1 CONTEXTS

Nobody knows
how it flows
as it goes

Nobody goes
where it rose
where it flows

Nobody chose
how it grows
how it flows
Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time

In this book we describe a form of therapeutic work with groups and individuals which derives originally from the work of Wilhelm Reich, but also from a number of other developments in therapy and healing, especially since Reich's death in 1957. It is the style in which we, the authors, were trained, but which we have also developed in new directions.

Although Reichian therapy has always attracted great interest - and still does - there is very little written about it which is useful for the ordinary reader.Some of Reich's own books are inspiring and moving, but those on the therapy itself and the theory behind it are very technical and hard to follow, aimed at an audience of medically-trained psychoanalysts. They are also very dated in relation to the sort of work actually being done at the present

In writing this book, we have tried to avoid jargon as far as possible. New words are sometimes needed to describe new ideas and experiences, but we have defined each of these clearly when it first appears, and remind you of its meaning when we use it again. More generally, we have tried never to use a long word when a short one will do. We have written for the sort of people who, we find, are interested in the work we do, many of whom are by no stretch of the imagination intellectuals. The new interest in therapy and growth work is part of a very broadly based concern with change, on an individual level and on a social one. Many people in our society are deeply dissatisfied with their conditions of life, and more and more of them are no longer willing to be the sort of person that society expects and forces them to be - mentally, emotionally, spiritually, even physically.

This book is for people who want to change.

Who Reich was

If you want to know about Reich's life and work, several books are listed under 'Further Reading' at the end of the book. In brief, Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957) trained as a young man with Freud in Vienna, and worked as a psychoanalyst. Besides making some important advances in technique, he soon 'burst the bounds' of psychoanalysis, moving into a deeper confrontation both with the clients themselves, and with the social conditions which he saw as creating and maintaining their problems.

An energetic, combative and 'difficult' man, Reich managed in a few short years to attract the enmity of the Nazis, the Communist Party (of which he was a member for several years), and the psychoanalytic establishment. As he travelled around Scandinavia and eventually to the USA as a refugee from the Nazis, he managed to achieve some fundamental breakthroughs in therapeutic methods; in particular, he created the whole new field of bodywork.

Reich became increasingly focused on life energy itself, and on finding ways to unblock, condense, channel and strengthen that energy, both in the human body and in the atmosphere. Above all, Reich was a person with open eyes: he noticed a lot of things which most people prefer to ignore, and this led him into many exciting new areas of enquiry - and attracted a lot of hostility.

As well as giving therapy to individuals, and becoming involved with the healthy upbringing of children, Reich created devices like the 'orgone accumulator' (to concentrate life energy) and the 'cloudbuster' (with which he believed he could affect pollution and weather). He became acutely sensitive to oppressive conditions in the physical and social atmosphere, and struggled to find ways of combating these 'plagues'.

At the same time, Reich continued to come up against anger and aggression; very largely because of his open and celebratory approach to sex, which got him in hot water throughout his life. In the last few years of Reich and his circle, there was a steady 'darkening', a distortion of feelings and perceptions, which derived at least partly from a disastrous 'oranur' experiment using orgone accumulators to neutralise radiation, but also from the constant pressure of both outside enemies and internal disciples.

Finally, Reich was prosecuted by the US federal authorities, accused - quite falsely - of peddling his accumulators as a fake cancer cure. Reich could almost certainly have won the case if he had fought on legal grounds: instead he refused to recognise the court's jurisdiction over 'issues of scientific truth'. The legal system in turn saw Reich as an awkward, suspect foreign crackpot; he was jailed for contempt, and died in prison of a heart attack shortly before he was due for release. His accumulators were destroyed, and his books burned by the American government.

Using Reich's techniques and reading his books, it is sometimes hard not to fall into discipleship. He was a person of extraordinary perceptions, and of great compassion and courage: a big-hearted man. He was also, clearly, an extremely awkward customer, and someone who expected to get his own way. He also had his own hangups - an anti-homosexual stance, for example, with which we very strongly disagree.

