Vegetotherapy

Vegetotherapy is a form of Reichian psychotherapy that involves the physical manifestations of emotions..The basic and founding text of vegetotherapy is Wilhelm Reich's Psychischer Kontakt und vegetative Strömung (1935), later included in the enlarged edition of Reich's Character Analysis (1933, 1949). The two goals are establishing the capacity of the "orgasm reflex" and orgastic potency, through reducing a person's body armor and character armor that keep a person in a state of neurosis. Its name derives from its focus on the vegetative or autonomous nervous system. After Reich's claimed discovery of orgone or life energy, vegetotherapy was accordingly adapted and succeeded by "psychiatric orgone therapy".

Hypotheses

Vegetotherapy was built on the assumption of several distinct, and occasionally self-contradictory, hypotheses:

• Libido, electric currents, orgone, or some other kind of energy really did move through the body.
• Beneficial, "primal" emotions such as love and rage were the expression of this moving energy.
• Muscular contractions blocked that energy flow.
• Chronic muscular contractions "held" energy within them that would otherwise have been released.
• The energy held in chronically contracted muscles got there because of specific emotions that the organism had blocked. This resulted in a character that expressed bad, "secondary" emotions such as frustration and anxiety.
• Specific secondary emotions tended to be caused by holding/blocks in specific muscles; e.g. a stubborn character usually had chronic contractions in the muscles of his lower back.
• Mobilization of the chronically contracted muscles freed the energy held in them, which was expressed as the original emotion that got blocked.
• Memories associated with the original emotion were also stored in the chronically contracted muscles, and released and re-experienced when the block was freed.
• Because the freed muscle group had been chronically contracted for so long, it had gotten used to being that way, and would likely become contracted again when any new emotions came along similar to the one that had been stored there. The same muscle group might need to get worked on many, many times before it could be cured.

Practice

The practice of vegetotherapy involves the analyst enabling the patient to physically simulate the bodily effects of strong emotions. The principal technique is to ask the patient to remove his or her outer clothing, lie down on a sheet-covered bed in the doctor's office, and breathe deeply and rhythmically. An additional technique is to palpate or tickle areas of muscular tension ("body armor"). This activity and stimulation eventually causes the patient to experience the simulated emotions, thus (theoretically) releasing emotions pent up inside both the body and the psyche (compare with Primal Therapy). Screaming usually occurs, and vomiting can occur in some patients. The catharsis of emotive expression breaks down the cathexis of stored emotions. While experiencing a simulated emotional state, the patient may reflect on past experiences that may have caused that emotion, but where the emotion has not been fully resolved. These emotions are described as stored emotions, and in Reichian analysis are seen as manifesting in the body. Vegetotherapy relies on a theory of stored emotions, or affects, where emotions build tensions in the structure of the body. This tension can be seen in shallow or restricted breathing, posture, facial expression or muscular stress, particularly in the circular muscles, and low libido (good sexual functioning and unrestricted, natural breathing are seen as evidence of recovery).

Examples of vegetotherapy and interviews with analyst and patients who have undergone vegetotherapy, can be seen in the film Room for Happiness, directed by Dick Young and approved by the American College of Orgonomy.

See also

• Body psychotherapy
• Neo-Reichian massage
• Primal scream therapy

Bibliography

Reich, Wilhelm: Psychic Contact and Vegetative Current. (Chap. xiv of Character Analysis, 1949 ff) Orig. in Reich's Zeitschrift für Politische Psychologie und Sexualökonomie

External links

• Vegetotherapy page from A Skeptical Scrutiny of the Works and Theories of Wilhelm Reich
• Reichian therapy