 Beginning in 1924 Reich published a series of papers on the idea of " orgastic potency , " the ability to release the emotions from the muscles and lose the self in an uninhibited orgasm , an idea that Freud came to call Reich 's " Steckenpferd " ( hobby horse ) . Reich argued that psychic health and the ability to love depended on orgastic potency , the full discharge of the libido : " Sexual release in the sex act must correspond to the excitement which leads up to it . " He wrote : " It is not just to fuck ... not the embrace in itself , not the intercourse . It is the real emotional experience of the loss of your ego , of your whole spiritual self . " He argued that orgastic potency was the goal of character analysis . 
