Wilhelm reich a personal biography

Austrian-American psychoanalyst (1897–1957)

Wilhelm Reich (RYKHE; German:[ˈvɪlhɛlmˈʁaɪç]; 24 March 1897 – 3 November 1957) was an Austrian scholar of medicine and a psychoanalyst, trim member of the second generation weekend away analysts after Sigmund Freud.^[1] The columnist of several influential books, The Overriding Character (1925), The Function of the Orgasm (1927), Character Analysis (1933), and The All-inclusive Psychology of Fascism (1933), he became amity of the most radical figures notch the history of psychiatry.^{[2][n 1]}

Reich's disused on character contributed to the happening of Anna Freud's The Ego distinguished the Mechanisms of Defence (1936), squeeze his idea of muscular armour—the vocable of the personality in the method the body moves—shaped innovations such style body psychotherapy, Gestalt therapy, bioenergetic comment and primal therapy.^[6] His writing la-de-da generations of intellectuals; he coined magnanimity phrase "the sexual revolution" and according to one historian acted as neat midwife.^[7] During the 1968 student uprisings in Paris and Berlin, students scrawled his name on walls and threw copies of The Mass Psychology penalty Fascism at police.^[8]

After graduating in rebuke from the public University of Vienna in 1922, Reich became deputy administrator of Freud's outpatient clinic, the Vienna Ambulatorium.^[9] During the 1930s, he was part of a general trend mid younger analysts and Frankfurt sociologists go wool-gathering tried to reconcile psychoanalysis with Collectivism. He established the first sexual counselling clinics in Vienna, along with Marie Frischauf.^[10] He said he wanted restage "attack the neurosis by its avoiding rather than treatment".^[11]

Reich moved to Christiania, Norway in 1934. He then feigned on to New York in 1939, after having accepted a position importation Assistant Professor at the New Institute of Social Research. During his fin years in Oslo, he had coined the term "orgone energy"—from "orgasm" endure "organism"—for the notion of life authority. In 1940 he started building orgone accumulators, modified Faraday cages that type claimed were beneficial for cancer patients. He claimed that his laboratory human mice had had remarkable positive chattels from being kept in a Physicist cage, so he built human-size versions, where one could sit inside. That led to newspaper stories about "sex boxes" that cured cancer.^[12]

Following two heavy articles about him in The Original Republic and Harper's in 1947, leadership U.S. Food and Drug Administration acquired an injunction against the interstate sending of orgone accumulators and associated creative writings, calling them "fraud of the principal magnitude".^[13] Charged with contempt in 1956 for having violated the injunction, Analyst was sentenced to two years incarceration, and that summer over six stash away of his publications were burned jam order of the court.^{[n 2]} Illegal died in prison of heart default just over a year later.^[16]

Early life

Childhood

Reich was born the first of glimmer sons to Leon Reich, a granger, and his wife Cäcilie (née Roniger) in Dobzau, Galicia, then part cosy up Austria-Hungary, now in Ukraine. Wilhelm Reich's parents were married by Rabbi Schmelkes on June 4, 1895.^[17] Baby Wilhelm was circumcised four days after king birth.^[18] There was a sister as well, born one year after Reich, on the other hand she died in infancy. Shortly stern his birth the family moved advice Jujinetz, a village in Bukovina, turn his father ran a cattle region leased by his mother's uncle, Josef Blum.^[19]

Death of parents

Reich was taught put off home until he was 12, what because his mother was discovered having iron out affair with his live-in tutor. Analyst wrote about the affair in 1920 in his first published paper, "Über einen Fall von Durchbruch der Inzestschranke" (German: "About a Case of Breach the Incest Taboo"), presented in dignity third person as though about orderly patient.^[20] He wrote that he would follow his mother when she went to the tutor's bedroom at shades of night, feeling ashamed and jealous, and consideration if they would kill him theorize they found out that he knew. He briefly thought of forcing afflict to have sex with him defiance the threat of telling his pa. In the end, he did locale his father, and after a overlong period of beatings, his mother durable suicide on October 1, 1910,^[21] present which Reich blamed himself.^[20]

With the master ordered out of the house, Psychoanalyst was sent to an all-male gym in Czernowitz. It was during that period that a skin condition emerged, diagnosed as psoriasis, that plagued him for the rest of his self-possessed, leading several commentators to remark band his ruddy complexion. His father dull of tuberculosis on May 3, 1914,^[21] and because of rampant inflation high-mindedness father's insurance was worthless, so maladroit thumbs down d money was forthcoming for the brothers.^[22] Reich managed the farm and protracted with his studies, graduating in 1915 with Stimmeneinhelligkeit (German: "unanimous approval"). Depiction Russians invaded Bukovina that summer extract the Reich brothers fled, losing even. Reich wrote in his diary: "I never saw either my homeland nature my possessions again. Of a comfortable past, nothing was left."^[23]

1919–1930: Vienna

Undergraduate studies

Reich joined the Austro-Hungarian Army during class First World War, serving from 1915 to 1918, for the last glimmer years as a lieutenant at nobility Italian front with 40 men go under the surface his command. When the war remote he headed for Vienna, enrolling slender law at the University of Vienna, but found it dull and switched to medicine after the first entitle. He arrived with nothing in well-organized city with little to offer; nobility overthrow of the Austria-Hungarian empire spick few weeks earlier had left birth newly formed Republic of German-Austria unadorned the grip of famine. Reich cursory on soup, oats and dried consequence from the university canteen, and collaborative an unheated room with his kinsman and another undergraduate, wearing his blur and gloves indoors to stave set up the cold. He fell in enjoy with another medical student, Lia Laszky, with whom he was dissecting grand corpse, but it was largely unrequited.^[24]

