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Book Review: Sex on the Couch, What Freud Still Has to Teach Us About Sex and Gender by Richard Boothby.
Book Review: Wilhelm Reich: Psychoanalyst and Radical Naturalist by Robert S. Corrington, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux
Book Review: Sex on the Couch, What Freud Still Has to Teach Us About Sex and Gender by Richard Boothby. Routledge, N.Y., N.Y. 2005 Paper, 276 pp. including index.
Richard Boothby is a Professor of Philosophy at Loyola College and the author of Death and Desire: Psychoanalytic Theory in Lacan’s Return to Freud and Freud as Philosopher: Metapsychology after Lacan.
For those of us who are psychoanalytically challenged, and who isn’t, this is an extremely informative book, well written, with humor and an excellent use of the rhetorical question to anticipate objections to the material and to highlight his thesis. Boothby’s thesis is that, as the title states, Freud has much to teach us about sex and gender, especially as it relates to our post-modern times. I come to the material not as one who is deeply versed in psychoanalytic lore, but as a practitioner of Wilhelm Reich’s character-analytic method of therapy, which, while originally developing out of psychoanalysis in the 1920’s to 30’s, became so sufficiently different in technique that it yielded results different from those obtained by the psychoanalysts, both then and now. As a “Reichian” I am, however, reasonably familiar with psychoanalytic theory, having been trained in classical psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy at Yale, a hot-bed of psychoanalysis in the 50’s when I served on faculty, so I feel competent to review the psychoanalytic aspects of this book with some authority. I received my post-graduate training as a character analyst and psychiatric orgone bio-therapist from Elsworth F. Baker, M.D., who was appointed by Reich to teach his methodology. Having taught the method myself as well as having contributed original work to the literature and edited the Journal of Orgonomy, I feel that I can represent Reich’s work also with some authority.
Now, while I think that “Sex” is informative, and that Boothby is correct in many of his original views about the nature of man and Western culture, I do not think that he is entirely correct. If one accepts Boothby’s (and thus Freud’s) fundamental tenets about what we are then all else that Boothby describes logically follows. However my personal experience as a therapist and the experience of colleagues using the same characteranalytic methodology, indicates that the alleged fundamental tenets presented by Boothby are in fact, in many important respects, derivative. They are based upon the observation of the behavior of man as an “armored creature, not of man in his unarmored, more natural state. This is an extremely important distinction, not only for fairly evaluating Boothby’s book, but for anyone attempting to understand human nature whether it be from the purely psychological or “psychosomatic” point of view. So permit me to explain a bit more.
Originally elucidated by Reich while he was still considered to be a classical psychoanalyst the phenomena discovered by the characteranalytic methodology revealed a whole world of functioning and behavior rarely seen by physicians and psychologists and thus not incorporated into psychiatry’s generally accepted view of what humans are and how they can function.
On the basis of his considerable clinical experience in both private practice and in psychoanalytic clinics Reich found that there are 3 layers to the character structure of any individual in our society. There is a superficial facade, which is an adaptive attitude with strong unconscious determinants that serves two functions, that of presenting an acceptable "front" to the outside world so that one can be accepted and get along easily in the world and to simultaneously keep out of awareness a second or "middle layer". The latter contains unacceptable (to both society and oneself) attitudes and emotions such as pornographic tendencies, rage, greed, and so on.
Any practitioner of a depth psychological approach to therapy whether or not he accepts Reich’s model who is worth his salt utilizes his therapeutic skills to penetrate the facade and reveal to the patient his middle layer. Once there, however, usually the resolution of the problem involves helping the patient come to terms and accept these parts of himself, often through "insight" into the childhood origins of the behavior. The middle layer is almost universally accepted as being the rock-bottom layer of Man’s structure, a “given” so to speak.
Reich's character-analytic approach, however, revealed another layer beneath the middle layer, what Reich termed the "core" of the character. This layer held within it "primary" emotions or impulses consisting of sexual genital impulses in the service of love, platonic love, natural aggression (without destructive impulses), a natural sociality (without artifice) plus those qualities of the individual which are idiosyncratic for her/him, which define one’s uniqueness, “who one is”. An individual functioning at her/his core knows themselves to be either fully masculine or feminine without ambivalence.
