Character Analysis by Wilhelm Reich

Author:Wilhelm Reich
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

PART THREE

From Psychoanalysis to Orgone Biophysics

CHAPTER XIII

PSYCHIC CONTACT AND VEGETATIVE CURRENT

(A Contribution to the Theory of Affects and Character-Analytic Technique)

PREFACE

The work which follows is an elaboration on the talk I gave at the 13th International Psychoanalytic Congress in Lucerne, August 1934. It is a continuation of the discussion of the difficult character-analytic and clinical material and problems which I considered in great detail in Part I of the present volume. Above all, it is an attempt to comprehend two groups of facts which were not dealt with in Part I: (1) psychic contactlessness and the psychic mechanism which attempts to compensate for this by establishing substitute contacts; (2) the antithetical unity of the vegetative and psychic manifestations of affect life. The latter is a direct continuation of my work on the “Urgegensatz des vegetativen Lebens,” which was printed in Zeitschrift für politische Psychologie und Sexualökonomie, 1934.

Again, it is merely a short, though clinically well substantiated, advance from the sphere of what is already known and established into the dark and difficult problems of the relationship between psyche and soma. The application of my technique of character analysis will enable anyone to verify these findings once he has mastered the initial technical difficulties.

A discussion of the views set forth in the works of other authors on the problem of “totality” and the homogeneity of psychic and somatic functions was intentionally avoided. Sex-economy approaches the problem from the perspective of an otherwise neglected phenomenon, the orgasm, and consciously applies the methods of functionalism. Even for this reason, a critical discussion would be premature, for it would presuppose a certain completeness in my own view and that other authors had already taken a stand on the orgasm problem. Neither is true.

There was good reason why the clinical refutation of Freud’s theory of the death instinct had to be retained. Deep analysis of the so-called striving for nirvana was especially instrumental in strengthening my view that the hypothesis of the death instinct was an attempt to explain facts which could not yet be explained and, moreover, attempted to do this in a misleading way.

To those psychoanalysts with a functional orientation, the young sex-economists and the character analysts, this essay is perhaps more suited than previous essays to offer some theoretical clarity and practical help in the application of the character-analytic technique. The character-analytic concept and technique of dealing with psychic disturbances is again in a state of flux as a result of the discovery of psychic contactlessness and the fear of establishing contact. It may well be that the ideas set forth in this writing will soon prove to be incomplete, perhaps incorrect here and there. This would demonstrate that only through living practice can one keep abreast of the development of a new idea. Those who are seriously endeavoring to learn the character-analytic technique will have no difficulty in recognizing in their clinical work, and making full use of, the relationships between the mode of psychic contact and vegetative excitability described here for the first time.

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