REICH, WILHELM

born March 24, 1897, Dobrzcynica, Galicia, Austria-Hungary [now in Ukraine] died Nov. 3, 1957, Lewisburg, Pa., U.S. Viennese psychologist who developed a system of psychoanalysis that concentrated on overall character structure, rather than on individual neurotic symptoms. His early work on psychoanalytic technique was overshadowed by his involvement in the sexual-politics movement and by orgonomy, a pseudoscientific system he developed. Reich was trained at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute and joined the faculty of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute in 1924. In The Function of Orgasm (1927), he argued that the ability to achieve orgasm, called orgastic potency, was an essential attribute of the healthy individual; failure to dissipate pent-up sexual energy by orgasm could produce neurosis in adults. This work led him into the sexual-politics movement, an attempt to combine radical left-wing politics with the advocacy of sexual education and freedom. Reich left Germany in 1933 and taught in Scandinavian countries until settling in the United States in 1939. In Charakteranalyse (1933; Character Analysis), Reich called attention to the use of character structure as a protective armour to keep the individual from discovering his own underlying neuroses. He believed that repressed feelings were also manifested as muscular tension and that this mental and physical armour could be overcome by direct manipulation and by making the individual aware of the tension. Reich used this approach to treat patients whose neuroses had proved resistant to more orthodox psychoanalytical techniques. Reich's political and sexual ideas led to a break with the psychoanalytic movement in 1934, after which he devoted himself to orgonomy, an attempt to measure orgones, units of cosmic energy Reich believed energized the nervous system. He conceived of mental illness as an orgone deficiency, which he attempted to treat by placing the patient in a specially constructed cabinet called the orgone box. He leased orgone boxes as a therapy for many illnesses, including cancer. Reich's experiments and the commercialization of the orgone box brought him into conflict with American authorities in the early 1950s; he was convicted of contempt of court and died in prison.