Looked at dynamically the middle layer arises out of an irrational thwarting of primary impulses in the core by one’s parents or institutions of society- school, church, etc. Reich defined middle layer impulses as “secondary” impulses. They are distortions of primary impulses: genital love becomes pornography with a splitting of one’s loving impulses from one’s sensual impulses, natural aggression becomes hatred, and so on. Thwarting of these latter impulses results in a further dampening of the original primary impulse as the 2nd impulses become the more acceptable traits of luke warm “caring” instead of love, passivity and masochistic tendencies instead of aggression, and complete or relative sexual impotence to name a few.
By adulthood the sum total of the dynamic interaction between 1 and 2nd impulses and the incorporated “verbotens” acquired from the outer world create an armored rigidification of the character structure. Character armoring simultaneously functions as a protection for the individual from disappointments from the outer world and from the anxiety that would come with contact with his deeper self. In one of his great discoveries Reich found the character armor to be anchored physiologically in patterns of chronic muscular tension. Muscular armoring deadens sensitivity and prevents the natural expression of emotion, In the sexual embrace armoring prevents the complete surrender of oneself in merging with one's partner. In the unarmored individual this is manifested as spontaneous, involuntary clonisms of the musculature of the entire organism at and briefly following orgasm and a feeling of complete satisfaction. Detailed investigation by Reich and his students reveals that this reflexive activity with full perceptual contact is rarely, if ever, seen in the armored individual.
The usually accepted view of men as naturally "macho" and women as "masochistically passive", which Boothby perpetuates, actually interferes with and is a defense against complete surrender to one’s partner and one’s self and satisfaction in sex. Macho and maso-chisms are 2nd impulses. Their pervasiveness accounts for the wide-spread prevalence of the lack of satisfaction in sex, the need for more sex soon after the sexual act, and the use of a variety of psychological games and physical sex toys to "make it happen". Contrary to Boothby’s description, which is, unwittingly, only of the armored individual, an unarmored woman feels the most intense sexual excitation in her vagina, not her clitoris, and desires the man she loves to penetrate her, albeit without any sado-masochistic intent. The unarmored man desires to "penetrate' his beloved but without any sadistic component.
This digression into Reichian bio-psychology, which is not described in "Sex" except for the rare use of the terms "armor" and “character armor", has been necessary because Reich’s findings are my major caveat standing in the way of acceptance of much Boothby's thesis, that is, that Freud's psychoanalytic theory (aided by the French psychoanalyst and death drive theorist, Jacques Lacan) is alive and explanatory of much of contemporary personal and public life. As a depth psychologist I can accept much of this thesis and Boothby argues it well, but as a Reichian therapist, I cannot accept Boothby's view of Man as a creature who is basically driven by secondary impulses.
Boothby’s position is well described in his chapter on “Sex and Intimacy.” While acknowledging that sexuality is a perfect venue for the expression of intimacy, Boothby correctly describes it as rarely occurring in modern man. “…in fact”, he writes, “sex can involve a minimum of real connection between partners and can readily be more alienating than it is affiliating.” Boothby’s reason? “The lack of more emotionally gratifying sex is finally to be traced to the source of sexual repression we have been examining: the nature and functions of the ego…The ego serves as a defensive apparatus to protect the self from becoming vulnerable to becoming lost in the other, exposed to the wounding influence of the other’s caprices, enslaved to a renewed dependency…Given this psychological danger posed by the sexual relation, it is no accident that human beings have sought to detach sex from interpersonal connection.” Now, I couldn’t agree more with Boothby’s description and understanding of what sex typically is in Western Man, however this is a description of armored man who, indeed suffered the pains of an irrationally inhibiting childhood and adolescence. However, an unarmored individual, albeit a rare bird in our society, welcomes intimacy in the sexual embrace, indeed has difficulty having sex where there is not intimacy. Boothby writes as if he believes that Man’s fears of intimacy are inevitable and that defensiveness against the woman (as mother) is necessary. It is also assumed that in adulthood every man must always see woman as representative of mother. He is correct where one’s parents do not support the developing child into an adult, which unfortunately is true in over 90% of developing children. The child, in order to survive without anxiety, must identify with and introject (take in) into their unconscious the threatening parent and make their views her/his own. Now the child’s conflict is no longer between his basic instincts (id) and the outer world but between his/her instincts and his/her ego. Once this pathological pattern is established the character structure begins to rigidify and is solidified by early adulthood and all else that Boothby describes eventuates. But, again, it ain’t necessarily so.1
Once armored and operating out of secondary impulses of destructive anger, pornographic tendencies, and compulsive behavior and a façade that keeps these impulses in check in society, the individual behaves much as Boothby describes. Men are phallic (macho), women are either passively “masochistic”, hysterically seductive, or (in current Western societies) phallic and the society advertises and promotes these character types as ideals to which every man and woman should aspire.
