6 : Reich’s Early Work on Character Analysis: 1920-1926By the early 1920s, Reich had acquired considerable exposure to neurotic patients,
the psychotically ill, and impulsive or borderline characters—all good experience for any
young psychiatrist. If Reich’s most careful diagnostic work was done with impulsive persons,
his concern with treatment began with the neurotic patients, whom he saw in private analyt-
ic practice.
There were few guidelines as to how an analysis should be conducted, but this lack
of requirements and guidelines had its advantages for the young Reich. He could plunge into
the practice of analysis directly; he could learn to think for himself; and he was not required
to absorb a good deal from others that he would later have to unlearn. He was spared the
endless seminars,supervised cases,and so on that today are required of analytic candidates,
with the result that they often are unable to abandon the student role, with all its infantiliz-
ing features, until about forty. Yet another paradox is that Reich was one of the main con-
tributors to expanding the analytic curriculum for students.
In his own writings, Reich stressed the deficiencies rather than the advantages of
his early years as an analyst:
There was hardly any discussion of psychoanalytic technique, a lack which I felt
very keenly in my work with patients. There was neither a training institute nor an
organized curriculum. The counsel to be had from older colleagues was meager.
“Just go on analyzing patiently,” they would say, “it’ll come.” What would come, and
how,one did not quite know.One of the most difficult points was the handling of
patients who were severely inhibited or even remained silent. Later analysts have
never experienced this desolate being at sea in matters of technique. When a patient
failed to produce associations, if he did not “want to have” dreams or did not pro-
duce associations, one would sit there, helpless, for hours. The technique of analy-
sis of resistances, although theoretically formulated, was not practiced. ... If one
told the patient, “You have a resistance,” he would look at one uncomprehending-
ly.Ifone told him that he “defended himself against his unconscious,” one was not
any better off. Trying to convince him that his silence or resistance was senseless,
that it really was distrust or fear, was somewhat more intelligent, but no more fruit-
ful. Yet, the older colleagues kept saying: “Just keep on analyzing.”^1In later years Reich spoke even more contemptuously of the “older colleagues,”