Alexander Lowen on Wilhelm Reich (from bioenergetics)

Here's some excerpts from Alexander Lowen's book Bioenergetics. I think you (and I) would do very well if we just read the whole book, but just for the purpose of introducing something online that isn't yet online, have a look:

I began my personal therapy with Reich in the spring of 1942. During the preceding year I had been a fairly frequent visitor at Reich's laboratory. He showed me some of the work he was doing with bio preparations and cancerous tissue. Then, one day, he said to me, "Lowen, if you are interested in this work, there is only one way to get into it, and that is by going into therapy." His statement startled me, for I had not contemplated this move. I told him, "I am interested, but what I want is to become famous." Reich took this remark seriously, for he replied, "I will make you famous." Over the years I have regarded Reich's statement as a prophecy. It was the push I needed to overcome my resistance and to launch me into my lifework.

My first therapeutic session with Reich was an experience I will never forget. I went with the naive assumption that there was nothing wrong with me. It was to be purely a training analysis. I lay down on the bed wearing a pair of bathing trunks. Reich did not use a couch since this was a body-oriented therapy. I was told to bend my knees, relax and breathe with my mouth open and my jaw relaxed. I followed these instructions and waited to see what would happen. After some time Reich said, "Lowen, you're not breathing." I answered, "Of course I'm breathing; otherwise I'd be dead. He then remarked, "Your chest isn't moving. Feel my chest." I placed my hand on his chest and noticed that it was rising and falling with each breath. Mine clearly was not.

I lay back again and resumed breathing, this time with my chest moving outward on inspiration and inward on expiration. Nothing happened. My breathing proceeded easily and deeply. After a while Reich said, "Lowen, drop your head back and open your eyes wide." I did as I was told and . . . a scream burst from my throat.
It was a beautiful day in early spring, and the windows of the room opened onto the street. To avoid any embarrassment with his neighbors, Dr. Reich asked me to straighten my head, which stopped the scream. I resumed my deep breathing. Strangely, the scream had not disturbed me. I was not connected to it emotionally. I did not feel any fear. After I had breathed again for a while, Dr. Reich asked me to repeat the procedure: Put my head back and open my eyes wide. Again the scream came out. I hesitate to say that I screamed because I did not seem to do it. The scream happened to me. Again I was detached from it, but I left the session with the feeling that I was not as all right as I thought. There were "things" (images, emotions) in my personality that were hidden from consciousness, and I knew then that they would have to come out.

At that time Reich called his therapy Character Analytic Vegetotherapy. Character analysis had been his great contribution to psychoanalytic theory, one for which he was highly regarded by all analysts. Vegetotherapy referred to the mobilization of feeling through breathing and other body techniques that activated the vegetative centers (the ganglia of the autonomic nervous system) and liberated "vegetative" energies.

... and so on. this is from "Bioenergetics" by Alexander Lowen, from the chapter "From Reich to Bioenergetics".

... He observed: "There is no neurotic individual who does not show a tension in the abdomen." He noted the common tendency of patients to hold their breath and inhibit exhalation as a means of controlling their feelings. He concluded that holding the breath served to diminish the organism's energy by reducing its metabolic activities, which in turn decreased the production of anxiety.

For Reich, then, the first step in the therapeutic procedure was to get the patient to breathe easily and deeply. The second was to mobilize whatever emotional expression was most evident in the patient's face or manner. In my case this expression was fear. We have seen what a powerful effect this procedure had on me.

Succeeding sessions followed the same general pattern. I would lie on the bed and breathe as freely as I could, trying to allow a deep expiration to occur. I was directed to give in to my body and not control any expression or impulse that emerged. A number of things happened that gradually brought me into contact with early memories and experiences. At first the deeper breathing to which I was not accustomed produced strong, tingling sensations in my hands which, on two occasions, developed into a severe carpopedal spasm, severely cramping the hands. This reaction disappeared as my body accommodated to the increased energy the deeper breathing produced. Tremors developed in my legs when I moved my knees gently together and apart and in my lips when i followed an impulse to reach out with them.


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Alexander Lowen little interview segments chopped up and combined.-
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8170454887142008583&hl=en