The Misdeeds of Wilhelm Reich: An Analysis of Orgone, Eastern Religions and Sexual Utopianism
- SOF NEWSLETTER, 16th July 2022
I will present a short analysis on Wilhelm Reich, an individual much maligned in these circles whom is perhaps deserving of a different and more thorough analytical treatment. He rarely receives this due to people's obsession with his ethnicity in right-wing circles, at least.
Although this is probably historically relevant.
Throughout this essay, it is essential to keep in mind that Reich's personal eccentricities and his working technique and its outcomes are not necessarily commensurate with one another. One should not necessarily deduct legitimacy from the other. Needless to say, the usual familiar arrows are aimed at this target. As one can imagine, with Reich being a derivative of Freudian psychoanalysis and Freud himself, this tends to end up a game of "pin the tail on the proverbial donkey." Much, therefore, gets missed.
As with most subjects, low brow smooth-brained analysis precludes one from having any fundamental understanding and more essential themes are often not even looked at. Yet, it is indeed these themes that give proper knowledge to the broader questions. Reich's nomenclature, technique, delusions later in life, and ultimately his imprisonment, however unfortunate, should be examined on their own merits. Not in the usual simplistic frames. I note many on the right detest Reich and feel his imprisonment was justified; I do not. I've always wished people of genius to be given a free berth.
I note much of Reich's more extreme quackery periodically does the rounds in so-called "esoteric health" circles. Indeed there is a plague of sorts; Reich was its victim. This is the tendency to reduce the genuinely esoteric to gross materialism. This, unsurprisingly, forms the primary context for my overarching case.
Much of what Reich suggested that is of eminently practical use never seems to garner a mention. There are two reasons for this, however, in my view. First, many people desire consumables of some kind. 5G protective anal insertion crystals or something gimmicky that you can buy. Whereas practical use requires hard work and suffering for a result. Maybe those who engage with it are not prepared for the consequences of what Reich put down. It is, in some ways, the method of destruction and creation.
Confrontation or examination of one's persona is the last thing on the menu for most people. Even miserable homeostasis is preferable. Even though, as far as I can tell, they are in dire need of it. I agree with Reich in this way; the mass of humanity is contemptible and psychologically maladapted. The difference is I don't think most of them can improve. An outstanding minority, maybe, and the ones I care about—the slightly damaged ones. The damage seems to offer the potential for great power. They seem to be wildcards, so to speak.
The results of his therapy cannot be purchased on Etsy. In pop-terminology, the process offers a "challenge to the ego." Or perhaps, as Reich would assert, the work challenges the neurotic character structure by using what he termed vegetotherapy. Simply put, this is the notion that the character structure and emotional content of the human psyche (importantly, as Reich thought - "emotions") are "stored" or regulated by the layers of the human being's fascia and musculature. Thus, the individual's neurosis can be liberated through progressive manipulations of breath, awareness, and musculature. In effect, by releasing tension or armour, one aims to restore the organisms' ability to feel and release a charge induced by the external environment. And it was this reflex, flag-shipped by the orgasm reflex, that was stunted by the oppressive forces of civilisation:
"the sum total of muscular(chronic muscular spasms) which an individual develops as a block against the breakthrough of emotions and organ sensations, particularly anxiety, rage, and sexual excitation" (Reich:1936).
We have seen many flare-ups and interpretations of this since Reich's death, from the so-called Primal Therapy of the 1970s and even Eliot Hulse presenting Alexander Lowen's bio-energetic therapeutic techniques on youtube. Breathing into his nuts and crying out repressed birth canal memories, as his Asian man-servant blasted him with some deep tissue massage.
However funny it is watching old footage of hippies wailing, flailing, screaming, and ceremoniously chimping out in a group session while imagining coming out of their mother's vaginas, emotional release is a significant point of misunderstanding and incorrectness. One Reich is almost squarely responsible for. I will elaborate on the misguided nature of emotional expression later. This is another crucial point of departure from Eastern techniques, driven by the ideology of his therapy and the ideology of therapy.
