Wilhelm Reich Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Joel Kovel

Critical Essay by Joel Kovel

SOURCE: "Why Freud or Reich?" in The Radical Spirit.: Essays on Psychoanalysis and Society, Free Association Books, 1988, pp. 251-69.

An American psychoanalyst and writer, Kovel is the author of White Racism: A Psychohistory (1970), A Complete Guide to Therapy: From Psychoanalysis to Behavior Modification (1976), and The Age of Desire: Case Histories of a Radical Psychoanalyst (1981). In the following essay, he critiques conceptions about Reich advanced by Janine Chassequet-Smirgel and Bela Grunberger in their book Freud or Reich? (1986), and explicates the principal differences between Freudian and Reichian psychotherapy.

Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel and Bela Grunberger's Freud or Reich? (1986) demands that anyone who comments upon it declare himself in relation to the subject-matter. Let me say then that I first encountered Reich by reading of his ignominious death in the New York Times. Although my initial reaction was little more than a vague curiosity, a number of personal matters...
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