Reich, Wilhelm(1897–1957)
Wilhelm Reich was an Austrian psychiatrist and social critic. After serving in the Austrian army during World War I, Reich became a medical student. He obtained his M.D. from the University of Vienna in 1922 and worked for some time as assistant to Julius Wagner-Jauregg at the latter's psychiatric clinic. Even before his graduation Reich began practice as a psychoanalyst and soon came to occupy an influential position in the psychoanalytic movement. From 1924 to 1930 he conducted what came to be known as the Vienna Seminar for Psychoanalytic Therapy, the first organized attempt to devise a systematic and effective analytic technique.
Reich also founded and directed sex hygiene clinics among the industrial workers of Vienna and later, on a much larger scale, in Berlin and other German cities. During his years in Germany, Reich was a member of the Communist Party, and he attempted to integrate his work as a sex counselor within the broader revolutionary movement. Adolf Hitler's assumption of power forced Reich to flee to Denmark. His activities had always been viewed with suspicion by the leaders of the Communist Party, and Reich was finally expelled from the party after the publication of Die Massenpsychologie des Faschismus (Copenhagen, 1933), in which he repudiated the official communist theory about the nature of fascism and the factors leading to its victory in Germany.
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