Personality disorders
and character-analytic psychotherapy
Xavier
Serrano Hortelano
Translation: alloattid@yahoo.fr
This
article was recently published in the
journal of thel Colegio de Psicólogos de Valencia (College
of Psychologists of Valencia).
ABSTRACT
Using
as main reference T. Millon’s theory and its similarities with the
Psychodynamic and Character theory, the author exposes the psychosocial
and ecological viewpoint of the post-reichian model about emotional
suffering and of the so-called “personality disorders”.
KEY
WORDS
T.
Millon; W. Reich; personality disorders; emotional suffering; character-analytic
psychotherapy; human systems ecology;
T.
Millon and personality disorders
In
the first pages of his book “Disorders
of Personality: DSM-IV and Beyond”,
T.
Millon clearly states that this concept is nowadays tangibly present in
psychopathologic nosology, and that it modifies clinical perspective:
“Indeed, for the revised multiaxial format to be applied, the set of
symptoms should not be not evaluated as a clinical entity separated from
the larger context of the patient, which includes the way of behaving,
meeting people, thinking, feeling and facing difficulties, ie
his or her personality”. (Millon, 1996).
Moreover,
he clearly explains that personality disorders are not diseases but
structural and dynamic systems without any possibility of “strict
division between normality and pathology” (idem). He adds that they can
be evaluated but not definitively diagnosed and that “personality
disorders require combined and strategically designed modalities of
intervention” (idem).
Using
these references, he proposes a classification that seems very original
and valuable, for it represents a general attempt to adjust distinct
variables. He thus differenciates: “pleasure-deficient personalities
(schizoid, avoidant and depressive); interpersonally-imbalanced
personalities (dependent, histrionic, narcissistic and antisocial);
intrapsychically-conflicted personalities (sadistic, compulsive,
negativistic, masochistic) and, lastly, disorders characterised by
structural deficiencies chizotypal, borderline, paranoid and
decompensated)” (idem).
Moreover,
besides the rigorous elaboration of the quoted text, it is extremely
revealing and gratifying to note that this avant-garde author, considered
as a leader in his speciality, bases his work on theoretical and
epistemological aspects already described in the psychodynamic literature
going from S. Freud (1917), his disciple W. Reich (1934) to contemporary
authors such as the pyschoanalysts J. Bergeret (1974) and O. Kernberg
(1975), or the post-reichians F. Navarro (1989) and X. Serrano (1990). In
fact, Million continuously mentions some of these authors in his work.
However, they are very rarely mentioned and studied in Spanish
universities of psychology or in masters of psychopathology.
Using
these facts as a starting point, I am going to briefly familiarise the
reader with the approach that we post-reichian professionals support. By
“post-reichian professionals”, I mean therapists that identify with
the clinical model developed for psychoanalysis more than sixty years ago
by W. Reich, and that he defined as Character-analytic vegetotherapy
(later named orgone therapy [[1]]). This model has been strengthened and enhanced by the
contributions of other professionals such as O. Raknes and F. Navarro,
whose work we have continued since. Indeed, they were the promoters of the
“European School of Orgone therapy (Scuola Europea di orgonoterapia)”,
cradle of the structure I manage, ie
the “Spanish School of Reichian Therapy (Escuela española de Terapia
Reichiana, Es.Te.R)”. We currently define our clinical practice as
“character-analytic psychotherapy”, for we have been applying
Reich’s theory to other more specific fields (such as brief or focal
psychotherapy, Serrano, 1992), which required a more generic definition.
W.
Reich: character versus personality
W.
Reich defined character as the “armour of the self” (Reich, 1925).
Through these terms, he referred to the clinical fact he had observed on
his “psychoanalytic couch”: the influence of the greatest or lightest
family violence suffered during our childhood inside the family or
education systems; and the influence of the level of pathogenic stress
(distress) to which we have been submitted during the whole process of our
psychoaffective maturation since intrauterine life till adolescence.
