ARMORING SEGMENTS, APPEARANCE

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Now what I have worked on in each of those patients is one segment of armoring.  Reich said that there are seven segments of armoring.  Each of these segments is capable of its own emotional function.  For all practical purposes, several segments work together to express an emotion.  For example, though the eye segment can express its own emotions, very often it works in conjunction with other segments.  If one expresses anger, one not only looks angry, but clenches one's jaw, punches one's fist, etc.  So very often in an emotional expression several segments are working simultaneously.

There are seven segments of armoring.  They are the ocular, the oral, the cervical, the thoracic, the diaphragmatic, the abdominal, and the pelvic.  These are the seven segments of armoring.

The Ocular segment: It is always involved in processes of psychosis and disassociative disorders.  Now we have known for a long time that, for example, in schizophrenia, there is a problem in eye tracking.  That's a well known phenomenon, and in ordinary psychiatry, it's considered one of the phenomenon in schizophrenia.  In orgonomy, that fact is regarded as a central issue.  The fact that the eyes are not in contact with the world to the extent that they are in normal people, we think is a factor in being able to distinguish reality from unreality.  We work at great length with such people in establishing better eye contact with the world.

What one learns when one investigates how eyes are armored is sometimes surprising.  For example, one patient reports that when she looks into a mirror, what she sees is her body outline.  Another patient reports that when he is in a painful confrontation, he has learned to endure that confrontation by focusing on one point on the other person's body and keeping his eyes fixed at that point.  That way he is able to get through the confrontation.  Another patient reports that she has no visual memory.  When she looks at something and closes her eyes, she cannot remember what she has just seen.  These are things that happen not only in psychotic people, but people who are walking around as if they are normal.

The Oral segment: We look for voice tone.  We listen to people: are they talking in rhyme, are they barking, are their jaws tight, do they have a problem biting, do they have a problem sucking, are they talkative so that they cannot keep their mouths shut, can they cry fully, can they scream, can they yell fully, and finally, are they capable of gagging.  Is there a problem in the throat and the oral segment that keeps them from maintaining a lively gag reflex.

The Cervical segment: Some people walk around with their shoulders held high and their neck held high as if they are watching for where the next blow will come from.  "Where will the next danger come from?"  They look like scarecrows in the field - this neck is always rigid and on the alert.  And such people, if you ask them on the couch to just let their heads fall and let gravity take their head, it is impossible.  They cannot let their heads simply fall because then God knows what danger might come!  In the neck is also revealed stubbornness, haughtiness, trying to separate the head from the rest of the body, with a big, long separation here, and problems in the cervical area also involve problems in deep crying, shoving, yelling , etc.

The Chest segment: The chest is one of the most significant areas for armoring because of its participation in the function of respiration.  The full expansion of breathing is involved in all armoring.  In expressing anger we breathe heavy if we are really fully angry.  If we are passionately loving, we go, ah, ah, ah.  Contrariwise, in fear, we go, he, he, he, he, we pull our chest in, which is why people with acute anxiety so often complain of a lump in the chest or a weight on the chest.  When we cry, we move our chest fully in sobbing.  So we can see that in all of the emotional expression the free movement of the chest is involved.  Contrariwise, when we want to inhibit any emotion, we hold our chests.  This is why most of us walk around not breathing fully, because all of us are repressing something which we might feel fully if we let this go.

This helps me to understand the first patient that I described above because, when he is on the couch and for the first time lets his chest go, something arose from deeper in him which turned first into laughter.  Almost invariably, if you just let that go on, that laughter turns into sobbing, but we didn't have the time to do that in the first session.  I didn't want that to happen in the first session.

Also involved with the chest segment are the shoulders and the upper extremities, which is part of this segment.  In the expression of the emotions that this segment is capable of, we have patients punch with all the anger they can muster on the couch. I have a baseball bat that they bang on the couch, and we distinguish between those people who punch like this (punching weakly) and people who punch like that (punching vigorously), because the second is like human beings should be capable of.

Another expression of the upper extremities is to be capable of feeling love, of being able to stretch out one's arms longing for someone else, and longing for contact with the universe just to make connection.

The Diaphragmatic segment: The diaphragm is used in all expulsive acts.  The diaphragmatic segment is what we work on mostly in the expression of gagging, for that's where the gag reflex starts, with the contraction of the diaphragm.  It's used in and is obviously related to disgust which means to disparage what's in here to get rid of it out there.  The diaphragm and armoring of the diaphragm is geographically very close to the solar plexus.  This is one of the most important plexus of the body.  It is also very close to the heart, which is why when we feel emotions very deeply, we have a feeling in this area of our body and why we talk so much in terms of heart feeling, because this is a very important area for deep emotional feeling. Consequently, when we succeed in loosening the diaphragmatic area, patients often experience a flowing of energy into their abdomen and pelvis which they have not experienced before, and which most invariably they first experience for a very short time as pleasurable, and then experience as anxiety-provoking.

The Abdominal segment: This segment generally has much simpler emotional functions. The educator, A. S. Neill, who originated the Summerhill School, says that he used to divide his students into the tight bellies and the soft bellies.  The tight bellies were the children who were scared, insecure, and the soft bellies were the children with more security who were able to move around more freely.  I'll tell you one fascinating anecdote about currents (sensations of vegetative streaming) into the abdominal area.  One lady had succeeded in freeing her armoring through the diaphragmatic area and had experienced these pleasurable flows of energy in her abdomen.  She came in to her session the next week and she said, "Do I have something to show you!"  I said, "What?"  So she opened her blouse, and there, halfway across her abdomen, starting halfway across, was a red rash.  She said, "Do you see that?  It says stop, it's a red light."