Wilhelm Reich ( , ; 24 March 1897 – 3 November 1957) was an Austrian
doctor of medicine
Doctor of Medicine (abbreviated M.D., from the Latin language, Latin ''Medicinae Doctor'') is a medical degree, the meaning of which varies between different jurisdictions. In the United States, and some other countries, the M.D. denotes a profes ...
and a
psychoanalyst
PsychoanalysisFrom Greek language, Greek: + . is a set of Theory, theories and Therapy, therapeutic techniques"What is psychoanalysis? Of course, one is supposed to answer that it is many things — a theory, a research method, a therapy, a bo ...
, along with being a member of the second generation of analysts after
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...
. The author of several influential books, most notably ''The Impulsive Character'' (1925), ''
The Function of the Orgasm'' (1927), ''
Character Analysis
''Character Analysis'' (german: Charakteranalyse) is a 1933 book by Wilhelm Reich.
Background
Reich finished the manuscript in January 1933. He submitted it to the Psychoanalytic Press in Vienna, presided over by Sigmund Freud, who initially acce ...
'' (1933), and ''
The Mass Psychology of Fascism
''The Mass Psychology of Fascism'' (german: Die Massenpsychologie des Faschismus) is a 1933 psychology book written by the Austrian psychoanalyst and psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich, in which the author attempts to explain how fascists and authoritari ...
'' (1933), he became known as one of the most radical figures in the history of psychiatry.
Reich's work on character contributed to the development of
Anna Freud
Anna Freud (3 December 1895 – 9 October 1982) was a British psychoanalyst of Austrian-Jewish descent. She was born in Vienna, the sixth and youngest child of Sigmund Freud and Martha Bernays. She followed the path of her father and contribu ...
's ''The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence'' (1936), and his idea of muscular armour—the expression of the personality in the way the body moves—shaped innovations such as
body psychotherapy
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 develope ...
,
Gestalt therapy
Gestalt therapy is a form of psychotherapy that emphasizes personal responsibility and focuses on the individual's experience in the present moment, the therapist–client relationship, the environmental and social contexts of a person's life, ...
,
bioenergetic analysis
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 develope ...
and
primal therapy
Primal therapy is a trauma-based psychotherapy created by Arthur Janov, who argues that neurosis is caused by the repressed pain of childhood trauma. Janov argues that repressed pain can be sequentially brought to conscious awareness for resolutio ...
. His writing influenced generations of intellectuals; he coined the phrase "the sexual revolution" and according to one historian acted as its midwife.
[Strick 2015, p. 2.] During the
1968 student uprisings in Paris and Berlin, students scrawled his name on walls and threw copies of ''The Mass Psychology of Fascism'' at police.
After graduating in medicine from the public
University of Vienna
The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich histor ...
in 1922, Reich became deputy director of
Freud
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts in ...
's outpatient clinic, the Vienna Ambulatorium. During the 1930s, he was part of a general trend among younger analysts and Frankfurt sociologists that tried to reconcile psychoanalysis with
Marxism
Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
. He is credited for establishing the first sexual advisory clinics in Vienna, along with Marie Frischauf. He said he wanted to "attack the neurosis by its prevention rather than treatment".
He moved to New York in 1939, after having accepted a position as Assistant Professor at the New School of Social Research. During his five years in Oslo, he had coined the term "
orgone
Orgone () is a pseudoscientific concept variously described as an esoteric energy or hypothetical universal life force. Originally proposed in the 1930s by Wilhelm Reich, and developed by Reich's student Charles Kelley after Reich's death in 1 ...
energy"—from "orgasm" and "organism"—for the notion of life energy. In 1940 he started building orgone accumulators, modified
Faraday cage
A Faraday cage or Faraday shield is an enclosure used to block electromagnetic fields. A Faraday shield may be formed by a continuous covering of conductive material, or in the case of a Faraday cage, by a mesh of such materials. Faraday cage ...
s that he claimed were beneficial for cancer patients. He claimed that his laboratory cancer mice had had remarkable positive effects from being kept in a Faraday cage, so he built human-size versions, where one could sit inside. This led to newspaper stories about "sex boxes" that cured cancer.
Following two critical articles about him in ''
The New Republic
''The New Republic'' is an American magazine of commentary on politics, contemporary culture, and the arts. Founded in 1914 by several leaders of the progressive movement, it attempted to find a balance between "a liberalism centered in hum ...
'' and ''
Harper's'' in 1947, the U.S.
Food and Drug Administration
The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA or US FDA) is a List of United States federal agencies, federal agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Health and Human Services. The FDA is respon ...
obtained an injunction against the interstate shipment of orgone accumulators and associated literature, calling them "fraud of the first magnitude". Charged with contempt in 1956 for having violated the injunction, Reich was sentenced to two years imprisonment, and that summer over six tons of his publications
were burned by order of the court. He died in prison of heart failure just over a year later.
[Sharaf 1994, p.&nbs]
477
.
Early life
Childhood
Reich was born the first of two sons to Leon Reich, a farmer, and his wife Cäcilie (née Roniger) in
Dobzau,
Galicia, then part of
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire,, the Dual Monarchy, or Austria, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of ...
, now in
Ukraine
Ukraine ( uk, Україна, Ukraïna, ) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which it borders to the east and northeast. Ukraine covers approximately . Prior to the ongoing Russian inv ...
. Wilhelm Reich's parents were married by Rabbi Schmelkes on June 4, 1895. Baby Wilhelm was
circumcised
Circumcision is a procedure that removes the foreskin from the human penis. In the most common form of the operation, the foreskin is extended with forceps, then a circumcision device may be placed, after which the foreskin is excised. Topic ...
four days after his birth. There was a sister too, born one year after Reich, but she died in infancy. Shortly after his birth the family moved to
Jujinetz, a village in
Bukovina
Bukovinagerman: Bukowina or ; hu, Bukovina; pl, Bukowina; ro, Bucovina; uk, Буковина, ; see also other languages. is a historical region, variously described as part of either Central or Eastern Europe (or both).Klaus Peter BergerT ...
, where his father ran a cattle farm leased by his mother's uncle, Josef Blum.
His father was described as a jealous man. Both parents were Jewish, but decided against raising the boys as practicing Jews. Reich and his brother, Robert, were brought up to speak only German, were punished for using
Yiddish
Yiddish (, or , ''yidish'' or ''idish'', , ; , ''Yidish-Taytsh'', ) is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated during the 9th century in Central Europe, providing the nascent Ashkenazi community with a ver ...
expressions and forbidden from playing with the local Yiddish-speaking children.
[Sharaf 1994, pp. 39, 463; Corrington 2003, pp. 90–91; Reich, ''Passion of Youth'', p. 3.]
Death of parents
Reich was taught at home until he was 12, when his mother was discovered having an affair with his live-in tutor. Reich wrote about the affair in 1920 in his first published paper, "''Über einen Fall von Durchbruch der Inzestschranke''" (german: "About a Case of Breaching the Incest Taboo"), presented in the third person as though about a patient.
[ He wrote that he would follow his mother when she went to the tutor's bedroom at night, feeling ashamed and jealous, and wondering if they would kill him if they found out that he knew. He briefly thought of forcing her to have sex with him, on pain of threatening to tell his father. In the end, he did tell his father, and after a protracted period of beatings, his mother committed suicide on October 1, 1910,] for which Reich blamed himself.[Turner 2011, pp. 42–43; Corrington 2003, pp. 6–10; Sharaf 1994, pp. 42–46; Reich, ''Passion of Youth'', pp. 31–38; Reich, "Über einen Fall von Durchbruch der Inzestschranke", ''Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft'', VII, 1920.]
With the tutor ordered out of the house, Reich was sent to an all-male gymnasium in Czernowitz
Chernivtsi ( uk, Чернівці́}, ; ro, Cernăuți, ; see also other names) is a city in the historical region of Bukovina, which is now divided along the borders of Romania and Ukraine, including this city, which is situated on the up ...
. It was during this period that a skin condition appeared, diagnosed as psoriasis
Psoriasis is a long-lasting, noncontagious autoimmune disease characterized by raised areas of abnormal skin. These areas are red, pink, or purple, dry, itchy, and scaly. Psoriasis varies in severity from small, localized patches to complete ...
, that plagued him for the rest of his life, leading several commentators to remark on his ruddy complexion. His father died of tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in ...
on May 3, 1914, and because of rampant inflation the father's insurance was worthless, so no money was forthcoming for the brothers.[Sharaf 1994, pp. 47–48; Turner 2011, pp. 47–48; Reich, ''Passion of Youth'', p. 50.] Reich managed the farm and continued with his studies, graduating in 1915 with ''Stimmeneinhelligkeit'' (german: "unanimous approval"). The Russians invaded Bukovina that summer and the Reich brothers fled, losing everything. Reich wrote in his diary: "I never saw either my homeland or my possessions again. Of a well-to-do past, nothing was left."
1919–1930: Vienna
Undergraduate studies
Reich joined the Austro-Hungarian Army
The Austro-Hungarian Army (, literally "Ground Forces of the Austro-Hungarians"; , literally "Imperial and Royal Army") was the ground force of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy from 1867 to 1918. It was composed of three parts: the joint arm ...
during the First World War, serving from 1915 to 1918, for the last two years as a lieutenant at the Italian front with 40 men under his command. When the war ended he headed for Vienna, enrolling in law at the University of Vienna
The University of Vienna (german: Universität Wien) is a public research university located in Vienna, Austria. It was founded by Duke Rudolph IV in 1365 and is the oldest university in the German-speaking world. With its long and rich histor ...
, but found it dull and switched to medicine after the first semester. He arrived with nothing in a city with little to offer; the overthrow of the Austria-Hungarian empire a few weeks earlier had left the newly formed Republic of German-Austria
The Republic of German-Austria (german: Republik Deutschösterreich or ) was an unrecognised state that was created following World War I as an initial rump state for areas with a predominantly German-speaking and ethnic German population wi ...
in the grip of famine. Reich lived on soup, oats and dried fruit from the university canteen, and shared an unheated room with his brother and another undergraduate, wearing his coat and gloves indoors to stave off the cold. He fell in love with another medical student, Lia Laszky, with whom he was dissecting a corpse, but it was largely unrequited.
Myron Sharaf
Myron Russcol Sharaf (July 7, 1926 – May 13, 1997) was an American writer and psychotherapist. He was a lecturer in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, the director of the Center for Sociopsychological Research and Education at Boston State H ...
, his biographer, wrote that Reich loved medicine but was caught between a reductionist/mechanistic
The mechanical philosophy is a form of natural philosophy which compares the universe to a large-scale mechanism (i.e. a machine). The mechanical philosophy is associated with the scientific revolution of early modern Europe. One of the first expo ...
and vitalist
Vitalism is a belief that starts from the premise that "living organisms are fundamentally different from non-living entities because they contain some non-physical element or are governed by different principles than are inanimate things." Wher ...
view of the world.[Sharaf 1994, pp. 54–55.] Reich wrote later of this period:
Introduction to Freud
Reich first met Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating psychopathology, pathologies explained as originatin ...
in 1919, when he asked Freud for a reading list for a seminar concerning sexology
Sexology is the scientific study of human sexuality, including human sexual interests, behaviors, and functions. The term ''sexology'' does not generally refer to the non-scientific study of sexuality, such as social criticism.
Sexologists app ...
. It seems they left a strong impression on each other. Freud allowed him to start meeting with analytic patients in September that year, although Reich was just 22 years old and still an undergraduate, which gave him a small income. He was accepted as a guest member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Association, becoming a regular member in October 1920, and began his own analysis with Isidor Sadger Isidor Isaak Sadger (29 October 1867 – 21 December 1942), born in Neu Sandez, Galicia, was a forensic doctor and psychoanalyst in Vienna. A leader in the early development of psychoanalysis, he began his career as a neurological specialist and, ...
. He lived and worked out of an apartment on Berggasse 7, the street on which Freud lived at no. 19, in the Alsergrund
Alsergrund (; Central Bavarian: ''Oisagrund'') is the ninth district of Vienna, Austria (german: 9. Bezirk, Alsergrund). It is located just north of the first, central district, Innere Stadt. Alsergrund was incorporated in 1862, with seven suburbs. ...
area of Vienna.
One of Reich's first patients was Lore Kahn, a 19-year-old woman with whom he had an affair. Freud had warned analysts not to involve themselves with their patients, but in the early days of psychoanalysis the warnings went unheeded. According to Reich's diaries, Kahn became ill in November 1920 and died of sepsis
Sepsis, formerly known as septicemia (septicaemia in British English) or blood poisoning, is a life-threatening condition that arises when the body's response to infection causes injury to its own tissues and organs. This initial stage is follo ...
after sleeping in a bitterly cold room she had rented as a place for her and Reich to meet (both his landlady and her parents had forbidden their meetings).
First marriage, graduation
Two months after Kahn's death, Reich accepted her friend, Annie Pink (1902–1971), as an analysand. Pink was Reich's fourth female patient, a medical student three months shy of her 19th birthday. He had an affair with her too, and married her in March 1922 at her father's insistence, with psychoanalysts Otto Fenichel
Otto Fenichel (2 December 1897 in Vienna – 22 January 1946 in Los Angeles) was a psychoanalyst of the so-called "second generation".
Education and psychoanalytic affiliations
Otto Fenichel started studying medicine in 1915 in Vienna. Already ...
and Edith Buxbaum as witnesses. Annie Reich became a well-known psychoanalyst herself. The marriage produced two daughters, Eva
Eva or EVA may refer to:
* Eva (name), a feminine given name
Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional characters
* Eva (Dynamite Entertainment), a comic book character by Dynamite Entertainment
* Eva (''Devil May Cry''), Dante's mother in t ...
