Famous Psychologists Wilhelm Reich

Like Carl G. Jung and Alfred Adler, disagreed with Freud, creating their own concepts of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, such as his closest associates, psychologists Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957) and O. Rank (1884-1939).

Wilhelm Reich

W. Reich, starting his acquaintance with psychoanalysis in Vienna at the students’ seminar at the end of 1910s, soon began to develop his own concept, reforming, in particular, Freud’s ideas about the nature of neurosis. He argued that the cause of neurosis is congestive sexuality that occurs due to dysfunction of orgasm. So already in his first works, he talks about the idea of universal sexual energy that will later lead to his work.

Inspired by the ideas of Marx, he initiated the flow, called Freudo-Marxism. The main provisions of this concept were first described in the article “Dialectical Materialism and Psychoanalysis” (1924). Later Freudo-Marxism ideas are reflected in the work of Erich Fromm and other scholars.

Unlike Freud, Reich believed that the aggressive and destructive drives mainly secondary, and serve not only as a congenital, acquired as much by the negative impact of society. He was  among the first conducted was who had conducted a psychological study of the phenomenon of fascism, showing in his book “The Mass Psychology of Fascism“(1933) that fascism is an expression of irrational mentality of mass man, instilled by the authoritarian society.

Of great importance, especially for practical psychology and psychotherapy was the concept created by Reich - “character armor”, which is a set of neurotic features of personality. In this case, as Horney, he came to the conclusion that it is the styles of human behavior that act as protective mechanisms that regulate the relationship between man and the outside world, providing mental relaxation.

Developing the principles of sexual energy of Sociology, organized in the United States, where he moved in 1939, the Institute of Orgon proceeding from own names psychic energy - orgon energy, which is the appearance of a natural, free-flowing sexualized space vitality. Based on its psychoanalytic and sexological studies Reich came to the conclusion that sexual energy is creative energy of the biological, which is linked to the vitality of space and therefore to a greater extent than the purely mental, and emotional influences on human intelligence.