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Fear Of Life Quotes by Alexander Lowen

25 quotes from Fear Of Life: ’The cases described in this section (The Fear of Being) may seem extreme, but I have become convinced that they are not as…

“There are many roles that people play and many images that they project. There is, for example, the “nice” man who is always smiling and agreeable. “Such a nice man,” people say. “He never gets angry.” The facade always covers its opposite expression. Inside, such a person is full of rage that he dares not acknowledge or show. Some men put up a tough exterior to hide a very sensitive, childlike quality. Even failure can be a role. Many masochistic characters engage in the game of failure to cover an inner feeling of superiority. An outward show of superiority could bring down on them the jealous wrath of the father and the threat of castration. As long as they act like failures they can retain some sexuality, since they are not a threat to her father.”
― Alexander Lowen, Fear Of Life

“While the repression of a memory is a psychological process, the suppression of feeling is accomplished by deadening a part of the body or reducing its motility so that feeling is diminished. The repression of the memory is dependent upon and related to the suppression of feeling, for as long as the feeling persists, the memory remains vivid. Suppression entails the development of chronic muscular tension in those areas of the body where the feeling would be experienced. In the case of sexual feeling, this tension is found in and about the abdomen and pelvis”
― Alexander Lowen, Fear Of Life

“Since the experience is different for each individual, the tension will reflect that experience. In some persons the whole lower half of the body is relatively immobilized and held in a passive state; in others the muscular tensions are localized in the pelvic floor and around the genital apparatus. If the latter sort of tension is severe, it constitutes a functional castration; for, although the genitals operate normally, they are dissociated in feeling from the rest of the body. Any reduction of sexual feeling amounts to a psychological castration. Generally the person is unaware of these muscular tensions, but putting pressure upon the muscles in the attempt to release the tension is often experienced as very painful and frightening.”
― Alexander Lowen, Fear Of Life

“Authenticity is closely related to the voice. The word personality has two different meanings. It is derived from the persona, a mask Greek actors wore to dramatize more clearly the role they were playing. On the other hand, the word persona means “by sound,” per sona. The authentic person can be recognized behind the mask by the sound of his voice. The voice is a major avenue of self-expression, and its quality reflects the richness and resonance of the inner being. When one’s voice is limited because of neck and throat tensions, one’s self-expression is restricted and one’s being is reduced.”
― Alexander Lowen, Fear of Life

“The ability to contain excitation or feeling is self-possession. It is the third stage in the therapeutic program. The first two are self-awareness and self-expression. Self-possession is the stage in which the ego functions as the standard-bearer of a self that knows who it is and what it has to do. The self possesses an ego. It is the stage in which the self experiences its being as a fully mature man or woman.”
― Alexander Lowen, Fear of Life

“In a recent book, Erich Fromm advances the hypothesis that being is reduced by having. He says, “Only to the extent that we decrease the mode of having, that is, nonbeing-i.e., stop finding security and identity by clinging to what we have, by ‘sitting on it,’ by holding on to our ego and our possessions-can the mode of being emerge.”6 According to Fromm, the two terms, being and having, represent two very different attitudes to life. The having mode is based on possessive relationships. The self is seen as the I that has a wife, a home, a car, a job, even a body. Since the I that has a body is the ego, the having mode is an egocentric position. This mode developed from and depends upon private property, power, and profit. Its focus is upon the individual rather than the community. The being mode, on the other hand, is based on loving, giving, and sharing relationships. In this mode the measure of the self is not in terms of what one owns but how much one gives or loves.”
― Alexander Lowen, Fear of Life

“Every chronic muscular tension in the body has associated with it sadness, fear, and anger. Since tension is a restriction of our being, it makes us sad. It also makes us angry to be so limited. And we are frightened to show our sadness or express our anger, so we stay locked in a diminished state of being and tied to our fate.”
― Alexander Lowen, Fear of Life

“As a child or animal, he is free but doesn’t know it. As an adult who aspires to be god, he equates freedom with the ability to assert his will. Both positions are equally valid. Freedom in nature is different from freedom in culture. In the latter situation the inability to assert one’s will denotes submission to the will of another. It is a loss of freedom since it is a denial of the right to express one’s feelings. An individual may not have the right to do what he wants, but we insist that he should have the right to say what he wants. In nature or culture, freedom cannot be separated from the right of self-expression.”
― Alexander Lowen, Fear of Life

“Once we give up our true self to play a role, we are fated to be rejected because we have already rejected ourselves. Yet we will struggle to make the role more successful, hoping to overcome our fate but finding ourselves more enmeshed in it. We are caught in a vicious cycle that keeps closing in, diminishing our life and being.”
― Alexander Lowen, Fear Of Life

“How much easier and more pleasurable life can be when one doesn’t have to make a decision because one’s desire is so clear and strong that it leaves one with no choice in behavior.”
― Alexander Lowen, Fear of Life