Subtitle: Sex-Economic Problems of Biological Energy
Author: Wilhelm Reich, M.D.
Edition Cited in The Compleat Witch
Publisher: Orgone Institute Press
City: New York
Year: 1949
Pages: 368
Binding: Hardback
Size: 9″ x 6.5″
Dust Jacket Flap Copy
This book is NOT a translation of the author’s earlier book, “Die Funktion des Orgasmus.”
It is the translation of an unpublshed transcript. While the earlier book, published in 1927, established the clinical foudation of sex-economy, from psychoanalysis to orgone biophysics, as it took place over the past twenty years.
The ORGONE INSTITUTE PRESS is the publishing house of the International Institute for Sex-Economy and Orgone-Research. It is a non-profit educational organization.
Table of Contents
TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE… ix
INTRODUCTORY SURVEY… xix
I. BIOLOGY AND SEXOLOGY BEFORE FREUD… 3
II. PEER GYNT… 20
III. GAPS IN THE THEORY OF SEX AND IN PSYCHOLOGY… 32
1. “Pleasure” and “Instinct”… 32
2. Genital sexuality and non-genital sexuality… 34
3. Psychiatric and psychoanalytic difficulties in the understanding of mental disease… 41
IV. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ORGASM THEORY… 62
1. First Experiences… 62
2. Supplementation of Freud’s theory of anxiety neurosis… 66
3. Orgastic potency… 72
4. Sexual stasis: the source of energy of the neurosis… 87
V. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CHARACTER-ANALYTIC TECHNIQUE… 94
1. Difficulties and contradictions… 94
2. Sex-economy of anxiety… 109
3. Character armor and dynamic layers of defense mechanisms…114
4. Destruction, aggression and sadism… 130
5. The genital character and the non-genital character. The principle of self-regulation… 143
VI. A BIOLOGICAL REVOLUTION THAT MISCARRIED… 164
1. The prevention of the neuroses and the problem of culture… 164
2. The social origin of sexual repression… 198
3. Fascist irrationalism… 203
VII. THE BREAK-THROUGH INTO THE VEGETATIVE REALM… 221
1. The solution of the problem of masochism… 223
2. The functioning of a living bladder… 228
3. The functional antithesis of sexuality and anxiety… 234
4. What is “biopsychic energy”?… 238
5. The orgasm formula: Tension > charge > discharge > relaxation…243
6. Pleasure (expansion) and anxiety (contraction): basic antithesis of vegetative life… 255
VIII. THE ORGASM REFLEX AND THE TECHNIQUE OF CHARACTER-ANALYTIC VEGETOTHERAPY… 266
1. Muscular attitude and bodily expression… 266
2. The abdominal tension… 272
3. The orgasm reflex: A Case History… 276
4. The establishment of natural respiration… 292
5. The mobilization of the “dead pelvis”… 303
6. Typical psychosomatic diseases: results of chronic sympatheticotonia… 320
IX. FROM PSYCHOANALYSIS TO BIOGENESIS… 326
1. The bio-eletric function of pleasure and anxiety… 326
2. The theoretical solution of the conflict between mechanism and vitalism… 337
3. “Biological energy” is atmospheric (comic) orgone energy…. 339
4. Illustrations… 353
TABLE OF EVENTS…. 353
GLOSSARY… 359
INDEX… 363
Online Resources
PDF from WilhelmReichTrust.org
Archive.org | GoodReads | Google Books | LibraryThing
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Editions (Arranged By Year)
Additional Photos/Images
Miscellaneous Quotes
“Sexuality and procreation were taken for one and the same thing. What a mountain of psychological and sociological misconception lay behind this one mistaken concept!”
“During sexual preliminaries a tension is created which would be experienced as unpleasurable if it were not followed by gratification. However, the anticipation of the pleasure of gratification produces not only tension, but also discharges a small quantity of sexual energy. This partial satisfaction, plus the anticipation of the great end-pleasure, outweighs the unpleasure of the initial tension. This interpretation was the beginning of my later function theory of sexual activity. I came to see in the instinct nothing more the “motor aspect of pleasure”.
“How was one to explain the urge for repetition of pleasure that had once been experienced? I remembered Semon’s theory of the engrams and made the following formulation: The sexual drive is nothing but the motor memory of previously experienced pleasure. The concept of drives became thus reduced to the concept of pleasure.“
“We are all simply a complicated electric machine which has a structure of its own and is in interaction with the energy of the universe. At any rate, I had to assume a harmony of outer world and ego; no other assumption seemed possible. Today I know that mental patients experience this harmony without any boundary between ego and outer world. And that the Babbitts have no idea of this harmony, feeling their beloved egos, sharply circumscribed, to be the center of the universe. The profundity of some mental patients makes them more valuable, from a human point of view, than the Babbitts with their nationalistic ideals! The former has at least an inkling of what the universe is like; the latter’s ideas of grandeur are all centered around his constipation and his inferior potency.”
Rev. Byrd’s Book Review
© 2015 Daniel Byrd.
This review may not be reproduced, adapted, modified, or otherwise used for any purpose without written permission of the author.
[In progress.]
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