(1924–2008) and Lore (b. 1928), both of whom became physicians; Lore Reich Rubin also became a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst.
Because he was a war veteran, Reich was allowed to complete a combined bachelor's and M.D.
Doctor of Medicine (abbreviated M.D., from the Latin ''Medicinae Doctor'') is a medical degree, the meaning of which varies between different jurisdictions. In the United States, and some other countries, the M.D. denotes a professional degree. T ...
in four years, instead of six, and graduated in July 1922. After graduating, he worked in internal medicine at the city's University Hospital, and studied neuropsychiatry
Neuropsychiatry or Organic Psychiatry is a branch of medicine that deals with psychiatry as it relates to neurology, in an effort to understand and attribute behavior to the interaction of neurobiology and social psychology factors. Within neurop ...
from 1922 to 1924 at the hospital's neurological and psychiatric clinic under Professor Julius Wagner von Jauregg, who won the Nobel Prize in Medicine
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded yearly by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute for outstanding discoveries in physiology or medicine. The Nobel Prize is not a single prize, but five separate prizes that, according ...
in 1927.[Sharaf 1994, p. 67.]
Vienna Ambulatorium
In 1922, Reich began working in Freud's psychoanalytic outpatient clinic, known as the Vienna Ambulatorium, which was opened on May 22 that year at Pelikangasse 18 by Eduard Hitschmann. Reich became the assistant director under Hitschmann in 1924 and worked there until his move to Berlin in 1930.[Danto 2007, p. 138.]
Between 1922 and 1932, the clinic offered free or reduced-cost psychoanalysis to 1,445 men and 800 women, many suffering from shell shock
Shell shock is a term coined in World War I by the British psychologist Charles Samuel Myers to describe the type of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) many soldiers were afflicted with during the war (before PTSD was termed). It is a react ...
after World War I. It was the second such clinic to open under Freud's direction; the first was the Poliklinik in Berlin, set up in 1920 by Max Eitingon
Max Eitingon (26 June 1881 – 30 July 1943) was a Litvak-German medical doctor and psychoanalyst, instrumental in establishing the institutional parameters of psychoanalytic education and training.Sidney L. Pomer, 'Max Eitingon (1881-1943): The ...
and Ernst Simmel Ernst Simmel (; 4 April 1882 in Breslau – 11 November 1947 in Los Angeles) was a German-American neurologist and psychoanalyst.
Life
Born in Breslau (Wrocław), Silesia to a secular Jewish background, Simmel moved to Berlin as a child.Veronika ...
.
Sharaf writes that working with labourers, farmers and students allowed Reich to move away from treating neurotic symptoms to observing chaotic lifestyles and anti-social personalities. Reich argued that neurotic symptoms such as obsessive–compulsive disorder
Obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) is a mental and behavioral disorder in which an individual has intrusive thoughts and/or feels the need to perform certain routines repeatedly to the extent where it induces distress or impairs general ...
were an unconscious attempt to gain control of a hostile environment, including poverty or childhood abuse. They were examples of what he called "character armour" (''Charakterpanzer''), repetitive patterns of behaviour, speech and body posture that served as defence mechanisms. According to Danto, Reich sought out patients at the Ambulatorium who had been diagnosed as psychopaths, believing that psychoanalysis could free them of their rage.
Reich joined the faculty of the Psychoanalytic Institute in Vienna in 1924 and became its director of training.[Blumenfeld 2006, p.&nbs]
135
. According to Danto, he was well-regarded for the weekly technical seminars he chaired at the Ambulatorium, where he gave papers on his theory of character structure, arguing that psychoanalysis should be based on the examination of unconscious character traits, later known as ego defences.[Danto 2007, p. 137.] The seminars were attended, from 1927, by Fritz Perls
Friedrich Salomon Perls (July 8, 1893 – March 14, 1970), better known as Fritz Perls, was a German-born psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and psychotherapist. Perls coined the term "Gestalt therapy" to identify the form of psychotherapy that he devel ...
, who went on to develop Gestalt therapy
Gestalt therapy is a form of psychotherapy that emphasizes personal responsibility and focuses on the individual's experience in the present moment, the therapist–client relationship, the environmental and social contexts of a person's life, ...
with his wife, Laura Perls
Laura Perls (née ''Lore Posner''; 15 August 1905 in Pforzheim – 13 July 1990 in Pforzheim) was a noted German-born psychologist and psychotherapist who helped establish the Gestalt school of psychotherapy. She was the wife of Friedrich (Fre ...
. Several commentators remarked on how captivating the seminars were and how eloquently Reich spoke. According to a Danish newspaper in 1934:
''Der triebhafte Charakter''
Reich's first book, ' ("The Impulsive Character: A Psychoanalytic Study of the Pathology of the Self"), was published in 1925. It was a study of the anti-social personalities he had encountered in the Ambulatorium, and argued the need for a systematic theory of character. The book won him professional recognition, including from Freud, who in 1927 arranged for his appointment to the executive committee of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. The appointment was made over the objection of Paul Federn
Paul Federn (October 13, 1871 – May 4, 1950) was an Austrian-American psychologist who was a native of Vienna. Federn is largely remembered for his theories involving ego psychology and therapeutic treatment of psychosis.
Life and career
Feder ...
, who had been Reich's second analyst in 1922 and who, according to Sharaf, regarded Reich as a psychopath. Reich found the society dull and wrote that he behaved "like a shark in a pond of carps".
Orgastic potency
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.
Whereas Reich's work on character was well received by the psychoanalytic community, Sharaf writes, his work on orgastic potency was unpopular from the start and later ridiculed. He came to be known as the "prophet of the better orgasm" and the "founder of a genital utopia".
Rest cure in Switzerland
Reich's brother died of tuberculosis (TB) in 1926, the same disease that had killed their father. Turner writes that a quarter of deaths in Vienna were caused by TB in the 1920s. Reich himself contracted it in 1927 and spent several weeks in the winter of that year in a sanitorium in Davos
, neighboring_municipalities= Arosa, Bergün/Bravuogn, Klosters-Serneus, Langwies, S-chanf, Susch
, twintowns =
}
Davos (, ; or ; rm, ; archaic it, Tavate) is an Alpine resort town and a municipality in the Prättigau/Davos R ...
, Switzerland, where TB patients went for rest cures and fresh air before antibiotics became widely available around 1945. Turner writes that Reich underwent a political and existential crisis in Davos; he returned home in the spring angry and paranoid, according to Annie Reich. Some months later he and Annie were on the streets during the July Revolt of 1927
The July Revolt of 1927 (also known as the Vienna Palace of Justice fire, german: Wiener Justizpalastbrand) was a major riot starting on 15 July 1927 in the Austrian capital, Vienna. The revolt was sparked by the acquittal of three nationali ...
in Vienna, when 84 workers were shot and killed by police and another 600 were injured. It seems that the experience changed Reich; he wrote that it was his first encounter with human irrationality. He began to doubt everything, and in 1928 joined the Communist Party of Austria
The Communist Party of Austria (german: Kommunistische Partei Österreichs, KPÖ) is a communist party in Austria. Established in 1918 as the Communist Party of Republic of German-Austria, German-Austria (KPDÖ), it is one of the world's oldest ...
:
Sex-pol movement
Partly in response to the shooting he had witnessed in Vienna, Reich, then 30, opened six free sex-counseling clinics in the city in 1927 for working-class patients. Each clinic was overseen by a physician, with three obstetricians and a lawyer on call, and offered what Reich called Sex-Pol counseling. Sex-Pol stood for the German Society of Proletarian Sexual Politics. Reich offered a mixture of "psychoanalytic counseling, Marxist advice and contraceptives", Danto writes, and argued for a sexual permissiveness, including for young people and the unmarried, that unsettled other psychoanalysts and the political left. The clinics were immediately overcrowded by people seeking help.
He also took to the streets in a mobile clinic, driving to parks and out to the suburbs with other psychoanalysts and physicians. Reich would talk to the teenagers and men, while a gynaecologist fitted the women with contraceptive devices, and Lia Laszky, the woman Reich fell in love with at medical school, spoke to the children. They also distributed sex-education pamphlets door to door.
''Die Funktion des Orgasmus''
Reich published ''Die Funktion des Orgasmus'' ("The Function of the Orgasm") in 1927, dedicating it to Freud. He had presented a copy of the manuscript to Freud on the latter's 70th birthday on 6 May 1926.[Sharaf 1994, pp. 91–92, 100.] Freud had not appeared impressed. He replied, "That thick?" when Reich handed it to him, and took two months to write a brief but positive letter in response, which Reich interpreted as a rejection.[Sharaf 1994, pp. 100–101.] Freud's view was that the matter was more complicated than Reich suggested, and that there was no single cause of neurosis. He wrote in 1928 to another psychoanalyst, Dr. Lou Andreas-Salomé
Lou Andreas-Salomé (born either Louise von Salomé or Luíza Gustavovna Salomé or Lioulia von Salomé, russian: link=no, Луиза Густавовна Саломе; 12 February 1861 – 5 February 1937) was a Russian-born psychoanalyst and a ...
:
Visit to the Soviet Union
In 1929, Reich and his wife visited the Soviet Union on a lecture tour, leaving the two children in the care of the psychoanalyst Berta Bornstein. Sharaf writes that he returned even more convinced of the link between sexual and economic oppression, and of the need to integrate Marx and Freud. In 1929 his article "Dialectical Materialism and Psychoanalysis" was published in '' Unter dem Banner des Marxismus'', the German Communist Party journal. The article explored whether psychoanalysis was compatible with historical materialism, class struggle and proletarian revolution. Reich concluded that they were compatible if dialectical materialism
Dialectical materialism is a philosophy of science, history, and nature developed in Europe and based on the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxist dialectics, as a materialist philosophy, emphasizes the importance of real-world con ...
was applied to psychology. This was one of the central theoretical statements of his Marxist period, which included ''The Imposition of Sexual Morality'' (1932), ''The Sexual Struggle of Youth'' (1932), ''The Mass Psychology of Fascism'' (1933), "What is Class Consciousness?" (1934) and ''The Sexual Revolution'' (1936).
1930–1934: Germany, Denmark, Sweden
''Verlag für Sexualpolitik''
Reich and his wife moved to Berlin in November 1930, where he set up clinics in working-class areas, taught sex education and published pamphlets. He joined the Communist Party of Germany
The Communist Party of Germany (german: Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands, , KPD ) was a major political party in the Weimar Republic between 1918 and 1933, an underground resistance movement in Nazi Germany, and a minor party in West German ...
, but grew impatient over their delay in publishing one of his pamphlets, ' (1932) later published in English as ''The Sexual Struggle of Youth'' (1972) and so set up his own publishing house, ', to produce the pamphlet himself.[
His subsequent involvement in a conference promoting adolescent sexuality caused the party to announce that it would no longer publish his material. On 24 March 1933 Freud told him that his contract with the International Psychoanalytic Publishers to publish ''Character Analysis'' had been cancelled. Sharaf writes that this was almost certainly because of Reich's stance on teenage sex.][Sharaf 1994, pp. 169–171.]
''Character Analysis''
Reich published what Robert Corrington called his masterpiece, ''Charakteranalyse: Technik und Grundlagen für studierende und praktizierende Analytiker'', in 1933. It was revised and published in English in 1946 and 1949 as ''Character Analysis''. The book sought to move psychoanalysis toward a reconfiguration of character structure.[Corrington 2003, pp. 133–134.]
For Reich, character structure was the result of social processes, in particular a reflection of castration
Castration is any action, surgical, chemical, or otherwise, by which an individual loses use of the testicles: the male gonad. Surgical castration is bilateral orchiectomy (excision of both testicles), while chemical castration uses pharmaceut ...
and Oedipal anxieties playing themselves out within the nuclear family.[ ]Les Greenberg
Leslie Samuel Greenberg (born 30 September 1945) is a Canadian psychologist born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and is one of the originators and primary developers of Emotion-Focused Therapy for individuals and couples. He is a professor emeri ...
and Jeremy Safran write that Reich proposed a functional identity between the character, emotional blocks, and tension in the body, or what he called character (or muscular/body) armour (''Charakterpanzer'').[Greenberg and Safran 1990, pp. 20–21.]
Reich proposed that muscular armour was a defence that contained the history of the patient's traumas. For example, he blamed Freud's jaw cancer on his muscular armour, rather than his smoking: Freud's Judaism meant he was "biting down" impulses, rather than expressing them. Dissolving the armour would bring back the memory of the childhood repression that had caused the blockage in the first place.[
]
End of first marriage
Reich had several affairs during his marriage to Annie Reich, which ended in 1933 after he began a serious relationship in May 1932 with Elsa Lindenberg, a dancer and pupil of Elsa Gindler Elsa Gindler (19 June 1885 – 8 January 1961) was a somatic bodywork pioneer in Germany.
Born in Berlin, teacher of gymnastik, student of Hedwig Kallmeyer (who, in turn, had been a student of Genevieve Stebbins).
From her personal experience of ...
. He was living with Lindenberg in Germany when Hitler became Chancellor in January 1933. On March 2 that year the Nazi newspaper ''Völkischer Beobachter
The ''Völkischer Beobachter'' (; "'' Völkisch'' Observer") was the newspaper of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) from 25 December 1920. It first appeared weekly, then daily from 8 February 1923. For twenty-four years it formed part of the official pub ...
