Wilhelm Reich

Wilhelm Reich was an Austrian-American psychoanalyst and sexologist who developed character analysis and described muscular armor as bodily expressions of psychological defenses.

Psychoanalysis: A method and theory of treating psychological distress through attention to unconscious processes and speech. Reich began as a psychoanalyst and reworked its account of resistance and character.
Resistance (psychoanalysis): In psychoanalysis, a patient’s conscious or unconscious opposition to insight or therapeutic change. Reich treated persistent resistance as a pattern of character, not merely a response to particular interpretations.
Vienna Psychoanalytic Society: A group founded in Vienna in 1902 that became the first organized society devoted to psychoanalysis. Reich entered psychoanalytic work through Vienna’s institutional circle.
Alexander Lowen: An American psychiatrist who founded bioenergetic analysis after studying with Wilhelm Reich. Lowen adapted Reich’s attention to bodily tension into a distinct therapeutic system.
Sigmund Freud: An Austrian neurologist who founded psychoanalysis and developed theories of the unconscious and psychosexual development. Reich trained in Freud’s movement before diverging sharply from Freud’s later views.
Vegetotherapy: A body-oriented psychotherapy developed by Reich that sought to release chronic muscular tension and emotional inhibition. It translated muscular armor into interventions involving breathing, posture, and bodily expression.
Marxist psychoanalysis: Approaches that combine psychoanalytic accounts of subjectivity with Marxist analyses of society and power. Reich joined psychoanalysis to socialist politics in his account of sexual repression.
Orgone accumulator: A box-like device Reich claimed could concentrate orgone energy for therapeutic use. The device became the focus of federal litigation and a defining controversy in Reich’s legacy.
Character analysis: A psychotherapeutic approach that interprets enduring personality patterns as defenses against psychological conflict. Reich developed this technique into a systematic way of treating resistance.
Catharsis: The release of suppressed emotion through its expression or recollection. Reich’s bodily techniques aimed to bring defended emotions into expression, though his approach differed from simple emotional discharge.

Linked from 5 pages