Boothby bases his argument and conclusions on a fine, but important point, the definition of the German word, “trieb”. In the original English translations of Freud’s early writings “trieb” is translated as “instinct”, which would be consistent with Freud’s strong bio-medical training. Boothby, however, argues that the correct meaning is “drive”, which would make it predominantly psychologically, rather than biologically, based. I googled the word and found that it can mean either. Now, if “trieb” means “instinct” then sex in man has its basis in the same rigidly determined activity as animals. If it means “drive”, then it isn’t rigidly determined, but has a far greater plasticity and capacity for variation than is found in animals. Thus, if “drive”, then all of the many variations of sexual expression found in man, including heterosexuality and homosexuality, and all the variations, many of which we have termed “pornographic”, are “natural”. Neurosis then becomes a conflict between these “drives” and, to express it simply, the individual’s sense of himself, his “ego”. Although Freud never completely gave up his devotion to biological determinants in neurosis, Boothby’s formulation is consistent with Freud’s later, more psychologically oriented concepts. It is more than interesting that Reich developed Freud’s original formulations which accounted for what was called “actual-neurosis”, anxiety which is a result of the “damming-up” of unsatisfied sexual urges, into character analysis wherein he found the deeper “core” of healthy functioning, as described above. Even, however, if Boothby is correct in his translation of “trieb”, his conclusions about the deepest functions of man are incorrect. As Reich established, the “drives” that psychoanalysis accepts as Man at his rock bottom functioning are secondary functions that, for the most part, come about as a result of the inhibition of more primary “core” (Reich) functions.
Having said this, what can we say about the verity of Boothby’s observations and conclusions on the functioning of modern man? Except for a few items mentioned below, as a fellow depth psychologist I agree with Boothby, but with the understanding that the basis for his observations are secondary drives. Boothby’s most essential point is that psychoanalysis, as presented by Freud mirrors our, then (late 19th, early 20th century) emerging Western culture and that we can use psychoanalytic thinking to help us understand our contemporary culture.
The absolute core of Freud’s theory, the point on which he never budged over the course of his career, the point upon which he continued to insist in spite of bitter struggles among the members of his inner circle, is that issues of sexuality lie at the heart of the personality. Indeed, Freud asserts that the personality is constructed around sexuality. Sex is the trellis for the unfolding of psychological development, the skeleton on which the flesh of personal character is hung. But, we can now assert, this focus on sexuality was itself historically determined. Whatever the applications of Freud’s theories to the modern era, they are nowhere more relevant than to the present period of history. In putting the erotic at the center of his psychology, Freud was responding to the emerging shape of modern culture, putting his finger on the pulse of a radical transformation in modern subjectivity that invests itself in the intimate, and in sex as the very heart of the intimate. The crux of Freud’s theories is thus a response to the conditions of modernity; indeed, it is a theoretically elaborated description of them. Freud is the theorist of the intimate par excellence… the fact remains that Freud was less a creator of his times than he was a product of them. Freud’s discovery of the rootedness of personality in the dynamics of sexual life was, after all, the product of observation. And what he observed were the consequences of an epochal shift in European culture. Freud began looking under the covers of sexual life at a time when Western culture was becoming obsessed with lifting the covers.2