'' published an attack on ''Der Sexuelle Kampf der Jugend''. Reich and Lindenberg left for Vienna the next day. They moved from there to Denmark, where Reich was excluded from the Danish Communist Party in November 1933 (without ever having joined it) because of his promotion of teenage sex and the publication that year of ''The Mass Psychology of Fascism'', which they regarded as "counterrevolutionary". There were multiple complaints about his promotion of abortion, sex education, and the attempted suicide of a teenage patient. According to Turner, when Reich's visa expired, it was not renewed.
He tried to find support among psychoanalysts in the UK so that he could settle there, and was interviewed in London by Ernest Jones
Alfred Ernest Jones (1 January 1879 – 11 February 1958) was a Welsh neurologist and psychoanalyst. A lifelong friend and colleague of Sigmund Freud from their first meeting in 1908, he became his official biographer. Jones was the first En ...
, Melanie Klein
Melanie Klein (née Reizes; 30 March 1882 – 22 September 1960) was an Austrian-British author and psychoanalyst known for her work in child analysis. She was the primary figure in the development of object relations theory. Klein suggested tha ...
, Joan Riviere
Joan Hodgson Riviere (28 June 1883 – 20 May 1962) was a British psychoanalyst, who was both an early translator of Freud into English and an influential writer on her own account.
Life and career
Riviere was born Joan Hodgson Verrall in Bri ...
and James Strachey
James Beaumont Strachey (; 26 September 1887, London25 April 1967, High Wycombe) was a British psychoanalyst, and, with his wife Alix, a translator of Sigmund Freud into English. He is perhaps best known as the general editor of ''The Standar ...
. They decided that he had been "insufficiently analysed" and had an unresolved hostility toward Freud. Anna Freud
Anna Freud (3 December 1895 – 9 October 1982) was a British psychoanalyst of Austrian-Jewish descent. She was born in Vienna, the sixth and youngest child of Sigmund Freud and Martha Bernays. She followed the path of her father and contribu ...
, Freud's daughter—whom Jones had contacted about Reich's desire to relocate to England—wrote in 1938: "There is a wall somewhere where he stops to understand the other person's point of view and flies off into a world of his own ... He is an unhappy person ... and I am afraid this will end in sickness."
Reich and Lindenberg moved instead to Malmö in Sweden, which Reich described as "better than a concentration camp", but he was placed under surveillance when police suspected that the hourly visits of patients to his hotel room meant he was running a brothel, with Lindenberg as the prostitute.[Turner 2011, p. 158.] The government declined to extend his visa, and the couple had to move briefly back to Denmark, Reich under an assumed name.
Vegetotherapy
From 1930 onwards, Reich began to treat patients outside the limits of psychoanalysis's restrictions. He would sit opposite them, rather than behind them as they lay on a couch (the traditional psychoanalyst's position), and begin talking to them and answering their questions, instead of offering the stock, "Why do you ask?" analyst's response. He had noticed that after a successful course of psychoanalysis his patients would hold their bodies differently, so he began to try to communicate with the body using touch. He asked his male patients to undress down to their shorts, and sometimes entirely, and his female patients down to their underclothes, and began to massage them to loosen their body armour. He would also ask them to simulate physically the effects of certain emotions in the hope of triggering them.
He first presented the principles of what he called character-analytic vegetotherapy in August 1934, in a paper entitled "Psychischer Kontakt und vegetative Strömung" ("Psychological Contact and Vegetative Current") at the 13th International Congress of Psychoanalysis at Lucerne, Switzerland.[ His second wife, Ilse Ollendorf, said vegetotherapy replaced the psychoanalytic method of never touching a patient with "a physical attack by the therapist".
The method eliminated the psychoanalytic doctrine of neutrality. Reich argued that the psychoanalytic taboos reinforced the neurotic taboos of the patient, and that he wanted his patients to see him as human.][Sharaf 1994, p. 242.] He would press his thumb or the palm of his hand hard (and painfully) on their jaws, necks, chests, backs, or thighs, aiming to dissolve their muscular, and thereby characterological, rigidity.[Sharaf 1994, pp. 234–235.] He wrote that the purpose of the massage was to retrieve the repressed memory of the childhood situation that had caused the repression. If the session worked, he would see waves of pleasure move through their bodies, which he called the "orgasm reflex". According to Sharaf, the twin goals of Reichian therapy
Reichian therapy can refer to several schools of thought and therapeutic techniques whose common touchstone is their origins in the work of psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957). Some examples are:
*Character Analysis, the analysis of chara ...
were the attainment of this orgasm reflex during sessions and orgastic potency during intercourse. Reich briefly considered calling it "orgasmotherapy", but thought better of it.[Sharaf 1994, pp. 238–241, 243; Reich, ''Function of the Orgasm'', p. 5.]
Just before the crucial August 1934 Lucerne conference (13th International Congress of Psycho-analysis), Reich was (perhaps naively) ignorant of the ground-swell of opinion against him. At the meeting, he was asked to resign from the International Psychoanalytical Association, where Anna Freud
Anna Freud (3 December 1895 – 9 October 1982) was a British psychoanalyst of Austrian-Jewish descent. She was born in Vienna, the sixth and youngest child of Sigmund Freud and Martha Bernays. She followed the path of her father and contribu ...
was the "acknowledged leader" at the time, for prioritizing his revolutionary political-social (Communist) views over Freud's psychoanalytic ideas. Besides the theoretical differences, there was also, by that time, a significant level of "appeasement" to the increasing power of National Socialism
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hit ...
. Reich had protested to Anna Freud (Secretary of the International Association) about the omission of his name from the list of German members of the Association, apparently on the spurious grounds that he was going to join the Scandinavian branch. Ernest Jones
Alfred Ernest Jones (1 January 1879 – 11 February 1958) was a Welsh neurologist and psychoanalyst. A lifelong friend and colleague of Sigmund Freud from their first meeting in 1908, he became his official biographer. Jones was the first En ...
was the President of the International Association and he had also turned against Reich, combined with Paul Federn
Paul Federn (October 13, 1871 – May 4, 1950) was an Austrian-American psychologist who was a native of Vienna. Federn is largely remembered for his theories involving ego psychology and therapeutic treatment of psychosis.
Life and career
Feder ...
and Max Eitingon
Max Eitingon (26 June 1881 – 30 July 1943) was a Litvak-German medical doctor and psychoanalyst, instrumental in establishing the institutional parameters of psychoanalytic education and training.Sidney L. Pomer, 'Max Eitingon (1881-1943): The ...
, who had all levelled personal attacks against Reich.
According to Lore Reich Rubin, Reich's daughter, Anna Freud
Anna Freud (3 December 1895 – 9 October 1982) was a British psychoanalyst of Austrian-Jewish descent. She was born in Vienna, the sixth and youngest child of Sigmund Freud and Martha Bernays. She followed the path of her father and contribu ...
was responsible for destroying her father's career: "She got rid of him".
However, there is also some evidence that she later regretted this.
He arrived at the conference, relatively unconscious about his future treatment. He presented a significant paper and was then informed that he was to be excluded. Turner writes that he cemented his reputation as a madman, camping in a tent outside the conference hall and reportedly carrying a large knife in his belt. According to the psychiatrist Grete L. Bibring, Paul Federn declared, "Either Reich goes or I go."
1934–1939: Norway
Bioelectricity
In October 1934, Reich and Lindenberg moved to Oslo, Norway, where Harald K. Schjelderup
Harald Krabbe Schjelderup (21 May 1895 – 19 August 1974) was a Norwegian physicist, philosopher and psychologist. He worked with all three subjects on university level, but is best remembered as Norway's first professor of psychology.
He was ...
, professor of psychology at the University of Oslo
The University of Oslo ( no, Universitetet i Oslo; la, Universitas Osloensis) is a public research university located in Oslo, Norway. It is the highest ranked and oldest university in Norway. It is consistently ranked among the top universit ...
, had invited Reich to lecture on character analysis and vegetotherapy. They ended up staying for five years. During his time in Norway, Reich attempted to ground his orgasm theory in biology, exploring whether Freud's metaphor of the libido
Libido (; colloquial: sex drive) is a person's overall sexual drive or desire for sexual activity. Libido is influenced by biological, psychological, and social factors. Biologically, the sex hormones and associated neurotransmitters that act up ...
was in fact electricity or a chemical substance, an argument Freud had proposed in the 1890s but had abandoned. Reich argued that conceiving of the orgasm as nothing but mechanical tension and relaxation could not explain why some experience pleasure and others do not. He wanted to know what additional element had to be present for pleasure to be felt.
Reich was influenced by the work of the Austrian internist Friedrich Kraus, who argued in his paper ''Allgemeine und Spezielle Pathologie der Person'' (1926) that the biosystem was a relay-like switch mechanism of electrical charge and discharge. Reich wrote in an essay, "''Der Orgasmus als Elektro-physiologische Entladung''" ("The Orgasm as an Electrophysiological Discharge", 1934), that the orgasm is just such a bioelectrical discharge and proposed his "orgasm formula": mechanical tension (filling of the organs with fluid; tumescence) → bioelectrical charge → bioelectrical discharge → mechanical relaxation (detumescence).
In 1935, Reich bought an oscillograph
An oscilloscope (informally a scope) is a type of electronic test instrument that graphically displays varying electrical voltages as a two-dimensional plot of one or more signals as a function of time. The main purposes are to display repetiti ...
and attached it to friends and students, who volunteered to touch and kiss each other while Reich read the tracings. One of the volunteers was Willy Brandt
Willy Brandt (; born Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm; 18 December 1913 – 8 October 1992) was a German politician and statesman who was leader of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) from 1964 to 1987 and served as the chancellor of West Ge ...
, the future chancellor of Germany. At the time, he was married to Reich's secretary, Gertrude Gaasland, and was living in Norway to organize protests against Nazi Germany. Reich also took measurements from the patients of a psychiatric hospital near Oslo, including catatonic patients, with the permission of the hospital's director. Reich described the oscillograph experiments in 1937 in ''Experimentelle Ergebnisse über die elektrische Funktion von Sexualität und Angst'' (''The Bioelectrical Investigation of Sexuality and Anxiety'').
Bion experiments
From 1934 to 1939, Reich conducted what he called the bion experiments, which he published as ''Die Bione: zur Entstehung des vegetativen Lebens'' in Oslo in February 1938 (published in English in 1979 and later called ''The Bion Experiments on the Origin of Life''). He examined protozoa
Protozoa (singular: protozoan or protozoon; alternative plural: protozoans) are a group of single-celled eukaryotes, either free-living or parasitic, that feed on organic matter such as other microorganisms or organic tissues and debris. Histo ...
and grew cultured vesicles
Vesicle may refer to:
; In cellular biology or chemistry
* Vesicle (biology and chemistry), a supramolecular assembly of lipid molecules, like a cell membrane
* Synaptic vesicle
; In human embryology
* Vesicle (embryology), bulge-like features o ...
using grass, sand, iron and animal tissue, boiling them and adding potassium
Potassium is the chemical element with the symbol K (from Neo-Latin ''kalium'') and atomic number19. Potassium is a silvery-white metal that is soft enough to be cut with a knife with little force. Potassium metal reacts rapidly with atmosphe ...
and gelatin
Gelatin or gelatine (from la, gelatus meaning "stiff" or "frozen") is a translucent, colorless, flavorless food ingredient, commonly derived from collagen taken from animal body parts. It is brittle when dry and rubbery when moist. It may also ...
. Having heated the materials to incandescence
Incandescence is the emission of electromagnetic radiation (including visible light) from a hot body as a result of its high temperature. The term derives from the Latin verb ''incandescere,'' to glow white. A common use of incandescence is ...
with a heat-torch, he wrote that he had seen bright, glowing, blue vesicles. His photographs and films of his experiments were taken by Kari Berggrav. He called them "bions" and believed they were a rudimentary form of life, halfway between life and non-life. He wrote that when he poured the cooled mixture onto growth media, bacteria
Bacteria (; singular: bacterium) are ubiquitous, mostly free-living organisms often consisting of one biological cell. They constitute a large domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria were among ...
were born, dismissing the idea that the bacteria were already present in the air or on other materials.
In what Sharaf writes was the origins of the orgone theory, Reich said he could see two kinds of bions, the blue vesicles and smaller red ones shaped like lancets. He called the former PA-bions and the latter T-bacilli, the T standing for ''Tod'', German for death. He wrote in his book ''The Cancer Biopathy'' (1948) that he had found T-bacilli in rotting cancerous tissue obtained from a local hospital, and when injected into mice they caused inflammation and cancer. He concluded that, when orgone energy diminishes in cells through aging or injury, the cells undergo "bionous degeneration". At some point the deadly T-bacilli start to form in the cells. Death from cancer, he believed, was caused by an overwhelming growth of the T-bacilli.
Opposition to his ideas
In 1937, Reich faced strong opposition from Norwegian scientists regarding his theories on bions, many deriding them as nonsense. To counter this, he allowed the Norwegian pathologist Leiv Kreyberg to examine one of his bion preparations under a microscope. Kreyberg wrote that, while the broth Reich had used as his culture medium was indeed sterile, the bacteria were ordinary staphylococci
''Staphylococcus'' is a genus of Gram-positive bacteria in the family Staphylococcaceae from the order Bacillales. Under the microscope, they appear spherical ( cocci), and form in grape-like clusters. ''Staphylococcus'' species are facultati ...
