Body psychotherapy, also called body-oriented psychotherapy, is an approach to psychotherapy which applies basic principles of somatic psychology. It originated in the work of Pierre Janet, Sigmund Freud and particularly Wilhelm Reich who developed it as vegetotherapy. Branches also were developed by Alexander Lowen, and John Pierrakos, both patients and students of Reich, like Reichian body-oriented psychotherapy and Gerda Boyesen.
Die Funktion des Orgasmus ("The Function of the Orgasm") is a monograph about the ability to achieve orgasm published in 1927 by Wilhelm Reich, later published in English as Genitality in the Theory and Therapy of Neurosis. In it, Reich proposed, based on his therapeutic experience and empirical studies, that orgastic potency should be used as a decisive criterion for mental health.
Neurotic disorder, according to Reich, was always based on a more or less pronounced "orgastic impotence". According to Reich, if a man were permanently unable to experience a "complete orgasm", it would cause a blockage of the libido, which would produce a variety of disorders. Reich saw the treatment goal of psychoanalytic treatment as the restoration of "orgastic potency". To achieve this objective, Reich further developed the psychoanalytic technique: first analysis of resistance, then Character Analysis, and finally, Vegetotherapy.