Reich and Alexander Lowen, perhaps most famously under the umbrella of bio-energetic primal therapy, sought the expression of pent-up emotion as the goal of body therapy. However, this is nonsense. Sentiments and emotions expressed during this therapy are inconsequential to the effects of this kind of work. They are fleeting side effects of a more fundamental change.
This is one of Reich's more significant misdemeanours. It is now inculcated in the common vernacular and understanding that repressed emotions are a thing that needs to be looked at and released. This has led to a plague of over-emotionalism and emphasis on emotion as the most essential element in life. Modern people, influenced by this, have entirely missed the forest for the trees.
This view is consistent with his ideology. We are oppressed by outside forces from birth, stunting sexuality as the prime mover, and thus we have repressed energies.
It should be no surprise that Reich was a Marxist in his earlier years, and when trawling his books, you definitely notice this in much of his language. Terms like Sex-economy and sex-political. The endpoint of vegetotherapy was also a progressivist end-game of orgastic potency; that is, almost all the world's problems could be reduced to a kind of civilisation-imposed blunting of "orgastic potency."
If one is further interested in this, I recommend reading his magnum opus The Function of the Orgasm. Vegetotherapy, therefore, can be seen as derivative of 2 main streams of contemporary thought; Freud (of whom he was a student and famously broke away) and Marxism. Yet as we will see, he did not really break away from Marxist notions in an overarching sense, and in fact, this exacerbated his split with Freud:
"…Many other factors attributed to the conflict, including Reich's increasing interest in Marxist theory and social action. In addition, Reich, who was a favourite son of Freud, had requested a personal analysis with him. While Freud had made a rule to no longer analyse those working with him, he had considered setting this rule aside, and it was crushing for Reich when Freud ultimately decided to stand by it." (1 pp. 22)
In a general sense, progressivism and leftism more broadly informed his entire psychiatric ideology. His work is "ideological pseudo-medicine," utilising ancient techniques reinterpreted into a progressivist, Marxist framework.
The Charges…
For me, these charges are 3-fold. Firstly, Reich tried to medicalise something that is NOT medical. Reich attempted to label non-medical Eastern mystical practices as therapy. Aimed at sexual Utopianism, where the downtrodden ape, civilisational oppressed could find respite through orgastic potency. These days practitioners design treatment to adapt an individual's function well within the context of civilisation - granted, this is a weakness. Reich's proposition, at least in the context of the time he lived, was highly subversive since it was not designed for this generally accepted purpose.
Secondly, I've always wished to understand how much of his therapy Reich practised on himself? One would have to say very little when considering the various delusions and hallucinations of his later life, much of which he documented in books like "Contact with Space: Oranur Second Report."
"He became convinced that the UFOs were "space ships" powered by Orgone Energy. He based his interpretation on certain observations that had been made of flying saucers: the bluish light shimmering through the opening of the machines, their comparatively silent motion, and the unusual maneuvers they were capable of making." (1 pp. 23)
The final charge I level is Reich's blatant theft (without acknowledgment) of the great Eastern Religions' spiritual hardware. His attempts to medicalise, marxify or materialise these powerful forces as a therapy to serve his Marxoid utopian vision. They were thereby not proposed in their entirety, i.e. not primarily sexual. The reductionism of these forces to the sexual drive alone. And the hopeless attempt to transmogrify these powerful psycho-spiritual forces into pleasure-seeking utopian idealism.
Ironically, Reich is rightly assumed as one of the head patriarchs of the ultimately subverted revolution of the '60s. He took something genuinely ancient and esoteric and subverted it within an ideological idealistic humanist framework.
In his trademark aggressive and stubborn way, Reich reduced everything to the sex instinct or sex economy as the starting point for the mass man's psychic masochism. This was partly derived from the flaring up of fascistic regimes in Europe at the time. Reich paraded the standard set of psycho-analytic scapegoats to explain what he termed the emotional plague driving the human being's millennia-long struggle against psychic masochism.
