Table Of Contents
A newer version of the platform is available. Please refresh the page.
Sign Up to Get information about Sales & Events Click Here
A newer version of the platform is available. Please refresh the page.
Table Of Contents
Reichian psychotherapy has evolved a great deal since its inception. Through his experimental and controversial methods, Reich founded the field of somatic psychotherapy. Freud, who began the field of psychoanalysis and is often called the “father of psychotherapy,” had some controversial methods. Nonetheless, the field of psychotherapy stands despite imperfect beginnings. Reichian therapy has evolved much beyond the Orgone machine.
Reich left Germany to escape the Nazis in the late 1930s, only to find himself persecuted and imprisoned in the United States. His work has long been contested, in part due to intense resistance to sex-positivity and bodily healing in mainstream United States culture. Reich died in prison in the United States in 1957.
Since his death, the field of somatic psychotherapy has developed considerably. Experts, such as Ian Grand, Don Hanlon Johnson, Christine Caldwell, and many others, continue to perform effective work with clients and influence followers around the globe. For many people, traditional talk therapy is ineffective. Many such people benefit greatly from the somatic approach that Reich began so long ago.
2. Elucidation of Points of Controversy: Wilhelm Reich
By Richard A. Blasband, M.D. and Patricia Frisch, Ph. D.
© Dr. Richard A. Blasband of Center for Functional Research and Dr. Patricia Frisch of The Orgonomic Institute of Northern California. Reprinted by permission.
This article includes excerpts taken from a book review written by Dr. Blasband, entitled Adventures in the Orgasmatron, How the Sexual Revolution Came to America.
Wilhelm Reich’s theories and clinical methods have been widely criticized and misunderstood throughout his lifetime and beyond. We will address the most dominantly misunderstood concepts that have been commonly critiqued to give a grounded knowledge base to some of the issues surrounding Reich.
Wilhelm Reich professional life began as a practicing psychoanalyst in Vienna in 1919 at the age of 22. He was recognized for his brilliance and important work on analysis of character. It was accepted by a large part of the psychoanalytic community as a major modification of the standard technique of free association. This began his divergence from mainstream analysts of his time. His style was engaging, not passive and changed the interaction from blank screen to one of delineating character defenses in a direct way. So innovation of theory and practice is a hallmark of Reich’s contribution to the fields of analysis and science.
Another area of controversy grew out of his clinical finding made through detailed questioning of the sexual practices of his patient, that a majority of them were sexually impotent; that is incapable of true gratification from the sexual act. He discovered in the vast majority of his patients, a fear of giving in to orgastic pleasure. When, through the character analytic process, they overcame this fear they rapidly lost their neurotic symptoms. Following Freud’s original thinking, Reich thought that this fact indicated that there was an “economic” factor in neurosis: if the patient became capable of discharging stored excessive quantities of libido, neurotic fixations lost their energy source and, as a result, their power to influence the individual. This quantitative energetic factor became a cardinal element in all his following work.
In Reich’s practice of psychoanalysis this meant that the goal became to increase the capacity of patients to surrender to their deepest impulses.
Yet the fact that Reich’s approach sought to make sexual practices healthier for the public at large was controversial and threatening to more conservative sectors of the population at large. Sexual freedom and what defines healthy sexuality remains a highly controversial topic today as it did in Reich’s time. Nonetheless, we continue in our time to see chronic manifestations in our society of unhealthy sexual acting out that is still not addressed appropriately both within society and in medicine.
The goal of what Reich termed orgastic potency could not be accomplished, through reasoning or dictate, because patients consciously and unconsciously resisted such surrender. The resistances took the form of character attitudes on both psychological and somatic levels. Reich also discovered that the character armoring was anchored in chronic muscular tensions, which he called muscular armoring. Complimenting the analysis of the patient’s character, dissolution of the muscular armoring was now utilized as a means of helping the patient overcome his/her resistances. This innovation became the basis of what is now known as “body work” in therapy, utilized by thousands of practitioners independent of those studying and utilizing Reich’s methods on a more formal basis. His method shaped innovations such as Fritz Perls’s Gestalt Therapy, Alexander Lowen’s bioenergetics analysis and Arthur Janov’s primal therapy.
Mind-body understanding is now more integrated into conventional medical practices and highlighted in medical school programs with an emphasis on the contribution patient’s stress reactions make to increased systemic inflammatory conditions and other stress induced diseases. They are familiarizing medical students with stress reduction techniques such as guided imagery, inclusion of massage, non-touch healing, acupuncture, reflexology, cranial-sacral therapy etc, yet there is still a stigma in some circles to follow the mind body connection to its logical conclusion by incorporating somatic interventions into the analytic field. But through these direct interventions in character and body armor, the organism can release energetic build-up/emotional content and expression that can otherwise contribute to illness, disease and other serious symptomatic conditions. So Reich’s original methods can become more accepted once accurately understood.
