By Nina Koren, PhD
Graz, 23.5. 2020

The virus is a tiny and rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple organ­ism. Yet it impacts our lives in a way that is very new to many of us, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the West­ern and North­ern parts of the world: We are con­cerned that our lives, or the lives of our loved ones, might be at risk, as mod­ern med­i­cine does not yet have much to offer us as treat­ment. In some parts of the so-called devel­oped world, hos­pi­tal staff had to leave some patients untreat­ed in the con­text of over­whelm­ing num­bers of peo­ple need­ing urgent med­ical atten­tion.

In some parts of the devel­oped world, some doc­tors and nurs­es have died from work­ing with­out the nec­es­sary pro­tec­tive gear, which has often been lack­ing. We won­der whether our economies might break down, result­ing in our los­ing com­forts we are used to. Our gov­ern­ments are tak­ing mea­sures which only a few weeks ago would have been unthink­able – free­doms we took for grant­ed have been dras­ti­cal­ly cur­tailed from one day to the next. At the same time, many ques­tions regard­ing the virus itself remain unan­swered.

For many coun­tries in the less priv­i­leged parts of the world, such lev­els of uncer­tain­ty have been the norm for decades, with­out this both­er­ing the rest of the world enough to offer the type of sup­port which could have facil­i­tat­ed change.

Those of us who were born after World War 2, in geo­graph­i­cal areas of pros­per­i­ty and high­er sociopo­lit­i­cal safe­ty, the cur­rent inten­si­ty of uncer­tain­ty is new and unex­pect­ed. This sit­u­a­tion is not how we grew up. We now realise that the belief we grew up with, that we are in con­trol of our lives, was an illu­sion – an illu­sion which is now crum­bling. Ide­al­ly, this will help us face real­i­ty more clear­ly and under­stand where change is need­ed.

A blank screen of uncertainty

This win­dow of uncer­tain­ty offers us a blank screen: Can we tol­er­ate the not-know­ing? Do we have to fill the emp­ty space? In many cas­es, the “fill­ing” con­sists of beau­ti­ful sol­i­dar­i­ty, com­pas­sion, and cre­ativ­i­ty in han­dling a new sit­u­a­tion.

For each of us, this uncer­tain­ty trig­gers fears – and we project our defens­es against the anx­i­ety, as well as our thought pat­terns and beliefs onto the blank screen. Each of us projects our own movie onto the screen, and the sto­ry we then see in front of our eyes is often far from being akin to a charm­ing romance.

Our characters

So how might our char­ac­terolo­gies play out in the con­text of the pan­dem­ic? This was an intrigu­ing ques­tion raised by my col­league Roi Stark Narun­sky in an online forum ded­i­cat­ed to the sub­ject. Char­ac­terol­o­gy is a con­cept devel­oped in body-ori­ent­ed psy­chother­a­py; it explores and describes how our ear­ly wound­ing cre­ates “sur­vival strate­gies”: pat­terns of think­ing and act­ing, which help us cope with painful feel­ings in our child­hood. These pat­terns are not seen as char­ac­ters, which define who we are. They are instead under­stood as being a com­plex road map to help us observe and dis­cern our auto­mat­ic reac­tions to life chal­lenges and to find ways to heal the pain. They are intend­ed to help us dis­cov­er what lies beneath our defense strate­gies as well as, our authen­tic and spon­ta­neous core respons­es.

Alexan­der Lowen, an ear­ly stu­dent of Wil­helm Reich, defined five major char­ac­ter styles. In this arti­cle I relate them to some of our pos­si­ble reac­tions to the coro­na-cri­sis. This is intend­ed as a short overview, which might be fol­lowed by a more detailed descrip­tion in a lat­er text. The name of the five struc­tures are Freudi­an terms used by Lowen from 1947 on. Their mean­ing has evolved over time; I give an overview descrip­tion in each sub-chap­ter.