Indeed, these violence and stress force our being not only to worm in a
psychic space where these experiences will shelter away from our
conscience, and that Freud would call the inconscious, but also to develop
a somatic or neuromuscular behavioural, structural and defensive system
that allows and facilitates a bearable adaptation to the demands of human
ecosystems.
This
avoidance of suffering (a process that Cannon defined, at a physiological
level, as homeostasis) is something tangible and concrete. It indeed
visibly appears in our behaviour, ie
in our character, which coincides with Millon’s above-mentionned
definition of “personality”. Moreover, it also appears in the chronic
tensions of our bodies, the respiratory dysfunction and the
neurovegetative dystonia (headaches, asthenia, constipation,
tachycardia...) that exist, to a certain extent, in everyone of us. Hence
W. Reich considered that normality involved neurosis in this social
system. He thus differentiated “character neurosis” (with its
ego-syntonic, chronified, phallic-narcissist or hysteric, masochistic,
compulsive, behavioural attitudes) from the rest of the psychopathologies
which imply an increased level of suffering associated with an acute and
obvious symptomatology arising from the functional deficiency of the
armour occuring in a person at a specific time. This symptomatology is
described and developped in handbooks such as the DSM-IV.
The
originality of this clinical model lies in the observation of our
difficulty to feel pleasure and live with pleasure. It also observes the
behaviours that every one of us has more or less been adopting face to the
distressing repression and demands coming from the outside, and which
appear in the classification realised by Millon in his book, ie
narcissist, depressive, histrionic, paranoid, dissociated, dependent,
compulsive, sadistic, avoidant behaviours.
Suffering
and personality disorders in character-analytic psychotherapy
Psychic
and emotional suffering has therefore a clearly social aetiology, and can
consequently be prevented by changes in the social and human ecosystems.
Let me repeat that we all have and feel suffering and dissatisfaction in
different degrees. However, these feelings may, in some cases or in
determined moments, increase in such a way that they become obvious due to
the “sharpness” of their symptoms which “irritate” daily
relationships. Yet,
these signs actually are moments of crisis that warn us of the danger of a
complete collapse. We should therefore pay attention to them, as in these
moments zones that are usually silent, but which dramatically determine
our daily reality, get to express themselves.
If
the health professional is committed to his job, this point of view forces
him to turn into a social agent when he sees that, through the “reichian
couch” technique, it is possible to reduce this suffering and to
increase the self potentiality of every one. It therefore indicates that
it is also possible to retrieve, at least partially, our “lost
paradise”, by modifying interrelational dynamics during childhood,
adolescence, and even in our reality of adults. Indeed,
behind our armour lies our potential personality waiting to blossom, for
what we believe to be our personality is merely the internalisation of
reality shaped by the armour. This phenomenon was very well described by
Plato in his allegory of “the cave”.
Thus,
from the character-analytic perspective, psychic disease, emotional
suffering and the subsequent “personality disorders” possess a
fundamentally social aetiology that is elaborated during the process of
maturation and integration of functions of our specific human structure.
Therefore, the family system, which represents the main ecosystem of this
period in so far as we depend on it to survive, becomes the principal
factor of disease or health. We very well know that the social system
greatly determines the life conditions of the family system, to the point
of being
its ecosystem. So, to understand disease, we have to understand more
closely the logic of human systems and its interrelation with vital
ecosystems. This is how the Reichian theory stands in the New paradigm or
“Deep ecology” as F. Capra defined it (1996), for the knowledge we
acquire on the couch helps us to prevent future pathology by intervening
on our ecosystems. This is how we work on prevention, and it is also a
sign of our identity. We continue Reich’s work to “help regain our
identity as animals and as human beings”, to regain instinct, regain the
knowledge of the living and develop human ecosystems and systems that
facilitate this process. The process of ontogenesis therefore becomes a
fundamental component in prevention as well as in clinical work, as it is
their connection. For indeed, in the clinical system of Character-analytic
vegetotherapy - orgone therapy (Navarro, 1983, a, 1989, b), many of the
neuromuscular movements (“actings”) made by the person on the couch
are reproductions of spontaneous muscular movements. In other words, they
are “signals” of maturation and psychosomatic functional integration
during certain basic periods of our child life. This is why acting allows
us to have access to the memories and experiences lived by the person at
that specific time.
