Orgastic potency

In Reichian psychology, the individual lacking orgastic potency is seen to have developed a neurotic psychosomatic "armor" that blocks the experience of pleasure. This is differentiated between the functionally identical "character armor" and "muscular armor".[19] Muscular armor prevents the sexual climax from being experienced throughout the body.[21] For example, forms of armoring are pulling back the pelvis or tightening the thigh and buttock muscles.[24]

Reich used the terms "genital character" and "neurotic character" respectively to distinguish between two ideal character types: one with and one without orgastic potency. The genital character is the non-neurotic character structure, which is free from armor and, therefore, has the capacity of natural sexual and moral self-regulation,[25] and experiences life as a fulfilment and unfolding of his or her natural tendencies and struggle to achieve objectives.[6] The neurotic character operates under a principle of compulsive moral regulation due to chronic energy stasis.[25] The neurotic character's work and life is permeated by struggle to suppress original and even more basic urges or tendencies. The various forms of neurotic character correspond to the equally many ways of suppressing such urges or tendencies that the human being in question considers to be dangerous or is ashamed of.[6]

The two goals of Reichian vegetotherapy are the attainment of orgastic potency (for sexual intercourse) and of the "orgasm reflex" during therapy. The orgasm reflex may be observed as waves of pleasure moving through the body, a series of spontaneous, involuntary movements,[10] and signifies that the person is free of body armoring, entailing the ability to give and receive love in all its forms.[15]

The Invasion of Compulsory Sex-Morality, written in 1931, was Reich's first step in approaching the answer to the problem of mass neuroses in society, followed by The Mass Psychology of Fascism and The Sexual Revolution.[26] The primary sociological issues with which Reich dealt included in particular the following three:

1. How to prevent neurosis through correct upbringing and education.
2. How to prevent sex-negative attitudes in society through sexual reform.
3. How to prevent authoritarian repression through general social reform.[27]

In 1934, Reich expanded his orgasm theory in the essay "Der Orgasmus als Elektro-physiologische Entladung" ("The Orgasm as an Electrophysiological Discharge").[28] Through clinical observations in his sex-counseling centers, Reich concluded that conceiving of the orgasm as only mechanical tension and relaxation could not explain why some experience gratification and others do not.[29] Thus, based on the work of Friedrich Kraus and others, Reich proposed that the orgasm is a bio-electric discharge, and is part of what Reich termed the orgasm formula:

mechanical tension > bioelectric charge > bioelectric discharge > mechanical relaxation.[28]

In 1934, Reich published the paper "Der Urgegensatz des Vegetatives Lebens" ("Sexuality and Anxiety: The Basic Antithesis of Vegetative Life"). The paper is a literature study in which Reich explored "the physiology of the autonomic nervous system, the chemistry of anxiety, the electro-physiology of the body fluids and the hydro-mechanics of plasma movements in protozoa".[28] In conclusion, Reich proposed a functional psychosomatic antithesis between the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems, captured respectively as pleasure or movement "towards the world", and anxiety or movement "away from the world".[30][31] The corollary is the idea that bioelectric energy displayed an antithetic function: if it flows outward to the skin surface, causing a build-up of charge at the skin, it is experienced as pleasure; in contrast, if it flows inward, away from the skin surface, resulting in a lowering of charge at the skin, then it is experienced as an increase in central tension or anxiety.[32]

Finally, in 1937 Reich published Experimentelle Ergebnisse über die elektrische Funktion von Sexualitat und Angst (The Bioelectrical Function of Sexuality and Anxiety) in which he thought he experimentally verified the existence of what he first termed the "libidinal economy".[33] The report summarised two years of research into the reaction of the skin to states of pleasure and anxiety. His claimed findings included the following: normal skin has a constant, basic electrical charge of 40 milivolts that does not change with mood states; erogenous zones have a wandering potential that can at times be much higher (200 milivolts) or lower, depending on the mood states; change in potential does not depend on the mechanical nature of the stimulus, but on changes in the subject's sensation or emotion; and, erogenous zones can have mechanical tension (be tumescent) without changes in levels of the charge, e.g. as in the case of a "cold erection".[34]

A common misconception about Reich's later developed orgone energy accumulator is that he claimed it could provide orgastic potency to those sitting inside the device.[35] As Reich put it, "The orgone accumulator, as has been clearly stated in the relevant publications (The Cancer Biopathy, etc.), cannot provide orgastic potency."[36]

According to Myron Sharaf, Reich's view that the capacity to unite tender and sensuous feelings is important for a healthy love relationship was not a new concept. Freud had noted this as early as 1912. However, Sharaf states that the involuntary physical aspects of the full genital discharge in Reich's work were new.[13] He called the concept orgastic potency and the manner in which Reich "connected a series of psychological, social, and biological findings with the presence or absence of this function" unique to Reich.[37]

When Reich first introduced the orgasm theory at the psychoanalytic congress in Salzburg he was congratulated by Karl Abraham for successfully formulating the economic element of neurosis.[38] However, Reich's presentation of the orgasm theory came exactly when psychoanalysis was moving away from the original Freudian instinct theory based on psychic energy. In his 1926 book Inhibitions, Symptoms, Anxiety Freud completely abandoned his earlier position and wrote: "Anxiety never arises from repressed libido."[39]