In describing our contemporary culture and its focus on “satisfaction” Boothby leans heavily on the writings of Hannah Arendt (The Human Condition, 1958). According to Arendt pre-modern cultures were characterized by an ethics of sacrifice with the individual securely positioned within the larger matrix of family, clan, and, to which the individual was deeply bonded. Within this matrix the exigencies and gratifications of private life were secondary. With an erosion of this sense of participation in a larger community due to a variety of reasons, which Boothby well documents, the social world has become progressively more atomized and the private individual has accordingly become steadily more sovereign. As Boothby writes, “ …the dilemma of the modern individual becomes less a matter of feeling torn between private gratification and public service than of deciding between one gratification and another that competes with it. Satisfaction, not sacrifice, is the order of the day…It is in this context that Freud put forward the psychoanalytic theory of the unconscious, a theory centered on the question of desire and its satisfaction, or lack of it.” Boothby points out that because of the times it was Freud’s earlier formulations dominated by the pleasure principle that have been most accepted by the mainstream, with the later formulations, including Freud’s postulations of a “death drive” being generally eschewed.3,4
Sex, then, according to Boothby, is the “primary symptom of our epoch”. And, like all symptoms, according to psychoanalytic thinking, its expression contains both the drive and the resistance against the drive. It is a compromise. In modern times sex has become, Boothby maintains, “our identity” and we must look to the contemporary resolution of the oedipal conflict in order to understand ourselves. The oedipal conflict, is, of course, the conflict that a child has because of sexual desire for the parent of the opposite sex combined with his simultaneous fear and love for his/her competition, the parent of the opposite sex. It is most strikingly expressed in the Greek tragedy of Oedipus, who unwittingly marries his own mother and murders his father. In psychoanalytic dogma this theme is considered to be written in stone throughout all humanity.
Boothby finds that in addition to the inversion of ancient attitudes towards public and private life that in the modern world there has been, and continues to be, a “transformation of authority… Modernity is the death throes of monarchy…(and therefore)...the modern era is the Oedipal age par excellence”. This is well revealed according to Boothby in the four features that distinguish our modern period, Natural Science, Protestantism, Enlightenment, and Capitalism. The wisdom of the elders of the community has been replaced by scientists, who objectify the subjective, and who are interchangeable with one another. The protestant worshiper has direct access to God, free of myriad intermediaries of the priesthood. The enlightenment, “championed the values of the individual, free from the influence of outside forces and guided by the light of his or her own reason.” Capitalism fuels the other three by its incessant expanding pressure to transform any society into which it is introduced. All result in a destabilization of the patriarchal status quo. Boothby anticipates the arguments of those who would object to his thesis by providing, up front, his own rebuttal. And he does it well. He summarizes: “Forces have been set in motion by the four historical movements I’ve described that, while they are still far from changing everything, have changed enough to create a definitely new state of affairs. The really decisive point might be put this way: What hasn’t been changed in fact has been altered by the perception that change might be on the way. It is for reason of this perceived possibility of change that being a man in today’s world-in fact still very much a man’s world-means something very different from what it did two or three hundred years ago”
In large part a reaction to this change, Boothby writes, is the exaggerated patriarchal stance of contemporary fascistic and religious fundamentalist militaristic organizations. Each relies upon a strong patriarchal leadership, “purity” of purpose, and the promotion of an ethics of “sacrifice”. And this refers not just to, say, Nazi fascism or Taliban-style Islamic Fundamentalism, but in a more hidden way to those calling for a return to “law and order”, “family values” and other rhetoric that implies that “father knows best” Boothby sees the dynamics of the current Western world order to be like a symptom in an individual: there is a cracking of the structure of society with the old patriarchal world view giving way to something deeper and that in reaction to this breakthrough there is the development of a counterforce consisting of new formal elements, but containing the old patriarchal tendencies. A symptom seen psychoanalytically, expresses and represses some impulse. As examples Boothby appropriately cites the French and Russian revolutions and contemporary battles over abortion, gay rights, and the women’s movement. Contemporary sexual behavior also deeply reflects these dynamics.