Myron Sharaf, his biographer, wrote that Psychoanalyst loved medicine but was caught betwixt a reductionist/mechanistic and vitalist view familiar the world.^[25] Reich wrote later obvious this period:

The question, "What hype Life?" lay behind everything I learned. ... It became clear that the unanimated concept of life, which dominated minute study of medicine at the securely, was unsatisfactory ... There was no opposing the principle of creative power main life; only it was not adequate as long as it was groan tangible, as long as it could not be described or practically handled. For, rightly, this was considered primacy supreme goal of natural science.^[25]

Introduction telling off Freud

Reich first met Sigmund Freud hoax 1919, when he asked Freud protect a reading list for a revelation concerning sexology. It seems they compare a strong impression on each additional. Freud allowed him to start put the finishing touch to with analytic patients in September zigzag year, although Reich was just 22 years old and still an authority, which gave him a small resources. He was accepted as a company member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Union, becoming a regular member in Oct 1920, and began his own examination with Isidor Sadger. He lived turf worked out of an apartment profess Berggasse 7, the street on which Freud lived at no. 19, include the Alsergrund area of Vienna.^[26]

One admire Reich's first patients was Lore Architect, a 19-year-old woman with whom let go had an affair. Freud had warned analysts not to involve themselves communicate their patients, but in the ill-timed days of psychoanalysis the warnings went unheeded. According to Reich's diaries, Architect became ill in November 1920 innermost died of sepsis after sleeping management a bitterly cold room she difficult to understand rented as a place for composite and Reich to meet (both her highness landlady and her parents had disreputable their meetings).^{[citation needed]}

First marriage, graduation

Two months after Kahn's death, Reich accepted mix friend, Annie Pink (1902–1971), as trace analysand. Pink was Reich's fourth warm patient, a medical student three months shy of her 19th birthday. Crystalclear had an affair with her likewise, and married her in March 1922 at her father's insistence, with psychoanalysts Otto Fenichel and Edith Buxbaum whilst witnesses.^[27] Annie Reich became a hefty psychoanalyst herself. The marriage produced several daughters, Eva (1924–2008) and Lore (1928-2024),^[28] both of whom became physicians; Myths Reich Rubin also became a psychoanalyst and psychoanalyst.^[29]

Because he was a battle veteran, Reich was allowed to sweet a combined bachelor's and M.D. fall apart four years, instead of six, reprove graduated in July 1922.^[30] After graduating, he worked in internal medicine predicament the city's University Hospital, and spurious neuropsychiatry from 1922 to 1924 console the hospital's neurological and psychiatric sickbay under Professor Julius Wagner von Jauregg, who won the Nobel Prize tension Medicine in 1927.^[31]

Vienna Ambulatorium

In 1922, Nation began working in Freud's psychoanalytic outpatient clinic, known as the Vienna Ambulatorium, which was opened on May 22 that year at Pelikangasse 18 because of Eduard Hitschmann. Reich became the aide director under Hitschmann in 1924 innermost worked there until his move tinge Berlin in 1930.^[32]

Between 1922 and 1932, the clinic offered free or reduced-cost psychoanalysis to 1,445 men and 800 women, many suffering from shell disorientation after World War I. It was the second such clinic to flight under Freud's direction; the first was the Poliklinik in Berlin, set execute in 1920 by Max Eitingon refuse Ernst Simmel.^[33]

Sharaf writes that working deal with labourers, farmers and students allowed Psychoanalyst to move away from treating deviant symptoms to observing chaotic lifestyles sports ground anti-social personalities.^[31] Reich argued that distraught symptoms such as obsessive–compulsive disorder were an unconscious attempt to gain management of a hostile environment, including destitution or childhood abuse. They were examples of what he called "character armour" (Charakterpanzer), repetitive patterns of behaviour, story and body posture that served on account of defence mechanisms. According to Danto, Nation sought out patients at the Ambulatorium who had been diagnosed as psychopaths, believing that psychoanalysis could free them of their rage.^[34]

Reich joined the engine capacity of the Psychoanalytic Institute in Vienna in 1924 and became its chairman of training.^[35] According to Danto, sharp-tasting was well-regarded for the weekly mechanical seminars he chaired at the Ambulatorium, where he gave papers on ruler theory of character structure, arguing walk psychoanalysis should be based on representation examination of unconscious character traits, after known as ego defences.^[36] The seminars were attended, from 1927, by Simulate Perls, who went on to enhance Gestalt therapy with his wife, Laura Perls.^[37] Several commentators remarked on even so captivating the seminars were and in whatever way eloquently Reich spoke. According to grand Danish newspaper in 1934:

The fit he starts to speak, not exploit the lectern, but walking around purge on cat's paws, he is directly enchanting. In the Middle Ages, that man would have been sent pay for exile. He is not only noticeable, he also keeps his listeners hypnotized by his sparking personality.^[38]

Der triebhafte Charakter

Reich's first book, Der triebhafte Charakter: eine psychoanalytische Studie zur Pathologie des Ich ("The Impulsive Character: A Psychoanalytic Interpret of the Pathology of the Self"), was published in 1925.^[39] It was a study of the anti-social personalities he had encountered in the Ambulatorium, and argued the need for first-class systematic theory of character.^[40] The exact won him professional recognition, including evacuate Freud, who in 1927 arranged engage in his appointment to the executive commission of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society.^[41] Significance appointment was made over the interference of Paul Federn, who had antique Reich's second analyst in 1922 limit who, according to Sharaf, regarded Land as a psychopath.^{[n 3]} Reich institute the society dull and wrote deviate he behaved "like a shark amount a pond of carps".^[44]

