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3 : Reich’s Childhood and Youth: 1897-1917Wilhelm Reich, son of Leon Reich and Cecilia (née Roniger), was born on March
24, 1897, in the part of Galicia that then belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was
undoubtedly born at home, the custom at that time and place. He once mentioned with
some pleasure to his daughter that his head had been massaged and molded after birth, in
the course of which there had been some sutures^1.
Soon after Reich’s birth his family moved to the small town of Jujinetz in northern
Bukovina, a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire named after the rich beech trees
dominating the forested terrain. Reich’s father, Leon, had decided to become a partner of
his wife’s uncle, Josef Blum, who owned an estate of two thousand acres. Leon gradually
took over sole control of the cattle farm on the land, while Blum went on to become a
multi-millionaire in other enterprises^2. A second son, Robert, was born to Leon and Cecilia
in 1900.
We know a good deal less about Reich’s mother than we do about his father. Only
nineteen at the time of Wilhelm’s birth, Cecilia appears from photographs to have been con-
siderably younger than the father, though I could not determine his birth date. One family
member estimates that Leon was ten years older than his wife^3 .Reich always described his
mother as “very beautiful,”though this is not apparent from the extant photo. It was clear
that he preferred her to his father, a much sterner, more authoritarian person. When the
young analyst described his complex family dynamics in a disguised self-history, he wrote of
his parents:
He [Reich] was brought up very strictly by his father and always had to accomplish
more than other children in order to satisfy his father’s ambition. From his earliest
childhood,he had tenderly clung to his mother who protected him from the daily
outbursts of the father. The parental marriage was not happy for the mother suf-
fered horribly from the father’s jealousy. Even as a five- and six-year-old he had wit-
nessed hateful scenes of jealousy on the father’s part, scenes which even culminat-
ed in the father’s violence toward the mother. He took the mother’s side which is
readily understandable since he himself felt under the same whip as the mother and
he deeply loved her^4.Later in the same article, he reported that Leon in his jealous rages would accuse
his wife ofbeing a “whore.”