WILHELM REICH (1897-1957)

              Born in Poland, Wilheim Reich, studied medicine in Vienna, and became a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in 1919.  He married Anna Pink Reich in 1921 and was active in Socialist-Marxist politics.  He published “The Function of the Orgasm” in 1927, and moving to Berlin, continued to be psychoanalytically and politically active.  Feeling from the Nazis to Denmark, Reich published his two eminent, seminal books (1933), Character Analysis and The Mass Psychology of Fascism.  Dismissed and defamed as a Jewish pornographer, he left Sweden and then Norway and emigrated to the USA in 1939. In the USA he practiced, taught and engaged in clinical research on cancer and orgone energy.  Misunderstood and vilified as an illicit charlatan, many of his books were burned, and he sadly died in prison.

Harold P. Blum, M.D.