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F RED E RIC K eRE WS
(paternal) inhibitors of sexuality, speak confidently about a single, real
human nature behind the twisted masks of character, and justify the
peremptory removal of those masks in the ,patients' best interest. Li–
bido was Reich's revolutionary leverage, the promised manna that
would be plentiful after the social and intrapsychic overthrow of the
superego.
This conceptual sparring acquires concrete and far-reaching
import when translated imo clinical practice. From the beginning of
his association with psychoanalysis Reich felt galled by the length of
treatment, by the analyst's supposed neutrality and inconspicuousness,
and by the patient's seemingly endless dodges and deceptions. What he
wanted was to make the patient over imo the free and open person that
he, Reich, knew was trapped beneath the character-armor. His Pyg–
malion impulse found its earliest outlet in a critique of Freudian
method - a critique which was trenchant and shrewd, for Reich in his
restlessness was able to see that the apparent compliance of patients
was likely
to
be a pseudocompliance masking a continued hostility
to
the analysis. No one should suppose, however, that the Reich of
Char–
acter Analysis
(1933) was simply repairing a weakness in analytic pro–
cedure. Rather, he was revoking the whole Freudian therapeutic al–
liance and putting in its place a relationship more congenial to his
hectoring disposition. Now the analyst would be a hero, daring
to
thwart the patiem's resistances at every point, to take the full fury of
his aggression, and then to crush his defensive system so that an ideal
"genital character" could emerge.
Whatever the merits of this approach, it constituted a reversal of
psychoanalytic ethics, whereby the therapist must try to refrain from
passing judgment on the patient's conscious values. "Full orgastic
potency" as Reich conceived it was not something his patients had
hoped to attain when they came to him, but a distant ideal which
he
told
them
was the proper object of human striving, and which he re–
garded as beyond the reach of civilized man under capitalism. Only by
joining Reich 's worldwide crusade could the patient hope
to
bring
about the preconditions of complete mental health for himself and
others. Submitting not just to the therapist's manipulations but
to
Reich 's social vision as well, the patient was evidently meam to un–
dergo a conversion experience and become a disciple - with or with–
out "cure" in the conventional sense.
It
is no secret, of course, that discipleship can be curative, offering
