This section is not part of the original book and was added by yours truly.

On almost any forum discussing Reichian Therapy and Undoing Yourself there is some disagreement on the opinion of who created these materials and who borrowed from whom. Unfortunately Christopher and Jack are no longer with us to defend themselves. But I did find notes from both camps and I'm sharing those with you, so you have both views side-by-side.

Jack Willis' Side of the Story

note: Jack also makes references to Charles R. Kelly's work in the following comments.

Re: Complete Reich, Regardie, Hyatt and Willis System wayback machine link.

Mon, December 22, 2008

Jack Willis wrote:

Well, I thank you for the link. I would have no idea that video was out there other than your link to it.

Hyatt's book (Hyatt was a nom de plum for Alan Miller) IS my book. The history is as follows.

Alan initially proposed that I write up the Reichian material as 8 small books that he could put in the highly profitable Black Book series. I did that and sent him the craft. He then decided that, no he did not want 8 short books, he wanted 2 intermediate size books. That took a lot of rewrite, but I did that and sent it to him. He then decided that, no, he didn't want two books; he wanted one book of about 256 pages. Another major rewrite. I did that and sent it to him. He returned it to me with changes to add in Regardie and quasi-magic stuff and, most important, he put himself down as the author and I would be the 2nd author (even though it was 100% my writing) and he would own the copyright. I could create a justification for him putting himself as first author -- it would sell more books under his name than under my name -- but I could not excuse him taking the copyright. It was my writing, not his, and if putting his name on it might increase sales, there was no justification for him owning (or would it be stealing?) the copyright. I fought him on the point of the copyright, but he was adamant that he would own the book. That was the point at which I stopped working on the book. I was not willing to have it be all my time, all my knowledge, but his ownership.

Alan also suggested during this period that we do a DVD or DVD series. I thought that a good idea and we went together to purchase the camera and the microphone. I wrote out a script for him to follow (he demanded that only he be shown in the DVD) which script followed what was in the book. He ignored the script in his need to be the star. In the process he was making a lot of mistakes in what he was putting on the DVD. At that point, I dropped out of the DVD project. If he needed to star in a pseudo-Reichian video; that was his need system. I was not going to spend more of my time working out scripts that he would then ignore such that the book and the DVD would contradict one another.

After Alan and I parted, I took out all his Regardie and magic changes; made an explicit statement that this was psychotherapy and not magic; and filled in the rest of the book which was not present in the draft that Alan had. As you can see from the book I put out on the net, the book runs to over 500 pages. Hardly a 256 page book. It had been decades since Alan had actually practiced any Reichian and he had a lot of errors in his memory. In fact, one of the issues between us was that he had put, in the Undoing book, instructions on breathing which were the exact opposite of the right way. He wanted the Reichian book to say that he had done that deliberately (in fact, he had simply forgotten the right way to do it).

Alan then used the drafts of the Reichian book that he had from me to create a set of DVDs (which I have not seen). Apparently at the time of the video you directed me to, in January 2007, he was still under the impression that I would continue to let my work appear under his name and his copyright, so he mentions me as a "co-editor."

Jack Willis

Hey has some more talk with Jack and he is open and more than willing to help anybody with questions and is up for me posting his letters on here. Here they are:

I'll help as much as I can from the distance to facilitate your work.

Do keep in mind that everything we do is a function of our character which, in your case, means that Hyatt, Regardie, Gurdjieff, etc. is a manifestation of your character. That does not make it invalid, it makes it something to look at in yourself from the perspective not within those systems, but outside looking at your interest. It is like the 'debate' (without giving them equal weight) between Darwin and "intelligent design." Anyone who bothers to consider the issue chooses either side not because that side is correct but because that side fills a character-based need which then results in the person saying his side is right.

