Therapeutic Writings
Wilhelm Reich
Reich was a student of Sigmind Freud’s who was active from the 1920s to the 1950s. He started as an orthodox psychoanalyst, but followed his own ideas and inspiration, forming his own therapeutic approach. This led to him being the first psychoanalyst to really bring the body into therapy. One of Reich’s central ideas was that of armouring. Armouring is basically the ways in which we protect ourselves and manifests as tensions held out of our awareness. Reich felt this arose in part, from not having our primary needs met as children – needs for holding, feeding, affection and love – and is later compounded by conflicts with parents, school and traumatic life events. He felt it expressed itself in two ways – characterological and muscular. Characterological means hang-ups, quirks of the personality, muscular means unconscious tensions held in the body (a tight jaw, a stiff neck, fear held in a tight stomach). His therapeutic innovation was to work directly on these tensions. I have found in my own therapy and later, my own practice, that working in this was can be really remarkable – it’s like a hotline to your emotions.
Here is a longer piece that I’ve written on armouring: https://pulsation1.substack.com/p/armouring-part-1
New ideas, new thinking, new approaches.
On of the many things I find exciting about Wilhelm Reich’s work is that it’s generative of new ideas, new thinking, new approaches. If you start to see the world, body and therapy as Reich did (even a little), you start to see the blockages and the possibilities of movement. One such set of ideas emerges around birth. Birth is often a fraught and difficult experience for women. Reich’s ideas of pulsation and the breathing techniques he proposes seems like they might be of some assistance here. Someone who’s taken this a lot further than me is Peter Jones, who worked firstly as a Reichian therapist, then as a midwife for 15 years. In this interview, he talks about how he discovered Reich, and how he used some of these ideas to help with birth.
https://pulsation1.substack.com/p/on-discovering-reich-and-working
I am based in Angel, Islington, a short walk from Angel Tube station.
Useful Links
An introduction to the life and works of Carl Rogers
Contemporary Reichian therapy and training
American College of Orgonomy, US organisation promoting Reich’s scientific and therapeutic work