Freud was ambivalent in his reception. When Reich presented him the manuscript of Die Funktion des Orgasmus in May 1926, Freud replied, "That thick?" Later that year he wrote to Reich that the book was "valuable, rich in observation and thought",[40] but in May 1928 wrote to Lou Andreas-Salomé: "We have here a Dr. Reich, a worthy but impetuous young man, passionately devoted to his hobby-horse, who now salutes in the genital orgasm the antidote to every neurosis. Perhaps he might learn from your analysis of K. to feel some respect for the complicated nature of the psyche."[9]

Reich was strongly influenced by Freud's distinction between psychoneuroses and actual neuroses, the latter being considered of a physiological origin,[41] and the related libido as the energy of an unconscious sexual instinct.[42] However, Reich emphasised the libido theory exactly when it was being discarded by psychoanalysis.[38] Freud had reasoned that sexual maladaption caused the active damming-up of "sexual stuff"[6] and defined "actual neurosis" as anxiety based on dammed-up libido.[43] However, Freud abandoned his view in the 1920s and postulated the never popularly accepted death instinct to explain the destructive behaviour that was earlier attributed to frustrated libido.[44] Reich's view of the relationship between actual and psychoneuroses has not found its way into psychoanalytic thinking. However, it has the advantage of connecting psychopathology with physiology and, according to Charles Rycroft, this makes Reich the only psychoanalyst to provide any explanation as to why childhood pathogenic experiences (causing neuroses in classical psychoanalysis) do not disappear when neurotics leave their childhood environment.[45]

Sharaf writes that the theory was immediately unpopular within psychoanalysis.[46] Paul Federn, Reich's training assistant, and Hermann Nunberg were particularly opposed to it. The German psychiatrist Arthur Kronfeld (1886–1941) wrote a positive review of Die Funktion des Orgasmus in 1927: "In this extremely valuable and instructive work the author has really succeeded in broadening as well as deepening Freud's theory of sex and of the neuroses. He broadens it by clarifying for the first time the significance of the genital orgasm for the development and the whole structure of the neuroses; he deepens it by giving Freud's theory of the actual neuroses an exact psychological and physiological meaning. I do not hesitate to consider this work of Reich's the most valuable contribution since Freud's The Ego and the Id."[47] The most prominent Freudian to make clinical use of the concept orgastic potency was Edward Hitschmann, the Director of the Psychoanalytic Polyclinic.[48]

Two further reactions to Reich's work in the psychoanalytic movement were either completely ignoring it or using the concept as if it was commonly accepted, but without referring to Reich as the source. As a result, the theme orgastic potency survived but became divorced from the concepts in which Reich embedded it. For example, in Clinical Psychology Charles Berg uses Reich's sex economic theory of anxiety as his own without attributing it to Reich.[49] Erik Erikson was another psychoanalytic writer who partially adopted Reich's concept without acknowledgement. In his bestselling Childhood and Society, Erikson wrote: "Genitality, then, consists in the unobstructed capacity to develop an orgastic potency so free of pregenital interferences that the genital libido ... is expressed in heterosexual mutuality ... and with a convulsion-like discharge of tension from the whole body."[50]

Otto Fenichel, in the classic textbook The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neuroses, uses aspects of Reich's orgasm theory but disguised that they were Reich's contribution, and furthermore he hid the conflicts in the psychoanalytic movement that were explicit in Reich's work. A major entry mainly based on Fenichel's work appeared in the 1953, 1970 Psychiatric Dictionary by L. Hinsie and R. Campbell: "Impotence, orgastic: The incapacity for achieving the orgasm or acme of satisfaction in the sexual act. Many neurotics cannot achieve adequate discharge of their sexual energy through the sexual act ... According to Fenichel, an important concomitant of orgastic impotence is that these patients are incapable of love."[51]

As of September 2012, there are no peer-reviewed articles in the PubMed database that discuss the concept of orgastic potency or Reich's orgasm theory.[52]

The two colleagues of Reich who build most on Reich's orgasm theory and orgastic potency are Tage Philipson and Alexander Lowen. They emphasised the importance of human relationship in orgastic functions.[53]

Tage Philipson, in his 1952 book Kaerlighedslivet: Natur Eller Unnatur, studied natural and unnatural love-life. He wrote that "in healthy people sexuality and love will always be associated together. Sex will come from the heart and return to the heart ... the fully healthy person must be the person with completely free love feelings ... When this is the case other feelings will also be able to stream through the entire organism: hate, sorrow, anxiety, etc., and the orgasm, as the highest point of sexuality, will also be able to affect the entire organism."[54]

Alexander Lowen in his 1966 book Love and Orgasm distinguishes between achieving orgasm in the Kinsey meaning of sexual performance, and the entering into a love relationship as a whole human, similar to Reich. Like Reich, Lowen considers the latter to be the expression of health, not a means to it.[55]

Theodore Wolfe, an American pioneer in psychosomatic medicine and later colleague of Reich, thought that anxiety was the cause of both neuroses and psychosomatic distortions. When reading Reich's Der Funktion des Orgasmus he found in it what he called the key to understanding the dynamics of this relationship.[56]

In a review of Reich's sexual theories Elsworth Baker, a psychiatrist and colleague of Reich, wrote that in particular Reich's sexual theories were commonly misinterpreted and misunderstood. While Reich was portrayed as advocating "a wild frantic promiscuity" to seek "mystical, ecstatic orgasm" that could cure all neuroses and physical ills, Baker continues, Reich in fact found that the healthy person needs less sexual activity and that the orgasm has a function to maintain health only for the healthy person.[57]