5 : Reich’s Work on the Impulsive Character: 1922-1924 73
One further point should be made about the development of Reich’s impulsive
characteristics—a point that is in accordance with his general theoretical approach to the
development of character traits. In the first section of the monograph, Reich, following
Freud, emphasizes the role of identification in the development of the ego: “The process
of identification holds the key to the characterological interpretation of personality.” In
Reich’s case, his impulsive tendencies can be seen as the result of childhood stimulation and
repression; but they can also be viewed in the light of his identification with his father. For
Leon, too, was given to fits of unbridled and rationalized rage, especially when his jealousy
was aroused. Throughout his life, Reich was aware of the problematic aspects of his per-
sonality that stemmed from his identification with Leon.
I hypothesize, then, that during the early 1920s Reich was involved in his own psy-
choanalysis, partly with the help of Isidor Sadger and Paul Federn, but largely (I conjecture)
on his own. As his first autobiographical sketch informs us, Reich was acutely aware of—
and sometimes very troubled by—many aspects of his own life history. It seems likely that
this awareness of his own conflicts and the environmental matrix within which they devel-
oped alerted him to similar constellations in patients. Clearly, his self-awareness was further
heightened by the work with impulsive characters in particular.
It would be erroneous to use the preceding linkage of themes in his life with his
work on the impulsive character to substantiate the accusation that some have made against
Reich: that he was a psychopath. Those who thought of him in this fashion had their own
reasons and problems. The complexity of Reich’s personality could provide a field day for
the diagnostician. My own aim is something different: to trace his development and to show
how creatively—and sometimes destructively—he used what was within him.
In the monograph, Reich’s tone is in fact cool and objective, showing considerable
distance between himself and his subject matter. These pages reveal him primarily as a sharp,
up-and-coming young analyst whose primary goal, along good Freudian lines, is to under-
stand rather than to cure. Indeed, compared with Reich’s later clinical works, it is striking
how relatively free the monograph is of any suggestions for treatment. Although he makes
passing reference to the poor economic conditions surrounding the impulsive characters,
there is none ofthe zeal for social reform that suffuses later publications.
The monograph is furthermore instructive because it shows how slowly Reich
arrived at the concepts most closely associated with his name. In the late 1920s, he was
essentially to redefine Karl Abraham’s notion of the “genital character.” He would also for-
mulate pedagogical notions describing the possibility of an upbringing different from either
“normal” repressiveness or the exotic mixture of indulgence and punishment that impulsive
persons experienced in childhood.
However, he first had to sort out the more conflict-ridden aspects of his own child-
hood experiences and the experiences of impulsive characters. For thatkind of sexual per-
missiveness led to all kinds of problems. And so in 1925, as in 1920, we find Reich still close-
ly identified with many traditional analytic notions.He believed in the desirability of strong
ego defenses against sexual wishes and impulses. He also emphasized the cultural value of