In discussing sexuality Boothby relies heavily upon the little known work of Murray S. Davis, author of Smut: Erotic Reality and Obscene Ideology. Assuming Boothby’s reportage of Davis’s work is accurate, I found it to be extremely interesting and absolutely relevant to Boothby’s thesis, although I, as a “Reichian” would come to different conclusions than either Davis or Boothby. Davis contrasts the states of being in the normal world compared to the state of the sexual embrace. In the latter we do, indeed, enter into an altered state of consciousness. As Boothby accurately describes,
“At the moment of climax, if not already before then, the line of separation between lovers completely disappears. We are aswim in the river of passion. No, we are nothing but that river...It is in this loss of definition, a loss that shakes the foundations of everyday reality, that Davis locates the threatening aspect of sex. Sex destabilizes the boundaries that separate one individual from another and that define the space and time of a rationally structured world. It is in order to contain and control this potentially destructive power, Davis argues, that sex becomes subject to a range of social and cultural constraints.”(199)
Reich would have agreed with Davis, except for one crucial point. While the natural tendency to merge with one’s partner in sex is, indeed, temporarily “destructive” to the stability of the ego, it provides not only the ultimate state of intimacy and energetic bonding we can obtain as corporeal creatures but also the discharge of excessive quantities of life energy that would otherwise be the “fuel” for the expression of neurotic fixations and complexes. To one who is armored, dissolution in the genital embrace can be perceived as frightening and “destructive”, to the unarmored it is life giving and saving itself. This is “the function of the orgasm”. Reich, W. The Function of the Orgasm, Orgone Institute Press, 1942.
According to Boothby, Davis defines three “dominant ideologies” of sex which arose to deal with its potentially destructive, destabilizing force. These are the “Jehovanist”, which is the patriarchal, religious “container” where the fires of sexuality may burn, globally repressive against all manifestations of sexuality except where absolutely needed for procreation, the “Gnostic”, who exploits the obscene as a form of rebellion against the banality and hypocrisy of everyday life, and the “Naturalist”, who “scientizes” and normalizes sex removing it from the realm of the sacred and the erotic. Nowhere in the description of these types, which Boothby appears to accept, can one find a distinction between sex as an expression of primary versus secondary impulses as I defined above. Neither Davis nor Boothby seem aware of this distinction.
However, having then launched into an analysis of pornography as a form of rebellion against patriarchy, Boothby does make certain vital and telling distinctions. While Gnostic pornography is ostensibly rebelliously anti-patriarchal it sustains the subservience of women. They are portrayed as always hot to go with endless appetites for sex: “the overthrow of patriarchy is reinstated though fantasy.” While pornography as practiced is extremely sexist Boothby argues that it need not necessarily be so. In this, again, he shows no understanding of the distinction between primary and secondary drives. To Reich it is the inhibition of natural sexuality by the outside world that creates the pornographic distortion of it: In men and women the erotic attraction to the opposite sex is split off from one’s love of them. When patients establish genitality through therapy this split is reconciled and the patient spontaneously loses interest in pornography.
Because of his ignorance of primary drives Boothby is confused about Davis’s so-called “naturalist” ideology, which is not “natural” at all. How could a contemporary “scientific” view of sexuality, which has little to do with feelings and perception be truly natural? But Boothby does understand that there is something wrong with the naturalist ideology: “Indeed enjoyment would seem to be the real problem for the Naturalist altogether…The naturalist gives us sex without Eros…a new form of control.” Boothby understands that the naturalist ideology is but another means of killing off pleasure, but pleasure to Boothby seems only to be the kind of pruriency expressed by the Gnostic temperament in Davis’s categorization.
In further delineating the symptomatic character of modern sex Boothby relies heavily on the writings of Michel Foucault (History of Human Sexuality). Foucault, according to Boothby maintains that our contemporary understanding of ourselves as sexually “liberated” is an illusion. The Victorians were “obsessed” by sex, as revealed in the many writings, both scientific (including Freud) and otherwise about it. Foucault writes that, “…the hidden purpose of this burgeoning science of sex is a kind of domestication of the erotic, a submission of sex-pleasure to a rational scheme. The modern compulsion to talk endlessly about sex conceals the unfolding of a new technics of power.” And here I couldn’t agree more: ” ...in the modern context, such (religious) regulatory scrutiny has become ever more pervasive and microscopic, albeit under the auspices of new and different authorities. The picture then, is of one controlling authority replaced by another that is subtler, more organized, more invasive. And far more deceptive. By condemning the past for its repressive excesses while trumpeting its own openness and volubility about sex, modern sexual science institutes a regime of control that is all the more effective for being able to give the appearance of a liberation.” This is to Foucalt, “biopower.” “Power would no longer by dealing simply with legal subject over whom the ultimate dominion was death, but with living beings, and the mastery it would be able to exercise over them would have to be applied at the level of life itself; it was the taking charge of life, more than the threat of death , that gave power its access even to the body.” “Excellent”, I say, but Boothby, while agreeing with Foucault’s central thesis does so with a caveat. That is, while Boothby admits that what Foucault writes may be true, Boothby maintains that there has been, “some progress.” Witness our liberated views on homosexuality. “Yes”, I say, but then ask, “What has been liberated?” In all too many cases an increasing tolerance of secondary drives, which in many ways is a diversion from coming to terms with genitality.
