Wilhelm Reich

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE LIFE AND WORKS OF WILHELM REICH:Part One

Wilhelm Reich was born on March 24, 1897, in what is now the Ukraine. He was born into a land-owning family and received a good education from tutors brought onto the estate by his father who raised cattle for a living. The most significant experience of his childhood was probably that of his mother's infidelity and suicide. His mother had begun an affair with one of Reich's tutors. Reich, from his adjacent bedroom was able to hear the tutor slip into his mother's bedroom on a few occasions. Reich, somewhat perplexed and perhaps jealous, decided to hint at the truth to his father who took his wife to task on the matter. She eventually attempted suicide to escape his torment (a sloppy attempt which left her bed-ridden for a time before she passed on). Reich was guilt-ridden, and his father was devastated--eventually dying of grief four years later in 1914. Reich was 17 and parentless. One of Reich's first case histories, "A Case of Pubertal Breaching of the Incest Taboo" published in 1920, was actually a self-analysis of his Oedipal longing for his mother and is exemplary of his lingering guilt (Corrington 6-11).

A year after his father's death, in 1915, Reich lost the family estate when the Russians invaded Austria during World War One. He enlisted in the army, and, following the war, moved to Vienna to continue his professional education. It was amidst the intellectual hub-bub of Vienna that Reich was first exposed to the relatively new field of psychoanalysis (Sharaf 56). By the end of 1918, Reich had enrolled in the School of Medicine at the University of Vienna. He was most fascinated by the study of sexuality and became involved in a student-organized seminar on the subject (FO 20-22).

"The seminar led Reich directly to Freud's writings. Immediately he was enthralled, and especially drawn to Freud's concept of infantile sexuality, which made sex a much larger force than when merely confined to adulthood. One could trace its developmental aspects and see in adult perversions and neurotic conflicts a fixation on or regression to earlier pre-pubertal modes of sexual functioning. This viewpoint was syntonic with Reich's own experience of the powerful childhood drama that Freud so emphasized: the boy's sexual love for his mother, and his rivalrous hatred toward his father.

"In a wider sense, Freud's method of thought greatly appealed to Reich because it tended to combine the two strands of vitalism and mechanistic science that Reich had already encountered in his own medical training. Freud was not afraid, for example, to address major problems of human emotional life even if they could not be studied in the laboratory. He was prepared to postulate a force--libido, or the energy of the sexual instinct--even though it could not be investigated experimentally or measured quantitatively. At the same time, Freud the empiricist studied the transformations of this postulated language of physics, speaking, for example, of 'cathexes' and 'displacements' of energy, of the 'quantitative' strength of an idea, of emotion as a phenomenon of 'energy discharge'. Moreover, he hoped that one day the concept of libido would be more than a metaphor or an analogy, that it would be rooted in a biochemical matrix" (Sharaf 56-7).

Reich began studying under Freud, and his life-work would eventually be devoted to, one could say, quantifying the libido and developing a science whereby its function could be understood in the context of healthy/unhealthy living. In 1920, Freud allowed Reich to begin seeing patients. In that fall he was admitted to the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, a great honor for such a young student--but then Reich was one of Freud's star pupils.

Reich's political interests were growing as well. He became interested in the social-democratic movement of the time and was intensely involved in women's rights, the rights of youth to experience sexuality, the need for birth control, and the right to an abortion (61). However, Reich found himself becoming more alienated from colleagues and friends. He was a workaholic and was intensely opinionated. He had little patience for those who disagreed with him, and, indeed, much of his later research was done without the support of the medical or psychoanalytic community. He eventually graduated from medical school in 1922.

Reich's early work was well received by the psychoanalytic community in Vienna. Between the years 1924 and 1930, Reich "was the director of the Seminar for Psychoanalytic Therapy, in which practical problems of treatment were thrashed out. His first book, The Impulsive Character "won Reich considerable recognition from his mentors and colleagues" (Sharaf 71). It also contained the first major exposition of his theory of character analysis (Corrington 56-62).