The authoritarian family structure with the patriarch at the helm - is enemy number 1. His revolution (although it did involve labour and civilisational mechanisms of material oppression and also as tools for a compulsive character) was different since it was a biological and sexual end of history he sought.
In sexually liberating adolescents and young people, he sought to install the progressive project of the left, the noble, free, and sexually liberated primitive man of Rousseau. For Reich, man's better instincts had been subverted by the extraneous forces of historical delusion, and all that was needed was to awaken man to himself. A primitivist utopian spirit that had been cruelly subverted by the edifices of a sick civilisation. Reich had found a non-mystical, bio-energetic nirvana.
In the literature I have surveyed, I have not come across the notion that perhaps nature is not as liberating as one would think. This has seemingly not occurred to progressive thinkers until recently; even when it does, they're not willing to acknowledge its shocking depths.
A few words on Reich's hatred of mysticism and religion…
Reich assumed his anti-intellectual, anti-religious stance would mend errant biology by restoring a proper reflex within the human organism. As we will see, this was his Marxist Bio-Nirvana.
An Eastern, for example, would see the flawed ways of mankind as simply built into the fabric of reality, and thus practice aims at states where one has mastered these drives. Spurring the individual adherent to not only accept the nature of things but in their own way to master all their senses to reach a state beyond man's base nature. Not to return entirely to it or to be ruled by it, but to master it and ride it as a mighty steed.
Indeed, when contemplating these matters and the undeniable similarities of technique, I first entertained the idea that perhaps Reich almost entirely appropriated eastern esoteric methods and framed them within his time's psycho-analytic and social-democratic progressivism.
As a Marxist, he saw a psychic plague primarily driven by religion and the consequent authoritarian family structure. This was the root of all human ills. He needed to find another way to frame the "inner logic of nirvana," as he self-admittedly put it. Religion may contain some truth, but religion generally asserted the state of mankind as fallen in some way, so as a progressive, he could not accept this as a frame. However valuable the techniques may have been, at least in Eastern Yoga.
These various religions, driven by an aggressive patriarchal world order, deliberately sought to subvert man's pleasure-seeking nature. All we need to do is increase the human sensitivity and capacity to experience pleasure. Thus, in no small way did Reich influence the 1960s and its excessive progressivist emphasis on sexuality as a panacea for humanity's ills.
And we have seen what destitute failure this sexual excess and pursuit of pleasure has been. If anything, it has considerably worsened the capacity of the modern of sex, passion, and love as even a cursory glance at tinder, at the disfigured outcomes you can see on those platforms of the '60s so obviously betray.
Did he ever ask - is pleasure the sole aim of man? How would emphasis on pleasure alone be evolutionarily advantageous for an organism living in a dangerous world?
Some final words on frame….
I have personally integrated much of Reich's physical exercises into my own practice and have done so for over 10 years. It is different from yoga; for a Westerner probably better. However, I contend that the exercises are immensely powerful, and ultimately the deluded ideology behind them need not render them useless. This impressive utility cannot be denied; I know this. You can integrate them with other practices, and once you engage in even a rudimentary integration, the results can be seen on their own merits. You can take it where you wish.
The exercises should be taken aside from the over-arching bio-Marxist philosophy or emphasis on emotionality and sexuality and, ultimately, the Utopian visions of a liberated Marxist biological freedom from patriarchal familial repression. Of course, this vision also drove the radicalisation of feminism to a considerable extent and was spurred on by the utopian anthropological ideologies and research of feminine-primary societies. Which, of course, Reich supported.
