Wilhelm Reich’s character analysis revisited

Abstract

ABSTRACT Reich character analytic technique is revisited. Many psychoanalytical researchers maintain that real psychic change only can occur through alterations in the implicit/procedural memory system. Therefore, they claim that analytical work should be focused on helping the patient to be aware of patterns of non-verbal manifestations and modes of behaving. The prominent problem of these researchers is that they do not have a workable and adequate methodology for investigating early experiences implicitly encoded. An improved character analytic approach can be applied to detect and explore such early experiences. The author presents clinical examples demonstrating that a character analytic approach to various non-verbal phenomena implicitly coded, can trigger and evoke different affects as crying, anger, laughter and anxiety etc. Moreover, clinical observations indicate that in the wake of such feeling states there quite often follows memories in the form of fragmented visual pictures related to relevant preverbal experiences.