Wilhelm Reich

Wilhelm Reich (1897 to 1957) was an Austrian doctor of medicine and psychoanalyst, a member of the second generation of analysts after Sigmund Freud. After graduating in medicine from the University of Vienna in 1922 he became deputy director of Freud's outpatient clinic, the Vienna Ambulatorium, and later helped set up the first sexual advisory clinics in Vienna with the aim of attacking neurosis by prevention rather than treatment. His books on character, including Character Analysis, and his idea of muscular armour shaped later body psychotherapy, Gestalt therapy and bioenergetic analysis. He moved to Oslo in 1934 and to New York in 1939, where from 1940 he built orgone accumulators that he claimed were beneficial for cancer patients. After the United States Food and Drug Administration obtained an injunction against shipping the devices and he was charged with contempt in 1956, he was sentenced to two years in prison and died there of heart failure. This entry records what he held and what was disputed; it is not medical advice.