Schizoid — the withdrawal defense

For those who look at life through the lens of the schizoid char­ac­ter defense struc­ture, imposed mea­sures such as, self-iso­la­tion and a home-office might, at first glance, be expe­ri­enced as a dream come true: Avoid­ing con­tact with oth­ers, which is a sig­nif­i­cant pat­tern of this defense, final­ly is not only offi­cial­ly accept­ed, but it has even become a rec­om­mend­ed pri­or­i­ty. Intro­verts enjoy the iso­la­tion.

At the same time, it is essen­tial not to for­get that the defense is only a way not to feel the fear under­neath: In the per­son using the schizoid defense it is expe­ri­enced as exis­ten­tial ter­ror, a feel­ing which is very dif­fi­cult to tol­er­ate. To avoid the ter­ror, we might engage in bypass­ing of all sorts: Some of us ques­tion the exis­tence of the virus at all. Some put all the atten­tion on pos­i­tive visions, stat­ing that this virus will bring about a whol­ly trans­formed and lov­ing world – which would be won­der­ful. Some share posts with Bill Gates’ vision­ary view of a sus­tain­able new world.

Clear goals and dreams help us nav­i­gate through a cri­sis; yet they might become a schizoid defense if they keep us from fac­ing – and ulti­mate­ly resolv­ing — dif­fi­cul­ties aris­ing in the now.

The coro­na-cri­sis cer­tain­ly is no com­fort for those of us who dare to feel the ter­ror trig­gered in them. Often, they hard­ly leave the house any­more, even in coun­tries with less severe lock down mea­sures; and they cer­tain­ly are the last ones look­ing for­ward to re-open­ing social and eco­nom­ic life.

The learn­ing task here is: find­ing safe­ty even in a world of pos­si­ble threat – find­ing clear dis­cern­ment. Learn­ing to con­nect – with oth­ers, but also with the plan­et – the earth suf­fers from our lack of con­nect­ed­ness.

The oral — the deprivation defense

Yes, the sto­ry of the toi­let-paper and emp­ty shelves in super­mar­kets … Let’s admit it: Most of us went to buy larg­er quan­ti­ties of near­ly every­thing: san­i­tary equip­ment, pas­ta, rice or choco­late. The announce­ment of the lock down made vis­i­ble one of the major fears in all parts of this globe – the fear of depri­va­tion, of not hav­ing enough, of star­va­tion.

And it’s great that these fears came to the sur­face so clear­ly: Ulti­mate­ly, it is this human belief in not hav­ing enough and need­ing more which our plan­et suf­fers from most. We con­sume many times more than the earth has to give. We have lived with a pan­dem­ic of greed for many years now. So maybe each piece of toi­let paper 🙂 can become a reminder of our learn­ing task: Instead of fill­ing up feel­ings of empti­ness with con­sumerism, we need to learn to nur­ture our­selves in ways which are healthy for our­selves and our sur­round­ings.

At the same time, the onset of a poten­tial glob­al eco­nom­ic cri­sis will chal­lenge us even more pro­found­ly to face our fears of not hav­ing enough. Some­times, they might appear in the dis­guise of down­play­ing the virus’s risks or jus­ti­fy­ing high­er death tolls as a means to secure our eco­nom­ic base. How about we try to do both: Allow our­selves to feel the fear – and then, from a place of being real with our­selves, check out solu­tions which take into account a car­ing approach for all, which does not play out health against mon­ey, or the econ­o­my against those who wish for more pro­tec­tion?

In any case, stand­ing togeth­er will be what our soci­eties need in the years to come. And this might be a beau­ti­ful heal­ing response for many, not only to the per­son using the oral defense.

The masochist — fear of control and invasion

What might be more threat­en­ing to our masochist defense than the idea of an unseen ’some­thing’ invad­ing our bod­ies and tak­ing con­trol? And then, also, wit­ness­ing that state author­i­ties lim­it our free­dom to go out and to make our own deci­sions? Who­ev­er car­ries these fears inside, is hav­ing a tough time these days. While our friends with oral defens­es might spend hours talk­ing and chat­ting exten­sive­ly on zoom and social media to dis­tract them­selves from their feel­ings, peo­ple with the masochis­tic defense tend to retreat deep inside them­selves. I have friends who use this defense who haven’t con­tact­ed me a sin­gle time since the onset of the pan­dem­ic – and who have to over­come con­sid­er­able inner resis­tance to even reply to my ten­der attempts for con­tact.

