action, if he did not actively seek it. Several persons who spoke with Reich at Lucerne com-
mented years later that he looked quite depressed. And pictures from this time show the
same hurt-brooding look revealed in the Davos photos.
Depressed or not, Reich delivered one of his best papers at the Congress on August
- It was published in expanded form in May 1935 by Reich’s press as “Psychischer Kontakt
und Vegetative Stromung” (“Psychic Contact and Vegetative Current”)^32 , and later includ-
ed in the 1945 edition ofCharacter Analysis. Reich opened with the words: “After fourteen
years as a member, I speak for the first time as a guest of the Congress.” As he put it, “atten-
tion was paid to me as never before. ... I had the feeling that the [Psychoanalytic Association]
had excluded the theory of sexuality which formed its very core.... And now [it] spoke as a
guest in the homeland... .”^33
Reich began his paper with a review of an older psychoanalytic concept that
formed his starting point, the social origin of neuroses. He went on to challenge death
instinct theory directly, and then linked what appeared to be “primary masochism” in analy-
sis to the patient’s unresolved negative transference.
So far nothing new, though Reich in a supercharged atmosphere had publicly
thrown down the gauntlet. He went on to say that “it becomes less important whether, early
in the analysis, one obtained much or little material, whether one learned much or little about
the patient’s past. The decisive question came to be whether one obtained, in a correct fash-
ion, those experiences which represented concentrations of vegetative energy.... The accent shift-
ed from experiential content to the economy of vegetative energy.”^34
This is the first occasion on which, in a character-analytic context, Reich speaks of
“vegetative energy,” although he had developed this theme in another paper from 1934,
“Der Urgegensatz des vegetativen Lebens” (“The Basic Antithesis of Vegetative Life”)^35.
Characteristically, since he expected his Lucerne audience to have read this article, he felt he
could use the term “vegetative energy” without further amplification.*
Reich then cited as a clinical example a patient who showed strong resistances
against the uncovering of his passive-homosexual fantasies. After analysis of the resistanc-
es,the fantasies emerged; so, too, did signs of acute anxiety. The color of his face kept
changing from white to yellow or blue; the skin was mottled and of various tints; he had
severe pains in the neck and occiput; the heartbeat was rapid; the patient had diarrhea. Once
again we witness Reich in one of his favorite realms: the direct observation of very tangi-
ble, clinical reactions, which express themselves in changes of color and other vivid forms.
In the same paper Reich introduced another important new term, “contactless-
ness.” His awareness of this phenomenon grew out of some discontent with his therapeu-
14 : The Psychoanalytic Furor and Reich’s Break with the Psychoanalytic Association: 1930-1934 181
- We should note briefly that the Berlin internist Friedrich Kraus had introduced the phrase “vegetative current”
some seven years earlier in reference to fluid convection processes in the body. Around 1933, Reich had been study-
ing the physiology ofbodily changes during specific emotions, such as pleasure and anxiety. Reich was often unwill-
ing to explain a concept or term previously defined. I recall once suggesting that he give a brief review about some
issue in a book to make it easier for the reader; he criticized me for the “socialist fallacy.” “Let them study my pre-
vious writings we don’t write for people, we write about things.”