Members of the Diagnostic Team

Enter our diagnostic team. It is headed by two men whom we have recruited. They are fully qualified to help oil the Tin Man’s armor. Perhaps they can also oil the armor worn by mid-21st Century men and women. They might even be able to help heal the Tin Man’s heart—and the hearts of armored men and women of our own time. We introduce these two men. We also introduce several adjunct members of the diagnostic team who have much to say about armor and hearts.

Wilhelm Reich

Wilhelm Reich was born to Jewish parents in Austria on March 24,1897. He received his medical degree from the University of Vienna in 1922 and became deputy director of Sigmund Freud’s outpatient clinic. Reich soon became one of Freud’s favorites and at one point was considered to be the successor to Freud in the burgeoning psychoanalytic field. However, he eventually fell out of favor with Freud (as did Jung, Adler and many other aspirants), in large part because he was moving beyond the prescribed boundaries of traditional Freudian practice. While Reich aligned with Freud regarding the importance of sexuality, he was developing his own unorthodox theories and practices regarding the nature of sexual energy. This departure from the “normal” views regarding sex would later lead to major controversy and even legal problems for Reich.

Moshe Feldenkrais

As in the case of Wilhelm Reich, Moshe Feldenkrais’s parents were European Jews—living at the time in what today is the country of Ukraine. Moshe was born in 1904 and was raised in Belarus. Having moved to Palestine in 1918, Moshe Feldenkrais worked as a laborer and began to study self-defense (including Ju-Jitsu). Following his subsequent migration to France during the early 1930s, Feldenkrais obtained a degree in engineering. He subsequently was awarded a Doctor of Science degree from the University of Paris. Marie Curie was one of his teachers.

Feldenkrais’ interest in the interplay between the human anatomy and movement became more immediate after World War II, when a personal Injury led him to begin developing his own approach to rehabilitation. Feldenkrais began to offer lectures and training programs regarding his new treatment methods and published his first book on his method (Body and Mature Behavior: A study of Anxiety, Sex, Gravitation and Learning). In this book, Feldenkrais (2005) touched on some of the same topics as Reich. Like Reich, he also became interested in many other topics and theories—including those offered by Gurdjieff (a noted mystic).

We have recruited two additional members to our assessment team. In the real world, they have both strongly influenced our primary actors or our current understanding of armor and wounded hearts: Robert Sapolsky and Wilfred Bion.