68 Myron SharafFury On Earth
his mother.)
This personal crisis around 1919 undoubtedly further fixed Reich’s intense interest
in psychoanalysis. Together with other evidence, the “case history” indicates that he did in
fact have some brief analytic therapy around this time. His first analyst was Isidor Sadger^19 ,
one of Freud’s earliest Viennese associates. In the early 1920s, Reich underwent a second
analysis, this time with Paul Federn, which also did not last long^20. Federn was a prominent
early disciple of Freud’s.
Reich may also have undergone analysis for training purposes. Although a person-
al analysis did not become a prerequisite for practice until 1926, Freud urged “very young
candidates who came to him for advice ... that they be analyzed themselves.”^21 It is reason-
able to conjecture that he also gave Reich this advice. I would further assume that Reich’s
first choice of analyst was Freud, but that the latter’s relatively high fees and his reluctance
to take Viennese students into therapy with him would have made this outcome unlikely.
There is definite evidence that some years later Reich very much wanted to be in treatment
with Freud.
In later years Reich never, to my knowledge, talked about his experiences as an ana-
lytic patient. We do not know why his analyses were so brief. Perhaps Reich, like the
“patient” he described, broke off treatment because of difficulties in even discussing his
childhood trauma. Perhaps there were conflicts about technique or personality clashes. Both
Sadger and Federn came to dislike Reich bitterly.
In any case, the intensity of the problems that appear to have led Reich into his first
analysis could not have lasted long, judging from his extremely rapid progress during those
early Vienna years. By the end of 1920 he was already a practicing analyst, with two more
years ofmedical school to complete.He no longer had to scrounge for the means to live
since now he could support himselfthrough his practice. In 1920 his living quarters, which
also served as an office, were on Berggasse, the same street where Freud resided. He had
found the beginning lines ofhis life work, and in Sigmund Freud the most significant role
model ofhis career. Whatever his conflicts, Reich had demonstrated that he could make it
in the world.And he had at least taken some first steps in understanding, and redeeming,
the tragedies of his early life.