Reich's early psychoanalytic theories eventually found fruition in two of his most important books, The Function of the Orgasm (1927) and Character Analysis (1933). The early German version of The Function of the Orgasm was rewritten in 1942. This updated version of The Function of the Orgasm was my introduction to Reich. I had heard of Reich in passing. I think the earliest recollection I have of hearing about him was in the early '90's. I think my friend T.C. had mentioned the work of a scientist in New England who had developed a rain-making machine back in the 1950's. I didn't know Reich by name at that point, but I was already becoming intensely interested in alternate technology, etc. In the Spring of '96 I was having dinner with my pal D.S., and I mentioned the rain-making story. She had read Reich and knew of whom I spoke. She intended to lend me the biography of Reich written by Myron Sharaf, one of his students; however, she had lent her copy to T.C., and it had not yet been returned. Instead, she lent me The Function of the Orgasm. I was a bit reluctant to read the book at first being somewhat intimidated by the title. However, the title, as I later would learn, is a bit misleading. It's not a sex manual. Rather, it is an intense piece of psychoanalytic genius. I loved the book and, upon finishing it, went out to the bookstore and picked up what I believe to be Reich's most important social-psychoanalytic work, The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933). After reading this I finally got a hold of Myron Sharaf's biography of Reich, Fury on Earth--a fascinating read if I might say so (though, through conversations with respected Reichian historians, I have learned that this book does not deal well with the intricacies of Reich's theories--especially those concerned with the bions and the cancer biopathy). After this book I read Genitality in the Theory and Therapy of Neurosis (1927)--basically a translation of the original 1927 German edition of The Function of the Orgasm--and then a collection of letters between Reich and A.S. Neill, a pioneer in the field of alternative education (more on Neill later). I got about halfway through Character Analysis before the Spring semester of '97 began. I have yet to pick Character Analysis back up. But I did find time to read Peter Reich's biography Book of Dreams and Ilse Ollendorf Reich's biography Wilhelm Reich: A Personal Biography. I then re-read The Function of the Orgasm in preparation for a seminar on the book during the summer of 1998 at the Wilhelm Reich Museum in Maine. The seminar was truly a wonderful experience for me. I met some great folks and enjoyed the opportunity to see Orgonon and the many exhibits there.

Since that time, I have built my own orgone accumulator, expanded my collection of Reich's works (taking the time to read Listen, Little Man, The Bion Experiments, and a good chunk of The Cancer Biopathy), and attended another seminar at Orgonon on the bionous nature of the cancer biopathy (which included lab work with bion preparations). Presently, I am working my way through Robert Corrington's Wilhelm Reich: Psychoanalyst and Radical Naturalist.

Anyway, it is necessary to summarize Reich's earlier work in order to get a feel for the events that led to the discovery of orgone. Put simply, Reich emphasized character analysis as opposed to traditional Freudian symptom analysis. Reich felt that it was more useful to treat the neurotic individuals entire character rather than individual symptoms (Corrington 41, 46-7, 51, 56-7). Reich postulated that neuroses manifested themselves in a persons facial expressions and body language or posture--i.e., their character structure. Reich pictured the healthy individual as elastic--capable of expansion out toward the world and life and contraction within the self when necessary. Reich saw neurotics, on the other hand, as rigid. Their body language and expressions denoted unreleased, chronic tension. This is what Reich is referring to when he speaks of body or character armor (i.e. chronic muscular tension). By looking at the organism as a functional whole, Reich felt that he was able to achieve better and quicker results than by simply treating whatever symptom happened to be manifesting itself at the moment.

Reich believed that at the root of all neurosis was sexual dysfunction brought on by pre-pubescent trauma (i.e. the individual manifests pre-genital drives rather than healthy adult genitality). He also believed that in order to defeat neurosis, "orgastic potency" had to be established or the neurosis would persist:

"The severity of every form of psychic illness is directly related to the severity of the genital disturbance.

"The prospects of cure and the success of the cure are directly dependent upon the possibility of establishing the capacity for full genital gratification.

"The disturbance of the ability to experience genital gratification, to experience, that is, the most natural of what is natural, proved to be a symptom which was always present in women and seldom absent in men" (Reich's emphasis, FO 96-7).

Reich summarizes his argument well in the introductory chapter of The Function of the Orgasm:

"Psychic health depends on orgastic potency, i.e., upon the degree to which one can surrender to and experience the climax of excitation in the natural sexual act. It is founded upon the healthy character attitude of the individual's capacity for love. Psychic illnesses are the result of a disturbance of the natural capacity for love.

"Psychic disturbances are the consequences of the sexual chaos of society. For thousands of years, this chaos has had the function of psychically subjecting man to the prevailing conditions of existence, of internalizing the external mechanization of life. It has served to bring about the psychic anchoring of a mechanized and authoritarian civilization by making man incapable of functioning independently.

