74 Myron SharafFury On Earth
the latency period an absence or strong diminution of sexual feelings between the ages of
around six and the onset of puberty. Before Reich could transcend psychoanalytic formula-
tions on these matters, he had to comprehend more fully the strengths as well as the weak-
nesses in his own background and personality.
As I have indicated, Reich’s main interests in the monograph per se were diagnos-
tic and etiological rather than therapeutic. His chief suggestion for treatment was to uncov-
er the unconscious of impulsive patients very carefully and particularly slowly.
At the end of the monograph, Reich argued for more research on how to treat the
impulsive character. Such study would require an institutional setting to protect the patient
from his or her uncontrollable impulses at the same time as it offered treatment. Few such
settings existed. Impulsive patients were initially hospitalized because of a destructive or
self-destructive act; they would then be discharged, only to be readmitted after another, usu-
ally more dangerous outburst. Finally, they often succeeded in killing themselves or they
were given custodial care. What Reich wrote of this deplorable course for the patient of the
1920s could be repeated, with slight modifications, to describe current treatment today.
The Impulsive Characterwon Reich considerable recognition from his mentors and
colleagues. Freud congratulated Reich directly, and in a letter to Paul Federn described the
monograph as “full of valuable content.”^4 Indeed,he thought so highly ofit that he urged
Federn, then vice-chairman of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society and Freud’s right-hand
man in organizational matters, to see that Reich was appointed to the Society’s executive
committee. More recently, an authority has called it a classic that does for the impulsive char-
acter what Freud’s case history of Dora does for the hysteric^5.
The monograph would undoubtedly have received much wider acclaim were it
more readily available. The German edition has been out of print for many years, and the
piece was not available in English until 1970, when it appeared in the Journal of Orgonomy.At
least one competent observer, with no ax to grind, believes that it would have been translat-
ed much earlier were it not for the quarrels that subsequently developed between Reich and
the psychoanalytic establishment^6.