, and thus concluded that Reich's control measures to prevent infection from airborne bacteria were not as foolproof as Reich believed. Kreyberg accused Reich of being ignorant of basic bacteriological and anatomical facts, while Reich accused Kreyberg of having failed to recognize living cancer cells under magnification.[ Reich sent a sample of the bacteria to a Norwegian biologist, Theodor Thjøtta of the Oslo Bacteriological Institute, who also blamed airborne infection. As a result, ''Tidens Tegn'', a leading liberal newspaper, launched a campaign against him with support from scientists and other newspapers.][
By February 1938, Reich's visa had expired. Several Norwegian scientists argued against an extension, Kreyberg saying, "If it is a question of handing Dr. Reich over to the Gestapo, then I will fight that, but if one could get rid of him in a decent manner, that would be the best." The writer ]Sigurd Hoel
Sigurd Hoel (December 14, 1890 – October 14, 1960) was a Norwegian author and publishing consultant, born in Nord-Odal. He debuted with the collection of short stories (The Way We Go) in 1922. His breakthrough came with (Sinners in Summertim ...
asked: "When did it become a reason for deportation that one looked in a microscope when one was not a trained biologist?" Reich received support from overseas, first from the anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski
Bronisław Kasper Malinowski (; 7 April 1884 – 16 May 1942) was a Polish-British anthropologist and ethnologist whose writings on ethnography, social theory, and field research have exerted a lasting influence on the discipline of anthropol ...
, who in March wrote to the press in Norway that Reich's sociological works were "a distinct and valuable contribution toward science", and from A. S. Neill, founder of Summerhill Summerhill or Summer Hill may refer to the following places:
Australia
* Summer Hill, New South Wales, a suburb of Sydney
*Summerhill, Tasmania, a suburb of Launceston
* Summerhill (Mount Duneed), a prefabricated iron cottage in Victoria
Canada
* ...
, a progressive school in England, who argued that "the campaign against Reich seems largely ignorant and uncivilized, more like fascism than democracy".[Sharaf 1994, pp. 231–232.] Norway was proud of its intellectual tolerance, so the "Reich affair", especially following the country's 1936 expulsion of Leon Trotsky
Lev Davidovich Bronstein. ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky; uk, link= no, Лев Давидович Троцький; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trotskij'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky''. (), was a Russian ...
, put Nygaardsvold's government on the spot. A compromise was found in which Reich was given his visa, but a royal decree was later issued stipulating that anyone wanting to practice psychoanalysis needed a licence, which Reich was not permitted to have.
The affair drew much attention between March and December 1938, with more than 165 articles and letters appearing in 13 Norwegian newspapers denouncing Reich's work.[Sharaf 1994, p. 233.] The most prominent was published by the country's largest newspaper, ''Aftenposten
( in the masthead; ; Norwegian for "The Evening Post") is Norway's largest printed newspaper by circulation. It is based in Oslo. It sold 211,769 copies in 2015 (172,029 printed copies according to University of Bergen) and estimated 1.2 million ...
'', on 19 and 21 April 1938, containing the views of both Kreyberg and Thjøtta, in which the former alleged that "Mr. Reich" knew less about bacteria and anatomy than a first-year medical student. When Reich requested a detailed control study, Kreyberg responded that his work did not merit it.[Sharaf 1994, p. 228.] Throughout the affair Reich issued just one public statement, when he asked for a commission to replicate his bion experiments. Sharaf writes that the opposition to his work affected his personality and relationships. He was left humiliated, no longer comfortable in public, and seething with bitterness against the researchers who had denounced him.
Personal life
According to Sharaf, 1934–1937 was the happiest period of Reich's personal life, despite the professional problems. His relationship with Elsa Lindenberg was good and he considered marrying her. When she became pregnant in 1935, they were initially overjoyed, buying clothes and furniture for the child, but doubts developed for Reich, who saw the future as too unsettled. To Lindenberg's great distress, Sharaf writes, Reich insisted on an abortion, at that time illegal. They went to Berlin, where the psychoanalyst Edith Jacobson
Edith Jacobson (german: Edith Jacobssohn; September 10, 1897 – December 8, 1978) was a German psychoanalyst. Her major contributions to psychoanalytic thinking dealt with the development of the sense of identity and self-esteem and with an ...
helped to arrange it.
In 1937, Reich began an affair with a female patient, an actress who had been married to a colleague of his. According to Sigurd Hoel, the analysis would stop because of the relationship, then the relationship would end and the analysis would start up again. The patient eventually threatened to go to the press, but was persuaded that it would harm her as much as it would Reich. Around the same time, Reich also had an affair with Gerd Bergersen, a 25-year-old Norwegian textile designer.[
Despite the affairs, Sharaf writes that, as the newspaper campaign against Reich gained pace, he developed an intense jealousy toward Lindenberg, demanding that she not have a separate life of any kind. He even physically assaulted a composer with whom she was working. Lindenberg considered calling the police but decided Reich could not afford another scandal. His behaviour took its toll on their relationship, and when Reich asked her to accompany him to the United States, she said no.][Sharaf 1994, pp. 253–255.]
1939–1947: United States
Teaching, second marriage
When Hitler annexed
Annexation (Latin ''ad'', to, and ''nexus'', joining), in international law, is the forcible acquisition of one state's territory by another state, usually following military occupation of the territory. It is generally held to be an illegal act ...
Austria in March 1938, Reich's ex-wife and daughters had already left for the United States. Later that year, Theodore P. Wolfe, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, traveled to Norway to study under Reich. Wolfe offered to help Reich settle in the States, and managed to arrange an invitation from The New School
The New School is a private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1919 as The New School for Social Research with an original mission dedicated to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry and a home for progressive thinkers. ...
in New York for Reich to teach a course on "Biological Aspects of Character Formation". Wolfe and Walter Briehl, a former student of Reich's, put up $5,000 to guarantee his visa. Wolfe also pulled strings with Adolph Berle, an official in the State Department.[ Reich wrote in his diary in May 1939:
He received the visa in August 1939, and sailed out of Norway on August 19 on the ''SS Stavangerfjord'', the last ship to leave for the United States before the war began on September 3.][Sharaf 1994, pp. 257–259.] He began teaching at The New School, where he remained until May 1941, living first at 7502 Kessel Street, Forest Hills, Queens
Forest Hills is a mostly residential neighborhood in the central portion of the borough of Queens in New York City. It is adjacent to Corona to the north, Rego Park and Glendale to the west, Forest Park to the south, Kew Gardens to the southeast, ...
, where he conducted experiments on mice with cancer, injecting them with bions. He built a small Faraday cage
A Faraday cage or Faraday shield is an enclosure used to block electromagnetic fields. A Faraday shield may be formed by a continuous covering of conductive material, or in the case of a Faraday cage, by a mesh of such materials. Faraday cage ...
to examine the vapors and lights he said the bions were producing.[Turner 2011, pp. 220–2212.] In October 1939, his secretary Gertrud Gaasland introduced him to Ilse Ollendorf, 29 years old at the time. Reich was still in love with Lindenberg, but Ollendorf started organizing his life for him, becoming his bookkeeper and laboratory assistant.[ They began living together in the Kessel Street house on Christmas Day 1939. She was eight weeks pregnant, but according to Turner he insisted that she have an abortion.][ Five years later, in 1944, they had a son, Peter, and were married in 1946.][Sharaf 1944, pp. 263–265]
Elkind, 18 April 1971
.
Sharaf writes that Reich's personality changed after his experience in Oslo.[ He became socially isolated and kept his distance even from old friends and his ex-wife. His students in the United States came to know him as a man that no colleague, no matter how close, called by his first name. In January 1940 he wrote to Lindenberg to end their relationship once and for all, telling her that he was in despair and that he believed he would end up dying like a dog.
]
Orgonomy
It was shortly after he arrived in New York in 1939 that Reich first said he had discovered a biological or cosmic energy, an extension of Freud's idea of the libido
Libido (; colloquial: sex drive) is a person's overall sexual drive or desire for sexual activity. Libido is influenced by biological, psychological, and social factors. Biologically, the sex hormones and associated neurotransmitters that act up ...
. He called it "orgone energy" or "orgone radiation", and the study of it "orgonomy". Reich said he had seen orgone when he injected his mice with bions and in the sky at night through an "organoscope", a special telescope. He argued that it is in the soil and air (indeed, is omnipresent
Omnipresence or ubiquity is the property of being present anywhere and everywhere. The term omnipresence is most often used in a religious context as an attribute of a deity or supreme being, while the term ubiquity is generally used to descri ...
), is blue or blue-grey, and that humanity had divided its knowledge of it in two: aether for the physical aspect and God for the spiritual. The colour of the sky, the northern lights, St Elmo's Fire, and the blue of sexually excited frogs are manifestations of orgone, he wrote. He also argued that protozoa
Protozoa (singular: protozoan or protozoon; alternative plural: protozoans) are a group of single-celled eukaryotes, either free-living or parasitic, that feed on organic matter such as other microorganisms or organic tissues and debris. Histo ...
, red corpuscles, cancer cell
Cancer cells are cells that divide continually, forming solid tumors or flooding the blood with abnormal cells. Cell division is a normal process used by the body for growth and repair. A parent cell divides to form two daughter cells, and these d ...
s and the chlorophyll
Chlorophyll (also chlorophyl) is any of several related green pigments found in cyanobacteria and in the chloroplasts of algae and plants. Its name is derived from the Greek words , ("pale green") and , ("leaf"). Chlorophyll allow plants to a ...
of plants are charged with it.[Sharaf 1994, pp. 17, 352; Reich, ''The Function of the Orgasm'', pp. 384–385.]
In 1940, he began to build insulated Faraday cage
A Faraday cage or Faraday shield is an enclosure used to block electromagnetic fields. A Faraday shield may be formed by a continuous covering of conductive material, or in the case of a Faraday cage, by a mesh of such materials. Faraday cage ...
s, "orgone accumulators", that he said would concentrate the orgone. The earliest boxes were for laboratory animals. The first human-sized, five-foot-tall box was built in December 1940, and set up in the basement of his house. Turner writes that it was made of plywood lined with rock wool and sheet iron, and had a chair inside and a small window. The boxes had multiple layers of these materials, which caused the orgone concentration inside the box to be three to five times stronger than in the air, Reich said. Patients were expected to sit inside them naked.
The accumulators were tested on plant growth and mice with cancer.[Sharaf 1994, pp. 302–303.] Reich wrote to his supporters in July 1941 that orgone is "definitely able to destroy cancerous growth. This is proved by the fact that tumors in all parts of the body are disappearing or diminishing. No other remedy in the world can claim such a thing." Although not licensed to practise medicine in the United States, he began testing the boxes on human beings diagnosed with cancer and schizophrenia. In one case the test had to be stopped prematurely because the subject heard a rumour that Reich was insane; there were stories, which were false, that he had been hospitalized in the Utica State Mental Hospital. In another case the father of an eight-year-old girl with cancer approached him for help, then complained to the American Medical Association that he was practising without a licence. He asked his supporters to stick with him through the criticism, believing that he had developed a grand unified theory of physical and mental health.
Experiment with Einstein
In December 1940, Reich wrote to Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...
saying he had a scientific discovery he wanted to discuss, and, in January 1941, visited Einstein at his home in Princeton
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ni ...
, where they talked for nearly five hours. He told Einstein that he had discovered a "specific biologically effective energy which behaves in many respects differently to all that is known about electromagnetic energy". He said it could be used against disease, and as a weapon "in the fight against the Fascist pestilence". (Einstein had signed a letter to President Roosevelt in August 1939 to warn of the danger of Nazi Germany building an atom bomb, and had urged the United States to establish its own research project.) Einstein agreed that if an object's temperature could be raised without an apparent heating source, as Reich was suggesting, it would be "a bomb".[Brian 1996, pp. 325–327.]
Reich was much encouraged by the meeting and hoped he would be invited to join Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent scholar ...
.[ During their next meeting, he gave Einstein a small accumulator, and over the next 10 days Einstein performed experiments with it in his basement, which involved taking the temperature above, inside and near the device, and stripping it down to its Faraday cage to compare temperatures. He observed an increase of temperature, which Reich argued was caused by orgone. One of Einstein's assistants pointed out that the temperature was lower on the floor than on the ceiling. Einstein concluded that the effect was simply due to the temperature gradient inside the room. "Through these experiments I regard the matter as completely solved", he wrote to Reich on 7 February 1941.][
Reich responded with a 25-page letter in which he tried to change Einstein's mind. To rule out the influence of ]convection
Convection is single or multiphase fluid flow that occurs spontaneously due to the combined effects of material property heterogeneity and body forces on a fluid, most commonly density and gravity (see buoyancy). When the cause of the convec ...
he told Einstein that he had taken certain measures, including introducing a horizontal plate above the accumulator, wrapping it in a blanket, hanging it from the ceiling, burying it underground and placing it outside. He wrote that in all these circumstances the temperature difference remained, and was in fact more marked in the open air. Einstein did not respond to this or to Reich's future correspondence—Reich would write regularly reporting the results of his experiments—until Reich threatened three years later to publish their previous exchange. Einstein replied that he could not devote any further time to the matter and asked that his name not be misused for advertising purposes. Reich believed that Einstein's change of heart was part of a conspiracy of some kind, perhaps related to the communists or prompted by the rumours that Reich was ill. Reich published the correspondence in 1953 as ''The Einstein Affair''.
Arrest by the FBI
Reich lost his position at the New School in May 1941, after writing to its director, Alvin Johnson, to say he had saved several lives in secret experiments with the accumulator. Johnson was aware of Reich's claims that he could cure cancer, and told him the New School was not an appropriate institution for the work. Reich was also evicted from Kessel Street after his neighbours complained about the animal experiments. His supporters, including Walter Briehl, gave him $14,000 to buy a house, and he settled into 9906 69th Avenue.
