Vegetotherapy and character analysis (Wilhelm Reich)

Theory of change

A person changes when they can recognise and loosen the defences that organise their character and their body, recover affect and contact, and respond with greater mobility instead of from an automatic armour.

Core ideas

1. Character, and not only the symptom, becomes the object of treatment

   Reich's central technical contribution was to shift attention from the isolated symptom towards the stable organisation by which a person defends themselves, relates, expresses affect and responds to conflict. Character thus appears as a chronic mode of ego functioning that can absorb conflict, make it ego-syntonic and turn it into a way of life; a treatment may therefore obtain insight into unconscious contents and yet fail if the character structure regulating access to them remains intact. Character analysis seeks to make that organisation visible and to loosen it before lasting changes in the contents it protects can be expected. (Reich, 1933/1967, Character Analysis, parts I–II).

2. The form of the resistance reveals how the defence operates in the present

   Reich distinguishes between the content of what the patient communicates and the form in which they communicate it, and attaches decisive technical value to the latter. Rigid politeness, an incongruent smile, monotony, grandiosity, silence, complaint or an apparently impeccable cooperativeness can all act as resistances even when the patient produces abundant associations and seemingly profound material. The therapist observes these regularities as present manifestations of character and makes them an object of clinical investigation, because they show how the defence is organised here and now before revealing what it is defending against. (Reich, 1933/1967, Character Analysis, chs. III–IV).

3. Resistance is analysed before the deep content it protects is interpreted

   Reichian technique establishes a dynamic priority: first it must become recognisable that a defence exists, then how it works, and finally against which affect, impulse or conflict it is organised. Deep interpretations offered while the resistance remains intact may be rejected, intellectualised or absorbed as new defensive material; Reich therefore insists on starting from the relevant psychic surface, working continuously with the dominant resistance and connecting with childhood strata only once the defence has loosened and the corresponding affect can be lived. (Reich, 1933/1967, Character Analysis, chs. III–V).

4. Insight acquires therapeutic value when accompanied by affective experience

   Reich regards it as insufficient for the patient to know intellectually the history or meaning of their conflict if the affect remains blocked. Deep modification requires that the defence lose part of its automatic function and allow fear, rage, sadness, desire or other emotions to be experienced again in a tolerable form that can be linked with personal history. This thesis explains his criticism of premature interpretations and prepares the transition from a chiefly verbal technique towards an intervention that also attends to breathing, posture, expression and muscular tension. (Reich, 1933/1967, Character Analysis, parts I and III).

5. Character armour and muscular armour are two functional expressions of one defence

   In the later development of his work, Reich formulates a functional identity between psychic and bodily modes of inhibition: a defence may appear simultaneously as a character attitude, an affective restriction, a breathing pattern and chronic muscular tension. Muscular armour is posited not merely as the somatic consequence of an idea, but as an active part of the way the organism contains excitation and expression. This formulation led to character-analytic vegetotherapy, which combines the reading of character with somatic work within a single functional conceptualisation. (Reich, 1933/1967, Character Analysis, chs. XIV–XV; Reich, 1942/2010, The Function of the Orgasm, chs. VII–VIII).

6. The body expresses a history of inhibitions without functioning as a literal archive of memories

   Bodily language acquires clinical value in Reich because the gaze, jaw, chest, diaphragm, abdomen or pelvis may take part in recurring forms of emotional restraint. His technique uses those regularities in order to access defensive function and facilitate affective and autobiographical associations, but a rigorous contemporary reading must avoid turning each tension into a fixed symbol or asserting that a muscle literally stores a specific memory. The clinically usable core is the functional and contextual observation of the relation between posture, breathing, emotion and defence. (Reich, 1933/1967, Character Analysis, chs. XIV–XV; Reich, 1942/2010, The Function of the Orgasm, ch. VIII).

7. Pleasure anxiety describes the defence that appears when an excitation experienced as dangerous increases

   Reich observes that some people contract precisely when pleasure, closeness, bodily excitation or spontaneity intensify, and conceptualises this reversal as pleasure anxiety. Within his theory, the person has learned to protect themselves from excitatory expansion through muscular control, affective inhibition and character restrictions, so that a potentially gratifying experience triggers fear and withdrawal. Clinically, this concept guides the therapist to locate the point at which a pleasant experience turns into contraction and to work with the defence without obliging the patient to increase excitation. (Reich, 1942/2010, The Function of the Orgasm, chs. V and VII–VIII).

8. Self-regulation constitutes the functional ideal opposed to compulsive morality

   Reich maintains that a less armoured organisation makes it possible to regulate needs, affects, sexuality, work and responsibility with less dependence on rigid external prohibitions. His concept of self-regulation expresses the conviction that social behaviour can be organised through contact with real needs, the capacity for gratification, consideration of consequences and responsibility, rather than moral obedience based on fear and suppression. This thesis runs through his theory of character and his sexological and social programme, although his historical formulations about sexuality must today be read in the light of contemporary knowledge and ethical norms. (Reich, 1936, The Sexual Revolution; Reich, 1942/2010, The Function of the Orgasm, chs. V–VI).

9. Character is also a psychological anchoring of social conditions

   Reich extends intrapsychic analysis by arguing that institutions, family organisation, sexual morality and relations of authority participate in the formation of relatively stable character structures. Ideology acquires material power when it ceases to be an external opinion and is incorporated as an automatic way of feeling, obeying, fearing, desiring and relating; he therefore tries to explain both individual suffering and collective adherence to authoritarian systems through the link between social conditions and the formation of character. This dimension distinguishes his proposal from an exclusively individual psychoanalysis. (Reich, 1933/1967, Character Analysis, preface to the first edition; Reich, 1933/1972, The Mass Psychology of Fascism).

10. Secondary destructiveness arises from the defensive distortion of vital impulses, not from an original aggressive essence

    Reich distances himself from the Freudian hypothesis of a death drive and proposes that much destructiveness, sadism and irrational behaviour develops secondarily when needs and excitations are chronically frustrated, inhibited or deformed by the armour. In his three-layer schema, an adapted and restrained surface covers a secondary layer in which destructive impulses appear, while beneath it he posits a biological core oriented towards love, work and spontaneous sexuality. This anthropology is doctrinally central in Reich, although it does not constitute an accepted empirical description of contemporary human personality. (Reich, 1942/2010, The Function of the Orgasm, chs. V–VI; Reich, 1933/1972, The Mass Psychology of Fascism).

Influences

• Classical psychoanalysis (Freud)
• Freudian theory of libido, resistance and transference
• Marxism and historical materialism
• Clinical sexology and interwar sexual reform
• Bronisław Malinowski's social anthropology

Key references

• Reich, W. (1933/1967). Análisis del carácter [Character Analysis]. Paidós / edición basada en las revisiones posteriores del autor.
• Reich, W. (1942/2010). La función del orgasmo: El descubrimiento del orgón. Paidós.
• Reich, W. (1933/1972). Psicología de masas del fascismo. Editorial Ayuso.
• Reich, W. (1936). La revolución sexual: Para una estructura de carácter autónoma del hombre [Die Sexualität im Kulturkampf].
• Reich, W. (1948/2013). Listen, Little Man! Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
• Neukrug, E. S. (Ed.). (2015). The SAGE Encyclopedia of Theory in Counseling and Psychotherapy. SAGE. Entrada «Orgonomy».