Granted, one can clearly see that Reich made some of his own contributions to those exercises he took from the East. Below I submit a brief analysis for consideration, which has not been thoroughly looked at to my knowledge. That is the influence of the techniques of Eastern Mysticism, in particular Buddhism, on Reich's vegetotherapy. Although much has been written (since his death) on the "similarities" of Reichian therapy and the Hindu chakras, for example:
"This interaction of the 7 segments forms the etiology of the 5 Primary Character Structures. The 5 Character structures are not formed in isolation to one segment but relate to Energy economy, and the regulation is between segments and also believed to be via chakras as proposed by Eastern philosophy." (2, pp.4)
Here is the difference: I am proposing that rather than it just being a coincidence (as these people do), Reich appropriated much of his theory. Including various "exercises" from the Buddhist and Hindu cultural saturation of Europe when he was developing his therapy.
I hope you derive some benefit from my breakdown. It is not exhaustive, and I only briefly outline significant points. Indeed an entire volume could be written on this matter. I hope you will see that Reich attempted to medicalise something that is not medical and should not be medical.
A Brief overview of Reichian Therapy, Segments and Similarities Chakra "Physiology."
What is the stated purpose of Reichian therapy?
In essence, through various specialised breathing and muscle movements exercises, to undo the held patterns of muscular armour in the body, thereby releasing the "armour" or energetic stasis stored in the body. This inevitably leads to the release of pent-up energy in the form of emotions. Reich would term this energy as Orgone in later years as he expanded his theory beyond sexual and human bounds.
"Mobilisation of the orgone energy in the organism, i.e., the liberation of the biophysical emotions from muscular & character armouring with the goal of establishing, if possible, orgastic potency" (Reich:1934).
Orgone, which I believe to be synonymous with prana and his therapeutic notions borrowed from the Hindu description of Kundalini:
"…primordial cosmic energy; universally present & demonstrable visually, thermically, spectroscopically, and by means of Geiger-Mueller counters, in the living organism."
(Reich:1934).
Thus, energetic blockages, at once preventing the circulation of Orgone and its accumulation, are expressed as blocks in the individual's character; the consequence of this is psychological neuroses. The blockages result from individuals being unable to tolerate the experience of the charge produced by their bodies in reaction to external shocks. The charge of Orgone cannot be handled in the body; Orgone's normal excitation, surrender, and discharge is prevented. Think of it instead as an appliance plugged into a socket with a too higher charge.
These blockages are imposed upon the organism from a young age, leading to several archetypal varieties of neurotic character structure. Reich outlines these as follows:
The Schizoid character
The Oral character
The Masochistic character
The Psychopathic character
The Rigid character
Reich asserted that each of these "blocks" is like an armouring. Blocks are self-reinforcing, self-perpetuating and homeostatic. That is to say, in Reich's model, armouring serves a protective purpose (This happens to be a significant problem in the context of his epistemological starting point or man as a fallen being). Armouring can also be self-perpetuating; for this reason, one can often see worsening of neuroses over time.
Each character type is directly correlated with the developmental phases of the child and corresponding age groups. Depending on psychic pressures unique to that child as determined by his psychological experience in a sick society at these specific developmental phases, he may develop disproportionate armouring at each developmental stage.
Some retarded steps of development stunting or hindering the full development of later stages. Ultimately leads to the unstable character structure of the individual within the civilisation, however, with some overarching themes endemic to a group of people. Each armoured segment implies some variety of psychological inability to express an innate drive, which would be allowed to develop appropriately under normal "sexually expressive" circumstances.
Therefore, Reichian therapy aims to reverse this process, which proceeds from the lower to the higher, by progressively undoing armour from the higher to the lower. I'd like to discuss this interesting point of difference at a different time.
