23 : Psychiatric, Sociological, and Educational Developments: 1940-1950After his arrival in America, all of Reich’s work with human beings was influenced
by his discovery of orgone energy. Since he had already utilized energy concepts (calling
them libido and bio-electricity), his orgone energy findings represented no sharp break with
his previous clinical and social endeavors. However, in the 1940s he would make less use of
psychoanalysis or Marxism in explaining man’s dilemmas; instead, his own views on human
health were to be featured more prominently.
Psychiatric DevelopmentsReich’s psychiatric work in the United States, as earlier in Europe, provided the
main source of financial support for his research as well as an opportunity for contact with
people. Almost all of those who were in close touch with him during the 1940s were initial-
ly interested in receiving therapy from him or learning his techniques. Usually both goals
were combined, especially after 1945, when Reich started to devote himself entirely to
“training therapy,” as we shall see later.
It is significant that amid all his activities, Reich was able to maintain a psychiatric
practice four to six hours a day. The financial needs of his research dictated this. In the early
19405, he commanded a fee of $20 per session; by 1948, he was charging $50. Between 1936
and 1950, Reich spent around $350,000 to support his own research^1.
Initially,Reich’s technique was very similar to the treatment he utilized in Norway.
Indeed,his description ofthis therapy published in his first American book,The Function of
the Orgasm(1942),was translated directly from a 1937 German monograph^2 .Then during
the 19405,some important therapeutic developments took place, although Reich never
wrote them up in the detail with which he presented his natural-scientific findings.
In this period,Reich’s major new therapeutic concept concerned the “segmental
arrangement of the armor.” The 1937 publication had shown him groping for a “law” cen-
tral to the dissolution ofthe muscular armor. In America, he now conceived of the armor
as consisting of various “segments” or “rings” that were at right angles to the spine. The
streamings and bodily excitations—what Reich now perceived as a current of orgone ener-
gy—flowed vertically along the body axis. The therapeutic battle lay between the armor
rings, on the one hand, and the streamings of energy, on the other. As Reich put it, since
“the armorings are in segments at right angles to the movement of the currents, it is clear
that the orgasm reflex cannot establish itself until after the dissolution of all the segmental
290 Myron SharafFury On Earth