Wilhelm Reich was born in Dobrzny, Galicia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (now in the Ukraine). He attributed his later interest in the study of sex and the biological basis of the emotions to his upbringing on his father’s farm where, as he later put it, the “natural life functions” were never hidden from him. He was taught at home until he was 13, when his mother committed suicide after being discovered having an affair with one of his tutors. Wilhelm Reich joined the Austrian Army, serving from 1915 to1918, for the last two years with the rank of a lieutenant. In 1918, when World War I ended, he entered the medical school at the University of Vienna. As an undergraduate, he was drawn to the work of Sigmund Freud, who became aware of Reich’s work in 1919, when Reich organized and led a seminar on sexology. Reich was accepted for membership of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Assocation in October 1920.
In his early years he made significant contributions to psychoanalytic theory. He broke away from the orthodox Freudian approach, believing that neurosis is due to undischarged sexual energy and that of blocking of sexual discharge causes actual physiological disturbance of sexuality. Die Funktion des Orgasmus, 1927. According to Reich mental health is the ability to achieve full orgasm. The sexually satisfied person would have already released his aggressions and thus behave in a socialized manner. He related his ideas to the prognosis of treatment in his paper Concerning genitality from the standpoint of psychoanalytic prognosis and therapy (1924, Eng. 1925). Another important contribution was Reich’s focus on character and character formation. Previously psychoanalysis dealt mainly with the interpretations of unconscious material. In his study of character resistances he concentrated on the whole person, his habits, tensions, and mannerisms. His books that deal with character are Der triebhafter Character (1925) and Characteranalyse (1933; English 1945), his most important work. Reich’s theories, which combined sexuality and politics, became increasingly unpalatable to the Freudians, and the International Psychological Association expelled him in 1934. The publication in 1933 of his The Mass Psychology of Fascism categorized Fascism as a symptom of sexual repression and the book was banned by the Nazis when they came to power.
Reich was also involved in politics and was active in exposing the dangers of the Fascist regime. Subsequently he was expelled from the International Psychoanalytic Association. Reich realized he was in danger and hurriedly left Germany, spending a couple of years in Denmark and Norway, before his arrival in the USA in 1939. There he developed the idea of orgone, a material found in the air, which according to Reich had therapeutic powers. He founded and became director of Orgon Institute in Rangeley, Maine. After selling ‘orgone boxes’ he was convicted of fraud and died in prison in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania in 1957.