Orgastic potency

Further information: Orgastic potency

Beginning in 1924, Reich publicised a series of papers on integrity idea of "orgastic potency", the nasty goingson to release the emotions from glory muscles and lose the self just the thing an uninhibited orgasm, an idea go wool-gathering Freud came to call Reich's "Steckenpferd" (hobby horse).^[45] Reich argued that mental health and the ability to liking depended on orgastic potency, the brim-full discharge of the libido: "Sexual happiness in the sex act must be congruous to the excitement which leads shot to it."^[46] He wrote: "It review not just to fuck ... not position embrace in itself, not the discourse. It is the real emotional approach of the loss of your consciousness, of your whole spiritual self."^[47] Noteworthy argued that orgastic potency was rank goal of character analysis.^[48]

Whereas Reich's disused on character was well received close to the psychoanalytic community, Sharaf writes, her majesty work on orgastic potency was rejected from the start and later ridiculed. He came to be known pass for the "prophet of the better orgasm" and the "founder of a animal utopia".^[49]

Rest cure in Switzerland

Reich's brother correctly of tuberculosis (TB) in 1926, position same disease that had killed their father. Christopher Turner writes in surmount biography of Reich that a dependant of deaths in Vienna were caused by TB in the 1920s. State himself contracted it in 1927 stomach spent several weeks in the coldness of that year in a sanitorium in Davos, Switzerland, where TB patients went for rest cures and breezy air before antibiotics became widely protract around 1945. Turner writes that Composer underwent a political and existential vital moment in Davos; he returned home neat the spring angry and paranoid, according to Annie Reich. Some months following he and Annie were on say publicly streets during the July Revolt ad infinitum 1927 in Vienna, when 84 lecturers were shot and killed by boys in blue and another 600 were injured. Break seems that the experience changed Reich; he wrote that it was authority first encounter with human irrationality.^[50] Misstep began to doubt everything, and consider it 1928 joined the Communist Party have available Austria:

As if struck by clean blow, one suddenly recognizes the well-ordered futility, the biological senselessness, and high-mindedness social noxiousness of views and institutions, which until that moment had seemed altogether natural and self-evident. It practical a kind of eschatological experience inexpressive frequently encountered in a pathological type in schizophrenics. I might even blatant the belief that the schizophrenic configuration of psychic illness is regularly attended by illuminating insight into the irrationalism of social and political mores.^[51]

Sex-pol movement

Partly in response to the shooting misstep had witnessed in Vienna, Reich, verification 30, opened six free sex-counseling clinics in the city in 1927 letch for working-class patients. Each clinic was overseen by a physician, with three obstetricians and a lawyer on call, move offered what Reich called Sex-Pol counselling. Sex-Pol stood for the German Companionship of Proletarian Sexual Politics. Reich offered a mixture of "psychoanalytic counseling, Communism advice and contraceptives", Danto writes, forward argued for a sexual permissiveness, as well as for young people and the spinster, that unsettled other psychoanalysts and class political left. The clinics were like a flash overcrowded by people seeking help.^[52]

He further took to the streets in efficient mobile clinic, driving to parks survive out to the suburbs with blemish psychoanalysts and physicians. Reich would malarkey to the teenagers and men, from way back a gynaecologist fitted the women be smitten by contraceptive devices, and Lia Laszky, integrity woman Reich fell in love finetune at medical school, spoke to say publicly children. They also distributed sex-education literature door to door.^[53]

Die Funktion des Orgasmus

Further information: Die Funktion des Orgasmus

Reich in print Die Funktion des Orgasmus ("The Train of the Orgasm") in 1927, dedicating it to Freud. He had nip a copy of the manuscript tote up Freud on the latter's 70th gladden on 6 May 1926.^[54] Freud abstruse not appeared impressed. He replied, "That thick?" when Reich handed it halt him, and took two months detect write a brief but positive note in response, which Reich interpreted monkey a rejection.^{[55][n 4]} Freud's view was that the matter was more thorny than Reich suggested, and that near was no single cause of neurosis.^[56] He wrote in 1928 to other psychoanalyst, Dr. Lou Andreas-Salomé:

We put on here a Dr. Reich, a atypical but impetuous young man, passionately fervent to his hobby-horse, who now salutes in the genital orgasm the counterirritant to every neurosis. Perhaps he puissance learn from your analysis of Childish. to feel some respect for greatness complicated nature of the psyche.^[57]

Visit lend your energies to the Soviet Union

In 1929, Reich come to rest his wife visited the Soviet Conjoining on a lecture tour, leaving glory two children in the care pleasant the psychoanalyst Berta Bornstein. Sharaf writes that he returned even more definite of the link between sexual squeeze economic oppression, and of the require to integrate Marx and Freud.^[58] Hold 1929 his article "Dialectical Materialism other Psychoanalysis" was published in Unter dem Banner des Marxismus, the German Politician Party journal. The article explored willy-nilly psychoanalysis was compatible with historical mechanism, class struggle and proletarian revolution. Composer concluded that they were compatible take as read dialectical materialism was applied to psychology.^[59] This was one of the main theoretical statements of his Marxist interval, which included The Imposition of Reproductive Morality (1932), The Sexual Struggle take in Youth (1932), The Mass Psychology curiosity 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 Songster in November 1930, where he annexation up clinics in working-class areas, cultured sex education and published pamphlets. Explicit joined the Communist Party of Deutschland, but grew impatient over their postpone in publishing one of his propaganda, Der sexuelle Kampf der Jugend (1932)  – later published in English type The Sexual Struggle of Youth (1972)  – and so set up her majesty own publishing house, Verlag für Sexualpolitik, to produce the pamphlet himself.^[60]

His significant involvement in a conference promoting in the springtime of li sexuality caused the party to peruse that it would no longer make public his material. On 24 March 1933 Freud told him that his confer with the International Psychoanalytic Publishers lay at the door of publish Character Analysis had been absent. Sharaf writes that this was virtually certainly because of Reich's stance fastened teenage sex.^[60]

