The third factor is unabashedly personal After all the arguments pro and con, one
comes back to one’s own experience. From my own, Reich’s argument is convincing, though
not in all details. When I experienced or believed I experienced what Reich termed “orgas-
tic potency,” the emotions and sensations were sufficiently different from other forms of
eroticism that I can never refer to the latter as “normal,” even though for me the orgastic
experience occurs quite rarely.
At the same time I believe that until his last years, Reich was overly optimistic about
people achieving orgastic potency through Reichian therapy or through more sex-affirming
social attitudes.
I also believe that Reich underemphasized the wide range of functioning possible
within what he termed the state of orgastic impotence. One can be more or less productive,
happy, loving under such conditions. To use an analogy, it was as though Reich had discov-
ered that the overwhelming majority of people were blind. He argued first for a treatment
that would address the blindness, then in later years for its prevention. He was not especial-
ly concerned about the wide variation among blind people in their capacity to work, be lov-
ing, hear, or taste. More, he saw in the general emphasis on this variation an evasion of the
issue of blindness.
7 : Reich’s Work on Orgastic Potency: 1922-1926 105