| death_place = United States Penitentiary, Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, United States
| death_cause = Heart failure
| resting_place = Orgonon, Rangeley, Maine, United States
| resting_place_coordinates =
| nationality = Austrian
| education = M.D. (1922), University of Vienna
| parents =
| relatives = Robert Reich (brother)
| partner =
| children =
| module =
}}
Wilhelm Reich (24 March 1897 – 3 November 1957) was an Austrian psychoanalyst. 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 practitioners of psychiatry.〔For radicalism, (Sheppard (''Time'' magazine) 1973 ); Danto 2007, p. (43 ); Turner 2011, p. 114.
For ''The Mass Psychology of Fascism'' and ''Character Analysis'', Sharaf 1994, pp. (163–164 ), 168; for ''The Mass Psychology of Fascism'', Turner 2011, p. 152; for ''The Sexual Revolution'', Stick 2015, p. 1.〕
Reich's idea of "muscular armour" – the expression of the personality in the way the body moves – influenced innovations such as body psychotherapy, Gestalt therapy, bioenergetic analysis and primal therapy.〔For Anna Freud, see Bugental, Schneider and Pierson 2001, p. (14 ), and Sterba 1982, p. (35 ). For Perls, Lowen and Janov, see Sharaf 1994, p. (4 )〕 His writing influenced generations of intellectuals; he invented the phrase "the sexual revolution".〔Strick 2015, p. 2.〕 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.〔(Elkind (''New York Times'') 18 April 1971 ); Turner 2011, pp. 13–14; Strick 2015, p. 2.〕
After graduating in medicine from the University of Vienna in 1922, Reich became deputy director of Freud's outpatient clinic, the Vienna Ambulatorium.〔Sharaf 1994, p. (66 ); Danto 2007, p. (83 ).〕 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 originates with 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 had a mobile clinic; he promoted adolescent sexuality and the availability of contraceptives, abortion and divorce, a provocative teaching in Catholic Austria. He said he wanted to "attack the neurosis by its prevention rather than treatment."〔For Danto's description of Reich, Danto 2007, p. (118 ).
That he visited patients in their homes, Grossinger 1982, p. (278 ), and Turner 2011, p. 82.
For the issues he promoted, Turner 2011, p. 114, and Sharaf 1994, pp. (4–5 ), 347, 481–482.
For orgastic potency and neurosis, Corrington 2003, p. 75; and (Turner (''New York Times''), 23 September 2011 ); that he wanted to "attack the neurosis by its prevention rather than treatment," Turner 2011, p. 114.〕
From the 1930s, he became increasingly controversial; from 1932 until his death in 1957 all his work was self-published. His teaching of sexual liberation disturbed the psychoanalytic community and his political associates, and his vegetotherapy, in which he massaged his disrobed patients to dissolve their "muscular armour", violated a major taboo of psychoanalysis.〔For self-publication from 1932, Sharaf 1994, p. (169 ); for violating psychoanalytic taboos, pp. 234–235. For his sexual permissiveness disturbing certain groups, Danto 2007, p. (120 ).〕 He relocated to New York in 1939, partly to escape the Nazis, and soon after arriving invented the term "orgone" – from "orgasm" and "organism" – for a biological energy he said he had discovered, which he said others called God. In 1940 he started building orgone accumulators, devices that his patients sat inside to harness the reputed health benefits, resulting in newspaper stories about sex boxes that cured cancer.〔Sharaf 1994, pp. (301–306 ); that Reich said God was the spiritual aspect of orgone and the ether the physical, p. (472 ); Reich, ''Ether, God and Devil'', 1949, pp. 39ff, 50.〕
After two critical articles about him in the magazines ''The New Republic'' and ''Harper's'' in 1947, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration obtained an injunction against the interstate shipment of orgone accumulators and associated literature, believing they were dealing with a "fraud of the first magnitude."〔For the articles, (Brady, April 1947 ); (Brady, 26 May 1947 ). For "fraud of the first magnitude," Sharaf 1994, p. (364 ).〕 Charged with contempt in 1956 for having violated the injunction, Reich was sentenced to two years' imprisonment, and that summer more than six tons of his publications were burned by order of the court. He died in prison of heart failure just over a year later, days before he was due to apply for parole.〔Sharaf 1994, p. (477 ).〕
==Early life==