Neurology Edited by Professor Emeritus Desire' Dubounet, IMUNE

Naturally, besides the intensive treatment of the eye segment, dealing with the whole organism'schronic sympatheticotonia will be part of therapy as well. This implies learning to reduce innerpressure and complementing the tendency of "keeping one's eyes open" with an "inwardly view".The patients learn to find themselves, to live and feel "from within" instead of having theiractions led from outside.According to what clinical studies found out about the character structure of glaucoma patients,we will expect a resurfacing of suppressed feelings during therapy. Examples of this are anxietyabout the environment's reaction, need for control, suppressed anger in case of frustratingexperiences or extreme distress, and pain about hurt sustained earlier in life.5.3. Neck, Shoulder, and Back Pain5.3.1. Pulsation of the ANSOn the level of the individual body segments according to Reich, increased sympatheticotonuscan become manifest in chronically increased tension of the skeletal muscles. Man is basicallyjust as segmentally structured as an earthworm. Reich, too, spoke of the body's segmentalstructure, and divided it into seven segments. In the following, however, we will refer to thesegments of the nervous system, which are not identical with the ones described by Reich."The rigidity of the musculature is the somatic side of the process of repression, and the basis forits continued existence. It is never a matter of individual muscles that become spastic, but ofmuscle groups forming a functional unit from a vegetative (autonomic) „point of view."[18]Healthy muscles display good tone, being neither floppy nor tense. The skin covering thosemuscles is warm and rosy, the joints mobile, movement smooth and fluid. But in most of us,permanent tension is present especially in the shoulder-neck-region. The muscles are hard, theskin cold, the joints crack with movement, and sometimes the muscles contain hard little lumps,called myogeloses. Furthermore, the back muscles are often tense, especially in the lumbarregion. The subjective sensations can span from a feeling of stiffness in that region to painfulcontraction all the way to incapacitating backache.