roses.” In his clinical and social work, Reich had been concerned with the relationship
between actual neuroses and psychoneuroses. In 1934, his attention moved to a basic
research question: the nature of pleasure and of anxiety. Interestingly enough, in 1926 Freud
had said that the physiological “stuff “ of which anxiety was made had lost its interest for
him. Characteristically, Reich picked up a question Freud had dropped. And he did so in an
effort to affirm the younger Freud against the older Freud and the analytic establishment
that had just expelled Reich.
In 1931, L. R. Miiller had published the third edition of Die Lebensnerven(The
Nervous System), in which he summarized the functions of the two major divisions of the
autonomic nervous system: the sympathetic and the parasympathetic^3. The autonomic sys-
tem operates outside consciousness, unlike the central nervous system, which includes the
brain and the spinal cord. The autonomic nervous system activates the cardiovascular, diges-
tive, sexual, and respiratory organs. The sympathetic division responds to dangerous or
threatening situations by preparing a person through anxiety for “flight or fight” reactions;
the parasympathetic division controls the same life-sustaining organs of the body under
danger-free, relaxed conditions.
Some examples of how particular organs respond to sympathetic or parasympa-
thetic activation are: sympathetic—accelerated heartbeat, increased blood pressure, con-
stricted blood vessels, increased inspiration in breathing, and reduced blood supply to the
genitals; parasympathetic—slow and full heart action, decreased blood pressure, dilated
blood vessels, stimulation of expiration, and increased blood supply to the genitals.
Reich was so impressed by Miiller’s organization of autonomic nerve responses that
he began to see the task of therapy as one of reversing the “general sympatheticotonic con-
traction of the organism.” In other words, he wanted to combat not the acute emergency
reaction of fear but the chronic anxiety (and the defense against it) that continued long after
the stimulus had vanished. Thus, for example, the child once held his breath to inhibit gen-
ital excitations that got him into trouble with his parents. As an adult he continued, through
early conditioning,to hold his breath,even though this response crippled his capacity for
pleasurable functioning.
To my knowledge, Reich was the first psychoanalyst to emphasize the role of sym-
pathetic response in neurotic illness. It is interesting to note that current bio-feedback tech-
niques often involve the replacement of anxiety states with calmer ones by conditioning the
patient to relaxing (parasympathetic) thoughts and feelings. The puzzling successes of faith
healing and the “placebo effect” may work on the same principle, stimulating hope
(parasympathetic innervation) and reducing anxiety (sympathetic response).
It should be stressed that Reich’s therapy, unlike bio-feedback techniques, did not
aim at the avoidance of anxiety states. On the contrary, the binding of anxietyin the armor
was more of a problem than free-floating anxiety itself. Intense anxiety was often aroused
in the course of therapy as the armor loosened. The patient was helped to work through his
anxiety states,not avoid them. The cardinal therapeutic problem became the fear of intense
emotions and, in particular, the fear of strong pleasurable sensations (what Reich termed
16 : The Bio-electrical Experiments: 1934-1935 197