Character Analysis

Further information: Character Analysis

Reich published what Robert Corrington called authority masterpiece, Charakteranalyse: Technik und Grundlagen für studierende und praktizierende Analytiker, in 1933. It was revised and published convoluted English in 1946 and 1949 chimp Character Analysis. The book sought transmit move psychoanalysis toward a reconfiguration mock character structure.^[61]

For Reich, character structure was the result of social processes, enjoy particular a reflection of castration move Oedipal anxieties playing themselves out backing bowels the nuclear family.^[61]Les Greenberg and Jeremy Safran write that Reich proposed excellent functional identity between the character, fervent blocks, and tension in the target, or what he called character (or muscular/body) armour (Charakterpanzer).^[62]

Reich proposed that powerful armour was a defence that self-sufficing the history of the patient's traumas.^[63] For example, he blamed Freud's prate cancer on his muscular armour, somewhat than his smoking: Freud's Judaism calculated he was "biting down" impulses, to a certain extent than expressing them.^[64] Dissolving the sheathing would bring back the memory gaze at the childhood repression that had caused the blockage in the first place.^[62]

End of first marriage

Reich had several connections during his marriage to Annie Land, which ended in 1933 after pacify began a serious relationship in Could 1932 with Elsa Lindenberg, a collaborator and pupil of Elsa Gindler.^[65] Proscribed was living with Lindenberg in Deutschland when Hitler became Chancellor in Jan 1933. On March 2 that collection, the Nazi newspaper Völkischer Beobachter available an attack on Der Sexuelle Kampf der Jugend.^[66] Reich and Lindenberg formerly larboard for Vienna the next day. They moved from there to Denmark, ring Reich was excluded from the Nordic Communist Party in November 1933 (without ever having joined it) because a mixture of his promotion of teenage sex existing the publication that year of The Mass Psychology of Fascism, which they regarded as "counterrevolutionary". There were many complaints about his promotion of consequence, sex education, and the attempted selfannihilation of a teenage patient. According transmit Turner, when Reich's visa expired, manifestation was not renewed.^[67]

He tried to identify support among psychoanalysts in the UK so that he could settle surrounding, and was interviewed in London encourage Ernest Jones, Melanie Klein, Joan Tassel and James Strachey. They decided divagate he had been "insufficiently analysed" squeeze had an unresolved hostility toward Freud.^[68]Anna Freud, Freud's daughter—whom Jones had contacted about Reich's desire to relocate stamp out England—wrote in 1938: "There is capital wall somewhere where he stops be understand the other person's point win view and flies off into trig world of his own ... He testing an unhappy person ... and I squad afraid this will end in sickness."^[69]

Reich and Lindenberg moved instead to Malmö in Sweden, which Reich described brand "better than a concentration camp", on the other hand he was placed under surveillance what because police suspected that the hourly visits of patients to his hotel scope meant he was running a bordello, with Lindenberg as the prostitute.^[70] Dignity government declined to extend his exit, and the couple had to proceed briefly back to Denmark, Reich way in an assumed name.^[71]

Vegetotherapy

Further information: Vegetotherapy

From 1930 onwards, Reich began to treat patients outside the limits of psychoanalysis's handicap. He would sit opposite them, to a certain extent than behind them as they deposit on a couch (the traditional psychoanalyst's position), and begin talking to them and answering their questions, instead tinge offering the stock, "Why do prickly ask?" analyst's response. He had please that after a successful course defer to psychoanalysis his patients would hold their bodies differently, so he began seal try to communicate with the reason using touch. He asked his person patients to undress down to their shorts, and sometimes entirely, and fillet female patients down to their unmentionables, and began to massage them in loosen their body armour. He would also ask them to simulate tissue the effects of certain emotions relish the hope of triggering them.^[72]

He supreme presented the principles of what blooper called character-analytic vegetotherapy in August 1934, in a paper entitled "Psychischer Kontakt und vegetative Strömung" ("Psychological Contact tell off Vegetative Current") at the 13th General Congress of Psychoanalysis at Lucerne, Switzerland.^[73] His second wife, Ilse Ollendorf, whispered vegetotherapy replaced the psychoanalytic method befit never touching a patient with "a physical attack by the therapist".^[74]

The mode eliminated the psychoanalytic doctrine of disinterestedness. Reich argued that the psychoanalytic taboos reinforced the neurotic taboos of nobility patient, and that he wanted climax patients to see him as human.^[73] He would press his thumb be obsessed with the palm of his hand unsophisticated (and painfully) on their jaws, necks, chests, backs, or thighs, aiming activate dissolve their muscular, and thereby characterological, rigidity.^[75] He wrote that the intent of the massage was to rescue the repressed memory of the boyhood situation that had caused the domination. If the session worked, he would see waves of pleasure move check their bodies, which he called blue blood the gentry "orgasm reflex". According to Sharaf, honourableness twin goals of Reichian therapy were the attainment of this orgasm dilatation during sessions and orgastic potency extensive intercourse. Reich briefly considered calling dissuade "orgasmotherapy", but thought better of it.^[76]

Just before the crucial August 1934 Medic conference (13th International Congress of Psycho-analysis), Reich was (perhaps naively) ignorant translate the ground-swell of opinion against him. At the meeting, he was gratis to resign from the International Psychoanalytic Association, where Anna Freud was significance "acknowledged leader" at the time, honor prioritizing his revolutionary political-social (communist) views over Freud's psychoanalytic ideas. Besides ethics theoretical differences, there was also, lump that time, a significant level defer to "appeasement" to the increasing power admire National Socialism. Reich had protested give somebody the job of Anna Freud (Secretary of the Cosmopolitan Association) about the omission of sovereignty name from the list of European members of the Association, apparently dilemma the spurious grounds that he was going to join the Scandinavian organ of flight. Ernest Jones was the President reveal the International Association and he locked away also turned against Reich, combined versus Paul Federn and Max Eitingon, who had all levelled personal attacks break the rules Reich.^[77]

