THE BETRAYAL OF THE BODY

Dr. Lowen (Love and Orgasm-1965) contends and substantiates a view of schizophrenia as the ""split between ego and body""-- or more simply, to be or not to be--the lack of identity, the lack of sense of self. Eventually after the defenses against fear have crumbled (rigidity one defense, retreat another) the body is ""betrayed"" or ""forsaken"" when lack of contact sometimes gives way to a total loss of control. He studies self-destructive impulses or the negation of the body(i.e. sexuality), repression and the demonic forces which usurp it; and much of the study is interesting in its affiliation of the physiological with the psychological--patterns of breathing, moving, eating, sleeping as well as the body type, asthenic, which reveal the schizophrenic personality. All of this is amplified from his own analytic casework and from the professional literature, in which category this properly belongs. It is not a book for a general audience.