Reich, Wilhelm

(1897-1957) Austrian psychiatrist and social critic. Even before his graduation from the University of Vienna he began practice as a psychoanalyst and became influential in this movement. His practice expanded from Austria into Germany where, as a member of the Communist Party, he attempted to integrate his work as a sex counselor into the broader revolutionary movement. Reich’s activities were suspect by the leaders of the Communist Party and, at the time of Hitler’s assumption to power in Germany in 1933, he was forced to flee to Denmark. Later that year he was ousted from the Communist Party as a result of a work he published against official communistic doctrine. After attacks by other psychiatrists and the press he left Denmark for Sweden and a short while later went on to Norway. In 1937 his detractors reached him in Norway and he moved to the US and practiced there for many years. In the last years of his life, Reich showed little interest in psychiatry, devoting his efforts to discoveries in the field of physics. In 1956 he was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for disobeying a government injunction which the Food and Drug Administration had obtained against him, ordering destruction of all orgone boxes, his journals and books. He died while in prison a year later.

See also orazone, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in this glossary.