Wilhelm Reich
Controversial Austrian psychoanalyst
Wilhelm Reich was an Austrian psychoanalyst who developed controversial theories about sexual energy, which he called "orgone." A student of Freud, Reich believed orgasms were essential to mental health and that cosmic life energy could be captured in devices called orgone accumulators.
The FDA banned his equipment in the 1950s; he died in federal prison.
His ideas influenced the sexual revolution and remain popular in alternative medicine circles.
From the Alpine republic
- psychoanalystUnconscious mind specialist
- FreudFounder of psychoanalysis
- ViennaAustrian capital
- BerlinGermany's largest city
Norway · Maine · emigration · Lewisburg
U.S. health regulator
- injunctionCourt-ordered behavioral requirement
- book burningIncinerating texts as censorship
- imprisonmentLegal detention in jail
- bannedOfficially disallowed
trial · sexual revolution · radical politics · Marxism · character analysis · censorship · unorthodox · blacklisted
Innate erotic drive
- transferenceRedirecting feelings to substitutes
- countertransferenceTherapist's emotional response to patient
- character analysisStudy of personality traits
- neurosisFunctional mental disorder
resistance · therapy · unconscious · repression · anxiety · psychodynamics · body armor · psychosexual
Device storing incremental charge
- life energyAnimating force within beings
- bioenergyPower from organic sources
- vesiclesSmall enclosed sacs
Austrian
From the Alpine republic
- psychoanalystUnconscious mind specialist
- FreudFounder of psychoanalysis
- ViennaAustrian capital
Berlin · Norway · Maine · emigration · Lewisburg
FDA
U.S. health regulator
- injunctionCourt-ordered behavioral requirement
- book burningIncinerating texts as censorship
- imprisonmentLegal detention in jail
banned · trial · sexual revolution · radical politics · Marxism · character analysis · censorship · unorthodox · blacklisted · deportation
libido
Innate erotic drive
- transferenceRedirecting feelings to substitutes
- countertransferenceTherapist's emotional response to patient
- character analysisStudy of personality traits
neurosis · resistance · therapy · unconscious · repression · anxiety · psychodynamics · body armor · psychosexual · emotional release
accumulator
Device storing incremental charge
- life energyAnimating force within beings
- bioenergyPower from organic sources
- vesiclesSmall enclosed sacs
- German FiguresOtto von Bismarck, Bach, Beethoven, Albert Einstein, Goethe
- Emigre IntellectualsThomas Mann, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Walter Benjamin, Bertolt Brecht
- Orgone Theorybody armor, life energy, character analysis, cloudbusting, cloudbusters
- Pseudoscience PromotersSamuel Hahnemann
- healersnurse, doctor, physician, surgeon, medic
- AustriansMozart, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sigmund Freud, Gustav Klimt, Franz Schubert
Wilhelm Reichevidence-based medicine
Clinical care guided by research
Jonas Salk · Louis Pasteur · Francis Crick · skeptical inquiry · Carl Sagan
Wilhelm Reichconformist
One following accepted norms
institutionalist · J. Edgar Hoover · Jonas Salk · Nobel laureate · tenured professor