Thursday, September 9, 2010

Character Armor

Drawn last winter while reading Steven LeBlanc's Constant Battles.

Wilhelm Reich invented the idea of "character armor." The idea is that we have devices, postures, habits that we use, both to defend ourselves from a world we see as hostile to us, and to keep us from realizing ourselves as we really are. We have all had experiences, even in the womb, Reich thought, that convinced us that the world is hostile, and we perform a kind of goofy calculus that makes us think it would be even more hostile, if we were to behave as we really are.

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