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involve intense pain or the release of strong emotions. titled
Reich was, in effect, expelled from the psychoanalytic society for his political views.Ironically, Reich was also repudiated by the Socialist and Communist parties at about the same time; but for quite different reasons. In a letter written shortly after Reich's trial, Neill said, with the early Reich in mind:“Reich, I love you … I can not bear to think of your be ing punished by an insane prison sentence … The fact is that you are being crucified fundamentally because you are the first man in centuries who has preached pro‐lifeness, be cause you are the one and only man to assert the right of adolescents to love com pletely.
When this chronic guilt was alle viated and the patient could mas turbate regularly with complete gratification, his symptoms subsided to the extent that he could work and socialize to a degree not possible for him before. musculature in the order that they're supposed to be freed:
Finally, Reich's early social psychological writing, particularly his “Mass Psychology of Fascism,” broke new ground in the study of the relations of social structure to in dividual character.
Neither Wilhelm nor his brother was allowed to play with the peasant children or with the Yiddish‐speaking children of the ghetto. which would back them up, but then later claimed that the reverse was actually
Research also revealed that fully developed bions, which Reich now called PA bions, tended to attract and to kill the T Bacilli. But the bulk of this apparent emotional-release reaction does not require any
in the tensed musculature. Soon after his arrival in 1939, Reich rented a house in Forest Hills, where he quickly resumed the pattern of activities he had followed in Oslo, Berlin and Vienna. The times and Reich's personality conjoined to make the next decade and a half a period of hectic, even chaotic, activities and accomplishments.
It was one of those realities Reich could not face. Much ado is made among orgone therapists about how, after a muscle group is
In part, the difficulty may have been Feni chel's reluctance to accept Reich's sexual‐political views. and compare them to a control group that received either no therapy or a
To the latter argument, Reich re sponded that ejaculation itself was not indicative of what he came to call orgastic potency.By this he meant complete, reflexive and totally satisfying orgasm, the major criteria of which were the “involuntary contractions of the organism and the complete discharge of the excitation,” as well as the ability to “concentrate oneself with one's whole personality on the orgastic experience, in spite of possible conflicts.” ‘A patient, argued Reich, could be orgastically impotent and still have an orgasm, but it would be a feeble replica of the ex perience of the orgastically potent individual for whom or genii was a total relief from sexual pressure and a rejuve‐ nating experience.ALTHOUGH Reich's theory of the damming up of sexual energy—sexual stasis he called it—is not supported by the preponderance of evidence, his idea that orgastic potency is a criterion of mental health contains a partial truth. found that if he pressed hard enough on the tensed muscles with his fingertips,
Wolfe was able to get Reich a two year appointment as associ ate professor of medical psy chology at the New School for Social Research in New York. energy moving. Freud had not, however, provided a detailed discussion of the nature of these resistances nor had he provided many clues as to how they were to be analyzed and overcome.Reich, as a result of ques tions raised in the technical seminar and his own thera peutic experiments, was the first analyst to present a sys tematic and detailed method for dealing with the patient's resistances to the fundamental rule. Orgone therapists conflate this notion of a physical
Ten days later he was transferred to the prison at Lewisburg, Pa.While Reich was clearly in contempt of court, the sen tence seems (considering the offense, his age, state of mind and health) rather harsh. whether tensed or not, can be very painful. Reich could be generous when it came to such things as birthday gifts, but he was penurious when it came to money for running a house hold, or in other cases of real material need. This rumor, which was not accurate, per sists today.Reich's stay in Norway was more prolonged than his so journ in either Denmark or Sweden. Mice in jected with large doses of T Bacilli were dead within 24 hours. In response to Reich's claim, many analysts con tended that they had patients who attained genital orgasm, yet remained ill. Others argued that the orgasm theory could not explain the war neuroses produced by sudden traumatic events. result of seeing many patients get sick during the course of their
Many modern orgonomists also use a penlight to elicit eye movement in their
(Deadly Orgone Energy). Von ihm festgelegte Körperzonen, Segmente genannt, wurden mobilisierend bearbeitet, um den Energiefluss im Körper wieder herzustellen.
Inflation was destroying the savings of most Austrians (even Freud was forced to borrow money, a loan he quickly repaid) and the political crosscurrents were many and disturbing. remembered. Reich's loneliness and frustration dur ing this period were height ened by the death of his good friend, Theodore Wolfe, who had handled so many of the publishing and administrative details of his work.
Reich soon had an institute and a publishing outlet (The Orgone Press) for his books and research articles. Party function aries put out orders that all of Reich's books and pamph lets were to be removed from party bookstores. unpleasant experiences from ones past for comparison. While working at the clinic, Reich initiated, in 1924, the famous “Technical Seminar” over which he presided for the next six years.
He considered cancer to be a
the convulsive gag reflex that accompanies vomiting — acts to release the