Reich, Wilhelm

(born March 24, 1897, Dobrzcynica, Galicia, Austria-Hungary—died Nov. 3, 1957, Lewisburg, Pa., U.S.) Austrian-U.S. psychologist. Trained at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, he joined the faculty of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute in 1924. In (1927), he argued that the failure to achieve orgasm could produce neurosis. An advocate of sexual education and freedom as well as of radical left-wing politics, he left Germany in 1933 and settled in the U.S. in 1939. After breaking with the psychoanalytic movement in 1934, he developed a pseudoscientific system called orgonomy. He conceived of mental illness and some physical illnesses as deficiency of cosmic energy (measured in units called “orgones”), which he treated by placing the patient in a cabinet with reflective inner surfaces known as the orgone box. Reich's views brought him into conflict with U.S. authorities in the early 1950s; he was convicted of contempt of court and died in prison.

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