These are, of course, reinterpretations of Freud's and Sandor Ferenczi's work on these matters. Reich applied to the various segments of the body in his own unique contribution; for example, the "moral character" would have armouring primarily in the oral component of the body, being the mouth and throat. There are all sorts of combinations; there are no pure types. Reich devised the armouring section as follows, and this is why it becomes interesting to us:
1. Ocular or Eye
2. Oral
3. Cervical
4. Thoracic
5. Diaphragm
6. Abdominal
7. Pelvic
At this juncture, one should note the emphasis Reichian therapy places on working the ocular segment of armouring before proceeding to any other part or element of the body:
"Let us refer to the first armour ring as the ocular and the second as the oral armor ring. In the sphere of the ocular armor segment, we find a contraction and immobilisation of all or almost all the muscles of the eyeballs, the eyelids, the forehead, the lachrymal gland, etc. Rigid forehead and eyelids, expressionless eyes or bulging eyeballs, mask-like expression, and immobility on both sides of the nose are the essential characteristics of this armor ring. The eyes peep out as from a rigid mask. The patient is not capable of opening his eyes wide as if to imitate fear. In schizophrenics, the expression of the eyes is blank, as if staring into space. This is caused by the contraction of the eyeball muscles. Many patients have lost the ability to shed tears. In others, the opening of the eyelids has been reduced to a narrow, rigid slit. The forehead is without expression, as if it had been "flattened out." Near-sightedness, astigmatism, etc., very often exist.
The loosening of the ocular armor segment is brought about by opening the eyes wide as in fright; this causes the eyelids and forehead to move and to express emotions. Usually, this also effects a loosening of the upper cheek muscles, especially when the patient is told to make grimaces. When the cheeks are pulled up, the result is that peculiar grin expressive of defiant, malicious provocation."
([4] Cf. Reich: The Discovery of the Orgone, Vol. I.)
Starting the ocular segment, movement gradually restores tonic integrity to the muscles' structure. It is incorrect to say it is simply tension being targeted, but rather the ability to feel and use muscles in varying ways and combinations and flood the bloodstream and muscle tissues with blood to oxygenate the system.
Each segment is designated as running at right angles to the spine on horizontal planes, so to speak. Once these segments of armour were loosened, and here is the interesting part, "Orgone" was liberated to run:
"..the direction of orgonotic streaming is transverse to the armour rings."
([4] Cf. Reich: The Discovery of the Orgone, Vol. I.)
And:
"Genuine sensations of plasmatic excitation waves are experienced only when a whole series of armor segments, e.g., muscular blocks in the region of the eyes, mouth, throat, breast, and diaphragm, have been dissolved. When this has been accomplished, marked wave-like pulsations are experienced in liberated parts of the body which move up toward the head and down toward the genitalia."
([4] Cf. Reich: The Discovery of the Orgone, Vol. I.)
Finally, Reich inadvertently indicates that perhaps a totally liberated energetic being is not a natural occurrence, and rather liberation may be a ceaseless activity:
"Very often, the organism reacts to these initial currents and pulsations with fresh armouring."
Having experienced these things myself, I do not intend to detract from Reich's description. They are true and correct; however, there are some critical takeaways. Firstly, the insistence on the ocular segment as the primary starting point for the ability to "see" what unfolds. Secondly, the segments of armouring run at right angles to the spine. Thirdly, once liberated, the energy runs from bottom to top and goes back down in a circular motion.
hmmm…..
Now, for a moment, I will briefly recap the 8 Hindu Chakras:
1. Sahasrara (not explicitly included in Reich's work)
2. Ajna
3. Vishuddha
4. Anahata
5. Manipura
6. Swadhisthana
7. Muladhara
8. Bindu
Granted - each Chakra is not material as Reich would consider something material, though it is associated with the body areas where Reich's armour rings are located. Kundalini yoga encourages a type of physical awareness by an intense focus on each chakra area (roughly corresponding with Reich's rings). Various yogas, breathing (such as pranayama), and asanas are utilised to "open up" the chakras and their corresponding areas.
In Eastern mysticism, the process of kundalini awakening has traditionally moved from bottom-up, though some gurus encourage the opposite. Work may be required at each energetic Nadi to enable the process to unfold properly. Not necessarily a linear fashion. Work may be needed at different points to encourage the process along efficiently.
