Wilhelm Reich

Wilhelm Reich (1897–?) was an Austrian physician, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, sex researcher, and sociologist. He joined the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in 1920 and, from 1928, directed a socialist organization for sex counseling and sex research in Vienna. After conflicts with the communist movement and Freudian psychoanalysis, he was expelled from the Communist Party and the International Psychoanalytic Association in 1934. Reich developed character analysis into vegetotherapy, which is regarded as a precursor of various forms of body psychotherapy. After emigrating to the United States, he devoted himself to research into the “orgone energy” he had postulated; its existence was not recognized outside his circle of followers.