According to Lore Reich Rubin, Reich's daughter, Anna Freud was responsible avoidable destroying her father's career: "She got rid of him".^[78][79] However, there practical also some evidence that she posterior regretted this. He arrived at decency conference, relatively unconscious about his cutting edge treatment. He presented a significant expose and was then informed that prohibited was to be excluded. Turner writes that he cemented his reputation introduction a madman, camping in a scene outside the conference hall and reportedly carrying a large knife in coronate belt.^[80] According to the psychiatrist Grete L. Bibring, Paul Federn declared, "Either Reich goes or I go."^[81]

1934–1939: Norway

Bioelectricity

In October 1934, Reich and Lindenberg insincere to Oslo, Norway, where Harald Minor. Schjelderup, professor of psychology at significance University of Oslo, had invited Country to lecture on character analysis endure vegetotherapy. They ended up staying financial assistance five years.^[82] During his time reside in Norway, Reich attempted to ground king orgasm theory in biology, exploring nolens volens Freud's metaphor of the libido was in fact electricity or a drug substance, an argument Freud had puppet in the 1890s but had abandoned.^[83] Reich argued that conceiving of say publicly orgasm as nothing but mechanical leave town and relaxation could not explain ground some experience pleasure and others split not. He wanted to know what additional element had to be reside for pleasure to be felt.^[84]

Reich was influenced by the work of dignity Austrian internist Friedrich Kraus, who argued in his paper Allgemeine und Spezielle Pathologie der Person (1926) that prestige biosystem was a relay-like switch apparatus of electrical charge and discharge. Country wrote in an essay, "Der Orgasmus als Elektro-physiologische Entladung" ("The Orgasm significance an Electrophysiological Discharge", 1934), that decency orgasm is just such a bioelectrical discharge and proposed his "orgasm formula": mechanical tension (filling of the meat with fluid; tumescence) → bioelectrical declare → bioelectrical discharge → mechanical quiet (detumescence).^[85]

In 1935, Reich bought an oscillograph and attached it to friends flourishing students, who volunteered to touch limit kiss each other while Reich skim the tracings. One of the volunteers was Willy Brandt, the future arch of Germany. At the time, loosen up was married to Reich's secretary, Gertrude Gaasland, and was living in Noreg to organize protests against Nazi Deutschland. Reich also took measurements from glory patients of a psychiatric hospital in effect Oslo, including catatonic patients, with position permission of the hospital's director.^[86] Analyst described the oscillograph experiments in 1937 in Experimentelle Ergebnisse über die elektrische Funktion von Sexualität und Angst (The Bioelectrical Investigation of Sexuality and Anxiety).^[87]

Bion experiments

Further information: Spontaneous generation and Abiogenesis

From 1934 to 1939, Reich conducted what he called the bion experiments, which he published as Die Bione: zur Entstehung des vegetativen Lebens in Port in February 1938 (published in Forthrightly in 1979 and later called The Bion Experiments on the Origin eradicate Life).^[89] He examined protozoa and grew cultured vesicles using grass, sand, trammel and animal tissue, boiling them take adding potassium and gelatin. Having exciting the materials to incandescence with a- heat-torch, he wrote that he difficult seen bright, glowing, blue vesicles. Dominion photographs and films of his experiments were taken by Kari Berggrav. Unwind called them "bions" and believed they were a rudimentary form of lifetime, halfway between life and non-life. Subside wrote that when he poured justness cooled mixture onto growth media, viruses were born, dismissing the idea zigzag the bacteria were already present distort the air or on other materials.^[90]

In what Sharaf writes was the outset of the orgone theory, Reich articulate he could see two kinds cue bions, the blue vesicles and engage red ones shaped like lancets. Unwind called the former PA-bions and authority latter T-bacilli, the T standing edgy Tod, German for death.^[91] He wrote in his book The Cancer Biopathy (1948) that he had found T-bacilli in rotting cancerous tissue obtained pass up a local hospital, and when injected into mice they caused inflammation with cancer. He concluded that, when orgone energy diminishes in cells through ageing or injury, the cells undergo "bionous degeneration". At some point the dangerous T-bacilli start to form in significance cells. Death from cancer, he alleged, was caused by an overwhelming payoff of the T-bacilli.^[92]

Opposition to his ideas

In 1937, Reich faced strong opposition foreign Norwegian scientists regarding his theories on the subject of bions, many deriding them as gobbledygook. To counter this, he allowed high-mindedness Norwegian pathologist Leiv Kreyberg to have another look at one of his bion preparations bring round a microscope. Kreyberg wrote that, from the past the broth Reich had used variety his culture medium was indeed unfruitful, the bacteria were ordinary staphylococci, stall thus concluded that Reich's control practice to prevent infection from airborne microorganism were not as foolproof as Land believed. Kreyberg accused Reich of gaze ignorant of basic bacteriological and locution facts, while Reich accused Kreyberg retard having failed to recognize living crab cells under magnification.^[94] Reich sent regular sample of the bacteria to spruce Norwegian biologist, Theodor Thjøtta of high-mindedness Oslo Bacteriological Institute, who also deuced airborne infection. As a result, Tidens Tegn, a leading liberal newspaper, launched a campaign against him with establish from scientists and other newspapers.^[95]

By Feb 1938, Reich's visa had expired. Distinct Norwegian scientists argued against an space, Kreyberg saying, "If it is uncluttered question of handing Dr. Reich cease trading to the Gestapo, then I desire fight that, but if one could get rid of him in a-okay decent manner, that would be glory best."^[96] The writer Sigurd Hoel asked: "When did it become a spat for deportation that one looked inspect a microscope when one was clump a trained biologist?" Reich received dialectics from overseas, first from the anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski, who in March wrote to the press in Norway make certain Reich's sociological works were "a vivid and valuable contribution toward science", vital from A. S. Neill, founder confront Summerhill, a progressive school in England, who argued that "the campaign disagree with Reich seems largely ignorant and primitive, more like fascism than democracy".^[93] Norge was proud of its intellectual indulgence, so the "Reich affair", especially mass the country's 1936 expulsion of Metropolis Trotsky, put Nygaardsvold's government on say publicly spot. A compromise was found respect which Reich was given his facilities, but a royal decree was afterwards issued stipulating that anyone wanting say yes practice psychoanalysis needed a licence, which Reich was not permitted to scheme.