Different
sorts of pathologising relationships are established in the family system
which facilitate the development of a structure with a constrictive, and
therefore degenerative, autopoiesis (to use a term of H. Maturana in our
orgonomic conception). Through clinical experience, we can understand
these relationships through the substitution or blocking of instinctive
basic responses during: pregnancy and birth, which leads to neurohormonal
dysfunctions and clinical and traumatic births; the different sexual
phases, facilitating the setting of oral ambivalence and/or Oedipus
triangle fixation; adolescence, precluding the possibility of development
of a human structure with an expansive autopoiesis in constant growth,
evolution and satisfaction, which Reich described as Mature or
“genital” character (as used in the Freudian terminology of sexual
phases, not in the literal meaning of the word).
In
this sense, it is important to precise that if clinical delivery using
forceps or vacuum extractor is a traumatic experience, what really
provokes high ocular and diaphragm tension is the loss of contact that can
occur between the mother and the baby before, during and after delivery,
when it is not compensated by a maternal attitude of the father. This
leads the foetus to feel distressed, lost and alone in the “cosmic”
void, as the cord is cut from the nourishing craft. It is well known that
the content associated to a traumatic or dysfunctional action, such as the
emotional and energetic impact, and, consequently, the relational factor,
has a greater influence on the aetiopathological level than the situation
in itself. This happens all along the process of ontogenesis
(psychoaffective maturation). It indeed occurs during pregnancy, birth,
and lactation (through the oral phase). In this last phase, it is
crucially important that not only mother lactation takes place, but also
that a loving relationship be set up inside the family system between the
mother and her baby, and also with the rest of the family system, and
especially with the figure of the father. Indeed, if there is no third
person, the risk of fixation of the baby and of displacement of perverse
affects from the mother to her baby is very high.
Behind
every dysfunction, there always is a relational problem, and therefore a
systemic problem, that has not been compensated. One of the clinical
consequences of this situation is that, to reach the therapeutic goals, a
clinical space is necessary to progressively instaure a therapeutic
relationship which will facilitate the psychotherapeutic process. The
importance of the framework, or “setting”, rests on this basis.
Thus
we can see that, depending on the particularities of this process of
constrictive ontogenesis, every individual develops different structural
dynamics that stand away from the functional dynamics of mature
personality. By Structure, we mean “the embodiment of a pattern of
organisation” (Prigogine), following W. Reich’s concept of
“organismic structure”.
Throughout
our experience (Serrano 1990b), we have observed three types of structures
showing not only psychic features (as described by the French analytic
school of Bergeret) but also somatic, emotional, perceptive and
existential characteristics: the neurotic character structure
(fundamentally characterised by the pathogenic Oedipus triangle dynamics
and presenting an organised armour); the borderline structure
(fundamentally characterised by the pathogenic ambivalent oral dynamics;
displaying a depressive or psychotic-depressive nucleus and a characterial
covering whose function is to maintain a social “normality”, thus preventing
the explosion of the pathogenic nucleus, and developing a minimally
organised armour); and the psychotic structure (fundamentally
characterised by a pathogenic primitive oral dynamics which leads to an
absence of contact and an incapacity to relate to others; these
dysfunctions almost entirely prevent the formation of an organised armour,
and induce the development of a mimetic character behaviour to survive).
The
main specificities of these three structures lead to their classification
in watertight categories. I have defined the battery of tests that allows
their differentiation as Initial Structural Differential Diagnosis, ISDD
(Diagnóstico Inicial Diferencial Estructural, Serrano 1990). I consider
it to be an epistemological diagnosis as it aims at discovering the
essential reality of people, their emotional, neurovegetative, energetic
and vital imbalance, and from then on, any aspect of their behaviour and
pathology. But it is not solely focused on psychopathological
symptomatology, and therefore does not split up or reify the reality of
the person.
