Everything is in place around the age of 2 years for a confrontation involving two wishes: that of the parents and that of the child.
The following situations can contribute to the development of a masochistic structure:
- A family where love is found combined with severe pressure
- The mother literally suffocates the child by making him/her feel extremely guilty of any attempt to assert his/her freedom or take an attitude that she considers negative.
- Strong fixation of interest on food (force-feeding) and defecation (toilet training is undertaken too early) which causes pressure up and down.
- All attempts at resistance including bursts of rage are crushed. The child cannot find any way out.
Wounding
Where the person with the oral structure has experienced deprivation, the person with a masochistic structure has experienced suppression.
What has been removed is the independence of the young organisem. Often this is not done in an obvious way but will be done through control and overprotection.
The masochist did not suffer from a lack of love but rather from the way in which this love was expressed, in a suffocating manner.
Various strategies can be used, always under the guise of “the good of the child”: punishment, irony, humiliation and finally the threat of withdrawing love if the child does not comply with what has been requested.
Emotions:
- Outside, the masochistic structure describes someone who suffers and complains, he laments while remaining submissive.
- Submission is the dominant tendency of the masochist.
- Inwardly it is the opposite: At the deepest emotional level, he/she feels resentment, negativity, anger, mistrust, and superiority.
Energy structure:
In contrast to the oral structure, the masochistic structure is very charged.
This charge is firmly retained but not frozen.
During toilet training, the child must become clean when the parents feel it should be. This creates tension in the lower body due to the effort to control bowel movements while physiologically it does not ‘is not yet capable of it, but also tensions in the upper body to suppress the expression of anger felt towards the parents.
The use of muscle function is diverted: it is no longer used to facilitate expressive movement but rather to retain expression. The extension of the body in the direction of stretching or tending towards is greatly diminished
The masochistic person’s ego was crushed as if he had been caught in a vice. Rather than releasing his aggression, he will turn it against him/herself.
Physical characteristics :
- The facial expression is full of innocence and naivety. Under this mask, you can expect to find fear, contempt, disgust.
- Heavy physics, picked up with very developed muscles that shorten at the level of the neck and the waist
- Strong tensions in the neck, jaw, and throat
- Strong tensions in the pelvis, buttocks, and thighs
- Overdevelopment of the muscles at the back of the thighs and calves
- The arches of the feet are very tight and the tips of the feet are turned outwards because the buttocks held tight.
Therapeutic objectives:
The masochist must experiment and consciously take responsibility for his rage as well as his pleasure.
It is important to teach him how he/she was programmed. This helps him/her to get out of his/her depressed and saboteur lifestyle
He/she needs to assert him/herself and regain his/her independence.
For that, he/she will have to wash away his/her humiliation and release his/her negativity, his/her aggressiveness, by expressing it actively, when he/she feels like it and as it suits him/her.
Summary of the character structure according to Anne Hodiamont, bio-energetic therapist and certified in “subtle energies” since 2016. Anne studies Integral Presence with Jan since 2011.