Wilhelm Reich

Wilhelm Reich (24 March 1897 – 3 November 1957) was an Austrian psychoanalyst, early disciple of Freud, and controversial theorist of sexuality and bioenergy. Best known for his concepts of character armor, orgastic potency, and the discovery of "orgone" energy, he pioneered body-oriented psychotherapy, and after fleeing the Nazis in 1939, settled in the United States, where his orgone accumulators and cloudbusters led to a 1954 FDA injunction, the burning of his books, and his imprisonment.

Wilhelm Reich
Born	March 24, 1897, Dobzau, Austria-Hungary
Died	November 3, 1957, Pennsylvania, United States
Nationality	Austrian, American
Education	M.D. in General Medicine (1922) University of Vienna
Occupation	Psychoanalyst
Known for	Orgone therapy
Notable works
Website

Early life

Wilhelm Reich was born on March 24, 1897, in Dobrzcynica (Dobriachyn), a small village in Galicia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Ukraine), to a wealthy, assimilated Jewish farming family. His father, Leon Reich, was a stern, non-religious Jew who forbade the speaking of Yiddish; his mother, Cecilia Roniger, came from a more cultured background. Reich grew up on the family estate, surrounded by nature, which deeply influenced his later theories on sexuality and energy. Tragedy struck early: at age 12, he discovered his mother’s affair with a tutor; after she attempted suicide and he informed his father, she died by suicide in 1910. His father died of pneumonia in 1914. Reich then managed the estate until World War I destroyed it. He served as a lieutenant in the Austrian army (1915–1918) on the Italian front, experiences that profoundly shaped his views on authoritarianism and human repression.

Education and career

Reich studied medicine at the University of Vienna, graduating in 1922 after an accelerated wartime program. While still a student, he became one of Sigmund Freud’s most brilliant pupils, joining the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in 1920 and becoming its assistant director by 1924. He opened his own psychoanalytic practice in Vienna and developed innovative techniques, including character analysis and a focus on bodily tensions. Politically radicalized, he joined the Communist Party of Austria in 1928 and founded sex-hygiene clinics for workers (Sex-Pol movement) in Vienna and later Berlin. After breaking with the Communists in 1933 and being expelled from the International Psychoanalytic Association in 1934 (officially for his political views and “heretical” ideas on orgasm), he fled Nazi Germany, living in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. In 1939 he emigrated to the United States, teaching at the New School in New York and founding the Orgone Institute in 1942 in Maine (Orgonon estate). His later career centered on “orgonomy,” the study of a supposed universal life energy he called orgone.

Notable/unique

Reich began as an orthodox Freudian but soon diverged by emphasizing the biological basis of the libido and the centrality of full orgastic potency for psychological health. He coined the term “sexual stasis” and developed “vegetotherapy,” a body-oriented psychotherapy that worked directly with muscular armoring to release repressed emotions. In the 1930s he formulated the theory of “character armor” and linked fascism to sexual repression in his 1933 book The Mass Psychology of Fascism. In the U.S., he claimed to have discovered orgone energy—a primordial cosmic energy visible as blue bions—and built orgone accumulators (wood-and-metal boxes) that he believed concentrated this energy to treat cancer and other illnesses. His experiments included weather modification (cloudbusters) and claims of influencing UFOs. These ideas made him a pioneer of body psychotherapy and an early figure in the sexual revolution, but also branded him a pseudoscientist and cult leader by mainstream science and medicine.

Death

By the early 1950s, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) investigated Reich for interstate shipment of orgone accumulators, which they deemed fraudulent medical devices. In 1954 a federal injunction banned the devices and required the destruction of his literature mentioning “orgone.” Reich defied the injunction, viewing it as a fascist attack. In 1956 he was charged with criminal contempt, convicted, and sentenced to two years in prison. Most of his books and journals were burned by court order—one of the largest book-burnings in U.S. history. Reich died of heart failure on November 3, 1957, at the Federal Penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, one week before he was eligible for parole, at age 60. He was buried at Orgonon, where his tombstone reads “Love, Work and Knowledge are the well-springs of our life. They should also govern it.”

Published works

"The Impulsive Character" (1925) "The Function of the Orgasm" (1927) "The Mass Psychology of Fascism" (1933) "The Sexual Revolution" (1936) "The Discovery of the Orgone" (1942) "Character Analysis" (1949) "Ether, God and Devil" (1949) "Cosmic Superimposition" (1951) "The Murder of Christ" (1953) "Contact with Space" (1957)

Patents

U.S. patent applications related to orgone energy devices which were abandoned or rejected:

Orgone Energy Accumulator (1940s) Cloudbuster apparatus, a weather-control device (1953) Orgone Energy Motor concepts (1954-1955)