, and resorting to primitive ‘fight-or-flight’ reflexive behaviour. It reflects a psychology of splitting and projection. Click here to return to beginning of article |
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continued … Boundaries, Defense and War |