The
ISDD is established on the following points:
a)
Constitutional predisposition.
b)
Orgonotic metabolism (Bioenergy).
c)
Object relationship and character traits.
d)
Blocks and muscle tensions.
e)
Neurovegetative and somatic functioning.
f)
Current reality: family, work, affective-sexual state, clinical
situation, motivations...
Clinical
care
The
diagnosis of each structure logically requires a certain type of setting
and a specific treatment. In certain occasions, we have to realise
emergency attention, which we mainly provide in public centres or
hospitals as they are the only places where clinical practice can be
immediatly performed to determine the diagnosis. In this setting, we work
in accordance with Eva Reich’s principles of “emotional primary
care” (1983), with M. Herskowitz’s concepts (1968) and with our own
contributions. We principally focus on ocular hypertension and the loss of
contact, cervical hypertension and diaphragm spasms. We display an active
attitude, with an open energetic field and therefore a strong
manifestation of empathy. On numerous occasions, clinical care also
involves corporal contact, respiratory and diaphragmatic massage, and/or a
provocative - and in many cases, a paradoxically “mad” – attitude,
which catches the patient’s eyes and then allows him to feel our
empathy.
Furthermore,
we understand the necessity of providing a specific treatment to people
with a psychotic structure. This includes the introduction of the family
system in the process, psychotropic drugs in crisis situations and the
therapeutic community on an ad
hoc
basis. In this case, the diagnosis is not only important for prognosis or
treatment indications, but also to clearly determine the type of setting
required.
For
instance, after years of practice of deep clinical analysis, we now know
that the rate of people quitting therapy because of analytic resistances
(therapeutic escapes) shortly after starting it is much higher in the
borderline structure, particularly for those with a compulsive-masochistic
or phallic-compulsive covering. In order to prevent it, we have come to
the conclusion that the number of sessions shoud be higher than in the
rest of the structures, and that a first approach with a focal or brief
setting would be particulary appropriate to maximise their level of
insight and analysability.
We
thus meet people attending public centres or our private centres but who
do not have the economic resources to undergo deep treatment such as
vegetotherapy.
In
order to provide an answer to both situations, we and some colleagues
introduced a certain number of variables from the postreichian clinical
work (among others, character analysis, the relation between muscle
hypertension and acute pathogenic reaction, and the performing of
“actings” or neuromuscular movements of the “ontogenic” type) into
the analytic clinical tradition of brief therapy (Mahler, Balint,
Braier...). This led to the development of a systematics that I defined as
“Brief character-analytic psychotherapy, BCP” (Psicoterapia breve
caracteroanalítica, Serrano 1992). The
objective of this therapy is to facilitate the emotional awareness of the
character traits that provoke a pathogenic dysfunction and therefore, a
group of symptoms. Becoming aware of these traits leads to a more
functional and conscious management of one’s resources and reality. At
the same time, the sources of hypertension reduce and breathing is
superficially freed, which results in increasing receptivity and
sensitivity. These are limited goals which attempt to reduce suffering and
cancel symptoms through the use of crisis as a therapeutic tool associated
with “insight”. However, being limited objectives, the setting as well
as the technique have to be coherent and therefore different from deep
therapy, in order to avoid regression, transference neurosis and the
breakdown of essential defenses. Indeed, the brief setting does not
provide enough time to tackle these goals, while they are achievable in a
deep setting, using our clinical tradition.
Thus,
in the brief setting, the position of the therapist is analytical but more
directive. He avoids induction and works a lot with signalling, contrasts
and free association. He also manages the session time to combine the
frontal seated position and the couch, which is used to perform actings,
though in a reduced time compared to deep therapy. Other body techniques
are included, with the patient lying on the couch but wearing his clothes.
