published until 1933 but already formulated as a result of his new approach, is worth quot-
ing: “Not until a patient who had, in good positive transference, produced a wealth of rec-
ollections and yet had failed to get well, told me many months after breaking off the analy-
sis that he had never trusted me, did I really know the danger of a negative transference
which is allowed to remain latent. This made me, successfully, seek for the means of always
getting the negative transference out of its hiding places.”^10
The fact that the patient told him of his distrust only many months later may have
allowed Reich, with some distance from the heat of the analysis, to ponder quietly its full
meaning. Once the significance of latent negative transference did register, it fused with
more personal themes in his own life, giving an extra charge to the shock of recognition.
More or less hidden negative feelings had played so crucial a role in his own life: his moth-
er’s negative feelings toward his father, which led her to take a lover; Willy’s own hostility
toward Leon, which led him to wish to conceal the affair; and his jealous rage toward his
mother and tutor, which impelled him to hint at the affair to Leon. And if there was ever a
role model for somebody digging out the truth from its “hiding places,” it was his father
once Willy had fired his suspicions. In periods of stress, Reich himself sometimes unearthed
concealed negative feelings in precisely the belligerent and suspicious way Sterba mentions.
But Reich’s emphasis on negative transference was also connected with a more pos-
itive aspect of his personality. He liked to make full contact with people. He usually much
preferred any disagreements to be aired openly rather than remain concealed. As a teacher,
for example, he disliked it when students stared off into space or otherwise indicated pre-
occupation or boredom with the subject.
Reich’s own vitality and emotional directness must have played their part in leading
him to elicit the same qualities in his patients. Most of those who knew Reich at different
periods of his life comment first of all on the energy, intensity, and directness of his emo-
tional reactions. He in turn welcomed openness on the part of others and experienced unre-
sponsiveness as frustrating and painful.
Thus,Reich brought to psychoanalysis a disposition to understand and break
through the armor he often felt in others. This tendency makes clearer his intense interest
in Freudian concepts such as resistance. Put differently, Reich did not proceed entirely with-
out preconceptions,as his own writings often make it sound. It in no way minimizes his
achievements to see the personal longings and frustrations that played their role in shaping
his search.Too often the scientific researcher is described in an objective, unemotional way
that overlooks the personal passions, conflicts, yearnings that may also motivate his or her
work.
Reich’s emphasis on the form of personal communication and on stratified layers
of character structure also relate to his preferred modes of investigation. As I have suggest-
ed, Reich always preferred to make matters as concrete as possible. Nonverbal resistances—
a contemptuous look, an embarrassed smile, a mumbling voice, a highly controlled
demeanor—are more tangible than a particular memory or fantasy.
In Reich’s keen sense for the form of things, one can detect his country back-
6 : Reich’s Early Work on Character Analysis: 1920-1926 81