At the same time, the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion might also seem like a dream come true for those using this defense: Final­ly, the gov­ern­ment itself tells every per­son to keep a min­i­mum dis­tance to oth­ers – which ful­fills the need to have their own space respect­ed. In Aus­tria, the author­i­ties, with some sense of humor, rec­om­mend to keep a dis­tance of the size of a baby ele­phant; for my friends who use the masochis­tic defense, it could even be a full-grown ele­phant bull.

Respect­ing oth­er people’s space, respect­ing oth­er species’ space – this might be our col­lec­tive learn­ing task in terms of this pat­tern of defense.

Psychopathic defense — the warrior for a great cause

A cri­sis calls for strong lead­ers – and those of us who car­ry aspects of the psy­cho­path­ic defense with­in have felt very acti­vat­ed dur­ing these times: We were the first to offer webi­na­rs on how to strength­en our immune sys­tems and how to sur­vive a virus attack; many of us got engaged in help­ing to buy and pro­duce masks or gloves for med­ical staff. And many have now become war­riors who want to find the truth. Often, they come from an authen­tic wish to help save lives or save the econ­o­my; they fight against state attempts to abuse the virus cri­sis by lim­it­ing civ­il rights per­ma­nent­ly. Crit­i­cal voic­es, which ques­tion the deci­sions tak­en, are par­tic­u­lar­ly need­ed in times when we lack approved rou­tines to han­dle a pan­dem­ic and have to accept extra-ordi­nary mea­sures.

In the more defend­ed expres­sions, these war­riors engage in fights to prove that their idea of truth is the one and only truth – they don’t leave much space for the pos­si­bil­i­ty that we might need months or years to under­stand and eval­u­ate this virus and the cri­sis. We might also find the idea of the sur­vival of the fittest in this think­ing pat­tern, and some might engage in the bat­tle of their life in fight­ing against what they per­ceive to be dark and evil forces which seek to take con­trol. Here, again, Bill Gates appears in the posts on social media – but this time as the vil­lain.

We all are called to step into our lead­er­ship these days – a lead­er­ship, which is not direct­ed against oth­ers, but is root­ed in trust and shared care for each oth­er and our liv­ing con­di­tions. We all are called to become lead­ers for a healthy and kinder world.

The rigid defense – our need to be perfect

For this char­ac­ter style also, this cri­sis offers many pos­si­bil­i­ties to express one­self: We can wear our masks per­fect­ly and pre­cise­ly as rec­om­mend­ed by virol­o­gists. We can hold our dis­tance from oth­ers per­fect­ly – and get irri­tat­ed about the schizoids, who, in their occa­sion­al absent-mind­ed­ness, bump into oth­ers. In the more intense forms of the defense, dis­in­fec­tion of hands, door han­dles, tables, and shop­ping carts might reach per­fec­tion, even obses­sive lev­els, par­tic­u­lar­ly when the rigid­i­ty cov­ers a schizoid under­lay with exis­ten­tial ter­ror and fear of germs.

So what might look com­fort­ing to those who car­ry much rigid­i­ty, also rein­forces deep-root­ed pat­terns of hav­ing to func­tion in a cer­tain way to feel safe.

They will retreat into iso­la­tion even more – while fol­low­ing their true and hard­ly accept­able need to let go of con­trol would lead to space for vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty.

This brings us back to the start­ing point of this arti­cle – liv­ing in uncer­tain­ty feels vul­ner­a­ble to us all. While we find many ways to com­pen­sate, it is our vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty which helps us to con­nect with each oth­er. We har­bor ten­der feel­ings and sweet long­ings; our bod­ies and immune sys­tems are as vul­ner­a­ble to dis­tur­bances as is the ecosys­tem we live in. May this cri­sis let us become soft and help us remem­ber that we belong – to this plan­et and each oth­er.