ABSTRACT
Emotional bodies were eco-bodies that also existed as part of nature. Drawing attention to the emotional lives of bodies and hence to how people respond through bodily gestures as much as through what they say, therapists could begin working in different ways around bodily tensions and make use of transference processes without being somehow limited by them. It was widely acknowledged, even by therapists who would draw on his work, that he was heteronormative and too focused upon orgasm as a sign of sexual health, but his attention to the emotional lives of bodies remains important. Reich challenges Cartesian modernities that create fears of the emotional lives of bodies so often sustained by religious traditions that remain enemies of attempts at sexual liberalism and freedom for people to shape their own gender and sexual identities.
