1 : Introduction 17
pet,” destined for a position of leadership within the psychoanalytic movement. When his rela-
tions with his Viennese colleagues soured, he was able to surround himself in Berlin with an
able group, including the analysts Otto Fenichel, Erich Fromm, and Edith Jacobson, who
shared his social-political concerns. After his expulsion from the analytic organization in 1934,
he developed a new circle of talented psychiatrists, psychologists, and writers in Oslo, Norway.
Reich had to leave Oslo in 1939 when his work on the bions (vesicles that he assert-
ed represented transitional forms between the nonliving and the living) was denounced by
many Norwegian scientists and Reich was accused of the grossest scientific charlatanism.
These controversies led to the loss of his Norwegian support but, once again, he was able to
attract a new group—this time in New York. Defying established psychiatric and medical opin-
ion, well-regarded psychiatrists such as Theodore P. Wolfe and Elsworth F. Baker devoted
themselves to learning and practicing Reich’s kind of therapy and to aiding his scientific
research.
In the 1940s, Reich’s writings made a deep impression on the thinking of several out-
standing people who were later to be very influential; they included Alexander Lowen, Fritz
Perls, Paul Goodman, Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, and William Burroughs.
Who exactly was this man whose life was filled with controversy, whom people loved
and hated,who had to flee five countries, who once was regarded by many as “Freud’s pet”
but was excluded and hated by the psychoanalytic establishment? Why was he expelled from
the Social Democratic Party in Vienna in 1929 and from the Communist Party in 1934, after
having been well regarded in both organizations? Why, in 1939, was he forced to leave Norway
despite its tradition of civil liberties and after he had been so influential a teacher? Was it a sign
of dilettantism, madness, or Renaissance-type genius that his work involved so many fields—
psychiatry, sociology, biology, physics, meteorology? And what forces—outer, inner, or both—
led to his death in an American jail?
When students were interested in Reich’s scientific work, he used to say: “Try to prove
me wrong.” By this he meant that students should not take his theory and evidence on faith,
but should scrupulously repeat the experiments with the most exact controls they could devise.
Positive testimonials without firsthand critical investigation were as worthless, if not as
destructive, as uninformed attacks.
My interest in Reich was and is primarily centered upon his work on human beings.
Not trained as a biologist or physicist, I have never made systematic studies of his natural-sci-
entific work.In writing this biography my first impulse was to concentrate on what I knew, not
only from firsthand experience in orgonomy but from related study in psychoanalysis and soci-
ology.However, I have decided to cover the entire range of Reich’s work, although with far
more concentration on its contributions to human concerns than on its experimental aspects.
For one thing, it seemed desirable to have the entire range of Reich’s work in a single volume,
since only some ofhis writings are available today. Secondly, the fields with which I am most
concerned—Reich’s psychiatric and social concepts and findings—were from 1934 on pro-
foundly influenced by his natural-scientific work. Finally, in the period from 1948 to 1955,