mented: “Persons in whom the genital primacy is lacking, that is, orgastically impotent per-
sons, are also incapable of love. Warded-oif pregenitality has resisted this primacy; after it is
freed from entanglements in the defense struggle, its forces are included into the genital
organization. It is primarily the experiences of satisfaction now made possible that once and
for all abolish the pathogenic damming-up.”^33
Although Fenichel’s language is more Reichian than Freudian, this quote is a good
example of how Reich’s equation of orgastic satisfaction and emotional health crept into
some of the analytic literature, minus—indeed ignoring—the stormy debates of the 1920s.
Another example is evident in Erik Erikson’s highly influential book Childhood and
Society. Without citing Reich, Erikson gives a key emphasis to orgastic potency: “Genitality,
then, consists in the unobstructed capacity to develop an orgastic potency so free of pre-
genital interferences that the genital libido (not just the sex products discharged in Kinsey’s
outlets) is expressed in heterosexual mutuality, with full sensitivity of both penis and vagina,
and with a convulsion-like discharge of tension from the whole body.”^34
It has to be stressed that there are still no systematic studies, from Reich or anyone
else, comparing a large number of orgastically potent persons with orgastically impotent
ones. All we have are some studies relating aspects of sexual responsiveness and overall psy-
chological functioning. In a careful review of the research literature correlating women’s
reports of their degree of sexual responsiveness with their general psychological well-being,
Seymour Fisher concluded that no clear relationship could be established^35.
Such research studies do not speak directly to Reich’s work. In my view, the con-
nection Reich made between sexual and emotional health is not especially valuable when
presented as a question ofdegree that the “better”the sex life, the “better” the mental
health.This is clearly simplistic. Far more fundamental but much less testable is his assump-
tion that orgastic potency goes hand in hand with a kind of psychological functioning that
is radically different not only from neurotic or psychotic behavior, but also from much that
passes for “normal.”
As recent arguments over the “vaginal orgasm” make clear, it is easy to be side-
tracked from the significance of Reich’s central thesis. In discussing female sexuality, Reich
followed to a certain extent traditional psychoanalytic thinking in giving favored status to
vaginal over clitoral sensation. Indeed, in agreement with Karen Homey, he stated that vagi-
nal sensation existed in childhood, and disputed the Freudian notion that the girl makes a
transition from a predominantly clitoral sensation in childhood to vaginal excitation after
puberty. However, for Reich the key point was not clitoral versus vaginal orgasm. For him,
orgasm could not be considered complete if it was only felt in the genitals (vagina, clitoris,
or both).Involuntary participation of the whole organism was its indispensable attribute.
A related argument against Reich’s concept has been advanced by Herbert Marcuse
and Norman O. Brown. They claim, essentially, that Reich espoused the “tyranny of geni-
tality.” Thus, Brown writes:
Ifthe repression ofsexuality is the cause of neuroses, what alternative to neuroses
7 : Reich’s Work on Orgastic Potency: 1922-1926 103