Finally, what is the relation between Reich’s vegetotherapy and current forms of
treatment such as primal scream therapy, Gestalt therapy, bio-energetics, and encounter
groups? Bio-energetics should be separated from this grouping because it essentially repre-
sents, as Lowen has pointed out, a popularization and amplification of Reich’s work and
hence is a direct descendant of it. The other schools make use of various Reichian tech-
niques. Primal scream, for example, works with direct touch of the body and is oriented
around deep emotional expression, Gestalt therapy involves considerable emphasis on
awareness of body feelings but does not directly use touch. Encounter groups employ a vari-
ety of methods to get people “out of their heads” and “into their feelings.”
None of these techniques involves a systematic working through of layered char-
acter defenses and segments of muscular armor. None postulates the release of an energy
from these blocked defenses. None has the treatment goal of orgastic potency or orgasm
reflex. In a later chapter I will consider the question of how effective Reich was in achiev-
ing his goal with patients and why he believed it was so important to maintain the principle
of orgastic potency as the criterion of health quite distinct from the therapist’s success in
reaching this goal It is enough here to emphasize Reich’s extraordinary pioneering contribu-
tions of the 1930s to classical theory and practice—contributions that were guided by his
own relentless quest to comprehend the nature oflife energy and what, in man, might block
its spontaneous flow.
18 : Psychiatric Developments: 1934-1939 231