then merely said: “You are perfectly right.” English was amazed. “I had the first and perhaps
greatest lesson in my life of the fact that a human being may be self-assertive and be given
the right to an opinion and not be criticized for it or have acknowledgment given grudging-
ly.”
English’s account of his treatment with Reich contains no new information about
Reich’s theory or techniques. Yet the period was extremely important in the evolution of
Reich’s therapy. Until the late 1920s, Reich had concentrated on three main concepts in his
character-analytic work: latent negative transference, defensive character traits, and nonver-
bal forms of expression. During the late 1920s and up to 1934, his focus fell on three other
subjects: the development of a typology of neurotic character structures and their child-
hood etiology; the distinction between the genital character and the neurotic character; and
the problem of masochism.
In his development of neurotic character structures, Reich brought a sharp focus
to the way character attitudes are shaped in childhood and the particular form they take
because of particular experiences, especially familial ones. A good example of Reich’s work
in this realm is his presentation of the “aristocratic character.” This example illustrates why
the psychiatric scholar Leston Havens has called Reich perhaps the only equal of the famed
nineteenth-century diagnostician Emil Kraepelin in “psychiatric portraiture.”^3
A thirty-three-year-old man came to analysis because of marital difficulties and
work problems. The connections Reich made between the patient’s difficulties and his early
childhood experiences were—at a content level—not especially striking. What is more
impressive, and what Reich focused upon, was the patient’s manner and attitudes:
The patient is good-looking, of medium height; his facial expression is reserved,
serious, somewhat arrogant. His gait is measured, refined. ... It takes him quite some
time to get from the door to the couch. His speech is measured He lies on the
couch in a composed manner with his legs crossed. His dignified composure hard-
ly ever changes at all,even with the discussion of ... painful subjects. When after a
while ...he discussed his relationship with his mother whom he loved very much, it
was easy to see how he intensified his dignified attitude in order to master his exci-
tation.In spite ofmy repeated admonitions to give his feelings free reign he main-
tained his attitude.
...This much had become clear: his behavior, no matter what was its origin, pro-
tected him against violent emotions [His character] had already become a resist-
ance^4.One day, Reich went on, “I told him he was play-acting an English lord, and that
this must have a connection with his youth.”^5
Reich’s remark triggered the patient’s comment that he had never believed he was
really the son of his father, a small Jewish merchant; he thought that he was in fact of
English origin.He had heard rumors that his maternal grandmother had had an affair with
170 Myron SharafFury On Earth