Relative to becoming a "certified practitioner," there is no certifying body so there is no way to become "certified" as such. I have zero knowledge of the legal situation in Australia or in the Melbourne province (or whatever term is used in Australia), so I have no idea whether one needs a license(s) etc. to have a psychotherapy practice. But Reichian is psychotherapy so the underlying issue is not this method, it is knowing human psychology. However, as with all things in life, what you do and how you do it is a function of your own personal ethical commitments. In the second book on Reichian for therapists which I am working on now, I mention an "orgonomist" of my knowledge who, despite his training, did not know what he was doing and in the first six months of his practicing the therapy, he had one suicide and one commitment to a state mental hospital. It is very easy to be a bad therapist, it is a lot of work and effort to be a good therapist (isn't that true of anything in life?). Thus the issue is not one of becoming 'certified' in this method, it is an issue of becoming knowledgeable of the process and the methods of psychotherapy. As you can hear in the audio of the session with Roberta, Reichian is more than just the technique itself, it is about all of human psychology. Check out the attached .pdf file. This is labeled as an "appendix." I had initially intended to include this with the next book but as you can see from the page number (639) the next book is going to be a monster in size so this will not likely be included. But it does illustrate how one must be aware of defense (coping) mechanisms and how they are a part of the therapy process.

Now, on to your next issue. Radix is local to me (Los Angeles) though Charles Kelly is now deceased. Kelly was extremely clever. He labeled what he did as "Neo-Reichian Emotional Release Techniques Training" thus making all his students who then went on to practice being "teachers" rather than "therapists" and thus they escape any license laws. As to his approach to therapy (a rose by any other name ... ), the issue is not so much what Kelly claimed as what your local people do. Kelly's theory I dismiss entirely (his last, and to my knowledge only, book is: Life force...the creative process in man and in nature; Charles R. Kelly; 2004; Victoria, Canada: Trafford). Kelly held that the issue of life is emotion and he further held that there are only a few major emotions, which he wanted the person to vent. I do not see humans as pressure cookers (the initial idea was from the physicist, Helmholtz, that was then taken up by Freud and applied to humans and then to Reich and then to Kelly). The experimental literature is clear that catharsis does not work (there are a few long term studies of Primal patients where there were improvements that lingered, but the experimental design was not good). Since the only technique which Kelly taught and advocated was his catharsis methods (based on modifications of the Reichian exercises; Kelly was classically trained I think directly by Reich but it has been several decades since I last read my big thick book of Kelly publications), I can't endorse Kelly's approach. But that is what Kelly did and taught, it does not say what your local people do or their level of knowledge; it does not even say whether in fact your local people came to Los Angeles to get Kelly's 'emotional release techniques' training or whether they got it 2nd, 3rd, etc. hand.

As to the Reichian Home book, no it is not complete. There are, first, several exercises and pressure areas which I did not include as they were not appropriate. There are many things I did not discuss, again because they were not appropriate to the audience for that book. I did not discuss the design of Reichian rooms and their sound proofing, diagnosis, the errors in Reich about energy, the autonomic nervous system, the current status of Freudian theory, and on it goes. The next book will be addressed to therapists and assumes that they know human psychology. It will likely be another three to five years before it comes out as it is very big and on some topics I have to spend a lot of time researching (so I can cite the literature to support my contentions).

I have not viewed the Hyatt DVDs. I have not had good reports on them but that is 2nd hand. I was with Allan when he tried to make the 1st DVD and he latter admitted that he had botched it. He re-did it after I left.

2nd:

I am only too willing to help in whatever way I can.

From your description that the areas of tension are all 'left sided', I suspect that you need some Chiropractic or Osteopathic adjustments. This is not some general statement: that all people with predominantly one sided tension need Chiro or Osteo adjustments, it can be psychogenic rather then physiologic or it can be simply be the way your body/brain is wired. I am not familiar with the various schools of Osteopathic adjustment, I do know the Chiropractic schools and there what you want is called "diversified."

Carl Jung proposed that, for right handed people, the left side is the mother and the right is the father (reversed for left handed people). Like most all concepts in psychology, if that postulates helps, use it, if it does not add anything to your understanding, ignore it

------------------------------------

You can go directly to the pelvis. Reich's from-face-to-pelvis claim is not only not supported, not even the zealots of Reich (the Orgonomists), when one reads their patient vignettes, actually follow a face to pelvis order. Recall, if anyone has read the book, that Orson Bean describes that in his first session that Baker was already working on his para-spinal muscles in the chest and lumbar areas. The only order I would recommend is that you get at least some sense of the breathing and, at least mostly, get the forehead and eyes cleared up and after that the order is individual. So there is no reason, on your part, not to go directly to the pelvis (after some breathing and forehead and eyes).

