Alternative POIS Forum

After a few minutes stop, make contact with each other's real self, perhaps by hugging and talking for a minute, and try the exercise in reverse.
Oral Position
 Jaw segment block: issues of
 feeding and support
 The primary infant experience connected with our mouths is breast or bottle feeding. At itsbest this is an experience of profound contentment and pleasure, the nearest thing to gettingback inside the womb, reuniting with the mother's body. That floating, drifting, relaxeddreaminess is often maintained long into childhood with thumb sucking, comfort blankets andso on. It is also a crucial component of our adult well-being. If all goes well we grow up withthe secure conviction that the universe can nourish and support us, that there will be goodtimes, that life is fundamentally
 possible
. This conviction enables us to move out effectivelyinto the world. We can mobilise our energies because at other times we are able to let go andbe supported.For very many people, though, the weaning process and infant feeding will have beendisturbed and damaged in some way. This is not really anyone's
 fault
- there is so much guiltin this area. It is very hard - though not totally impossible - for us as parents to give ourchildren more than we had ourselves; the mother or father with distress around feeding issueswill have difficulties in making their own child feel secure.Of course, the parents may have real problems in their own life, or simply too much to do,distracting them from giving full attention to the baby. Their own instincts may have beendistorted by bizarre 'expert' theories of when and how to feed. The birth of more children mayspeed up the weaning process together with the closely related process of 'standing on yourown feet', which is often beyond what the child can handle.The 'oral yearning' character position, then, seeks to be
 fed
. The whole message emanatingfrom the person is 'feed me, hold me up'. There is often a sense of physical weakness; a thin,stringy, weedy body like a plant deprived of light, which has bolted and stretched itself out -the child eternally reaching to be picked up and cuddled. Less commonly, there is the fat oralcharacter, with a jolly grin concealing their resentful, sadistic determination to chew up anddevour the whole world.With the oral position there is almost always an aggressive edge, a profound bitterness. Whywon't people look after me? How can they expect me to fend for myself in this cold, cruelworld? Can't they see how important and special I am? In the oral position, we tend to be 'onstrike', withdrawing our labour from life in the hope that people will see how unfairly we arebeing treated, Sulking, in other words!The infantile nature of these attitudes is very obvious, and often very irritating, Part of theirritation, though, is that we are uncomfortably reminded of feelings we have ourselves, Rareis the person who, as a child. felt fully satisfied and nurtured; who spontaneously initiatedtheir own weaning and every other stage of their independence; who truly feels they have had
enough
. When we refer to feelings as 'infantile', we must remember that they are fullyappropriate for infants to have: we
did
need looking after, we
were
special and important.Many of us, in order to survive, have developed a 'denying oral' block, contradicting ourneeds. We present clenched teeth, stiff lips - the Clint Eastwood, 'strong silent type'. Here is a