Boothby expands on Foucault’s essential thesis by exploring the significance of contemporary visual imagery from a psychoanalytic point of view. He sees sexual imagery as fetishistic, i.e. containing within itself both expressive and repressive functions, serving to entice the viewer (mostly men) while simultaneously allaying castration fears. Through fetishizing one’s sexual object sex can be obtained without attachment, commitment, or the anxiety ( or pleasure –RAB) that comes with truly intimate contact with a loved female partner, genitalia and all. It is Erica Jong’s “zipless fuck”, sex with the anonymous person where the clothing flies off without effort in an essentially masturbatory act devoid of real contact.
Boothby argues that in the fetishistic function modern man achieves, a “free and sovereign” individualism, one who is, “...fully in control of (their) satisfaction.” This is modern man in search of commodities, which are essentially fetishistic objects. In the contemporary marketplace they, “..take on a particular aura of desirability”, of a value far exceeding their practical worth (Marx). Our longing for these objects may be …”traced back to the emotional system of the family and to a need for love that has come to grief.” Advertising for such products, according to Boothby, is the “pornography of commodities”. It is achieved through “sexiness”, specifically scenes of sexual provocation with a hint of aggressive confrontation by women in a setting of luxury. But it is “…a sexual come-on that fails to materialize”. The viewer is attracted and held in thrall by the sexual image with a net effect of, not sexual excitement and satisfaction, but of empowerment of the image and what it is selling. I agree with much of Boothby’s analysis here, but would argue that his “free and sovereign” individual is not really free and sovereign in that he has no choice of love objects: he is compulsively bound to the fetish. He has only the illusion of freedom.
Boothby concludes his book by summarizing his view of the increasing expression of the essential plasticity of the sex drive as patriarchal values melt away in our modern world, the reaction from the Right to the “liberated” sexual expression, and Freud’s place in all this. As I have tried to write above, both the “liberated” and the “repressive” are derivative positions and can only truly be understood and resolved by dealing with the deeper level from which both are derived, the armoring of mankind. Freud was a genius whose contribution to our understanding of what motivates us will live forever. I am grateful to Boothby for showing us his marvelous discoveries in the light of the culture from which he came. That both liberating and repressive elements of our society try to tear him down is really no surprise. We always kill the messenger.
By: Richard Blasband, M.D.
Note: This review first appeared in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 20, No. 3, Fall 2006.
Footnotes:
1 As an example of the process let us examine voyeurism which is rife in our society. Advertising depends upon it. Voyeurism is different from the natural desire to view the body in that it is compulsive. The voyeur hides while striving to see. This is a result of repressive tendencies in the society (home) centered about forbidding looking at one’s siblings or parent’s genitals. The visual function is literally partially physiologically and psychically blocked, especially against the viewing of exciting sexual things leaving the child, later the adult, with a compulsion to satisfy the act of looking. This phenomenon was starkly illustrated in the Trobriand Island society of Melanesia. Prior to the appearance of white missionaries to the islands the natives, who were only partially clad at all times, and had no prohibition against appearing naked, never “peeked” at the body of one of the opposite sex. With the introduction of verbotens against sexuality in general, especially among adolescent who were used to sexual freedom, and the insistence that the natives cover up their breasts and genitals at all times, voyeurism became prevalent. A further illustration of the point is seen in adolescent behavior with respect to sexual intercourse. The society gave adolescents a communal home in which they could live and discover sexuality. While there was much promiscuity soon after entering the home, this was spontaneously given up with time and replaced with selection of a mate and marriage, usually for life. (Malinowsky). In our society, with its distorted sexuality, divorce is now expected in marriage.
