At one point the patient reacted suddenly with involuntary kicking. This was the
first time Reich reported large bodily movements in the course of an analysis. He was con-
fronted with a choice: to ask the patient to render his feeling into words or to encourage the
kicking. Reich described what he did: “I seized the opportunity and asked him to let himself
go completely. At first he could not understand how anybody could ask him to do anything
like that. But ,.. he began to thrash around on the couch, which behavior turned into high-
ly emotional yelling and inarticulate animal sounds. His actions began to assume an almost
frightening character... .”^14
However, Reich reasoned that this was the only avenue of approach to the patient’s
deep emotions. Only in this way was he able to relieve his infantile neurosis affectively, and
not just in the form of recollections.
The meaning of all the kicking and screaming eventually became clearer to Reich.
The patient was trying to provoke his parents and—through transference—Reich. When the
patient found out that in analysis he would not be punished for his tantrum-like behavior,
he continued his uproar out of enjoyment. Reich recognized that emotional behavior could
itself become a resistance, a stereotyped way of acting out rather than remembering and
reaching still deeper affective layers. Unlike much of modern expressive therapy, Reich was
keenly aware of the defensivefunctions emotional outbursts could often serve.
The patient continued complaining about the “morass” and indirectly about Reich
for not freeing him from the bog. Reich used the technique of imitation or “mirroring.”
When the patient entered the office, Reich would stand there in utter dejection. He began
to use the patient’s childish language. Sometimes he would lie on the floor and scream the
way the patient did. Initially, the patient was dumbfounded, but one day he laughed in an
absolutely unneurotic fashion.
Why did Reich imitate the patient? The neurotic person generally does not perceive
defensive character traits such as spitefulness as painful, the way he perceives a symptom
such as a tic or phobia as debilitating and embarrassing. One way to facilitate his self-per-
ception is to show him his behavior,or to imitate him.If this mirroring is done punitively,
it can be humiliating.If it is done with some humor and warmth, it can be very illuminat-
ing, as it was on the occasion reported above.*
Reich now analyzed the patient’s complaints as an expression of his demand for
love. Through his misery, he would force Reich to love him. Why is the masochistic charac-
ter’s demand for love so excessive? Reich suggested that the masochistic patient has an
intense fear of being left alone, something he experienced with great pain in early childhood.
This fear of being left alone is, in turn, related to the anxiety the masochistic character feels
when contact with the skin ofthe beloved person is lost. Here Reich connects his own find-
ings with previous observations on the role of skin eroticism. The masochist frequently fan-
tasizes or acts out some kind of skin abrasion, being pinched, for example, or making the
skin bleed. However, these wishes do not basically reflect a desire for pain. The patient
174 Myron SharafFury On Earth
*I still remember vividly the exactness, subtlety, and wit of Reich’s mimicry.