Description
“Coming to Freud from sexology and biology, I perhaps felt the lack of a fundamental theory of the biological basis of neurosis more acutely than did my colleagues who came from internal medicine or from materialistic philosophy. Thus, although when I first encountered Freud’s teachings, his views of “actual neurosis” seemed completely unclear, I nevertheless felt it was the pivotal point from which the natural scientific study of sexual biology had to proceed.”
Wilhelm Reich, M.D.
(from the Preface – 1944)
Reich first presented the major aspects of his clinical findings on the significance of genitality in the theory and therapy of neurosis in 1927. Published in German as Die Funktion des Orgasmus, Reich dedicated the book to Freud who found it “valuable, rich in clinical material as well as in ideas.” In 1937 and again in 1944, Reich made extensive revisions for a second edition of this work in which his early thinking on the function of the orgasm was brought into line with his later biophysical discoveries.
Genitality is the first publication of Reich’s second, revised edition. Its title was changed to avoid confusion with Reich’s first American book, published in 1942, which he entitled The Function of the Orgasm.
Chapters in Genitality include: “Orgastic Potency,” “The Neurotic Conflict,” “Disturbances of the Orgasm,” “Sexual Statis: The Energy Source of Neurosis,” “Forms of Genital Impotence,” “On the Psychoanalytic Theory of Genitality,” “Sexual Stasis, Aggression, Destruction, and Sadism,” “The Social Significance of Genital Strivings.”
