The character types are patterns that form when emotional and physical patterns from early life remain unresolved and become fixed in the body and in how we behave. They draw on Wilhelm Reich’s character analysis. Therapeutic Shamanism works with six types, each linked to a stage of early childhood: Boundaried, Oral, Controlling, Holding, Thrusting and Crisis, some with a sub-type.
Where does the idea of character types come from? #
From Wilhelm Reich, who proposed that our early life experiences set the foundation for emotional and behavioural patterns that persist throughout our lives. Reich believed that how we process emotions as infants and children shapes the patterns we carry into adulthood.
How are they linked to body armour? #
When we experience emotional trauma, our bodies protect us by creating chronic muscular tension. This tension forms habitual patterns that correspond to the unresolved emotions from earlier stages of life. So our posture, patterns of muscular tension, facial expressions, and where we hold weight or don’t, are a physical expression of the armouringArmouring. Wilhelm Reich’s term for the chronic muscular tension that locks unbearable feeling into the body. The body holds the truth of what has happened to us; healing is somatic, letting the held movement complete. Read the full answer we have put on.
“As emotional and physical patterns remain unresolved, they become fixed into what Reich called ‘character types’.” See What is body armouring, and what does Reichian work contribute?
What are the six types? #
There are six types, some of them with sub-types. Here they are with their ages and descriptions:
– Boundaried, from conception to six months: not feeling safe to be here, and not belonging. Chameleons. – Oral, from six months to two years: feeling underfed, unsupported, starved of love, with vulnerability, longing and neediness. Its sub-type, compensated oral, has the same issues but denies the neediness. – Controlling, from two to four years: not safe to be vulnerable, so must be in control and top dog. Charismatic and narcissistic. – Holding, from two to four years: not safe to be assertive, so must behave. Long-suffering, with low self-esteem. – Thrusting, from four to seven years: only worth what they achieve. Stiff upper lip and perfectionist. – Crisis, from four to seven years: getting attention through being sexual, and going from crisis to crisis. Its sub-type, denying crisis, is cooler and more aloof: “You can look but you cannot touch.”
Their older names are schizoid (Boundaried), psychopathic (Controlling), masochistic (Holding), phallic (Thrusting) and hysteric (Crisis).
Why does the body matter so much here? #
Animists knew that the body never lies and knows the truth. Our head is constantly making things up, telling stories, rationalising, explaining and justifying; the body is incapable of making up stories. When we are not listening to our bodies, a gap opens between what we think the truth is, who we think we are, and what the truth actually is and who we really are.
See How do embodiment, grounding and the nervous system support healing?