On 12 December 1941, five days after the attack on Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl HarborAlso known as the Battle of Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, j ...
and a day after Germany declared it was at war with the United States, Reich was arrested in his home at 2 a.m. by the FBI and taken to Ellis Island
Ellis Island is a federally owned island in New York Harbor, situated within the U.S. states of New York and New Jersey, that was the busiest immigrant inspection and processing station in the United States. From 1892 to 1954, nearly 12 mi ...
, where he was held for over three weeks.[ He identified himself at the time as the Associate Professor of Medical Psychology, Director of the Orgone Institute.][ He was at first left to sleep on the floor in a large hall, surrounded by members of the fascist ]German American Bund
The German American Bund, or the German American Federation (german: Amerikadeutscher Bund; Amerikadeutscher Volksbund, AV), was a German-American Nazi organization which was established in 1936 as a successor to the Friends of New Germany (FoN ...
, who Reich feared might kill him, but when his psoriasis
Psoriasis is a long-lasting, noncontagious autoimmune disease characterized by raised areas of abnormal skin. These areas are red, pink, or purple, dry, itchy, and scaly. Psoriasis varies in severity from small, localized patches to complete ...
returned he was transferred to the hospital ward. He was questioned about several books the FBI found when they searched his home, including Hitler's ''Mein Kampf
(; ''My Struggle'' or ''My Battle'') is a 1925 autobiographical manifesto by Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler. The work describes the process by which Hitler became antisemitic and outlines his political ideology and future plans for Germ ...
'', Trotsky
Lev Davidovich Bronstein. ( – 21 August 1940), better known as Leon Trotsky; uk, link= no, Лев Давидович Троцький; also transliterated ''Lyev'', ''Trotski'', ''Trotskij'', ''Trockij'' and ''Trotzky''. (), was a Russian M ...
's ''My Life My Life may refer to:
Autobiographies
* ''Mein Leben'' (Wagner) (''My Life''), by Richard Wagner, 1870
* ''My Life'' (Clinton autobiography), by Bill Clinton, 2004
* ''My Life'' (Meir autobiography), by Golda Meir, 1973
* ''My Life'' (Mosley a ...
'', a biography of Lenin and a Russian alphabet book for children. After threatening to go on hunger strike he was released, on 5 January, but his name remained on the "key figures list" of the Enemy Alien Control Unit, which meant he was placed under surveillance.[Sharaf 1994, pp. 271–272; Turner 2011, p. 241.]
Turner writes that it seems Reich was the victim of mistaken identity; there was a William Reich who ran a bookstore in New Jersey, which was used to distribute Communist material. The FBI acknowledged the mistake in November 1943 and closed Reich's file. In 2000 it released 789 pages of the file:
Purchase of Orgonon
In November 1942, Reich purchased an old farm for $4,000 on Dodge Pond, Maine, near Rangeley, with of land. Calling it Orgonon, he started spending summers there, and had a one-room cabin built in 1943, a laboratory in 1945, a larger cabin in 1946, and an observatory in 1948.
In 1950, he decided to live there year-round, and in May that year moved from New York with Ilse, their son, Peter, and Reich's daughter Eva, with the idea of creating a centre for the study of orgone. Several colleagues moved there with him, including two physicians with an interest in orgone, and Lois Wyvell, who ran the Orgone Press Institute. The artist William Moise
William Moise (1922–1980) was a visual artist, primarily an Abstract impressionism, abstract impressionist painter, working in a Regionalism (art), regionalist style.
In his art, Moise’s favorite subject was the landscape around him, i ...
joined Reich as an assistant at Orgonon, later marrying Eva Reich. Orgonon still houses the Wilhelm Reich Museum, as well as holiday cottages available to rent, one of which is the cottage in which the Reichs lived.
1947–1957: Legal problems
Brady articles, FDA
Until 1947, Reich enjoyed largely uncritical attention from the press in the United States. One journal, ''Psychosomatic Medicine'', had called orgone a "surrealist creation", but his psychoanalytic work had been discussed in the ''Journal of the American Medical Association'' and the ''American Journal of Psychiatry'', ''The Nation'' had given his writing positive reviews, and he was listed in ''American Men of Science''.
His reputation took a sudden downturn in April and May 1947, when articles by Mildred Edie Brady
Mildred Edie Brady (June 3, 1906 – July 27, 1965) was a freelance writer for ''The New Republic'' who is mostly known for writing the May 26, 1947 article ''The Strange Case of Wilhelm Reich''For the article, see ; reprinted in (with the subhe ...
were published in ''Harper's'' and ''The New Republic'', the latter entitled "The Strange Case of Wilhelm Reich", with the subhead, "The man who blames both neuroses and cancer on unsatisfactory sexual activities has been repudiated by only one scientific journal."[ Brady's ultimate target was not Reich but psychoanalysis, which according to Turner she saw as akin to astrology.
Of Reich she wrote: "Orgone, named after the sexual orgasm, is, according to Reich, a cosmic energy. It is, in fact, cosmic energy. Reich has not only discovered it; he has seen it, demonstrated it and named a town—Orgonon, Maine—after it. Here he builds accumulators of it, which are rented out to patients, who presumably derive 'orgastic potency' from it."][Brady, April 1947]
Brady, 26 May 1947
Turner 2011, pp. 272ff. She claimed, falsely, that he had said the accumulators could cure not only impotence but cancer.[ Brady argued that the "growing Reich cult" had to be dealt with.][Sharaf 1994, pp. 360–361.] On his copy of the ''New Republic'' article, Reich wrote "THE SMEAR". He issued a press release, but no one published it.
In July 1947, Dr. J. J. Durrett, director of the Medical Advisory Division of the Federal Trade Commission
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is an independent agency of the United States government whose principal mission is the enforcement of civil (non-criminal) antitrust law and the promotion of consumer protection. The FTC shares jurisdiction ov ...
, wrote to the Food and Drug Administration
The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA or US FDA) is a List of United States federal agencies, federal agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Health and Human Services. The FDA is respon ...
(FDA) asking them to investigate Reich's claims about the health benefits of orgone. The FDA assigned an investigator to the case, who learned that Reich had built 250 accumulators. The FDA concluded that they were dealing with a "fraud of the first magnitude". According to Sharaf, the FDA suspected a sexual racket of some kind; questions were asked about the women associated with orgonomy and "what was done with them". From that point on, Reich's work came increasingly to the attention of the authorities.[
]
Orgonomic Infant Research Center
Reich established the Orgonomic Infant Research Center (OIRC) in 1950, with the aim of preventing muscular armouring in children from birth. Meetings were held in the basement of his house in Forest Hills. Turner wrote that several children who were treated by OIRC therapists later said they had been sexually abused by the therapists, although not by Reich. One woman said she was assaulted by one of Reich's associates when she was five years old. Children were asked to stand naked in front of Reich and a group of 30 therapists in his basement, while Reich described the children's "blockages". Reich's daughter, Lore Reich Rubin, told Turner that she believed Reich himself had been abused as a child, which is why he developed such an interest in sex and childhood sexuality.[Turner 2011, p. 323.]
The sexual allegations apart, several people discussed how the vegetotherapy had hurt them physically as children, as therapists pressed hard on the body to loosen muscular armour. Reich's son, Peter, wrote in his autobiography, ''Book of Dreams'' (1973) about the pain this had caused him. Susanna Steig, the niece of William Steig
William Steig (November 14, 1907 – October 3, 2003) was an American cartoonist, illustrator and writer of children's books, best known for the picture book ''Shrek!'', which inspired the film series of the same name, as well as others that in ...
, the ''New Yorker'' cartoonist, wrote about being pressed so hard during Reichian therapy that she had difficulty breathing, and said that a woman therapist had sexually assaulted her. According to Turner, a nurse complained in 1952 to the New York Medical Society that an OIRC therapist had taught her five-year-old son how to masturbate. The therapist was arrested, but the case was dropped when Reich agreed to close the OIRC.
Divorce, cloudbusters
Reich and Ilse Ollendorff divorced in September 1951, ostensibly because he thought she had an affair. She continued working with him for another three years. Even after the divorce, he suspected her of having affairs, and persuaded her to sign confessions about her feelings of fear and hatred toward him, which he locked away in the archives of his Orgone Institute. He wrote several documents denouncing her, while having an affair himself with Lois Wyvell, who ran the Orgone Institute Press.
In 1951, Reich said he had discovered another energy that he called deadly orgone radiation (DOR), accumulations of which played a role in desertification
Desertification is a type of land degradation in drylands in which biological productivity is lost due to natural processes or induced by human activities whereby fertile areas become increasingly arid. It is the spread of arid areas caused by ...
. He designed a "cloudbuster", rows of 15-foot aluminium pipes mounted on a mobile platform, connected to cables that were inserted into water. He believed that it could unblock orgone energy in the atmosphere and cause rain. Turner described it as an "orgone box turned inside out".
He conducted dozens of experiments with the cloudbuster, calling his research "Cosmic Orgone Engineering". During a drought in 1953, two farmers in Maine offered to pay him if he could make it rain to save their blueberry crop. Reich used the cloudbuster on the morning of July 6, and according to Bangor's ''Daily News''—based on an account from an anonymous eyewitness who was probably Peter Reich—rain began to fall that evening. The crop survived, the farmers declared themselves satisfied, and Reich received his fee.
Injunction
Over the years the FDA interviewed physicians, Reich's students and his patients, asking about the orgone accumulators.[ A professor at the University of Oregon who bought an accumulator told an FDA inspector that he knew the device was phoney, but found it helpful because his wife sat quietly in it for four hours every day.
The attention of the FDA triggered belligerent responses from Reich, who called them "HiGS" (hoodlums in government) and the tools of red fascists. He developed a delusion that he had powerful friends in government, including ]President Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; ; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was an American military officer and statesman who served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, ...
, who he believed would protect him, and that the U.S. Air Force was flying over Orgonon to make sure that he was all right.[ On 29 July 1952 three inspectors arrived at Orgonon unannounced. Sharaf writes that Reich detested unannounced visitors; he had once chased some people away with a gun just for looking at an adjacent property. He told the inspectors they had to read his work before he would interact with them, and ordered them to leave.][Sharaf 1994, pp. 410–413.]
In February 1954, the United States Attorney for the District of Maine filed a 27-page complaint seeking a permanent injunction, under Sections 301 and 302 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act
The United States Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (abbreviated as FFDCA, FDCA, or FD&C) is a set of laws passed by the United States Congress in 1938 giving authority to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to oversee the safety of f ...
, to prevent interstate shipment of orgone accumulators and to ban promotional literature. Reich refused to appear in court, arguing that no court was in a position to evaluate his work. In a letter to Judge John D. Clifford, Jr. in February, he wrote:
The injunction was granted by default on 19 March 1954. The judge ordered that all accumulators, parts and instructions be destroyed, and that several of Reich's books that mentioned orgone be withheld.
Chasing UFOs
According to Turner, the injunction triggered a further deterioration in Reich's mental health. From at least early 1954, he came to believe that the planet was under attack by UFOs, which he called "energy alphas". He said he often saw them flying over Orgonon, shaped like thin cigars with windows, leaving streams of black Deadly Orgone Radiation in their wake, which he believed the aliens were scattering to destroy the Earth.
He and his son would spend their nights searching for UFOs through telescopes and binoculars, and sometimes, when they believed they had found one, they would roll out a cloudbuster to suck the energy out of it (the perceived-or imagined-UFO). Reich claimed he had shot several of them down. Armed with two cloudbusters, they fought what Reich called a "full-scale interplanetary battle" in Arizona, where he had rented a house as a base station. In ''Contact with Space'' (1956), he wrote of the "very remote possibility" that his own father had been from outer space.
In late 1954, Reich began an affair with Grethe Hoff, a former patient. Hoff was married to another former student and patient of his, the psychologist Myron Sharaf
Myron Russcol Sharaf (July 7, 1926 – May 13, 1997) was an American writer and psychotherapist. He was a lecturer in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, the director of the Center for Sociopsychological Research and Education at Boston State H ...
, who decades later, with his ''Fury on Earth'' (1983), became Reich's main biographer. Hoff and Sharaf had had their first child the year before Hoff left him for Reich; the marriage was never repaired although the affair had ended by June 1955. Two months later Reich began another relationship, this time with Aurora Karrer, a medical researcher, and, in November, he moved out of Orgonon to an apartment in Alban Towers, Washington, D.C., to live with her, using the pseudonym Dr. Walter Roner.
Contempt of court
While Reich was in Arizona in May 1956, one of his associates sent an accumulator part through the mail to another state, in violation of the injunction, after an FDA inspector posing as a customer requested it. Reich and another associate, Dr. Michael Silvert, were charged with contempt of court
Contempt of court, often referred to simply as "contempt", is the crime of being disobedient to or disrespectful toward a court of law and its officers in the form of behavior that opposes or defies the authority, justice, and dignity of the cour ...
; Silvert had been looking after the inventory in Reich's absence. Reich at first refused to attend court, and was arrested and held for two days until a supporter posted bail of $30,000.[
Representing himself during the hearing, he admitted the violation but pleaded not guilty and hinted at conspiracies. During a recess the judge apparently suggested a psychiatric evaluation to Reich's ex-wife, Ilse Ollendorff, but this was not communicated to Reich. The jury found him guilty on 7 May 1956, and he was sentenced to two years' imprisonment. Silvert was sentenced to a year and a day, the Wilhelm Reich Foundation was fined $10,000, and the accumulators and associated literature were to be destroyed.][Turner 2011, pp. 401–408.]