"The vital energies regulate themselves naturally without compulsive duty or compulsive morality--both of which are sure signs of existing antisocial impulses.

"People who are brought up with a negative attitude toward life and sex acquire a pleasure anxiety, which is physiologically anchored in chronic muscular spasms.

"The character structure of modern man, who reproduces a six-thousand-year-old patriarchal authoritarian culture is typified by characterological armoring against his inner nature and against the social misery which surrounds him. This characterolgical armoring of the character is the basis of isolation, indigence, craving for authority, fear of responsibility, mystic longing, sexual misery, and neurotically impotent rebelliousness.

"Since the emergence of patriarchy, the natural pleasure of work and activity has been replaced by compulsive duty.

"The structuring of masses of people to be blindly obedient to authority is brought about not by natural parental love, but by the authoritarian family. The suppression of the sexuality of small children and adolescents is the chief means of producing this obedience.

"Nature and culture, instinct and morality, sexuality and achievement become incompatible as a result of the split in the human structure. The unity and congruity of culture and nature, work and love, morality and sexuality, longed for from time immemorial, will remain a dream as long as man continues to condemn the biological demand for natural (orgastic) sexual gratification" (Reich's emphasis, FO 6-8).

Indeed, this is a harsh analysis of humankind--not to mention the foundation of intense expectations. However, I think part of Reich's perception of humanity had to do with the era and environment in which he wrote his early psychoanalytic work. It was the beginning of large-scale industrialization in Austria and Germany. Many young people were coming into the cities from farms looking for new opportunities and income. Reich pictured the homes these people came from as traditional patriarchal, authoritarian farmhouses with overly protective and repressive fathers and submissive mothers. In addition, Reich saw religious mores more ingrained in those from the country than in those who lived in the somewhat agnostic city. Reich saw the clash of these two cultures occurring in the minds of these migrants--their authoritarian upbringing coming into conflict with the relative sexual liberation and social-democratic nature of city life:

"...the statement that the 'ideology' changes at a slower pace than the economic basis is invested with a definite cogency. The basic traits of the character structures corresponding to a definite historical situation are formed in early childhood, and are far more conservative than the forces of technical production. It results from this that, as time goes on, the psychic structures lag behind the rapid changes of the social conditions from which they derived, and later come into conflict with new forms of life. This is the basic trait of the nature of so-called tradition, i.e., of the contradiction between the old and the new social situation" (Reich's emphasis, MPF 18-9).

Indeed, I agree with much of what Reich was saying, and I believe it is still applicable. What is most interesting to me is Reich's theory that social structures can produce submissive populations. In The Mass Psychology of Fascism, Reich argues this point in depth. He first applies his theories to the rise of fascism in Germany and then to the failure of the Bolshevik revolution--which disintegrated into authoritarian Stalinism. Both arguments are strong, and I believe the book to be one of the most fascinating and potentially important social-psychological commentaries of the 20th century. It's implications, especially in terms of the similarity (some may say 'sameness') of patriotism and nationalism/fascism are definitely food for thought.

Regardless, I think birth control, the ability to obtain safe abortions, and the increased freedom of youth to explore their sexuality have brought the mass psychology of society a long way from its structure in Europe in the 1910's, 20's, and 30's--and all of these were goals of Reich's social-psychological work. However, I've only experienced modern America, and fascism still exists--though a façade of increased democratization is being perpetuated. Perhaps society has just become a bit more polarized. There are those who have liberated themselves to an extent. These people cannot be fooled by blatant fascist propaganda; however, many liberals have been duped by the façade of modern democracy which conceals the growing feudal/fascist, authoritarian, business-controlled New World Order.

I often wonder what Reich would think of the '90's. Indeed, there is a much more liberal attitude toward sex and sexuality than there was in the '30's; however, I sense that despite such strides as birth control and the sexual "revolution", the emotional plague--the fear of submission to pleasure and the need for authority--is still an epidemic. Perhaps things are worse now than they were then due to the unhealthy portrayal of sexuality in many films and TV programs, millennial madness in the Christian right, the paranoia associated with the increasing fascist international police state, and economic disparity in inner cities and the third world. In other words, society is a long, long way from attaining anything resembling an utopia.

