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Wilhelm Reich
Wilhelm Reich | |
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 Portrait by Ludwig Gutmann (Vienna, before 1943) | |
| Born | 24 March 1897 |
| Died | 3 November 1957 (aged 60) |
| Resting place | Orgonon, Rangeley, Maine, U.S. 44°59′28″N 70°42′50″W / 44.991027°N 70.713902°W |
| Nationality | Austrian |
| Medical career | |
| Education | University of Vienna (MD, 1922) |
| Speciality | Psychoanalysis |
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| Relatives | Robert Reich (brother) |
| Part of a series of articles on |
| Psychoanalysis |
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Wilhelm Reich (/raɪx/ RYKHE; German: [ˈvɪlhɛlm ˈʁaɪç]; 24 March 1897 – 3 November 1957) was an Austrian doctor of medicine and a psychoanalyst, a member of the second generation of analysts after Sigmund Freud.[1] The author of several influential books, The Impulsive Character (1925), The Function of the Orgasm (1927), Character Analysis (1933), and The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933), he became one of the most radical figures in the history of psychiatry.[2][n 1]
Reich's work on character contributed to the development of Anna Freud'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, Gestalt therapy, bioenergetic analysis and primal therapy.[6] His writing influenced generations of intellectuals; he coined the phrase "the sexual revolution" and according to one historian acted as its midwife.[7] 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.[8]
After graduating in medicine from the public University of Vienna in 1922, Reich became deputy director of Freud's outpatient clinic, the Vienna Ambulatorium.[9] During the 1930s, he was part of a general trend among younger analysts and Frankfurt sociologists that tried to reconcile psychoanalysis with Marxism. He established the first sexual advisory clinics in Vienna, along with Marie Frischauf.[10] He said he wanted to "attack the neurosis by its prevention rather than treatment".[11]
Reich moved to Oslo, Norway in 1934. He then moved on 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 energy"—from "orgasm" and "organism"—for the notion of life energy. In 1940 he started building orgone accumulators, modified Faraday cages 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.[12]
Following two critical articles about him in The New Republic and Harper's in 1947, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration obtained an injunction against the interstate shipment of orgone accumulators and associated literature, calling them "fraud of the first magnitude".[13] 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.[n 2] He died in prison of heart failure just over a year later.[16]
- ^ Danto (2007), p. 43 Archived 23 May 2016 at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ For radicalism, Sheppard (Time magazine) 1973; Danto (2007), p. 43 Archived 23 May 2016 at the Wayback Machine; Turner (2011), p. 114.
For The Mass Psychology of Fascism and Character Analysis, Sharaf (1994), pp. 163–164 Archived 24 May 2016 at the Wayback Machine, 168; for The Mass Psychology of Fascism, Turner (2011), p. 152; for The Sexual Revolution, Stick (2015), p. 1.
- ^ Young-Bruehl (2008), p. 157 Archived 24 May 2016 at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ Sterba (1982), p. 35 Archived 24 May 2016 at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ Guntrip (1961), p. 105 Archived 23 May 2016 at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ For Anna Freud: Bugental, Schneider & Pierson (2001), p. 14 Archived 24 May 2016 at the Wayback Machine, and Sterba (1982), p. 35 Archived 24 May 2016 at the Wayback Machine.
For Perls, Lowen and Janov: Sharaf (1994), p. 4 Archived 25 May 2016 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Strick (2015), p. 2.
- ^ Elkind (New York Times) 18 April 1971 Archived 14 February 2012 at the Wayback Machine; Turner (2011), pp. 13–14; Strick (2015), p. 2.
- ^ Sharaf (1994), p. 66 Archived 24 May 2016 at the Wayback Machine; Danto (2007), p. 83 Archived 24 May 2016 at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ For Danto's description of Reich, Danto (2007), p. 118 Archived 23 May 2016 at the Wayback Machine.
That he visited patients in their homes, Grossinger (1982), p. 278 Archived 23 May 2016 at the Wayback Machine, and Turner (2011), p. 82.
For the issues he promoted, Turner (2011), p. 114, and Sharaf (1994), pp. 4–5 Archived 25 May 2016 at the Wayback Machine, 347, 481–482.
For orgastic potency and neurosis, Corrington (2003), p. 75; and Turner (New York Times), 23 September 2011 .
- ^ Turner (2011), p. 114.
- ^ Sharaf (1994), pp. 301–306 Archived 23 May 2016 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ For the articles, Brady, April 1947 Archived 15 October 2012 at the Wayback Machine; Brady, 26 May 1947. For "fraud of the first magnitude", Sharaf (1994), p. 364 Archived 23 May 2016 at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ "Wilhelm Reich" Archived 22 November 2012 at the Wayback Machine, Encyclopædia Britannica, 2015; Sharaf (1994), pp. 460–461 Archived 23 May 2016 at the Wayback Machine.
- ^ Strick (2015), p. 1.
- ^ Sharaf (1994), p. 477 Archived 23 May 2016 at the Wayback Machine.
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