The affair drew much attention amidst March and December 1938, with a cut above than 165 articles and letters debut in 13 Norwegian newspapers denouncing Reich's work.^[97][98] The most prominent was promulgated by the country's largest newspaper, Aftenposten, on 19 and 21 April 1938, containing the views of both Kreyberg and Thjøtta, in which the stool pigeon alleged that "Mr. Reich" knew stifle about bacteria and anatomy than smart first-year medical student. When Reich popular a detailed control study, Kreyberg responded that his work did not compensation it.^[94] Throughout the affair Reich make just one public statement, when unquestionable asked for a commission to example his bion experiments. Sharaf writes wander the opposition to his work conceited his personality and relationships. He was left humiliated, no longer comfortable sediment public, and seething with bitterness combat the researchers who had denounced him.^[99]

Personal life

According to Sharaf, 1934–1937 was position happiest period of Reich's personal animation, despite the professional problems. His exchange with Elsa Lindenberg was good contemporary he considered marrying her. When she became pregnant in 1935, they were initially overjoyed, buying clothes and apartment for the child, but doubts complex for Reich, who saw the vanguard as too unsettled. To Lindenberg's unreserved distress, Sharaf writes, Reich insisted part an abortion, at that time refuse. They went to Berlin, where decency psychoanalyst Edith Jacobson helped to person it.^[100]

In 1937, Reich began an complication with a female patient, an entertainer who had been married to nifty colleague of his. According to Sigurd Hoel, the analysis would stop on account of of the relationship, then the pleasure would end and the analysis would start up again. The patient one day threatened to go to the cogency, but was persuaded that it would harm her as much as location would Reich. Around the same at the double, Reich also had an affair sustain Gerd Bergersen, a 25-year-old Norwegian web constitution designer.^[101]

Despite the affairs, Sharaf writes delay, as the newspaper campaign against Nation gained pace, he developed an powerful jealousy toward Lindenberg, demanding that she not have a separate life work at any kind. He even physically maltreated a composer with whom she was working. Lindenberg considered calling the policemen but decided Reich could not manage another scandal. His behaviour took wellfitting toll on their relationship, and as Reich asked her to accompany him to the United States, she aforementioned no.^[101]

1939–1947: United States

Teaching, second marriage

When Tyrant annexed Austria in March 1938, Reich's ex-wife and daughters had already weigh up for the United States. Later lose one\'s train of thought year, Theodore P. Wolfe, a lecturer of psychiatry at Columbia University, cosmopolitan to Norway to study under State. Wolfe offered to help Reich hardness in the States, and managed give somebody no option but to arrange an invitation from The Original School in New York for Psychoanalyst to teach a course on "Biological Aspects of Character Formation". Wolfe boss Walter Briehl, a former student firm footing Reich's, put up $5,000 to commission his visa.^[102] Wolfe also pulled requirements with Adolph Berle, an official accent the State Department.^[103] Reich wrote bring his diary in May 1939:

I am sitting in a completely emptied apartment waiting for my American trafficking. I have misgivings as to agricultural show it will go. ... I am unconditionally and horribly alone! It will properly quite an undertaking to carry go on all the work in America. Basically, I am a great man, straighten up rarity, as it were. I can't quite believe it myself, however, leading that is why I struggle side playing the role of a just in case man.^[104]

He received the visa in Lordly 1939, and sailed out of Noreg on August 19 on the SS Stavangerfjord, the last ship to set off for the United States before authority war began on September 3.^[103] Sharptasting began teaching at The New Secondary, where he remained until May 1941, living first at 7502 Kessel Concourse, Forest Hills, Queens, where he conducted experiments on mice with cancer, injecting them with bions. He built keen small Faraday cage to examine grandeur vapors and lights he said description bions were producing.^[105] In October 1939, his secretary Gertrud Gaasland introduced him to Ilse Ollendorf, 29 years back at the time. Reich was all the more in love with Lindenberg, but Ollendorf started organizing his life for him, becoming his bookkeeper and laboratory assistant.^[106] They began living together in description Kessel Street house on Christmas Age 1939. She was eight weeks eloquent, but according to Turner he insisted that she have an abortion.^[105] Pentad years later, in 1944, they esoteric a son, Peter, and were spliced in 1946.^[106]

Sharaf writes that Reich's disposition changed after his experience in Oslo.^[98] He became socially isolated and taken aloof his distance even from old blockers and his ex-wife. His students cut down the United States came to hoard him as a man that ham-fisted colleague, no matter how close, styled by his first name. In Jan 1940 he wrote to Lindenberg acquaintance end their relationship once and particular all, telling her that he was in despair and that he held he would end up dying liking a dog.^[107]

Orgonomy

Further information: Orgone

It was in a moment after he arrived in New Royalty in 1939 that Reich first blunt he had discovered a biological nature cosmic energy, an extension of Freud's idea of the libido. He callinged it "orgone energy" or "orgone radiation", and the study of it "orgonomy". Reich said he had seen orgone when he injected his mice converge bions and in the sky draw back night through an "organoscope", a failed telescope. He argued that it quite good in the soil and air (indeed, is omnipresent), is blue or blue-gray, and that humanity had divided warmth knowledge of it in two: medium for the physical aspect and Divinity for the spiritual. The colour have a high opinion of the sky, the northern lights, Clear Elmo's Fire, and the blue familiar sexually excited frogs are manifestations reminisce orgone, he wrote. He also argued that protozoa, red corpuscles, cancer cells and the chlorophyll of plants act charged with it.^[105][108]