The sessions take place on a weekly basis and for a predetermined time,
with an average of twenty sessions. Individual sessions can be combined
with two two-hour group sessions once a month, or one three-hour session,
depending on the specific circumstances of each group. However, these
group sessions start only when the third phase of the treatment is
reached,
ie
from the third month onwards. It is worth remembering that both Reich in
his essay “Mass Psychology of Fascism” and O. Raknes (1950) had
already considered this therapeutic option, although none of them studied
it thoroughly.
The
setting
We
can affirm that, except for the circumstances above-mentionned, the
setting of our practice follows the tradition of European psychotherapy,
and therefore takes psychoanalysis as reference. In fact, Reich always
considered himself as part of this movement (see: Reich Speaks of Freud,
1970), which explains why it is an analytical setting. We partially agree
with the psychoanalyst Etchegoyen (1986) when he recalls that the setting
is “above all a mental attitude of the analyst, and [that] it possesses
a content, the process. This content consists in the unique relationship
between analyst and analysed, and comprises three components:
transference, countertransference and therapeutic alliance. For the
process to develop, a framework as stable as possible is necessary, ie
the setting”.
According
to our experience, this attitude is not only mental but also emotional and
thus energetic and analogic, and constitutes the basic component of the
“Reichian couch”. Setting is essential, as without it no process, and
consequently no achievement of the clinical objectives, are possible. It
is determined by a systematics that comprises a series of techniques,
which, to be functional, have to be modulated by the therapist’s
position and his way of being. The latter stands next to the patient,
respects his rhythm, without neither induction nor advice, neither
formulation nor recipe concerning the current aspects of his life. This
attitude leads the person to feel accompanied, but at the same time it
facilitates the displacement of affects which occurs through historical
affective objects, and which allows transference.
To
sum up, the relationship is sufficiently neutral, while retaining an
empathic atmosphere. To use Matt Blanco’s terms, we would say that the
therapist has to know how to be on both plans of the analytical setting:
the symmetric and asymmetric levels.
The
individual sessions take place with the patient lying on the couch, his
body visible, and the therapist sitting next to him but without invading
his space. The number and periodicity of the sessions are determined
according to the structure of the patient. However, they occur on a
minimum of one fifty-minute session a week or a one-hour-and-a-half
session every two weeks (double session) to a maximum of two double
sessions a week. Contrary to the BCP setting, there is no predetermined
time to complete the process, which will take place as agreed between the
patient and the therapist, such as any other situation of the setting.
Deep
character-analytic psychotherapy: Character-analytic vegetotherapy
Once
the therapeutic contract is established (in the case of a deep therapy),
character-analytic vegetotherapy, or orgone therapy, can start: “When
the orgasm reflex was discovered in 1935, the emphasis placed on the
character-analytic work shifted to the somatic field. The term
“Vegetotherapy” represented the fact that my therapeutic technique
then got an influence on characterologic neurosis in the physiological
field. The term “character-analytic vegetotherapy” refers to the
simultaneous work done on both psychic and somatic systems
(neurovegetative system)”, (Reich, 1949 a).
This
clinical practice depends essentially on the therapeutic relationship that
takes place between the patient and the therapist, focusing particularly
on the patient’s structure. Transference dynamics is accompanied by the
activation of memories and emotions that are linked to the transference
object and the armour segment on which we are working. Following Reichan
tradition (Reich, 1945), the therapy is performed cephalocaudally, from
the first down to the seventh segment. Indeed, as previously seen, blocks,
tensions and defences that develop to face the distress produced during
ontogenesis appear from the first segment downwards. This muscular
approach is fundamentally based on the execution, by the patient, of
particular neuromuscular actings which have been modulating signs of the
process of infantile evolution. These actings take place during a certain
time and for a certain number of sessions. Each acting lasts about 20
minutes, during which the patient is focused on muscular action and on
breathing. In a state of floating attention, he observes the things that
cross his mind. He is attentive to images or sensations that may appear,
in order to share what he remembers with the therapist afterwards.
