SOURCE: "Wilhelm Reich: Character Analysis," in Psychoanalytic Pioneers, Franz Alexander, Samuel Eisenstein, Martin Grotjahn, eds., Basic Books, Inc., Publishers, 1966, pp. 430-38.

In the following essay, Briehl provides an overview of Reich's career as a psychoanalyst.

Of the many psychoanalysts who have contributed to the theoretical and technical aspects of the science, Wilhelm Reich stands out because of his overwhelming preoccupation with the problems of technique.

Reich was born in 1897 in Austria, where his father was a farmer. He became interested in biology early in life and, prior to his military service during World War I, maintained plant and insect collections and his own breeding laboratory. In 1918, at the age of twenty-one, he matriculated at the University of Vienna School of Medicine where he was awarded the Doctor of Medicine degree "with distinction." His post-graduate work was carried on at the Vienna Neuropsychiatric Institute under Julius von Wagner-Jauregg and...