2 Those who are interested in the relationship between society and emerging scientific ideas will be well rewarded by reading Henri Bortoft’s, The Wholeness of Nature, wherein he examines the works of Goethe, Copernicus, Newton, and Galileo within the context of their cultures. (Bortoft, Henri The Wholeness of Nature, Lindisfarne Press, 1996.
3 As noted above it was Reich who carried the concept of tension release to its full realization with his observations on orgastic potency and genitality. Yet, like Freud, Reich, author of The Sexual Revolution, has, wittingly and unwittingly, been maligned and misunderstood. You can’t simply “fuck” your way to health as many reading Reich mistakenly thought that he advocated. Reich well knew that between desire and satisfaction there stood the almost universal barrier of the characterological and muscular armoring making true satisfaction for most individuals impossible. If one is unarmored “fucking” is impossible because it excludes love in the genital embrace.
4 Boothby, who is a scholar of Lacan’s psychoanalytic writings, follows Lacan in his view of the importance of what Freud called the “death drive.” Freud postulated such an instinct in part as a means of understanding why patients could not get well and to explain masochism. This concept became more important to Freud’s theories in his later years when he had cancer of the jaw. It was Reich who disproved the existence of a drive toward death, at least as an explanation of masochism, when he found clinically that the masochist’s negative reaction to therapy could be uncovered and dissolved like any other defense. When this was accomplished the patient had the same strong will to life as any other type of patient.
5 Reich made this same point about the presence of the fascistic mentality in the character structure of much of Western society, not just as a presence in Nazi Germany. Reich, W. The Mass Psychology of Fascism, Orgone Institute Press, Rangeley, 1946.
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Book Review: Wilhelm Reich: Psychoanalyst and Radical Naturalist by Robert S. Corrington, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux N.Y. 2003, 297 pages including index.
Those who are seriously interested in the logic of the development of the work of the psychiatrist and scientist, Wilhelm Reich, will find this book rewarding. Robert Corrington is a professor of theological philosophy at Drew University in N.J. and he gives us a philosophical anthropologist’s view of what made Reich tick. The goal of philosophical anthropology, according to Corrington, “…is to develop an encompassing perspective on the whole self-in-process as it manifests its cumulative directionality in both its conscious and its unconscious dimensions.” (xiv). In doing this Corrington relies heavily on the work of the Euro-American philosopher, C.S. Peirce, who described how, “Each self-in-process moves through signs, objects, and interpretants.. so that meaning can be had in a chaotic world”. (xv). I warn you, however, that this is heavy going, especially in the early chapters where Corrington analyzes Reich’s early writings in psychoanalysis. Aside from Corrington’s philosophical analysis of Reich’s work, on which I do not have the expertise to comment, he appears to have presented an overview of the corpus of Reich’s work without distortion or bias. Gratefully, after the many years of the misrepresentation of Reich, especially in his leaps through many domains of nature, Corrington recognizes the rationality of the logic inherent in Reich’s thinking as he made transitions through psychology into biology, then physics and cosmology.
As a psychobiography Corrington sees Reich as a “radical naturalist”, one who believes that not only is nature, “..all that there is”, but also that the, “ ‘one’ nature manifests (and is) a deep pulsating energy that spawns new life out of itself.” (p.193). Having immersed myself in Reich’s writings, and conducted research in various aspects of orgonomy and practiced the therapy he originated for about 45 years, I find that I well agree with this assessment.
What does puzzle me, however, is Corrington’s “diagnosis” of Reich as a “borderline” personality since Corrington “gets” Reich is so many other ways. For one thing while it is well known that such personality types cannot do significant work, one of the things that characterized Reich was his capacity to not only work hard, but to be incredibly productive in making significant break-through findings in a variety of scientific disciplines. There are many other exceptions to this diagnosis as it would apply to Reich, and having discussed Reich with many of his professional students who knew him it is clear to me that the diagnosis does not apply. As Corrington recognizes, Reich was not schizophrenic, but he did think, work, and live outside the collective. For this we should be grateful as Reich saw homo normalis as few have before him and he gave us so many gifts in so many realms of possible human experience.
-Richard A. Blasband, M.D.
Note: This review first appeared in the Journal of Scientific Exploration, Vol. 20, No. 3, Fall 2006.
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