Book burning
On 5 June 1956, two FDA officials arrived at Orgonon to supervise the destruction of the accumulators. Most of them had been sold by that time and another 50 were with Silvert in New York, leaving only three accumulators at Orgonon. The FDA agents were not allowed to destroy them, only to supervise the destruction, so Reich's friends and his son, Peter, chopped them up with axes as the agents watched. Once they were destroyed, Reich placed an American flag on top of them.[
On 26 June, the agents returned to supervise the destruction of the promotional material, including 251 copies of Reich's books.][Turner 2011, p. 410.] The American Civil Liberties Union
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". T ...
issued a press release criticizing the book burning, although coverage of the release was poor, and Reich ended up asking them not to help because he was annoyed that they had failed to criticize the destruction of the accumulators. In England, A. S. Neill and the poet Herbert Read
Sir Herbert Edward Read, (; 4 December 1893 – 12 June 1968) was an English art historian, poet, literary critic and philosopher, best known for numerous books on art, which included influential volumes on the role of art in education. Read ...
signed a letter of protest, but it was never published. On July 23 the remaining accumulators in New York were destroyed by S. A. Collins and Sons, who had built them.
On 23 August, six tons of Reich's books, journals and papers were burned in New York, at the Gansevoort incinerator, a public incinerator on 25th Street. The material included copies of several of his books, including ''The Sexual Revolution'', ''Character Analysis'' and ''The Mass Psychology of Fascism''. Although these had been published in German before Reich ever discussed orgone, he had added mention of it to the English editions, so they were caught by the injunction. It has been cited as one of the worst examples of censorship in U.S. history. As with the accumulators, the FDA was supposed only to observe the destruction. The psychiatrist Victor Sobey (d. 1995), an associate of Reich's, wrote:
Imprisonment
Reich appealed the lower court's decision in October 1956, but the Court of Appeals upheld it on 11 December. He wrote several times to J. Edgar Hoover
John Edgar Hoover (January 1, 1895 – May 2, 1972) was an American law enforcement administrator who served as the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). He was appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation ...
, director of the FBI, requesting a meeting, and appealed to the Supreme Court
A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...
, which decided on 25 February 1957 not to review the case.[Sharaf 1994, pp. 465–466.] On 12 March 1957 Reich and Silvert were sent to Danbury Federal Prison. (Silvert committed suicide in May 1958, five months after his release.) Richard C. Hubbard, a psychiatrist who admired Reich, examined him on admission, recording paranoia
Paranoia is an instinct or thought process that is believed to be heavily influenced by anxiety or fear, often to the point of delusion and irrationality. Paranoid thinking typically includes persecutory beliefs, or beliefs of conspiracy concer ...
manifested by delusions of grandiosity, persecution, and ideas of reference
Ideas of reference and delusions of reference describe the phenomenon of an individual experiencing innocuous events or mere coincidences and believing they have strong personal significance. It is "the notion that everything one perceives in the ...
:
On March 19, Reich was transferred to the Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary
The United States Penitentiary, Lewisburg (USP Lewisburg) is a medium-security United States federal prison in Pennsylvania for male inmates. It is operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons, a division of the United States Department of Justice. ...
and examined again. This time it was decided that he was mentally competent and that his personality seemed intact, though he might become psychotic when stressed.[ A few days later, on his 60th birthday, he wrote to his son, Peter, then 13:
He applied for a presidential pardon in May, to no avail. Peter visited him in jail several times, where one prisoner said Reich was known as the "flying saucer guy" and the "Sex Box man". Reich told Peter that he cried a lot, and wanted Peter to let himself cry too, believing that tears are the "great softener". His last letter to his son was on 22 October 1957, when he said he was looking forward to being released on 10 November, having served one third of his sentence. A parole hearing had been scheduled for a few days before that date. He wrote that he and Peter had a date for a meal at the Howard Johnson restaurant near Peter's school.][ Peter's mother Ilse, who was a ]Quaker
Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of Christian denomination, denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belie ...
, stated that Wilhelm attended some Protestant services during his imprisonment and sent his son various prayers.
Death
Reich failed to appear for roll call on 3 November 1957, and was found at 7 a.m. in his bed. The prison doctor said he had died during the night of "myocardial insufficiency with sudden heart failure". He was buried in a vault at Orgonon that he had asked his caretaker to dig in 1955. He had left instructions that there was to be no religious ceremony, but that a record should be played of Schubert's "Ave Maria" sung by Marian Anderson
Marian Anderson (February 27, 1897April 8, 1993) was an American contralto. She performed a wide range of music, from opera to Spiritual (music), spirituals. Anderson performed with renowned orchestras in major concert and recital venues throu ...
, and that his granite headstone should read simply: "Wilhelm Reich, Born March 24, 1897, Died ... " None of the academic journals carried an obituary. ''Time'' magazine wrote on 18 November 1957:
Reception and legacy
Psychotherapy
The psychoanalyst Richard Sterba wrote in 1982 that Reich had been a brilliant clinician and teacher in the 1920s; even the older analysts had wanted to attend his technical seminars in Vienna. But according to Sharaf, they came to consider Reich as paranoid and belligerent.[ Psychologist Luis Cordon wrote that Reich's slide from respectability concluded with the consensus inside and outside the psychoanalytic community that he was at best a crackpot and perhaps seriously ill.
There were inaccurate rumours from the late 1920s that he had been hospitalized. ]Paul Federn
Paul Federn (October 13, 1871 – May 4, 1950) was an Austrian-American psychologist who was a native of Vienna. Federn is largely remembered for his theories involving ego psychology and therapeutic treatment of psychosis.
Life and career
Feder ...
became Reich's second analyst in 1922; he later said he had detected "incipient schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations (typically hearing voices), delusions, and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social withdra ...
" and called Reich a psychopath
Psychopathy, sometimes considered synonymous with sociopathy, is characterized by persistent Anti-social behaviour, antisocial behavior, impaired empathy and remorse, and Boldness, bold, Disinhibition, disinhibited, and Egotism, egotistical B ...
. Similarly, Sandor Rado
Sandor Rado ( hu, Radó Sándor; 8 January 1890, Kisvárda – 14 May 1972, New York City) was a Hungarian psychoanalyst of the second generation, who moved to the United States of America in the 1930s.
According to Peter Gay, "Budapest produ ...
had Reich as an analyst and in 1931 declared him schizophrenic "in the most serious way". Reich's daughter, Lore Reich Rubin, a psychiatrist
A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry, the branch of medicine devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, study, and treatment of mental disorders. Psychiatrists are physicians and evaluate patients to determine whether their sy ...
, speculated that he had bipolar disorder
Bipolar disorder, previously known as manic depression, is a mental disorder characterized by periods of depression and periods of abnormally elevated mood that last from days to weeks each. If the elevated mood is severe or associated with ...
and may have been sexually abused as a child.
Sharaf argued that psychoanalysts tended to dismiss as ill anyone from within the fold who had transgressed, and this was never done so relentlessly as with Reich. His work was split into the pre-psychotic "good" and the post-psychotic "bad", the date of the illness's onset depending on which parts of his work a speaker disliked. Psychoanalysts preferred to see him as sane in the 1920s because of his work on character, while political radicals regarded him as sane in the 1930s because of his Marxist-oriented research.[Sharaf 1994, p. 8.]
Despite Reich's precarious mental health, his work on character and the idea of muscular armouring contributed to the development of what is now known as ego psychology
Ego psychology is a school of psychoanalysis rooted in Sigmund Freud's structural id-ego-superego model of the mind.
An individual interacts with the external world as well as responds to internal forces. Many psychoanalysts use a theoretical c ...
, gave rise to body psychotherapy
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 develope ...
, and helped shape the Gestalt therapy
Gestalt therapy is a form of psychotherapy that emphasizes personal responsibility and focuses on the individual's experience in the present moment, the therapist–client relationship, the environmental and social contexts of a person's life, ...
of Fritz Perls
Friedrich Salomon Perls (July 8, 1893 – March 14, 1970), better known as Fritz Perls, was a German-born psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and psychotherapist. Perls coined the term "Gestalt therapy" to identify the form of psychotherapy that he devel ...
, the bioenergetic analysis
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 develope ...
of Reich's student Alexander Lowen
Alexander Lowen (December 23, 1910 – October 28, 2008) was an American physician and psychotherapist.
Life
A student of Wilhelm Reich in the 1940s and early '50s in New York, Lowen developed bioenergetic analysis, a form of mind-body psy ...
, and the primal therapy
Primal therapy is a trauma-based psychotherapy created by Arthur Janov, who argues that neurosis is caused by the repressed pain of childhood trauma. Janov argues that repressed pain can be sequentially brought to conscious awareness for resolutio ...
of Arthur Janov
Arthur Janov (; August 21, 1924October 1, 2017), also known as Art Janov, was an American psychologist, psychotherapist, and writer. He gained notability as the creator of primal therapy, a treatment for mental illness that involves repeatedly de ...
.[Sharaf 1994, pp. 4–5, 347, 481–482.]
Humanities
Reich's work influenced a generation of intellectuals, including Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow (born Solomon Bellows; 10 July 1915 – 5 April 2005) was a Canadian-born American writer. For his literary work, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts. He is the only wr ...
, William Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular cultur ...
and Norman Mailer
Nachem Malech Mailer (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007), known by his pen name Norman Kingsley Mailer, was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, activist, filmmaker and actor. In a career spanning over six decades, Mailer ...
, and the founder of Summerhill School in England, A. S. Neill.[ The French philosopher ]Michel Foucault
Paul-Michel Foucault (, ; ; 15 October 192625 June 1984) was a French philosopher, historian of ideas, writer, political activist, and literary critic. Foucault's theories primarily address the relationship between power and knowledge, and how ...
wrote in ''The History of Sexuality
''The History of Sexuality'' (french: L'Histoire de la sexualité) is a four-volume study of sexuality in the Western world by the French historian and philosopher Michel Foucault, in which the author examines the emergence of "sexuality" as a di ...
'' (1976) that the impact of Reich's critique of sexual repression had been substantial.
The Austrian-American philosopher Paul Edwards said that the FDA's pursuit of Reich had intensified Edwards' attachment to him. He wrote in 1977 that for years he and his friends regarded Reich as "something akin to a messiah". Paul Mathews and John M. Bell started teaching a course on Reich in 1968 at New York University through its Division of Continuing Study, and it was still being taught at the time Sharaf was writing Reich's biography in 1983, making it the longest-running course ever taught in that division.
Several well-known figures used orgone accumulators, including Orson Bean
Orson Bean (born Dallas Frederick Burrows; July 22, 1928 – February 7, 2020) was an American film, television, and stage actor, comedian, writer, and producer. He was a game show and talk show host and a "mainstay of Los Angeles’ small ...
, Sean Connery
Sir Sean Connery (born Thomas Connery; 25 August 1930 – 31 October 2020) was a Scottish actor. He was the first actor to portray fictional British secret agent James Bond on film, starring in seven Bond films between 1962 and 1983. Origina ...
, Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Gener ...
, Paul Goodman
Paul Goodman (1911–1972) was an American writer and public intellectual best known for his 1960s works of social criticism. Goodman was prolific across numerous literary genres and non-fiction topics, including the arts, civil rights, decen ...
, Jack Kerouac
Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac (; March 12, 1922 – October 21, 1969), known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation.
Of French-Canadian a ...
, Isaac Rosenfeld
Isaac Rosenfeld (March 10, 1918 - July 14, 1956 This article also has details about Rosenfeld's upbringing, parents, siblings, wife and children.) was an American writer who became a prominent member of New York intellectual circles. Rosenfeld w ...
, J. D. Salinger
Jerome David Salinger (; January 1, 1919 January 27, 2010) was an American author best known for his 1951 novel ''The Catcher in the Rye''. Salinger got his start in 1940, before serving in World War II, by publishing several short stories in '' ...
, William Steig
William Steig (November 14, 1907 – October 3, 2003) was an American cartoonist, illustrator and writer of children's books, best known for the picture book ''Shrek!'', which inspired the film series of the same name, as well as others that in ...
and Robert Anton Wilson
Robert Anton Wilson (born Robert Edward Wilson; January 18, 1932 – January 11, 2007) was an American author, futurist, psychologist, and self-described agnostic mystic. Recognized within Discordianism as an Episkopos, pope and saint, Wilson ...
.[Turner 2011, introduction; also se]
Turner (''Guardian''), 8 July 2011
Murphy (''Times Literary Supplement''), 4 January 2012
. Norman Mailer—who owned several orgone accumulators, including some in the shape of eggs—wrote about Reich enthusiastically in ''The Village Voice'', as a result of which Orgonon became a place of pilgrimage and the orgasm a symbol of liberation.[Turner 2011, pp. 430–431.]
Popular culture
Reich continued to influence popular culture after his death. Turner writes that the evil Dr. Durand Durand in the feature film '' Barbarella'' (1968) seems to be based on Reich; he places Barbarella (Jane Fonda
Jane Seymour Fonda (born December 21, 1937) is an American actress, activist, and former fashion model. Recognized as a film icon, Fonda is the recipient of various accolades including two Academy Awards, two British Academy Film Awards, sev ...
) in his ''Excessive Machine'' so that she would die of pleasure, but rather than killing her the machine burns out. A film about Reich and the implications of his ideas, '' W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism'' (1971), was made by Yugoslav director Dušan Makavejev
Dušan Makavejev ( sr-Cyrl, Душан Макавејев, ; 13 October 1932 – 25 January 2019) was a Serbian film director and screenwriter, famous for his groundbreaking films of Yugoslav cinema in the late 1960s and early 1970s—many of wh ...
