Kets de Vries uses the term “true impostor” when describing the intentions and behaviors of those people whose “identity is based on impersonations rather than actual attainments and accomplishments.” He uses a different term when describes the rest of us folk: “neurotic impostors.” We are the “individuals who feel fraudulent and imposturous while actually being successful.” We have “an abiding feeling that [we] have fooled everyone and are not as competent and intelligent as others think [we] are.”
While Kets de Vries has identified a specific subset us who are living in contemporary times, we would suggest that the term “neurotic impostor” applies to most of us. It is recognition of the “persona” we carry with us most of the time or even the “character armor” we wear as a burden when interacting in our challenging and ever-changing world. As a colleague once said (in quoting some unnamed source): “which of us won’t be taking the first train out of town tonight when told that all has been found out about us and will be revealed tomorrow to everyone in our life!”
Oiling the Armor: Moshe Feldenkrais
Unconscious dynamics were just as important for Moshe Feldenkrais as they were for Reich. However, these dynamics were primarily concerned with the implicit way in which human beings (and virtually all sentient organisms) engage and monitor their bodily functions and physical movements. From a physiological perspective we can point to the source of most monitoring of these functions and movements in the more primitive (reptilian) brain. Known officially as the archipallium brain, this sector of our brain resides primarily in the brain stem and consists of the medulla, pons, cerebellum, mesencephalon, the oldest basal nuclei – the globus pallidus and the olfactory bulbs.
We rarely pay attention to the operation of these functions or the coordination of these movements—unless we are attempting somehow modify one of these functions (very hard to do) or learn a new skill associated with the movement. For instance, we can pay attention to our breathing and try to slow it down, ensure that it is based in the movement of our belly, or simply decide to take a deep breath.
This is all fine and good; however, we can’t keep attending to our breathing. We must attend to other matters. So, at some time (in short order) our breathing once again becomes “unconscious” and is turned over to our reptilian brain. Similarly, we can learn a new way of hitting a golf ball or, for the first time, learn to ride a bike or steer a car. We are attentive to each (or at least most) steps in the required movement; however, once again we must eventually relegate this movement (now skillfully embedded) to the primitive sector of our brain.
Thus, the lack of consciousness comes not from a repression of primitive impulses, but rather from a relegation of many functions and movements to our primitive brain. We don’t block the movement of energy in our body as a result of anxiety; rather, we direct some of this energy to the “automatic” but essential life-sustaining functions of our body. Just as the free flow of energy requires that we “unfreeze” our psychic functions, so the proper functioning of our physical body requires that energy is free flowing and not “frozen” in place.
For Reich, the free flow of energy is the outcome: it helps us heal our heart; for Feldenkrais, the free flow of energy is the means to an outcome that is just as important: the freeing of our bodily functions and our movement. Feldenkrais provides the oil that frees the Tin Man to move and join the journey to Oz. Reich provides the psychic insights that enables the Tin Man to find his heart in Oz.
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