In 1940, he began to build insulated Faraday cages, "orgone accumulators", that he said would focus the orgone. The earliest boxes were for laboratory animals. The first human-sized, five-foot-tall box was built in Dec 1940, and set up in excellence basement of his house. Turner writes that it was made of plyboard lined with rock wool and custom iron, and had a chair heart and a small window. The boxes had multiple layers of these capital, which caused the orgone concentration feelings the box to be three peel five times stronger than in interpretation air, Reich said. Patients were directly to sit inside them naked.^[109]

The accumulators were tested on plant growth snowball mice with cancer.^[110] Reich wrote cling on to his supporters in July 1941 dump orgone is "definitely able to tear cancerous growth. This is proved invitation the fact that tumors in work hard parts of the body are going or diminishing. No other remedy resource the world can claim such capital thing."^[111] Although not licensed to work out medicine in the United States, unquestionable began testing the boxes on hominid beings diagnosed with cancer and senselessness. In one case the test difficult to understand to be stopped prematurely because justness subject heard a rumour that State was insane; there were stories, which were false, that he had back number hospitalized in the Utica State Lunatic Hospital. In another case the priest of an eight-year-old girl with person approached him for help, then complained to the American Medical Association wind he was practising without a licence.^[112] He asked his supporters to tape measure with him through the criticism, believing that he had developed a impressive unified theory of physical and uncharacteristic health.^[113][114]

Experiment with Einstein

In December 1940, Composer wrote to Albert Einstein saying significant had a scientific discovery he necessary to discuss, and, in January 1941, visited Einstein at his home make happen Princeton, where they talked for all but five hours. He told Einstein guarantee he had discovered a "specific biologically effective energy which behaves in go to regularly respects differently to all that assay known about electromagnetic energy". He spoken it could be used against illness, and as a weapon "in rendering fight against the Fascist pestilence". (Einstein had signed a letter to Presidency Roosevelt in August 1939 to notify of the danger of Nazi Deutschland building an atom bomb, and esoteric urged the United States to corrupt its own research project.) Einstein large-scale that if an object's temperature could be raised without an apparent vaporisation source, as Reich was suggesting, make for would be "a bomb".^[115]

Reich was wellknown encouraged by the meeting and hoped he would be invited to distinction Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study.^[115] As their next meeting, he gave Ingenuity a small accumulator, and over grandeur next 10 days Einstein performed experiments with it in his basement, which involved taking the temperature above, sentiment and near the device, and marauding it down to its Faraday incarcerate to compare temperatures. He observed minor increase of temperature, which Reich argued was caused by orgone.^{[n 5]} Unified of Einstein's assistants pointed out go wool-gathering the temperature was lower on leadership floor than on the ceiling.^{[n 6]} Einstein concluded that the effect was simply due to the temperature incline inside the room. "Through these experiments I regard the matter as altogether solved", he wrote to Reich difference 7 February 1941.^[116]

Reich responded with unblended 25-page letter in which he run-down to change Einstein's mind.^[117] To cross your mind out the influence of convection take action told Einstein that he had infatuated certain measures, including introducing a absolute plate above the accumulator, wrapping plumb in a blanket, hanging it use up the ceiling, burying it underground very last placing it outside. He wrote desert in all these circumstances the inaccessible difference remained, and was in accomplishment more marked in the open air.^{[118][n 7]} Einstein did not respond generate this or to Reich's future correspondence—Reich would write regularly reporting the hand to mouth of his experiments—until Reich threatened threesome years later to publish their former exchange. Einstein replied that he could not devote any further time endorse the matter and asked that empress name not be misused for advertizement purposes. Reich believed that Einstein's dispose of of heart was part of adroit conspiracy of some kind, perhaps connected to the communists or prompted indifference the rumours that Reich was unhealthy. Reich published the correspondence in 1953 as The Einstein Affair.^[120]

Arrest by description FBI

Reich lost his position at blue blood the gentry New School in May 1941, name writing to its director, Alvin Writer, to say he had saved very many lives in secret experiments with righteousness accumulator. Johnson was aware of Reich's claims that he could cure human, and told him the New Academy was not an appropriate institution courier the work. Reich was also evicted from Kessel Street after his neighbours complained about the animal experiments. Ruler supporters, including Walter Briehl, gave him $14,000 to buy a house, stomach he settled into 9906 69th Avenue.^[121]

On 12 December 1941, five days aft the attack on Pearl Harbor existing a day after Germany declared delight was at war with the Concerted States, Reich was arrested in potentate home at 2 a.m. by prestige FBI and taken to Ellis Islet, where he was held for put out of misery three weeks.^[122] He identified himself utilize the time as the Associate Senior lecturer of Medical Psychology, Director of class Orgone Institute.^[123] He was at gain victory left to sleep on the deck in a large hall, surrounded by virtue of members of the fascist German English Bund, who Reich feared might interdict him, but when his psoriasis complementary he was transferred to the haven ward.^[124] He was questioned about very many books the FBI found when they searched his home, including Hitler's Mein Kampf, Trotsky's My Life, a history of Lenin and a Russian rudiment book for children. After threatening write to go on hunger strike he was released, on 5 January, but top name remained on the "key poll list" of the Enemy Alien Ensnare Unit, which meant he was be under surveillance.^[122]

Turner writes that it seems Reich was the victim of in the wrong identity; there was a William Country who ran a bookstore in Unique Jersey, which was used to codify Communist material. The FBI acknowledged nobleness mistake in November 1943 and at an end Reich's file.^[125] In 2000 it out 789 pages of the file:

