a real English lord and that his mother was half-English.
Reich continued: “Consistent analysis of the lordly’ behavior showed that it was
connected with ... his tendency to deride everybody.... The sadistic fantasies ... were grati-
fied in the derision and warded off in the lordliness.... The arrogant behavior ... served the
purpose of warding off a drive as well as its satisfaction.”^6
Reich connected the development of the lordliness trait with the man’s specific
childhood experiences. For one thing, it was a counter-identification with his father, who
was anything but lordly; in fights between the parents, the boy took the mother’s side and
vowed to be as unlike his father as possible. There was also a specificity to the timing of its
origin. Between the ages of three and six, the patient had suffered from an intense phobia
about mice. The lord fantasy provided a way of binding the phobic anxiety. Indeed, after its
development the fear of mice disappeared.
Reich summarizes: “The development of a phobia indicates that the ego was too
weak to master certain libidinal strivings. The development of a character trait or typical atti-
tude at the expense of a phobia means a strengthening of the ego in the form of chronic
armoring against the id and the outer world.”^7
The notion of character traits as a way ofbinding emotions, especially anxiety, is a key
to Reich’s characterological work. The kind of detailed description Reich provided for his
“aristocratic” patient he also gave for more general types, for example, the hysterical char-
acter, the compulsive character, and the phallic-narcissistic character. Although his descrip-
tions as well as his theory continued the investigations made by other analysts, notably Freud
and Karl Abraham, Reich added a wealth of detail, an elaborated conceptual framework, and
suggestions for therapy that surpassed previous work. His characterological typology has
been quoted more than any other aspect of his work.
Yet Reich’s original contribution lay not so much in the distinctions among various
neurotic character types as in what distinguished all of them from another type—the geni-
tal character.
In a paper published in 1929 and later incorporated in expanded form into Character
Analysis, Reich distinguished between character structures in a fundamentally new way: on
the basis ofthe presence or absence oforgastic potency. Here, he linked his character-ana-
lytic work with his work on genitality. Orgastic potency, or the unimpeded expression of
genitality, became the explicit goal of character analysis.
Reich described the genital character as one that has fully reached the post-ambiva-
lent genital stage; the wish for incest and the wish to eliminate the parent of the same sex
have been relinquished.Up to this point, Reich essentially followed Abraham. But now he
sounds a unique note: the genital character is capable of orgastic potency, which prevents
the damming up of libido and the pathogenic outbreak of pregenital impulses.
The neurotic character, on the other hand, is completely under the sway of infan-
tile impulses and wishes. “If there is any sexual life at all, its infantile nature can be readily
seen:the woman represents the mother or the sister and the love relationship carries the
stamp of all the anxieties ... and [inhibitions and] neurotic peculiarities of the infantile incest
14 : The Psychoanalytic Furor and Reich’s Break with the Psychoanalytic Association: 1930-1934 171