I contend this "feet-upwards" approach is responsible for much mental illness in Western adherents. Ridiculous side effects of various colours thrust upon Westerners with no spiritual capacity, merely attracted to the honey pot of spiritual power or exoticism. Many Westerners who engage in kundalini yoga have no success or go batshit insane and have all sorts of physiological and spiritual problems. The reversal of this to "eyes-to-feet" is something invaluable that Reich contributed.
Interestingly, Reich left out the Sahasrara chakra. I believe this is probably due to his self-admitted dislike of mysticism, but I have no evidence for this conclusion. I think his notion of the external universal life flow of Orgone accounts as his mechanistic version of the Hindu Chakra Sahasrara.
One of the biggest giveaways that set me on this path to discovery is Reich's insistence that the ocular segment and ring as the primary focal point for channelling all these energies. This ring must be cleared first and continuously worked upon. It is, in fact, the same with kundalini yoga:
"…where the tantra guru touches the seeker during the initiation ritual (saktipata). He or she commands the awakened Kundalini to pass through this center."
This was the part that finally convinced me of Reich's having lifted eastern mystical techniques. How would he alone have come up with the concept that all energies are integrated through the Ajna knot - or in his case, the ocular segment of armouring?
It is interesting, therefore, that there is such a striking similarity. One could rightly ask, why has no one made this connection? The answer is, that many have. From all the literature I have surveyed. However, the implication is that Reich intuited this all on his own. This is where I differ; I believe he was influenced by Eastern thought streams and extrapolated the chakras' physiological doctrine into his pseudo-medicalised version.
Similarities with Buddhism:
It is abundantly clear to me now, so many years on, that similarities between Reich's views and techniques and those of Buddhism are, in fact, carbon copies. Reich himself admits in the introduction to the function of the orgasm:
"…again, I ran across the "to" of biology in various doctrines of salvation. I read Grimm's (a book I recommend, by the way) Buddha. I was stunned by the inner logic of the theory of Nirvana, which also rejected joy because it inevitably entailed suffering…." (Reich 1934)
Let us briefly examine an essential idea and a significant point of departure. Nirvana is described by the Buddhist mystics to be a state of mind where one is free of hatred, greed, and delusion. Could we entertain the possibility here that Reich, upon engaging with these ideas, was fundamentally influenced by them? Reich was indeed a progressive, as was common amongst left-wing political radicals at the time, and this is a critical factor in correctly understanding this point of departure.
Here we see Reich's Marxist perversion emerge. Initially, Reich sought to abolish the repressions society and religion imposed on the individual, leading to neuroses.
Like Marxism, which sought to bring an end to the repression of the common man and to bring an end to political history, I believe Reich, being influenced by his Marxist & Freudian inception, effectively sought to bring an end to biological history; one where a man was liberated entirely to live out his own "deep impulses."
That is to say, through completely biologically and psychically liberated individuals, mankind could effectively free himself from the subversion of the structures of the psychic plague. Therefore, the genitally realised man represented an end of biological and orgonotic subversion. What would later become Reich, an orgonotic subversion of the mass of mankind on a cosmic scale, involving galactic scale.
I contend this, in essence, is a kind of strange biological Marxist Nirvana. A place where, although not totally free of enmities, mankind would no longer be subject to fascistic group hatreds, like the Bonobo, he would be driven by his own liberated sexual economy.
For sure, I do not critique pleasure. For pleasure is a gift, yet I contend it is not the supreme achievement. It is fleeting. Yet Reich did acknowledge this in the last moments of his career, in which his name was invoked in the name of the more extreme species of perversion, to which he was apparently to retort that these were a "shit perversion" of his work.
As for specifics as to the different stages of therapy, I have found the following helpful comparison.
Summary of Similarities:
(1) Vegetotherapy therapy, after conducting muscular loosening exercises, sets aside ample time for "sensing and feeling." By describing and keeping eyes open, the patient becomes completely aware of all bodily sensations, arising and falling away, thoughts arising and falling away. This is precisely the same as the initial scope of the Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna Sutta. It is also described in Grimm's book, of which Reich would have therefore been aware, at the very least, through this book. But who knows how deeply he really delved?
