The Function of the Orgasm
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Wilhelm Reich
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Reich in his mid-20s
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| Pronunciation | English /raɪx/; German [ʀaɪç] |
| Born |
24 March 1897 Dobzau, Austria-Hungary (now Ukraine) |
| Died |
3 November 1957 (aged 60) United States Penitentiary, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, United States |
| Cause of death | Heart failure |
| Resting place |
Orgonon, Rangeley, Maine, United States 44°59′28″N 70°42′50″W / 44.991027°N 70.713902°W |
| Nationality | Austrian |
| Medical career | |
| Education | M.D. (1922), University of Vienna |
| Speciality | Psychoanalysis |
| Institutions | Vienna City Hospital; Vienna Ambulatorium; University of Oslo; The New School, New York |
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| Relatives | Robert Reich (brother) |
Wilhelm Reich (24 March 1897 – 3 November 1957) was an Austrian doctor of medicine and psychoanalyst, a member of the second generation of analysts after Sigmund Freud. The author of several influential books, most notably Character Analysis (1933), The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933) and The Sexual Revolution (1936), Reich became known as one of the most radical figures in the history of psychiatry.
Reich's work on character contributed to the development of Anna Freud's The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence (1936), and his idea of muscular armour – the expression of the personality in the way the body moves – shaped innovations such as body psychotherapy, Gestalt therapy, bioenergetic analysis and primal therapy. His writing influenced generations of intellectuals; he coined the phrase "the sexual revolution" and according to one historian acted as its midwife. During the 1968 student uprisings in Paris and Berlin, students scrawled his name on walls and threw copies of The Mass Psychology of Fascism at police.
After graduating in medicine from the University of Vienna in 1922, Reich became deputy director of Freud's outpatient clinic, the Vienna Ambulatorium. Described by Elizabeth Danto as a large man with a cantankerous style who managed to look scruffy and elegant at the same time, he tried to reconcile psychoanalysis with Marxism, arguing that neurosis is rooted in sexual and socio-economic conditions, and in particular in a lack of what he called "orgastic potency." He visited patients in their homes to see how they lived, and took to the streets in a mobile clinic, promoting adolescent sexuality and the availability of contraceptives, abortion and divorce, a provocative message in Catholic Austria. He said he wanted to "attack the neurosis by its prevention rather than treatment."
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