In connection with the third subject—masochism—Reich often wrote about his
technique of character analysis with considerable optimism, at the same time that he was
aware of the depth of the therapeutic obstacles. This awareness was also stimulated by oth-
ers’ formulations of the problems in ways that he opposed. The case in point is Freud’s later
concept of masochism.
In his early work, Freud had viewed masochism as the expression of destructive
impulses toward the world that turned against the self out of frustration and fear of pun-
ishment. In this view, the basic initial conflict was between self and the world; it followed
the pleasure principle. To torment the self, physically or psychologically, was less painful than
to lose the love of parents or parental surrogates, less painful than the feared punishment
for expressing the anger outward.
Around 1920, Freud believed he had to move “beyond the pleasure principle.” On
the basis of that principle alone, he felt unable to explain certain repetitive phenomena such
as the fondness of children for repeating games, even painful ones; the recurrent dreams of
war-neurotics in which the original trauma is revived again and again; the pattern of self-
injury that can be traced through the lives of many people; and the tendency of a number
of patients to reenact during psychoanalysis (despite ample self-awareness) unpleasant expe-
riences oftheir childhood.
Freud now explained these and related phenomena on the basis of a “death
instinct” that led to primarymasochism. The same instinct could also be directed toward the
world in the form of sadistic urges and actions.
This concept of the death instinct clashed with Reich’s more positive view of clin-
ical theory. Prior to the early 1930s, Reich avoided any direct confrontation with a concept
that carried Freud’s full authority, though he had talked about the “sublimation” of sadistic
impulses and their decrease with sexual gratification. But by 1932, Reich felt prepared to
publish a case history of a masochistic patient in an article that directly challenged “death
instinct”theory. The case history presented was that of a young man who had been in treat-
ment for four years.
Reich’s introductory description of typical masochistic character traits is brief:
“Subjectively, a chronic sense of suffering, which appears objectively as a tendency to complain;
chronic tendencies to self-damageand self-depreciation(moral masochism) and a compulsion to
torture otherswhich makes the patient suffer no less than the object.”^13
Right from the start he focused on the patient’s sexual behavior. The young man,
who was incapable of working and had no social interests, would masturbate every night for
hours. He would roll around on his stomach with the fantasy that a man or woman was beat-
ing him with a whip.When the excitement mounted, he would hold back the ejaculation, let
the excitation subside, and then begin all over again.
After Reich did some work on the patient’s defenses, the patient entered a spiteful
phase. In answer to any request from Reich, he would cry: “I won’t, I won’t” This kind of
stubbornness was what he had shown his parents as a young child, when he would kick and
yell, rendering his parents helpless and furious.
14 : The Psychoanalytic Furor and Reich’s Break with the Psychoanalytic Association: 1930-1934 173