(2) A primary assertion of Buddhism being the self or "atta" is an illusion. Likewise, in the Reichian conception, the self is inherently neurotic and a construct of blockages, drives, or bio-energetic contractions. Buddhism decrees that once we become experientially aware of the illusory nature of what we refer to as "self," we become aware of the totality of the interdependent nature in all things. Reich would say that as soon as we clear all the rigidities of our character, we would become aware of the "universal pulsation of orgone" and our neurotic character's prior folly. Reich employs only a different language.
(3) For Reich, clearing blockages enables the patient to be totally in touch, or better said, aware of the prior unconscious emotions, motives, and drives of the body and the psyche. This is the proposed outcome of the Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna Sutta...
(4) Part of this process includes the embrace also of painful emotions, thoughts, or bodily sensations. Both Reichian therapy and Buddhism in technique and theory require that one should be able to be aware of and acknowledge all subjective physical phenomena - as part of the process.
(5) Practically, Reichian therapy's sensing and feeling and the various species of Buddhist meditation aim to get one to notice the independent arising and passing away of sensation, feeling, and emotion. This enlivens the individual to the energies around them, and one becomes fully conscious, and unconsciousness of these same forces is dispelled.
(6) One of Reich's primary assertions was that part of the psychic plague was that mankind could not cope with the inevitabilities of transition, painful or pleasurable, due to his fear and anxiety. So then. One is reminded of impermanence and the average person clinging to stabilities that don't exist.
(7) sensing and feeling - Part of this process includes staying completely aware of and conscious of sensations coursing through the body. The correct mental positioning is one of objective observation. This is done in the following manner:
"I feel a tingling in the right hand… I feel a twitch in the left eye."
How is this any different to the descriptive requirements of the Mahāsatipaṭṭhāna Sutta.?:
"Breathing in long, he understands: 'I breathe in long'; or breathing out long, he understands: 'I breathe out long.' Breathing in short, he understands: 'I breathe in short'; or breathing out short, he understands: 'I breathe out short.' He trains thus: 'I shall breathe in experiencing the whole body of breath'; he trains thus: 'I shall breathe out experiencing the whole body of breath."
Conclusion...
As with most things, apparent differences presented here are almost entirely semantic; the elements of therapy retain all functional similarities to the traditions discussed. Driven by ideology, Reich attempted to subvert powerful forces for progressivist ends. However well-intentioned. The wrath of the authorities was inflicted upon him with full force as a result.
The required emphasis on emotions and pleasure for their own sake remains very different from the outlook of his ideas' original sources. Reich took these things in the wrong direction in this respect.
I ask, however, How could they be fundamentally different? Reich glaringly re-appropriated these powerful forces into a modern materialistic, linguistic and ideological framework.
Despite his misdeeds, Reich encouraged man's ability to allow all emotions, impulses, and sensations - all those things that are a part of life experience and the senses- to be felt in full. He appropriated this work for a Western mind and body. I can attest to this valuable contribution.
In essence, he was saying that these blockages, the character armour, indeed ails mankind, yet within it lies energetic potential. The tendency of man to exacerbate his disconnectedness from himself, his own drives, and his nature can be fixed. This is no different from what the Buddhists and Hindus explicitly assert in various practices.
Thus, I do not deny he is correct in some way. Who could tell the outcome if all were to engage in this therapy?
Modern man has gone to extreme lengths to avoid pain and suffering, yet he also avoids greatness and personal transformation.
As Reich famously touted it in his seminal work The Function of the Orgasm:
"contraction-tension-release-expansion."
This dynamic principle underlies our physiological experience of reality. The Buddhists would say, do not grasp. Do not become swept up and attached to these phenomenological life events as if they were concrete, tangible or substantial. Do not contract and armour against sensation. Recognise it. Since all problems are only an extension of our own mind and psyche. As it were, allow these things to pass through and simply observe and sense.