Another area of confusion for the public lies in Reich’s concept of Orgone energy. His idea became very controversial, as it was a cutting edge concept for his time.
In the process of conducting “vegetotherapy”, as Reich initially called the method, he noted that with the dissolution of the patient’s armoring strong clonisms and pulsations appeared along with “electric currents” that patients described coursing through their body. Following a bioelectric theory of life extant at the time, Reich postulated that the libidinal energy was electrical in nature and that the fundamental life process was its spontaneous pulsation, its rhythmic expansion and contraction. In the 1930s Reich studied this phenomenon experimentally with a DC millivoltmeter of his own design. Readings on subject’s bodies, when in acute emotional states of anxiety, anger, or pleasure, confirmed Reich’s concept of spontaneous organismic pulsation. Certain of the objective findings did not, however, fit an electrical concept. This set Reich on the path to the discovery of what he later called “orgone energy”.
By examining boiled food stuffs, a natural source of life energy, Reich found under sterile conditions using high magnification microscopy that, no matter what the original source, all foods broke down into microscopic vesicles that Reich called “bions”. The bions consisted only of a membrane and some inner fluid, water. They glowed blue and moved from place to place in the microscope field. Bions could also be secured from non-organic sources such as carbon, iron filings, and ocean sand by heating them to incandescence and placing them in sterile nutrient media. Remarkably, they divided. Cultures of bions from ocean sand seemed to luminate strongly and the laboratory containing them showed anomalous effects; light phenomena such as lightening- like tiny rays, a blue glow in the air, the magnetization of metallic instruments and light impressions on closed film cassettes without exposure to light. There were also strong biological effects such as “sunburned” skin exposed to the bions, and conjunctivitis in the eye Reich used to view bions in the microscope. Fearing some form of nuclear radiation, Reich had the bion cultures tested by a radiation specialist at a nearby Oslo hospital. Nuclear radiation was ruled out as were all possible other known forms of radiation. Reich was forced to conclude that he had discovered a previously unknown kind of radiation, which he called “orgone” because he discovered it in the course of his study of the sexual orgasm and because it was absorbed by organic materials. Metals attracted and repelled it as revealed by electroscopic investigations.
The orgone accumulator became another source of controversy for Reich but its origins and design are easily explained in the context of his growing explorations of the, heretofore unknown, radiation he had discovered.
In order to examine the luminations more carefully, Reich built an enclosure consisting of non-metallic walls and an inner metal lining. He reasoned that, with the bion cultures within the enclosure, the orgone radiation would be concentrated inside. The light phenomena were more readily seen, but to Reich’s surprise the phenomena remained after removing the bions and even after washing down the inner metal lining. Even building a new enclosure without placing bions within it showed the same luminations. It was clear to Reich that the enclosure was somehow concentrating a radiation that existed in the atmosphere. Reich named the enclosure the “orgone energy accumulator” (ORAC). He demonstrated many powerful biological effects, including prolongation of the life of mice with cancerous tumors as well as anomalous physical effects within the enclosure such as a spontaneous elevation of temperature and an anomalous prolongation of discharge times of statically-charged electroscopes. Later he found that Geiger-Mueller Counters could also detect the orgone. In the next decade, Reich was able to experimentally demonstrate a motor force by hooking specially prepared devices to accumulators; anomalous interactions between nuclear radiation sources and concentrated orgone energy; and weather modification by a device that could alter the distribution of orgone energy in the atmosphere.
All of these experiments, including aspects of the nuclear radiation experiment, have been independently replicated by scientifically competent investigators including Dr. Richard Blasband, author, and have been published in a variety of scientific journals.
We have addressed the most controversial of Reich’s ideas: importance of healthy sexual functioning to the health and well-being of our patients, character analysis, somatic interventions, orgone, the orgone accumulator and Reich’s other scientific experimentation and one can see that these are the investigations and innovative discoveries of a very brilliant thinker who found a way to functionally integrate mind and body and show their relationship to cosmic functioning. That he was ultimately imprisoned for his innovative ideas represents a part of American history that shames our identity as an intellectually free and civil society.
3. Critique of Reich’s Theories and Reichian Therapy
The main areas that Reich’s work has been criticized have been:
Note: One must take a note that neither the construct of “resistance” nor the entire DSM has been scientifically validated. Even the term “chemical balance” has not been scientifically validated. Critique articles: http://www.zurinstitute.com/articles.html#critique
Extensive response to the Skeptic’s articles: http://www.orgonelab.org/skeptics.htm