0.10 Biology and personality  (Page 11/22)

While attending medical school at the University of Vienna, Reich joined the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, where he began studying with Sigmund Freud. Reich and Freud were deeply impressed with one another. Reich eventually held several important positions in Freud’s training clinic, including Director of the Seminar for Psychoanalytic Therapy, and his work on character analysis was widely respected. Indeed, Reich was so involved with the society, Freud, and the clinic that many people thought of him as “Freud’s pet” (Higgins, 1973; Sharaf, 1983).

However, Reich fell out of favor with the psychoanalytic society. In 1930, he moved to Germany, joined the communist party, and became active in a variety of sex education and sex hygiene programs. But the communists opposed progressive sex education, because they hoped to gain the favor of the Catholic Church, in opposition to the growing threat of the Nazis. Reich stepped right into this dangerous controversy, often relating one particular story of how moved he was when a young pregnant girl sought his help, help she had not received from the Hitler Youth (Sharaf, 1983). In 1933, he published The Mass Psychology of Fascism , a book subsequently banned by the Nazis (Reich, 1933/1970). Eventually, Reich was excluded from both the Communist Party and the psychoanalytic society.

Reich left Germany for Denmark, and then moved to Norway, where his life and work began to take a strange turn. He became convinced that he had discovered a primordial cosmic energy, orgone energy , which provided the underlying energy for all life. He believed that orgone energy streams created hurricanes and galaxies. He built orgone energy accumulators, and began studying how it might be used for such diverse goals as treating cancer and controlling the weather. He was compelled to leave Norway, and in 1939 moved to the United States. Eventually, however, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) sought an injunction in federal court to put an end to Reich’s work on orgone energy. Reich refused to appear in court, and the injunction was issued in default (see Greenfield, 1974). Reich was accused and found guilty of criminal contempt, and sentenced to two years in federal prison. The FDA destroyed much of Reich’s equipment, and burned tons of his papers and books. In 1957, Reich suffered a heart attack and died in the Federal Penitentiary at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.

Somatic Psychology

Reich’s psychoanalytic work emphasized three important topics: the intimate relationship between body and mind, the character of the individual, and the value of precise diagnosis. By the 1920s, Freud and his colleagues had stopped paying much attention to the concept of libido. In contrast, Reich became more and more interested in this sexual energy, which he associated directly with sexual activity. While working with his patients, Reich was impressed by their descriptions of feeling an “emptiness” in their genitals. This was an especially interesting point regarding women, since Reich himself considered the sexual inhibition experienced by many women as something appropriate to their development. However, as Reich pursued these ideas, he began to question the completeness and accuracy of Freud’s theories. Reich developed what became known as the orgasm theory , and he proposed the concept of orgastic potency :