. An orgone accumulator made an appearance as the Orgasmatron in Woody Allen
Heywood "Woody" Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg; November 30, 1935) is an American film director, writer, actor, and comedian whose career spans more than six decades and multiple Academy Award-winning films. He began his career writing ...
's comedy feature film '' Sleeper'' (1973). The use of orgone accumulators, a cloudbuster and representations of Reich's orgone therapy with patients, together with a snapshot of the FDA's hostile actions against Reich were dramatised in a short film called 'It Can Be Done', which was made by British director Jon East in 1999. The film screened at the 56th Venice Film Festival on 11 September 1999.
Patti Smith
Patricia Lee Smith (born December 30, 1946)
is an American singer, songwriter, poet, painter and author who became an influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album '' Horses''.
Called the "punk poe ...
's "Birdland" on her album ''Horses
The horse (''Equus ferus caballus'') is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of ''Equus ferus''. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million yea ...
'' (1975) is based on Reich's life. Hawkwind
Hawkwind are an English rock band known as one of the earliest space rock groups. Since their formation in November 1969, Hawkwind have gone through many incarnations and have incorporated many different styles into their music, including hard ...
's song "Orgone Accumulator", on their album ''Space Ritual
''The Space Ritual Alive in Liverpool and London'' (commonly known as ''Space Ritual'') is a 1973 live double album recorded in 1972 by UK rock band Hawkwind. It is their fourth album, reached #9 in the UK album charts and briefly dented the ...
'' (1973) is named for his invention. In Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture during a career sp ...
's "Joey
Joey may refer to:
People
*Joey (name)
Animals
* Joey (marsupial), an infant marsupial
* Joey, a Blue-fronted Amazon parrot who was one of the Blue Peter pets
Film and television
* ''Joey'' (1977 film), an American film directed by Horac ...
" from ''Desire
Desires are states of mind that are expressed by terms like "wanting", "wishing", "longing" or "craving". A great variety of features is commonly associated with desires. They are seen as propositional attitudes towards conceivable states of aff ...
'' (1976), the eponymous gangster spends his time in prison reading Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, Prose poetry, prose poet, cultural critic, Philology, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philo ...
and Reich. Reich is also a character in the opera '' Marilyn'' (1980) by Italian composer Lorenzo Ferrero
Lorenzo Ferrero (; born 1951) is an Italian composer, librettist, author, and book editor. He started composing at an early age and has written over a hundred compositions thus far, including twelve operas, three ballets, and numerous orchestral ...
.
Kate Bush
Catherine Bush (born 30 July 1958) is an English singer, songwriter, record producer and dancer. In 1978, at the age of 19, she topped the UK Singles Chart for four weeks with her debut single "Wuthering Heights (song), Wuthering Heights", ...
's single "Cloudbusting" (1985) described Reich's arrest through the eyes of his son, Peter, who wrote his father's story in ''A Book of Dreams'' (1973). The video for the song features Donald Sutherland as Reich and Bush as Peter. Robert Anton Wilson
Robert Anton Wilson (born Robert Edward Wilson; January 18, 1932 – January 11, 2007) was an American author, futurist, psychologist, and self-described agnostic mystic. Recognized within Discordianism as an Episkopos, pope and saint, Wilson ...
's play, ''Wilhelm Reich in Hell'' (1987), is about Reich's confrontation with the American government. ''Four-beat Rhythm: The Writings of Wilhelm Reich'' (2013) is a compilation album on which Reich's writings are adapted to music. The Australian designer Marc Newson has produced a range of orgone furniture, most famously his Orgone Chair (1993). In James Reich's novel ''Soft Invasions'' (2017), a fictionalized Wilhelm Reich is treating a Hollywood mogul using an orgone accumulator.
Science
The mainstream scientific community dismissed Reich's orgone theory as pseudoscience. James Strick, a historian of science at Franklin and Marshall College, wrote in 2015 that the dominant narrative since Reich's death has been that "there is no point in looking more closely at Reich's science because there no legitimate science from Reich".[Strick 2015, p. 3.]
From 1960, Streisand effect, apparently in response to the book burning, the New York publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux began republishing his major works. Reichian physicians organized study groups. In 1967 one of his associates, Dr. Elsworth Baker, established the bi-annual ''Journal of Orgonomy'', still published , and in 1968 founded the American College of Orgonomy in Princeton, New Jersey. According to Sharaf, contributors to the ''Journal of Orgonomy'' who worked in academia often used pseudonyms. The Orgone Biophysical Research Laboratory was founded in 1978 by James DeMeo and the Institute for Orgonomic Science in 1982 by Morton Herskowitz.
There was renewed interest in November 2007, when the Reich archives at the Boston Medical Library, Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine at Harvard University were unsealed; Reich had left instructions that his unpublished papers be stored for 50 years after his death. James Strick began studying Reich's laboratory notebooks from the 1935–1939 bion experiments in Norway. In 2015 Harvard University Press published Strick's ''Wilhelm Reich, Biologist'', in which he writes that Reich's work in Oslo "represented the cutting edge of light microscopy and time-lapse micro-cinematography". He argues that the dominant narrative of Reich as a pseudoscientist is incorrect and that Reich's story is "much more complex and interesting".
Speaking to Christopher Turner in 2011, Reich's son, Peter, said of his father, "He was a nineteenth-century scientist; he wasn't a twentieth-century scientist. He didn't practice science the way scientists do today. He was a nineteenth-century mind who came crashing into twentieth-century America. And boom!"[Turner 2011, p. 376.]
Works
;German
;Selected early papers
* "Über einen Fall von Durchbruch der Inzestschranke" ("About a Case of Breaching the Incest Taboo"), ''Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft'', VII, 1920
* "Triebbegriffe von Forel bis Jung" ("Forel's Argument Against Jung"), "Der Koitus und die Geschlechter" ("Sexual Intercourse and Gender"), ''Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft'', 1921
* "Über Spezifizität der Onanieformen" ("Concerning Specific Forms of Masturbation"), ''Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse'', VIII, 1922
* "Zur Triebenergetik" ("The Drive for Power"), ''Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft'', 1923
* "Kindliche Tagträume einer späteren Zwangsneurose" ("Childhood Daydreams of a Later Neurosis"), ''Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse'', 1923
* "Über Genitalität" ("About Genitality"), ''Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse'', IX, 1923
* "Die Rolle der Genitalität in der Neurosentherapie" ("The Role of Genitality in the Treatment of Neurosis"), ''Zeitschrif für Ärztliche Psychotherapie'' (Journal for Medical Psychotherapy), IX, 1923
* "Der Tic als Onanieequivalent" ("The Tic as a Masturbation Equivalent"), ''Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft'', 1924
* "Die therapeutische Bedeutung der Genitallibido" ("The Therapeutic Importance of Genital Libido"), and "Über Genitalität vom Standpunkt der psa. Prognose und Libidotheorie". ("On Genitality from the Standpoint of PENSA. Prognosis and Libido Theory") ''Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse'', X, 1924
* "Eine hysterische Psychose in statu nascendi" ("Hysterical Psychosis in Statu Nascendi"), ''Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse'', XI, 1925
* ''Der Sexuelle Kampf der Jugend'', Sexpol Verlag, 1932 (pamphlet)
"Dialektischer Materialismus und Psychoanalyse"
, Kopenhagen: Verlag für Sexualpolitik, 1934 (pamphlet)
;Books/booklets
''Der triebhafte Charakter: Eine psychoanalytische Studie zur Pathologie des Ich''
Wien: Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, 1925
''Die Funktion des Orgasmus: Zur Psychopathologie und zur Soziologie des Geschlechtslebens''
Wien: Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, 1927
* ''Sexualerregung und Sexualbefriedigung'', Münster Verlag, 1929
* ''Geschlechtsreife, Enthaltsamkeit, Ehemoral: Eine Kritik der bürgerlichen Sexualreform'', 1930
''Der Einbruch der Sexualmoral: Zur Geschichte der sexuellen Ökonomie''
Kopenhagen: Verlag für Sexualpolitik, 1932, 2nd edition 1935
''Charakteranalyse: Technik und Grundlagen für studierende und praktizierende Analytiker''
Berlin, 1933
* ''Massenpsychologie des Faschismus'', 1933
*
Was ist Klassenbewußtsein?: Über die Neuformierung der Arbeiterbewegung
', 1934
* ''Psychischer Kontakt und vegetative Strömung'', 1935
* ''Die Sexualität im Kulturkampf: Zur sozialistischen Umstrukturierung des Menschen'', 1936
* ''Experimentelle Ergebniße Über Die Elektrische Funktion von Sexualität und Angst'', 1937
* ''Menschen im Staat'', 1937
* ''Die Bione: Zur Entstehung des vegetativen Lebens'', Sexpol Verlag, 1938
* ''Die Entdeckung des Orgons Erster Teil: Die Funktion des Orgasmus'', 1942
* ''Rede an den kleinen Mann'', 1945
;Journals
* (ed.) ''Zeitschrift für Politische Psychologie und Sexualökonomie'' (Journal for Political Psychology and Sex-Economy), using pseudonym Ernst Parell, 1934–1938
* (ed.) ''Klinische und Experimentelle Berichte'' (Clinical and Experimental Report), c. 1937–1939
;English
;Books
* ''The Discovery of Orgone, Volume 1'': ''The Function of the Orgasm'', 1942 (''Die Entdeckung des Orgons Erster Teil: Die Funktion des Orgasmus'', translated by Theodore P. Wolfe)
* ''Character Analysis
''Character Analysis'' (german: Charakteranalyse) is a 1933 book by Wilhelm Reich.
Background
Reich finished the manuscript in January 1933. He submitted it to the Psychoanalytic Press in Vienna, presided over by Sigmund Freud, who initially acce ...
'', 1945 (''Charakteranalyse'', translated by Theodore P. Wolfe)
* ''The Sexual Revolution'', 1945 (''Die Sexualität im Kulturkampf'', translated by Theodore P. Wolfe)
* ''The Mass Psychology of Fascism
''The Mass Psychology of Fascism'' (german: Die Massenpsychologie des Faschismus) is a 1933 psychology book written by the Austrian psychoanalyst and psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich, in which the author attempts to explain how fascists and authoritari ...
'', 1946 (''Massenpsychologie des Faschismus'', translated by Theodore P. Wolfe)
* ''The Discovery of Orgone, Volume 2'': ''The Cancer Biopathy'', 1948
* ''Listen, Little Man!'', 1948 (''Rede an den kleinen Mann'', translated by Theodore P. Wolfe)
* ''The Orgone Energy Accumulator, Its Scientific and Medical Use'', 1948
* ''Ether, God and Devil'', 1949
* ''Cosmic Superimposition: Man's Orgonotic Roots in Nature'', 1951
* ''The Invasion of Compulsory Sex-Morality'', 1951
* ''The Oranur Experiment: First Report (1947–1951)'', 1951
* ''The Murder of Christ (The Emotional Plague of Mankind)'', 1953
* ''People in Trouble (The Emotional Plague of Mankind)'', 1953 (''Menschen im Staat'')
* ''The Einstein Affair'', 1953
* ''Contact with Space: Oranur Second Report, 1951–1956'', 1957
;Journals
* (ed.) ''International Journal of Sex-Economy & Orgone Research'', 1942–1945
* (ed.) ''Annals of the Orgone Institute'', 1947–1949
* (ed.) ''Orgone Energy Bulletin'', 1949–1953
* (ed.) ''CORE – Cosmic Orgone Engineering'', 1954–1955
;Posthumous
* ''Selected Writings: An Introduction to Orgonomy'', Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1960
* ''Reich Speaks of Freud'', Souvenir Press, 1967
* ''Sexpol. Essays 1929–1934'', Random House, 1972
* ''The Sexual Struggle of Youth'', Socialist Reproduction, 1972 (''Der Sexuelle Kampf der Jugend'')
* ''Early Writings: Volume One'', Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975
* ''The Bion Experiments: On the Origin of Life'', Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1979 (''Die Bione: Zur Entstehung des vegetativen Lebens'')
* ''Genitality in the Theory and Therapy of Neurosis'', Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1980
* ''Record of a Friendship: The Correspondence of Wilhelm Reich and A.S. Neill (1936–1957)'', 1981
* ''The Bioelectrical Investigation of Sexuality and Anxiety'', 1982
* ''Children of the Future: On the Prevention of Sexual Pathology'', 1983 (the chapter entitled "The Sexual Rights of Youth" is a revision of ''Der Sexuelle Kampf der Jugend'')
* Reich's autobiographical writings in four volumes:
** Mary Boyd Higgins and Chester M. Raphael (eds.), ''Passion of Youth: An Autobiography, 1897–1922''. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1988
** Mary Boyd Higgins (ed.), ''Beyond Psychology: Letters and Journals 1934–1939'', Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994
** Mary Boyd Higgins (ed.), ''American Odyssey: Letters and Journals 1940–1947'', Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999
** Mary Boyd Higgins (ed.), ''Where's the Truth?: Letters and Journals, 1948–1957'', Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012
See also
*
*
* Aether (classical element)
* Aether (mythology)
* Élan vital
* Energy (esotericism)
* Luminiferous aether
* Qi
Sources
Notes
Citations
Works cited
* Abrahams, Ian. ''Hawkwind: Sonic Assassins'', SAF Publishing Ltd, 2004.
* Bauer, Henry H. (2000). "Wilhelm Reich", in ''Science or Pseudoscience?'', University of Illinois Press.
* Blumenfeld, Robert (2006)
"Wilhelm Reich and Character Analysis"
, ''Tools and Techniques for Character Interpretation''. Limelight Editions.
