ABSTRACT
Reich starts out from his basic definition of the two functions of character, "defense and the binding of anxiety", that is, guarding the ego against the outer world and the drives on the one hand, and "the consumption of the surplus sexual energy produced by the sexual stasis" on the other. Reichians and post-Reichians would generally argue that sexual climax without loving feelings towards the partner—orgasm involving the pelvis but not the heart—cannot be considered full orgasm in Reich's sense. Reich addresses directly the question of what makes it possible for the perverse structure to overcome the repression of desire. It is by incorporating the trauma into the pleasure that perversion is able to bypass the block placed upon pleasure by traumatic experience. Rank argues that the hero's story is "the reaction to a specially severe birth trauma, which has to be mastered by over-compensatory achievements, among which the most prominent is the regaining of the mother".