Proper breathing is amazingly difficult to achieve. I will discuss this at greater length in the next book on Reichian, designed for therapists, that most everyone employs some method of control in his breathing. It can be jaw movement with the breath, it can be tongue movement, it can be various sound issues - especially articulation of the sound - it can be hear movement, it can even be a "catch in the throat" which can't be seen or heard (as reported to me by one of my patients), it can be slow inhale-exhale cycles as heard on the audio files with the book. No matter what the nature of point of control, it is very difficult for people to let go of it.

--------------------------------

You certainly have my permission to post my emails on the Tribe forum. My goal in writing that book and making it available for free to anyone who was interested was to spread the knowledge of this method of therapy and to help those who wanted to use it but could not find a local practitioner.

Jack Willis

Christopher Hyatt' Side of the Story

reddit (self.occult)

submitted by nicktharcher (Nick Tharcher)

As someone who knew both Jack Willis (since 1968, in Chicago when he was in the computer business...I even worked for him for a short time) and Alan Miller/Christopher Hyatt* (since 1971 in Los Angeles when Jack introduced me to him and I became his patient and later his friend and colleague), I feel the need to make some long overdue comments... especially after reading some recent postings. First, to clarify: both Hyatt and Willis were trained in "Reichian" methods by Francis Israel Regardie who had a clinical practice in Los Angeles, CA and used (neo-)Reichian techniques. Hyatt, who had been a patient of Regardie's for some time, learned the methods from Regardie and incorporated them into his own psychotherapy practice. Hyatt met Jack around 1970 and introduced him to Regardie around then. Jack became Regardie's patient for a time and learned some of Regardie's methods. Later Jack opened a therapy practice of his own, largely employing the methods he learned from Regardie. Hyatt's practice was very successful; Jack's less so.

In the mid to late 1970s Hyatt and Jack attempted to work together with an eye toward writing several books, including one about the techniques they had learned from Regardie. As time went on, the differences in their personalities and ways of thinking made it clear (to Hyatt, at least) that working together was impossible.

So successful was Hyatt's therapy practice and other business ventures that he retired around 1979 and gave Jack his entire therapy business as a gift. (Sadly, as brilliant as Jack could be, he was a terrible businessman and managed to run this one into the ground as he had other businesses before.)

While Jack was Regardie's patient and student, Hyatt's relationship with Regardie went far, far deeper. Around 1980 Regardie asked Hyatt to get involved with publishing some of his books and some Aleister Crowley titles that he controlled. Though Hyatt had no background in publishing, he had had enough of retirement and created Falcon Press. They remained friends and colleagues right up to Regardie's death in 1985. As far as I know, Regardie had no contact with Jack during that time.

For many years Hyatt and Jack had virtually no contact, though from time to time we would "check in on him" without his knowing. Around 2002 Hyatt got in contact with Jack (whose therapy practice was not doing well) and tried once again to work with him. Jack even moved to Arizona for a while. Hyatt gave Jack the opportunity to write articles for some of his books (e.g., "Undoing Yourself") and even gave him co-author credit on some titles. Unfortunately Jack could not keep it straight whose company it was, who was in charge, and whose projects he was working on and the relationship deteriorated, finally ending with the production of the first "Radical Undoing" DVD which Jack wanted to do one way and Hyatt another.

Make no mistake about it: both Hyatt (and I) loved Jack deeply and admired his unique and fantastic brain. But Jack could be as rigid, blind and irrational as anyone I've ever known and that hurt his relationships with many people...including Hyatt and me.

In due course I may write more on this subject, but for now I'll just say this: take anything and everything that Jack wrote about his relationship with Hyatt and the development of his work with a ton of salt. Most of it is (to be kind) simply inaccurate. I don't doubt that Jack believed it, but it is incorrect, nonetheless.

Warmly, Nick Tharcher The Original Falcon Press nick@originalfalcon.com

*Though Alan Miller did not take the nom de plume Christopher S. Hyatt until around 1981, I have referred to him as "Hyatt" throughout.