Moreover, if any emotion shows up, the patient allows himself to live it
consciously. In the meantime, the therapist stands by his side,
accompanies the action but does not intervene in it. He only empathises
with the feelings that the patient may have while observing his
involuntary neurovegetative reactions. The latter are indeed part of the
body language that the therapist has to understand and appropriatedly
contrast, signal or analyse during the process of analysis development.
These
actings are sequentially performed, as described in the methodology of F.
Navarro (1990), which we apply according to the different structures
(Serrano, 1994). In order to give practical examples, I shall describe
some of the actings that are realised with the first segment: looking at a
point on the ceiling with the mouth open (object focusing: primitive
relational signal); looking at a point on the ceiling and then to the tip
of the nose (primitive object difference described by R. Spitz); looking
from right to left (entrance of the third person, emergence of the
shizoid-paranoid structure) or rolling the eyes (group relationship,
entrance of family system, social reality and movement specific to human
mamals only). There are actings for each of the seven segments of the
muscular armour described by Reich. These segments are progressively
stimulated, and try to recover vegetative motility and neuromuscular
functionality. There are not many actings, but those that are used have
been experimented and have proven to be sufficiently functional. Moreover,
it is not the number of movements that is important but their repetition,
and the analysis of the way the patient does this movement, which is
different in every person. All these points are part of character analysis
(character meaning the defensive psycho-somatic structuring which is
reflected in the behaviour as well as in the muscular response, which are
respectively based on psychism and soma). Thus, we neither induce nor
provoke emotions or regressions, but we facilitate a progressive body
conscience through which the patient feels the difference between the self
and the character, and the link between his history and his current
behaviour, his limits and his potentialities. He then progressively learns
to manage his reality according to a self associated with an armour, ie
a flexible character based on the principle of pleasure and expansion,
love, and therefore on the capacity for abandon and for living the
orgastic experience which always goes with a greater ability for social
compromise.
However,
this is not an easy thing to do. It implies immersing oneself in one’s
“hell”, in what lies behind resistances, in repressed pulsions. It
also involves facing the subsequent resistances that appear during the
process and which will determine its rhythm and its duration.
This
individual approach is accompanied by group work, which starts when the
process of “separation-individualisation”, to use Mahler’s terms,
has sufficiently been elaborated during individual therapy. In other
words, it occurs when the patient has integrated in his self the denied
aspects of the maturation process that took place in his early infancy,
and when he is able to relate with the “other” and to go about all the
conflicts that he has faced in his process of social integration (extended
family, school, friends, etc.). On the neuromuscular level, this usually
coincides with the moment when the cephalocaudal unblocking reaches the
third or fourth segment. The groups consist of 12 to 14 men and women and
of two cotherapists of both sexes. Patients meet once a month for two
years (group meeting lasts a certain time in order to give enough time for
social relationships to be established between the patients of the group).
The group system develops its own matrix to work on the dynamics of social
conflicts, such as gender conflicts, social paranoia, fear of authority,
difficulty to assume social responsibilities and group identity.
References
to Foulkes’group analysis, Moreno’s psychodrama and other
psychocorporal techniques are used within a specific systematics (Serrano,
1997, d). However, the main objective is the use of the group matrix, and
the conflicts occuring in this group, to make the participants aware of
the social conflicts that they face in their real life, and to let them
find solutions among themselves. This is a most important way to acquire
the “social or collective identity” that our social system lacks so
much.
Let
us keep in mind that group space is a tool converging from individual
vegetotherapy and that therapists practice according to its thesis.
Lastly,
let me underline that emotional suffering, and thus certain personality
disorders, require an interdisciplinary approach. Indeed, it is necessary
to combine individual psychotherapy with couple therapy or family care. We
thus consider essential the intervention of diverse professionals, for
indeed, through different clinical models and experiences, we can tackle
the psychic and emotional suffering of our patients more functionally and
deontologically. Moreover, this inevitably leads us to question and revise
our own limits and suffering, and to take personal and collective measures
to prevent and avoid them. Consequently, we have also been stimulated to
develop a preventive care practice which I have defined as “human
systems ecology”. Through this practice, we may some day be able to live
- as my professor F. Navarro used to say – in a society where our
clinical function would no longer be necessary.
