had taken the place of the father in guarding against sexual temptation. ... To the
same extent to which the “dead” expression was replaced by the “critical” expres-
sion, the defense against genitality became accentuated.... With the final disappear-
ance of the critical attitude of the forehead and its replacement by the cheerful atti-
tude, the inhibition of genital excitation disappeared also^6.Reich’s vignette provides a good example of the interweaving of his observations
of the patient’s bodily expression, her characterological attitudes, and her early history. Yet
it was a great oversimplification of what happened in the typical course of therapy.
What has this to do with respiration, the starting point of Reich’s therapy? The con-
nection is in fact straightforward: the release of blocked feeling, through the expression of
rage or sorrow, was usually accompanied by freer, fuller, easier breathing. Reich would care-
fully note ways the patient would “shut down” a particular feeling, both mentally, by being
ashamed of sobbing, considering it self-indulgent; and physically, by constricting the throat,
tightening the mouth and chin, raising the chest and—above—all by stopping full exhala-
tion. (He once described deep sobbing as the “great softener” of the whole musculature.)
During the 1930s, Reich developed a keen eye for the ways the muscular armor was
expressed in different segments of the body—how it looked to the observer, how it was
subjectively experienced, the signs of its incipient dissolution, and the anxieties that accom-
panied freer feeling, particularly genital excitation, when the armor was more fully dissolved.
Thus, the forehead might looktense, with eyebrows raised and a haughty expression of the
eyes; the patient might feela “band around the forehead” or complain of headaches. Patients
might have a masklike expression around the mouth, chin, and neck; or their voice might be
low, monotonous, “thin.” “One only has to imagine that one is trying to suppress an impulse
to cry; one will find that the muscles of the floor of the mouth become very tense, the mus-
cles of the whole head become tense, the chin is pushed forward and the mouth becomes
small.”^7
Characteristic expressions ofother “armor segments” are a tight, forward-jutting
chest, especially pronounced in the “he man”; a hunch of the shoulders, as though one is
perpetually carrying a big burden; contracting the diaphragm with a resultant feeling of
“pressure” or a “tight band” just above the stomach; an arched back with a retracted pelvis
and a protrusion of the upper abdomen and chest; and a dead, heavy, lifeless expression in
the legs.
From the very beginning of his work on bodily expression, Reich focused on start-
ing the armor dissolution farthest from the genitals. Characteristically, he would begin with
facial expressions, the expressions which strike the observer first and which the patient is
more likely to be aware of than other armor segments.
Reich’s vegetotherapeutic work during the 1930s influenced his thinking about the
goal of treatment. In the broadest sense, the goal remained the same—the establishment of
orgastic potency. However, direct work on the body permitted Reich to see a kind of minia-
ture model of orgastic potency within the therapeutic session. If the therapist worked cor-
18 : Psychiatric Developments: 1934-1939 225