A Controversy about Technique

Not long ago an English translation of Theodor Reik's book, Der berraschte Psychologe, was published in this country under the title, Surprise and the Psycho-Analyst.1 Reik in a part of this book engages with Wilhelm Reich in a very important controversy which is of great practical and theoretical interest. It is the purpose of this paper to compare the technical teachings of Theodor Reik with those of Wilhelm Reich. The latter may be represented by his book, Charakteranalyse2 (Character Analysis), published by the author in Vienna. Reference is made only to the first part of this book which describes Wilhelm Reich's technique.

Theodor Reik's book is the latest of a series of investigations of the psychology of the psychoanalyst. How does the analyst's mind operate when he seeks to understand a patient's psyche? This comprehension is a psychological task. For this reason Reik speaks mostly of 'the psychologist' and only on rare occasions of 'the psychoanalyst'. (The literal translation of the German title of his book is 'The Surprised Psychologist'.) His basic question is: how can one grasp mentally another person's unconscious which is not directly accessible to observation? Most of such comprehension is conjecture later confirmed. How does a psychological discovery become 'evident'?

In a somewhat too long drawn out chapter Reik enumerates in detail all the signs and signals by which a patient communicates data about himself to the analyst besides those which he tells consciously: his manner and tone of speaking, his behavior, his mannerisms, the way he is silent, etc. The analyst, in the traditional attitude of 'poised attention', does