Reich’s time as today, used patterns of skin resistance response as an indicator of emotion-
al response. Reich was not interested in this line of research because it could not distinguish
between pleasurable and unpleasurable reactions. He was drawn instead to skin potential,
because here one was measuring a spontaneous, sustained charge within the body—a charge
that showed variations in two directions, negative and positive^11. He particularly noted pre-
vious research that showed an increase in charge (more positive) after delicate touching of
the skin. Further, it had been shown that there was often a substantial potential (or charge)
between an electrode placed on intact skin and an electrode placed over a scratched or
injured site, the latter site reflecting a charge beneath the skin surface toward the “interior”
of the body in which Reich was interested.
He seems to have absorbed the available literature rather easily, including the evi-
dence that the sweat glands played a role in at least some of the skin’s electrical behavior,
moisture being a conductor of electricity. Reich responded characteristically to this evidence
by writing that the emphasis on finding a local mechanism (e.g., sweat-gland activity) “errs
by confusing the means of fulfilling a function with the function itself.” He argued that this
reasoning set the local mechanism “apart from the functional unity of the organism as a
whole,” in other words, the pleasure-anxiety function.
Reich set out to clarify the role of the electrical charging of the skin as “the expres-
sion of a unitary function related to the bio-electric totality of the organism.” He saw the
skin as a “special kind of membrane,” with the capacity to hold or give up electrical charge
as a function of the “vegetative antithesis” he had already described qualitatively and which
he now sought to quantify. He reasoned that the antithesis of “moving toward the world”
or “moving away from the world” must also involve two directions in the flow of bioelec-
tric charge. Pleasurable sensation should accompany charging of the periphery (toward the
world), while sensations of fear, anxiety, and disgust should parallel a decrease in peripher-
al charge (toward the interior).
Sophisticated skin potential measurements had only been possible for a few years,
since the development ofthe triode vacuum tube.Reich describes his measurement appara-
tus in some detail.It was a substantial apparatus for the times, involving the use of a vacu-
um amplifier tube connected to an oscillograph whose moving light beam was filmed con-
tinuously.
His basic approach was to place the “experimental” electrode on an intact skin site,
and the “reference”electrode on a site that had been scratched so that the charge beneath
the skin surface would be measured. (The same principle is used in traditional research
today.) First, he established that in a state of rest, nonerogenous zones have a potential of
10-40 millivolts more negative than the “interior” (injured) site—a finding that was in keep-
ing with the earlier research of others. The potential was relatively steady, varying little over
time for any one individual. Next, he studied subjects’ erogenous zones —“penis, vaginal
mucosa, tongue, inner surface of the lips, anal mucosa, nipple.” These zones were found to
be much more variable and were capable of a much greater charge, either positive or nega-
tive.
16 : The Bio-electrical Experiments: 1934-1935 201