Who we are

We live together in Leeds with our young baby daughter and with Em's son. We both work as therapists and group leaders, moving into this work through doing a training in Reichian therapy led by William West. This training, which finished in 1982, was only the beginning. As we started to work with clients, we found much that we didn't know, and searched out ways of learning it, through books, through further training, and through talking out our experiences together and with other people.

A result of that first Reichian training led by William was the creation of 'Energy Stream: the Post Reichian Therapy Association'. Three training courses later - one led by William, two by ourselves - Energy Stream includes some thirty practising therapists, all working in their own personal style and with a range of techniques, but all sharing the same commitment to Reichian work.

We talk about 'Reichian work', but what is it? There are many approaches which could claim a right to that label. During his career Reich worked differently at different times, and there are several schools of therapy descended from people he trained in various ways. There are also several schools developed after Reich's death which have consciously changed his ideas and methods; many of these call themselves 'neo-Reichian'.

We see our own work as very close to the essence of Reich's, but not everyone would agree with us. We certainly don't know whether Reich would agree with us! We sometimes like to think that he might be working in this sort of way if he was still alive, but there are many things we do of which he strongly disapproved. So this book is about our work; and not, either, specifically about Energy Stream's methods. However. we are very grateful to everyone in Energy Stream for their support, stimulation and encouragement, especially William West who originally trained us and gave us therapy; Annie Morgan, Rika Petersen and Sean Doherty, who helped lead the last training course; Mary Swale; and Holly Clutterbuck, Maxine Higham and Pam Wilkinson, with whom Nick sorted out many of these ideas in a supervision group.

This book is not intended to be a manual for therapists - although we hope it will be useful for therapists. It is aimed mainly at anyone trying to change, searching for ideas about how to change, about how we are and why we are like that. We are writing about 'human nature', human beings as part of nature, as natural beings. It is for a vision of naturalness, above all, that we thank Reich; and it is in pursuit of naturalness (which ultimately cannot be pursued) that we have learnt from and adapted many other ways of perceiving and working with people. Thank you to everyone who has helped us learn.

We want to make it very clear that in writing a book about therapy we are not claiming to be 'super shrinks'. Still less are we claiming to be totally clear, enlightened individuals who have sorted out all our problems. Anyone who knows us would find such an idea laughable. We felt that the book needed writing, and we felt able to do it. Now we have to go on trying to live up to these ideas.

You may notice that there are no case histories included in this book. It's always good fun to read about a therapist's clients and their sessions - as good as a novel - and in some ways it is very informative. But it is also very easy - in fact, inevitable - to over-simplify the wholeness of a person's life and struggle. We felt that any of our clients would be bound to recognise themselves, and that this sort of thumbnail sketch would be disrespectful to their courage and complexity. However, all our clients do of course feature in these pages, and we want to thank them as well. together with those who have attended our workshops, and especially those whom we have trained. There could be no book without you.

Our method of collaboration has been for Nick (the verbally oriented one) to write chunks of it and show them to Em (the feeling oriented one), who has read them and explained to Nick how no ordinary person could make head or tail of it. Nick then went away and re-wrote until it passed the test. Of course. we don't always agree on every detail, and some of what follows reflects more the views of one or other of us. But to a remarkable extent we do agree about people and therapy (after all, it was through Reichian therapy that we met in the first place).

Meanwhile our own work moves on. Like the rest of Energy Stream, we have other interests, other skills. We have recently formed a separate identity, 'Selfheal', as a vehicle for the whole of our healing work, including but not restricted to the 'Reichian' element. This doesn't mean that we have turned our backs on anything we describe in this book. simply that the stream goes on flowing, broadening and deepening, meeting with other streams, merging into a greater river, on the way to the sea.

We hope that what follows helps you to flow.

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