The Nature Of Emotion And Its Place In Reichian Therapy

Reich, among a number of errors, took the totally unclear concept of repression and turned it, undefined, into the sine qua non of the therapy. At the same time he changed from a focus on the character to a focus on the emotions. The rest of the body-based psychotherapists (Lowen, Boadella, etc.) followed Reich into this labyrinth of therapy being about repressed emotions.

Despite what you may have thought, emotions are not automatic. We can stop emotions or we can create them. If we could not create emotions there would be no profession of acting. When we create emotions (other than as an actor) we are doing so in order to manipulate ourselves or others. Who of us has not seen a child create tears in order to get attention?

During the course of this work you will feel many things, some very old and some very new. Try to allow the feelings but not to cause the feelings. Also try to give physical and/or verbal expression to whatever you do feel. Judging a feeling to be inappropriate or invalid only leads to denial or to self-manipulation and works against the therapy. Just allow, do not cause, do not inhibit.

I want to emphasize that emotions are NOT the goal, the purpose or the objective of this work. If, during a session, you experience some emotion, that is neither a good thing nor a bad thing; it is not a sign of progress or a danger signal. Reichian therapy, practiced conscientiously at home, will do its work irrespective of any emotional experiences. All too many people wrongly assume that expressing emotions in therapy is appropriate and curative. It is not. Emotional experiences and/or expressions are neither appropriate nor inappropriate, they are simple brute facts. What cures is insight and the work, as you proceed through it, will allow you to better observe yourself and understand the source of your character.

If you have read Reich or Lowen or most of the other body-based psychotherapy authors, you have been told that the goal of the therapy is "emotional expression."

That Is Not Correct

Human beings are cognitive animals. Except for some primitive survival-related emotions, emotions are not primary, they are derivative. We start with concepts and it is from concepts that emotions arise. Problems in living — psychological problems — are not emotional problems, they are cognitive problems. Inappropriate emotions arise from inappropriate concepts.

"The prerequisite for the experience of feeling is consciousness. Feeling is the conscious perception of an emotion.

It is probable that most emotions are not felt on a conscious level, and when they are — they are felt after the fact: the latter comprising actions with objects in the outer world or just imaginative acts. Interactions in reality or just imagined tend to proceed the emergence of emotions and sometimes they eventuate in conscious feelings.

Footnote 3. Technically we use three different words: affect, emotion, and feeling. Affect is what occurs in the brain. It may or may not have any body expression. Emotion is what occurs when affect has a body effect. Feeling is the conscious recognition of an emotion or an affect. There can be affect with emotion; there can also be feeling without emotion. That is, it is not always necessary for there to be a body response to affect for there to be feeling. This latter condition is the norm when the spine is cut (as in quadriplegia) such that the person is unable to get any sensory data from the body.

There has been written a lot about basic-emotions, primary emotions, secondary emotions, background emotions and moods... and various taxonomies have been spelled out. In short, human infants and animals tend to express signs of fear, joy, rage, and sorrow. There is always an action pattern associated with these affects: flight with fear, proximity with joy, fight with rage and withdrawal with sorrow. Besides these "basic emotions", there are emotions like jealousy, guilt, shame, etc. The cognitive element is probably more complex in these later and maturated affects."

I will reiterate this view throughout this book but I don't know any way to make this statement more emphatic other than to bold and underline it as follows:

THE GOAL OF THIS WORK IS CHARACTER CHANGE; IT IS NO T A GOAL OF THIS WORK TO EXPRESS EMOTION!

If you undertake this work with the idea that you will "get out your emotions," you will fail in the work.

Again I am leaving out all the theory of this and just giving you the conclusion. But I can without qualification guarantee that if you try to produce emotional expression from this work, you will get, if you are fortunate, nothing from it. If you are unfortunate, you will do great damage to yourself.

If you experience an emotion, fine, allow it to your personal level of comfort. But if you do not experience any emotions, that too is fine. The work will do its job. It only requires conscientious effort on your part.

Footnote 4. Tallberg, T. (2003). Transforming emotional experiences. The Scandinavian Psychoanalytic Review. 26(2), 131-140

A Few General Points The Basic Posture

The work is done lying on your back on a bed. The bed can be hard or soft, it does not matter. But lying on the floor on a very thin mattress or a futon will not work because when you get to the shoulders, the chest, or the leg exercises you will be striking the mattress with as much force as possible and that can not be done against a hard floor.

Lying on your back, the knees are bent so that the feet are flat on the bed and about 6 to 8 inches from your behind. (Figure 1 on page 19) The feet should be apart by about six or seven inches such that they are in line with your hip joints. Similarly, the legs at the knees should be about six or seven inches apart (Figure 2 on page 19).

The arms are at your side, lying on the mattress, with the palm of your hands flat on the mattress. The elbows are slightly bent (Figure 2).

Now with your palms flat, your wrist should also be flat against the bed. Many people have too much tension in their shoulders to allow their wrist to lie flat. Don't try to force it. As the work proceeds and you reduce the tension in your chest and shoulders, your wrist will come down over time to rest flat on the mattress.

Figure 3 on page 19 shows a minor but common error. In the left photograph the legs are properly spread (in line with the hip). In the right photograph, the legs have been allowed to lean outward.

Breathing fully and properly is the central issue of the training. I discuss the issue of breathing fully in Part One of this book.

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3