Anyway, back to Vienna. Reich's political interests were becoming a growing concern of the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society which was constantly trying to avoid bad press. But Reich was a revolutionary, and his next move provided Freudian purists with more ammunition in their attempt to defrock him--he broke with Freud over the concept of the death instinct. Freud had:

"assumed the existence of an unconscious need for punishment. This need ostensibly explained the patient's resistance to getting well. At the same time, the 'death instinct' was made a part of psychoanalytic theory. Freud assumed that living substance was governed by two antithetical instinctual forces. On one hand, he postulated the life instincts, which he equated to the sexual instinct (Eros)...However, operating behind these life instincts was the 'mute' but 'far more important' death instinct (Thanatos), the tendency to reduce living substance to an inanimate condition, to nothingness, to Nirvana...In the neurosis, according to this view, the death instinct counteracted the creative life, i.e., sexual, instincts. To be sure, the death instinct could not be perceived. But its manifestations were said to be too evident to be overlooked. In everything he did, man demonstrated the tendency toward self-annihilation" (FO 126).

Reich argued against this entire conception by placing the destructive impulses of the "death instinct" within the context of sadism and masochism. Reich states,

"A living creature develops a destructive impulse when it wants to destroy a source of danger. In this case, the destruction or killing of the object is the biologically purposeful goal. The original motive is not pleasure in destruction. Rather the destruction serves the 'life instinct'...and is an attempt to avoid anxiety and to preserve the ego in its totality. I destroy in a dangerous situation because I want to live and do not want to have any anxiety. In short, the impulse to destroy serves a primary biological will to live...

"Every seemingly arbitrary destructive action is a reaction of the organism to the frustration of a gratification of a vital need, especially of a sexual need.

"The inhibition of sexual excitation produces a contradiction that grows steadily worse. The inhibition increases the stasis of excitation; the increased stasis weakens the ability of the organism to reduce the stasis. As a consequence, the organism acquires a fear of excitation, in other words, sexual anxiety. Hence, sexual anxiety is caused by the external frustration of instinctual gratification and is internally anchored by the fear of the dammed-up sexual excitation. This leads to orgasm anxiety, which is the ego's fear of the over-powering excitation of the genital system due to its estrangement from the experience of pleasure. Orgasm anxiety constitutes the core of the universal, biologically anchored pleasure anxiety. It is usually expressed as a general anxiety about every form of vegetative sensation and excitation, or the perception of such excitation and sensations. The pleasure of living and the pleasure of the orgasm are identical. Extreme orgasm anxiety forms the basis of the general fear of life". (Reich's emphasis, FO 155-7, 161-2).

Moving on to the crux of Reich's argument:

"It is necessary to point out that the sex-economic elucidation of the problem of masochism, i.e., the clinical refutation of the theory of the death instinct, represents an enormous step forward in the understanding of neuroses. For now it was no longer possible to ascribe human suffering to an immutable 'biological will to suffer,' i.e., a 'death instinct,' but to dismal social impingements on the biopsychic apparatus. And this paved the way to a critique of neuroses-engendering social conditions, a way previously blocked by the hypothesis of a biological will to suffer.

"The sex-economic solution of the problem of masochism also provided an approach to the biological basis of neuroses. Indeed, the fear of 'bursting,' a fear which characterizes masochism, led (at first merely at a speculation, later as a viable theory) to the understanding of the vegetative life apparatus.

"Long years of research on cases of masochism did not provide any solution. It was not until I began to have doubts about the veracity and correctness of the patients' statements that a ray of light finally broke through this darkness. One could not help but be amazed, notwithstanding long years of analytic work, at how little one had learned to analyze the masochistic experience of pleasure itself. In probing deeply into the function of pleasure in the masochist, I was suddenly struck by a curious fact which was deeply puzzling at first, but at the same time provided a complete clarification of the sex-economy and, consequently, of the specific basis of masochism. What was surprising and at the same time puzzling was that the formula, the masochist experiences unpleasure as pleasure, proved to be incorrect. Rather, the masochist's specific mechanism of pleasure consisted precisely in that, while he strives after pleasure like any other person, a disturbing mechanism causes the striving to miscarry. This, in turn, causes the masochist to perceive sensations, which are experienced as pleasurable by the normal person, as unpleasurable when they exceed a certain intensity. The masochist, far from striving after unpleasure, demonstrates a strong intolerance of psychic tensions and suffers from a quantitative overproduction of unpleasure, not to be found in any other neurosis.

