Erik Harry Johannessen

Komposisjon / Komposisjon

Olje på lerret

1935

The painter Erik Harry Johannessen was a friend and patient of Willhelm Reich, who stayed in Norway for five years (1935-1940), working under the auspices of Professor Schjelderup of the Psychological Institute at the University of Oslo. He first presented the principles of his vegetotherapy in a paper called “Psychic contact and vegetative current” in August 1934 at the 13th International Congress of Psychoanalysis at Lucerne, Switzerland, and went on to develop the technique between 1935 and 1940. Vegetotherapy involves the patient physically simulating the effects of certain emotions, in the hope of triggering them. Reich argued that the ability to feel sexual love depended on a physical ability to make love with what he called “orgastic potency.” He tried to measure the male orgasm, noting that four distinct phases occurred physiologically: first, the psychosexual build-up or tension; second, the tumescence of the penis, with an accompanying charge, which Reich measured electrically; third, an electrical discharge at the moment of orgasm; and fourth, the relaxation of the penis. He believed the force that he measured was a distinct type of energy present in all life forms.

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