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Reich, Wilhelm (1897-1957)
Biographical Note:
Wilhelm Reich was born on March 24, 1897 in Dobrzanica, Galicia in a
family of prosperous farmers Leon Reich and Cecilia Roniger. He studied
in the Czernowitz gymnasium, where he was sent after the tragic suicide
of his mother. When his father died in 1914, he had to manage the farm
while continuing with his studies. Wilhelm and his brother Robert
fled to Vienna in 1915 after the Russians invaded Bukovina. When the
war and his Austrian military service were over, Reich entered the
medical school at the University of Vienna, which he graduated in 1922.
In school he got drawn to the works of Freud, attended his seminar
on sexology, and joined the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in 1920. His
early career combined neuropsychiatry and psychoanalysis both at the
Vienna University Hospital and Freud's Psychoanalytic Polyclinic. In
the 1930s Reich became a prolific writer for psychoanalytic journals,
advocating his principles of vegetotheraphy and character analysis. He
joined Austrian and later German communist parties, and
established the Socialist Association for Sexual Councelling and
Research, teaching sexual education to working class people and writing
The Mass Psychology of Fascism
(1933), a book banned by the Nazis. Endangered by the fascism, and
expelled from the communist party in 1933 and the International
Psychological Association in 1934, Reich fled first to Scandinavia
and finally to the United States in 1939. While remaining a respected
psychoanalyst and researcher focused on character structure, Reich also
became a controversial figure for his theories of "orgastic potency"
and his discovery of the "orgone" energy. In 1947, after a series of
critical publications of Reich's theories and activities, the US Food
and Drug Administration began an investigation into his claims, and won
an injunction against the intestate sale of his orgone accumulators. He
was eventually sentenced to two years in prison, and several tons of
his publications were burned by the FDA. Wilhelm Reich died of heart
failure in a federal prison in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, on
November 3rd of 1957.
Summary: one
manuscript box of Wilhelm Reich's papers and publications cover the
years 1947-1956 and are accompanied by a small collection of books
by and about Wilhelm Reich, donated to BPSI by Robert Koff. The papers
include Reich's response to FDA charges, the US Court
complaint, William Steig's correspondence on behalf of the Orgone
Legal Fund, the Orgone Bulletins and other printed matter. The latest
additions are the Reich exhibit publications by the Jewish Museum in Vienna. Please note that our Bibring Photograph Collection contains photographs of Wilhelm and Annie Reich from 1919 through the 1940s.
Finding
Aid for
this collection is available
here (viewing it requires Adobe Acrobat Reader).
Related BPSI Collections
Bibring Photograph
Collection
Vienna
Psychoanalytic Society Records, 1922-1994
Related
Archives
Wilhelm Reich Archive in the Library of Congress
Related Sites
The Wilhelm Reich Museum in Maine
Wilhelm Reich (Wikipedia Entry)
Wilhelm Reich Exhibition at the Jewish Museum in Vienna
Public Orgonomic Research Exchange (PORE)
FBI file on Wilhelm Reich
Reich, Annie (International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis Entry)
Robert Koff's Obituary
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