"The masochist approaches pleasurable activity just like any other person, but the fear of punishment intervenes. Masochistic self-punishment is not the execution of the feared punishment but rather the execution of a milder, substitute punishment. Thus, it represents a special kind of defense against punishment and anxiety.

"It took many years to solve this puzzle and to understand that the 'incurability of the masochist, who doesn't want to give up his suffering,' was to be ascribed to our very imperfect knowledge of his sexual apparatus. It would have been impossible to find an answer had we adhered to the theory that the masochist is fixated on suffering because of a repressed guilt feeling or a need for punishment, supposedly the manifestation of a death instinct" (Reich's emphasis, CA 226, 236, 241, 256).

The whole argument is fascinating and is hard for a neophyte, like me, to adequately relate without going beyond the scope of this paper, but I hope this provides some insight into Reich the psychoanalyst. For a better understanding, I highly recommend reading the primary sources (i.e. Function of the Orgasm, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, Character Analysis, etc.) and Robert Corrington's biography of Reich, Wilhelm Reich: Psychoanalyst and Radical Naturalist.

As a result of the break with Freud and his growing involvement in the Austrian Communist Party, Reich lost his position in the Vienna Psychoanalytical Society. Reich left Austria in 1930 and moved to Berlin. In Germany, Reich became deeply involved in the German Communist Party--the main leftist opposition to the National Socialists. Reich had embraced the intent of the Bolshevik revolution--the absolute destruction of the state--though Lenin was unsuccessful in his endeavor, and Russia lapsed into Stalinistic despotism. Reich felt that all life should be self-regulated, that is that if humankind could overcome it's neurosis, then people would be able to live together without a need for authoritarian structures which are necessary in the present age to protect us from ourselves and each other:

"For the first time in the history of sociology, a possible future regulation of human society is derived not from ideologies or conditions that must be created, but from natural processes that have been present and have been developing from the very beginning. Work-democratic 'politics' is distinguished by the fact that it rejects all politics and demagogism. Masses of working men and women will not be relieved of their social responsibility. They will be burdened with it. Work-democrats have no ambition to be political führers, nor will they ever be permitted to develop such an ambition...

"Work-democracy adds a decisive piece of knowledge to the scope of ideas related to freedom. The masses of people who work and bear the burden of social existence on their shoulders neither are conscious of their social responsibility nor are they capable of assuming the responsibility for their own freedom. This is the result of the century-long suppression of rational thinking, the natural functions of love, and scientific comprehension of the living. Everything related to the emotional plague in social life can be traced back to this incapacity and lack of consciousness. It is work-democracy's contention that, by its very nature, politics is and has to be unscientific, i.e., that it is an expression of human helplessness, poverty, and suppression" (Reich's emphasis, MPF 314-5).

A utopian ideal to say the least. Yet, Reich was not one to give up on an idea simply because it was utopian. I believe that Reich thought he was laying the foundations of a new mode of human organization. He believed that a contradiction existed in the human psyche. On the one hand, he posited that men and women sought freedom and desired to throw off the yoke of authoritarian politics. On the other hand, he believed that humankind had been warped by authoritarian structures--that is, that adults had already been indoctrinated into authoritarian structures, and, though they sought to overcome them, the only real hope for humanity was to attempt to bring up children in a way that encouraged self-regulation. Indeed, a difficult task. But this is the process that Reich attempted to begin within the framework of the German Communist Party. He organized seminars at party rallies where he distributed pamphlets and gave speeches on the necessity of self-regulation-what Reich would refer to as overcoming the "emotional plague," and the need for parents to allow their children to explore their sexuality without fear of authoritarian retribution for masturbation or sex-play between adolescents. He provided birth control information and pushed for legalized abortion.

Such talks were actually well received. However, following a youth conference in Dresden in the fall of 1932 during which "a resolution was issued strongly endorsing adolescent sexuality within the framework of the revolutionary movement, "the party leaders became concerned worrying that the opposition would use such information to discredit the communists" (Sharaf 169). The party leaders put out an edict stating that Reich's pamphlet did not represent the party line. This led to "disputes between youth groups strongly in favor of the sex-political publications and the party hierarchy that opposed them" (170). Party leaders "declared that Reich was 'counter-revolutionary,' that 'Reich wishes to make fornication organizations out of our associations,' that his publications 'discredited Marxism,' that 'there were no orgasm disturbances among the proletariat, only among the bourgeoisie,' and that Reich was replacing the 'class struggle' with the conflict between the young and the adults" (170).

Go to Part Two

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