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"Uber Charakteranalyse". I. Z. P. International Zeitchrift für
Psychoanalyse. Vol.
14. Included in "Análisis de carácter, 1949.
(1934) "Psicología de masas del fascismo". Complete
edition of Editorial Bruguera, collection “Pensadores y temas de hoy”,
from the third ed. in English, N. Y. 1946. Barcelona, 1974.
(1934b) "The orgasm as an Electrophysiological discharge"
in Pulse of the planet, Journal of the Orgone Biophysical Research
Laboratory. Oregon,
1993. Translated from "Der Orgasmus als Elektrophysiologische“.
Entladung"
Zeitschrift für Politische Psychologie und Sexualökonomie, I, 1934.
(1937)
"Experimental Investigation of the electrical function of sexuality and
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Research Laboratory. Oregon,
1993. Translated from „Experimentelle Ergebnisse uber die elektrische
Funktion von Sexualitat und Angst“, Sexpol Press, Copenhagen, 1937.
(1945)
"La función el orgasmo. El descubrimiento del orgón" Vol. 1.
Edit. Paidós. Barcelona, 1977. Transaltion
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Orgone Institute Press, New York.
(1946)
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English. Edit.
Paidós. Barcelona, 1980.
(1949b)
“Children of the nature”. On the prevention of sexual pathology, Farrar,
Straus & Giroux, New York, 1989. *
(1949c) "Ether, God and Devil". Orgone Institute Press.
Rangeley Maine. Included in Ether, God and Devil and Cosmic Superimposition,
Farrar Straus & Giroux, New York, 1973. *
(1951b) "The Orgonic Energy Accumulator". Institute Press.
Rangeley (Maine). *
(1952a) "Reich habla de Freud". Edit. Anagrama, 1970.
SERRANO,
X. (1986) "La Vegetoterapia y las disfunciones sexuales". Energía,
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ABBREVIATIONS
-
ECS: Energía, Carácter y Sociedad. Publicaciones orgón. Valencia. www.
esternet. org
-
SO: Scienzes Orgonomiques - Scienza Orgonomica (Orgonomic Sciences).
- IZO: Internationale Zeitschrift für Orgonomie.
- JO: Journal of Orgonomy.
-
ECS (i): Energía, carattere e societá.
-
WRB: Wilhelm Reich Blatter.
- AIO: Annals of the Orgone Institute.
[1]
Name
given in 1937 by W. Reich to his form of psychoanalytic work, after
hypothesising that “each muscle rigidity contains the history and
meaning of its origin”. This thesis gives specific importance to the
link between the behaviour of each person and their character, their
way of breathing and their muscle tensions. It is sustained by the
idea that character neurosis is reflected in neurovegetative
dysfunction, ie
in the vegetative nervous system that controls the emotional world and
the pulsative and involuntary movements of vital organs. It marked the
beginning of psychosomatic medicine. In 1945, W. Reich defined it as
Orgone therapy, searching for a term that would not separate psyche
and soma and that: “covered character analysis and vegetotherapy”
(Reich, 1945). The clinical objective was to retrieve the capacity of
biological and vital pulsation, to regain the free vegetative current
that integrates, through emotionality, psyche and soma. This objective
can “be assessed through the so called “orgasm reflex, because
this is where the function of biological, bioenergetic and orgonomic
energy is expressed” (idem 1942). However, this change of name did
not fundamentally modify the therapy, although it could be combined
with other treatments, such as the Or. Ac., ie
accumulator of orgone energy. This is why F. Navarro was in favour of
keeping the term Vegetotherapy until research was completed on orgone
(name given by Reich to the concept of vital energy, or prana, vital
drive, Chi etc.)