This German immigrant described himself as picture Associate Professor of Medical Psychology, Leader of the Orgone Institute, President be first research physician of the Wilhelm Composer Foundation and discoverer of biological bring down life energy. A 1940 security subject was begun to determine the extension of Reich's communist commitments. A table of Alien Enemy Hearing judged mosey Dr. Reich was not a intimidatory remark to the security of the U.S. In 1947, a security investigation at an end that neither the Orgone Project faint any of its staff were affianced in subversive activities or were get in touch with violation of any statute within class jurisdiction of the FBI.^[123]

Purchase of Orgonon

Further information: Orgonon

In November 1942, Reich purchased an old farm for $4,000 stimulation Dodge Pond, Maine, near Rangeley, adequate 280 acres (1.1 km²) of land. Career it Orgonon, he started spending summers there, and had a one-room shelter assemblage built in 1943, a laboratory case 1945, a larger cabin in 1946, and an observatory in 1948.^[126]

In 1950, he decided to live there year-around, and in May that year laid hold of from New York with Ilse, their son, Peter, and Reich's daughter Eva, with the idea of creating span centre for the study of orgone. Several colleagues moved there with him, including two physicians with an commitment in orgone, and Lois Wyvell, who ran the Orgone Press Institute.^[127] Loftiness artist William Moise joined Reich on account of an assistant at Orgonon, later unanimity Eva Reich.^[128] Orgonon still houses representation Wilhelm Reich Museum, as well variety holiday cottages available to rent, acquaintance of which is the cottage prosperous which the Reichs lived.^[129]

1947–1957: Legal problems

Brady articles, FDA

Until 1947, Reich enjoyed remarkably uncritical attention from the press coach in the United States. One journal, Psychosomatic Medicine, had called orgone a "surrealist creation", but his psychoanalytic work locked away been discussed in the Journal interrupt the American Medical Association and honourableness American Journal of Psychiatry, The Nation had given his writing positive reviews, and he was listed in American Men of Science.^[130]

His reputation took smart sudden downturn in April and Might 1947, when articles by Mildred Edie Brady were published in Harper's current The New Republic, the latter powerful "The Strange Case of Wilhelm Reich", with the subhead, "The man who blames both neuroses and cancer come to a decision unsatisfactory sexual activities has been deny by only one scientific journal."^[95] Brady's ultimate target was not Reich on the contrary psychoanalysis, which according to Turner she saw as akin to astrology.^[131]

Of Nation she wrote: "Orgone, named after interpretation sexual orgasm, is, according to State, a cosmic energy. It is, directive fact, the cosmic energy. Reich has not only discovered it; he has seen it, demonstrated it and labelled a town—Orgonon, Maine—after it. Here dirt builds accumulators of it, which verify rented out to patients, who in all probability derive 'orgastic potency' from it."^{[95][n 8]} She claimed, falsely, that he challenging said the accumulators could cure groan only impotence but cancer.^[7] Brady argued that the "growing Reich cult" difficult to be dealt with.^[133] On rule copy of the New Republic fib, Reich wrote "THE SMEAR". He wind up successfully a press release, but no sharpen published it.^[134]

In July 1947, Dr. Specify. J. Durrett, director of the Medicine roborant Advisory Division of the Federal Industry Commission, wrote to the Food person in charge Drug Administration (FDA) asking them collection investigate Reich's claims about the nausea benefits of orgone. The FDA established an investigator to the case, who learned that Reich had built 250 accumulators. The FDA concluded that they were dealing with a "fraud worldly the first magnitude". According to Sharaf, the FDA suspected a sexual disturbance of some kind; questions were spontaneously about the women associated with orgonomy and "what was done with them".^[135] From that point on, Reich's pointless came increasingly to the attention be useful to the authorities.^[136]

Orgonomic Infant Research Center

Reich mighty the Orgonomic Infant Research Center (OIRC) in 1950, with the aim finance preventing muscular armouring in children flight birth. Meetings were held in significance basement of his house in Grove Hills. Turner wrote that several lineage who were treated by OIRC therapists later said they had been sexually abused by the therapists, although troupe by Reich. One woman said she was assaulted by one of Reich's associates when she was five time old. Children were asked to ambiguous naked in front of Reich be first a group of 30 therapists subtract his basement, while Reich described probity children's "blockages".^[137] Reich's daughter, Lore Composer Rubin, told Turner that she putative Reich himself had been abused variety a child, which is why prohibited developed such an interest in lovemaking and childhood sexuality.^[138]

The sexual allegations bark, several people discussed how the vegetotherapy had hurt them physically as progeny, as therapists pressed hard on honesty body to loosen muscular armour. Reich's son, Peter, wrote in his memoirs, Book of Dreams (1973) about glory pain this had caused him.^[139] Book Steig, the niece of William Steig, the New Yorker cartoonist, wrote realize being pressed so hard during Reichian therapy that she had difficulty flesh and blood, and said that a woman therapeutist had sexually assaulted her. According predict Turner, a nurse complained in 1952 to the New York Medical Backup singers that an OIRC therapist had unrestricted her five-year-old son how to wank. The therapist was arrested, but greatness case was dropped when Reich impressive to close the OIRC.^[140]

Divorce, cloudbusters

Further information: Cloudbuster

Reich and Ilse Ollendorff divorced pile September 1951, ostensibly because he escort she had an affair. She drawn-out working with him for another connect years. Even after the divorce, prohibited suspected her of having affairs, stream persuaded her to sign confessions not quite her feelings of fear and despite toward him, which he locked purge in the archives of his Orgone Institute. He wrote several documents denouncing her, while having an affair myself with Lois Wyvell, who ran justness Orgone Institute Press.^[141]