infantile sexual longings would be discussed, but not deeply experienced.
It is clear from all this that Reich’s approach was quite active. It was not active, how-
ever, in the didactic sense of advising or exhorting the patient. Nor was it active in Sandor
Ferenczi’s sense of becoming a direct “good” mother or father surrogate for the patient.
The activity lay in the relentless analysis of resistances and in the careful selection of mate-
rial from the patient’s communications.
Some analysts objected that “resistance analysis”—or “character analysis,” as Reich
later called it, using Abraham’s term—violated the principle that one should let oneself be
guided by the patient. Selection ran the danger of permitting one’s personal biases and inter-
ests to override the patient’s needs at any given time. Reich replied that the analyst always
selected from the patient’s associations, for he did not necessarily interpret a dream in
sequence but chose this or that detail for interpretation. What really mattered was whether
or not one selected correctly within the analytic situation.
A related criticism was that Reich’s approach might artificially exaggerate the resist-
ance if the patient’s material did not contain clear-cut signs of defensive character traits.
Here Reich, along with others such as Ferenczi and Fenichel, replied that the concept of
material should be enlarged to include not only the content but also the form of the patient’s
communications.Case presentations in the seminar convinced Reich that the nonverbal behav-
iorof the patient—his look, facial expression, dress, bodily attitude—was not only underes-
timated but often completely overlooked by many analysts.
The form of behavior was to assume much importance in Reich’s development of
therapy over the years. By the mid-1930s he was far more interested in the nonverbal emo-
tional expression of the patient than in his or her words. However, as early as 1924 or so, he
became convinced that, in Nietzsche’s words, “one can Me with the mouth, but with the
accompanying grimace one nevertheless tells the truth.” And the nonverbal expression often
contained the resistive element that had to be dealt with before the words could carry a full
emotional charge. That is, a patient might be relating the most dramatic infantile memories,
but in a monotonous, low voice. For Reich, it was important to deal with the blocked emo-
tions contained in the vocal expression before getting into the lively content of the commu-
nications.
I have gone into some technical detail to give an idea of the problems Reich
encountered at the time and the analytic context within which they occurred. The underly-
ing issues can be summarized in a fairly simple fashion.
Reich was trying to understand the conditions under which patients could make use
of painful truths, the factors at work in determining when interpretations of the uncon-
scious actually helped the patient in his or her total functioning and when analysis became a
mere mental exercise, or “game.” Analytic truths are painful because the process perforce
stirs up old longings, angers, griefs. These emotions, punished or at least not validated in
childhood,are in turn pervaded by anxiety and guilt. Defensive character traits develop as a
way ofautomatically warding off such feelings. Now the analyst disturbs this “neurotic equi-
librium.” Not only because the patient transfers angry and fearful feelings toward him from
6 : Reich’s Early Work on Character Analysis: 1920-1926 79