Reich, Wilhelm (1897-1957), was an Austrian psychoanalyst. His pioneering work on a holistic (treating the whole person) system of psychoanalysis was overshadowed by his eccentric views on sex and his involvement in the sexual-politics movement.
After training in Berlin, Reich joined the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute in 1924, where he became associated with Sigmund Freud, the Austrian physician who developed psychoanalysis as a method of treating mental illness. Reich was already deeply interested in the mental aspects of sexual intercourse. In his book The Function of the Orgasm (1927; translated into English in 1942), he expressed the conviction that experiencing regular orgasms was essential to the mental well-being of both men and women. Failure to achieve an orgasm and relieve pent-up sexual energy could lead to neurosis. Reich was soon drawn into the sexual-politics movement in Germany, whose aim was to integrate Marxist ideology with a call for greater sexual freedom (see Marx, Karl ). Much of his thinking on this subject later found expression in his book The Sexual Revolution (1936-1945). After being expelled from the German Communist Party in 1933, Reich worked for five years in Scandinavia. He immigrated to the United States in 1939, where he worked briefly at the New School for Social Research in New York.
In 1933, Reich wrote a book called Character Analysis (translated into English in 1945). In it, he described how the structure of people’s characters protects them from discovering their own underlying neuroses. Using this approach, he developed a system for treating patients whose neuroses had failed to respond to more orthodox treatments. This aspect of Reich’s work became obscured by his preoccupation with sex.
In 1934, he was expelled from the International Psychoanalytical Association and afterward devoted himself to a pseudo-scientific study called orgonomy. This was an attempt to measure and harness orgones, cosmic particles that, according to Reich, had a beneficial effect on people’s sex life and emotional health. He invented an orgone accumulator or an orgone box, which, he claimed, collected orgones and passed them on to the user. In the United States, Reich set up the Orgone Institute in 1942. He also established a business selling orgone boxes to the public as a form of treatment for many illnesses, including cancer. He came into conflict with the U.S. authorities and was eventually convicted for making fraudulent claims about his product. He died in prison on Nov. 3, 1957, in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Reich was born on March 24, 1897, in Dobrzcynica, Galicia, Austria-Hungary (now in Poland).
See also Freud, Sigmund ; Neurosis ; Psychoanalysis .