* Bocian, Bernd. ''Fritz Perls in Berlin 1893–1933'', Peter Hammer Verlag GmbH, 2010.
* Mildred Edie Brady, Brady, Mildred Edie (April 1947)
"The New Cult of Sex and Anarchy"
, ''Harper's''.
* Brady, Mildred Edie (26 May 1947)
"The Strange Case of Wilhelm Reich"
''The New Republic''.
* Brian, Denis (1996). ''Einstein: A Life'', John Wiley & Sons.
* James Bugental, Bugental, James F. T., Kirk J. Schneider, Schneider, Kirk J. and Pierson, J. Fraser (2001). ''The Handbook of Humanistic Psychology'', Sage.
* Cooper, Kim (26 September 2011)
"Very Different Tonight: The Contagious Nightmares of Wilhelm Reich"
''Post45''.
* Cordon, Luis A. (2012). "Reich, Wilhelm" in ''Freud's World: An Encyclopedia of His Life and Times'', Greenwood, pp. 405–424.
* Robert S. Corrington, Corrington, Robert S. (2003). ''Wilhelm Reich: Psychoanalyst and Radical Naturalist'', Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
* Elizabeth Danto, Danto, Elizabeth Ann (2007). ''Freud's Free Clinics: Psychoanalysis & Social Justice, 1918–1938'', Columbia University Press, first published 2005.
* DeMarco, Donald and Wiker, Benjamin D. (2004)
"Wilhelm Reich"
, ''Architects of the Culture of Death'', Ignatius Press.
* Paul Edwards (philosopher), Edwards, Paul (1977). "The Greatness of Wilhelm Reich", ''The Humanist'', March/April 1974, reprinted in Charles A. Garfield (ed.) (1977). ''Rediscovery of the Body. A Psychosomatic View of Life and Death'', Dell, pp. 41–50.
* David Elkind, Elkind, David (18 April 1971)
"Wilhelm Reich – The Psychoanalyst as Revolutionary; Wilhelm Reich"
, ''The New York Times''.
* ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' (2012)
"Wilhelm Reich"
.
* Michel Foucault, Foucault, Michel (1978). ''The History of Sexuality
''The History of Sexuality'' (french: L'Histoire de la sexualité) is a four-volume study of sexuality in the Western world by the French historian and philosopher Michel Foucault, in which the author examines the emergence of "sexuality" as a di ...
'', Volume 1, Vintage Books.
* Sigmund Freud, Freud, Sigmund (1928)
"Letter from Freud to Lou Andreas-Salomé, May 9, 1928"
in Ernest Jones (ed.), ''The International Psycho-Analytical Library'', 89, pp. 174–175.
* Les Greenberg, Greenberg, Leslie S. and Safran, Jeremy D. (1990). ''Emotion in Psychotherapy'', Guilford Press.
* Richard Grossinger, Grossinger, Richard (1982)
"Wilhelm Reich: From Character Analysis to Cosmic Eros"
, ''Planet Medicine: From Stone Age Shamanism to Post-industrial Healing'', Taylor & Francis.
* Harry Guntrip, Guntrip, Harry (1961). ''Personality Structure and Human Interaction'', Hogarth Press.
* Isaacs, Kenneth S. (1999)
"Searching for Science in Psychoanalysis"
''Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy'', 29(3), pp. 235–252.
* Karina, Lilina and Kant, Marion (2004). ''Hitler's Dancers: German Modern Dance And The Third Reich'', Berghahn Books.
* Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher (4 January 1971)
, ''The New York Times''.
* MacBean, James Roy (1972)
"Sex and Politics: Wilhelm Reich, World Revolution, and Makavejev's WR"
, ''Film Quarterly'', 25(3), Spring, pp. 2–13.
* Moy, Ron (2007). ''Kate Bush and Hounds of Love'', Ashgate Publishing.
* Murphy, James M. (4 January 2012)
"The man who started the sexual revolution"
, ''The Times Literary Supplement''.
* Reich, Peter (1973). ''A Book Of Dreams'', Harper & Row.
* Reich, Wilhelm (1920). "Über einen Fall von Durchbruch der Inzestschranke", ''Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft'', VII.
* Reich, Wilhelm (1942). ''The Function of the Orgasm''.
* Reich, Wilhelm (1953). ''People in Trouble''.
* Reich, Wilhelm (1957). ''Contact with Space: Oranur Second Report, 1951–1956''.
* Reich, Wilhelm (1973). ''Ether, God and Devil''. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
* Reich, Wilhelm (1974). ''The Cancer Biopathy''. Farrar, Straus and Giroux (first published 1948).
* Reich, Wilhelm (1982). ''The Bioelectrical Investigation of Sexuality and Anxiety''.
* Reich, Wilhelm (1988). ''Leidenschaft der Jugend''/''Passion of Youth''. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
* Reich, Wilhelm (1994). ''Beyond Psychology: Letters and Journals 1934–1939''. Farrar Straus & Giroux.
* Reich, Wilhelm (1967). ''Reich Speaks of Freud''. Souvenir Press.
* Roeckelein, Jon E. (2006). "Reich's Orgone/Orgonomy Theory", ''Elsevier's Dictionary of Psychological Theories''. Elsevier.
* Rubin, Lore Reich (2003)
"Wilhelm Reich and Anna Freud: His Expulsion from Psychoanalysis"
, ''Int. Forum Psychoanal'', 12, pp. 109–117.
* Myron Sharaf, Sharaf, Myron (1994). ''Fury on Earth: A Biography of Wilhelm Reich'', Da Capo Press; first published by St. Martin's Press, 1983.
* Sheppard, R. Z. (14 May 1973
"A family affair"
''Time'' magazine.
* Sterba, Richard F. (1982). ''Reminiscences of a Viennese Psychoanalyst'', Wayne State University Press.
* Espen Søbye, Søbye, Espen (1995). ''Rolf Stenersen. En biografi'', Forlaget Oktober (in Norwegian).
* Strick, James E. (2015). ''Wilhelm Reich, Biologist'', Harvard University Press.
* ''Time'' magazine (18 November 1957)
"Milestones, Nov. 18, 1957"
(obituary).
* Christopher Turner, Turner, Christopher (6 October 2005)
"Naughty Children"
, ''London Review of Books'', 27(19).
* Turner, Christopher (2011). ''Adventures in the Orgasmatron'', Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
* Turner, Christopher (8 July 2011)
"Wilhelm Reich: the man who invented free love"
, ''The Guardian''.
* Turner, Christopher (23 September 2011)
, ''The New York Times''.
* Yontef, Gary and Jacobs, Lynn (2010). "Gestalt Therapy" in Raymond Corsini, Raymond J. Corsini and Danny Wedding (eds.), ''Current Psychotherapies'', Cengage Learning.
* Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth (2008). ''Anna Freud: A Biography'', Yale University Press, first published 1988.
Further reading
;External links
"Biography of Wilhelm Reich"
an
, Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust.
Wilhelm Reich archive on microfilm, from Dr. Eva Reich.
"Man's Right to Know"
documentary on Reich, Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust.
"Revitalizing the environment and creating a rain hole"
, Practical experiments to create energy density to build wind and absorb rain systems.
Recording of Reich speaking
, Orgonon, 3 April 1952.
* Dabelstein, Nicolas, and Svoboda, Antonin (2009)
''Wer Hat Angst vor Wilhelm Reich?''
("Who's Afraid of Wilhelm Reich?"), documentary, Coop99, Austrian television
IMDb entry
).
* Federal Bureau of Investigation
"Dr. Wilhelm Reich"
(also see her
.
* [https://web.archive.org/web/20140316122732/http://acorgone.free.fr/Reich-FBI/ FBI files about Wilhelm Reich]
;Einstein experiments
* Brian, Denis (1996). ''Einstein: A Life'', John Wiley & Sons, pp. 326–327.
* Ronald W. Clark, Clark, Ronald W. (1971). ''Einstein: The Life and Times'', Avon, pp. 689–690.
* Correa, Paul N.; Correa, Alexandra N. (October 2010). "The Reproducible Thermal Anomaly of the Reich-Einstein Experiment under Limit Conditions", ''Journal of Aetherometric Research'', 2(6), pp. 25–31.
* Reich, Wilhelm (ed.) (1953). ''The Einstein Affair'', Orgone Institute Press.
;Books about Reich
* Baker, Elsworth F. (1967). ''Man In The Trap''. Macmillan.
* Orson Bean, Bean, Orson (1971). ''Me And The Orgone, Me and the Orgone''. St. Martin's Press.
* Boadella, David (1971). ''Wilhelm Reich: The Evolution Of His Work''. Henry Regnery.
* Boadella, David (ed.) (1976). ''In The Wake Of Reich''. Coventure.
* Cattier, Michael (1970). ''The Life and Work of Wilhelm Reich''. Horizon Press, 1970.
* Cohen, Ira H. (1982). ''Ideology and Unconsciousness : Reich, Freud, and Marx''. New York University Press.
* Robert S. Corrington, Corrington, Robert S. (2003). ''Wilhelm Reich: Psychoanalyst and Radical Naturalist''. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
* Chesser, Eustice (1972). ''Reich and Sexual Freedom''. Vision Press.
* Chesser, Eustice (1973). ''Salvation Through Sex: The Life and Work of Wilhelm Reich''. W. Morrow.
* Dadoun, Roger (1975). ''Cent Fleurs pour Wilhelm Reich''. Payot.
* De Marchi, Luigi (1973). ''Wilhelm Reich, biographie d'une idée''. Fayard.
* Gebauer, Rainer and Müschenich, Stefan (1987). ''Der Reichische Orgonakkumulator''. Frankfurt/Main: Nexus Verlag.
* Greenfield, Jerome (1974). ''Wilhelm Reich Vs. the U.S.A.''. W.W. Norton.
* Herskowitz, Morton (1998). ''Emotional Armoring: An Introduction to Psychiatric Orgone Therapy''. Transactions Press.
* Johler, Birgit (2008). ''Wilhelm Reich Revisited''. Turia & Kant.
* Kavouras, Jorgos (2005). ''Heilen mit Orgonenergie: Die Medizinische Orgonomie''. Turm Verlag.
* Kornbichler, Thomas (2006). ''Flucht nach Amerika: Emigration der Psychotherapeuten: Richard Huelsenbeck, Wilhelm Reich, Erich Fromm''. Kreuz.
* Korsgaard, Lea (2014). ''Orgasmeland – Da den seksuelle revolution kom til Danmark'', Gyldendal, 432 sider,
* Lassek, Heiko (1997). ''Orgon-Therapie: Heilen mit der reinen Lebensenergie''. Scherz Verlag.
* Mairowitz, D. & Gonzales, G. (1986). ''Reich For Beginners''. Writers & Readers.
* Makavejev, Dusan (1972). ''WR Mysteries of the Organism''. Avon Publishers.
* Mann, Edward (1973). ''Orgone. Reich And Eros: Wilhelm Reich's Theory Of The Life Energy''. Simon & Schuster.
* Mann, Edward & Hoffman, Edward (ed.) (1980). ''The Man Who Dreamed Of Tomorrow: A Conceptual Biography Of Wilhelm Reich''. J.P. Tarcher.
* Martin, Jim (2000). ''Wilhelm Reich and the Cold War''. Flatland Books.
* Meyerowitz, Jacob (1994). ''Before the Beginning of Time''. Rrp Publishers.
* Harry Mulisch, Mulisch, Harry (1973). ''Het seksuele bolwerk''. De Bezige Bij.
* Ollendorff, Ilse. (1969). ''Wilhelm Reich: A Personal Biography''. St. Martin's Press.
* Ola Raknes, Raknes, Ola (1970). ''Wilhelm Reich And Orgonomy''. St. Martin's Press.
* Reich, Peter (1973). ''A Book Of Dreams''. Harper & Row.
* Paul Ritter (architect), Ritter, Paul (ed.) (1958). ''Wilhelm Reich Memorial Volume''. Ritter Press.
* Robinson, Paul (1990). ''The Freudian Left: Wilhelm Reich, Geza Roheim, Herbert Marcuse''. Cornell University Press, first published 1969.
* Charles Rycroft, Rycroft, Charles (1971). ''Reich''. Fontana Modern Masters.
* Seelow, David (2005). ''Radical Modernism and Sexuality : Freud, Reich, D.H. Lawrence and Beyond''. Palgrave Macmillan.
* :de:Bernd Senf, Senf, Bernd (1996). ''Die Wiederentdeckung des Lebendigen (The Rediscovery of the Living)''. Zweitausendeins Verlag.
* Myron Sharaf, Sharaf, Myron (1994). ''Fury on Earth: A Biography of Wilhelm Reich''. Da Capo Press; first published by St. Martin's Press, 1983.
* Sinelnikoff, Constantin (1970). ''L'Oeuvre de Wilhelm Reich''. François Maspero.
* Strick, James E. (2015). ''Wilhelm Reich, Biologist'', Harvard University Press.
* Christopher Turner, Turner, Christopher (2011). ''Adventures in the Orgasmatron: Wilhelm Reich and the Invention of Sex''. HarperCollins.
* Robert Anton Wilson, Wilson, Robert Anton (1998). ''Wilhelm Reich in Hell''. Aires Press.
* Colin Wilson, Wilson, Colin (1981). ''The Quest for Wilhelm Reich''. Doubleday.
* Wright, Paki (2002). ''The All Souls' Waiting Room''. 1st Book Library (novel).
* Wyckoff, James (1973). ''Wilhelm Reich: Life Force Explorer''. Fawcett.
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