SOURCE: "The Greatness of Wilhelm Reich," in The Humanist, Vol. XXXIV, No. 2, March-April, 1974, pp. 32-5.

Edwards is an Austrian-born American philosopher and educator. In the following essay, he addresses what he considers misconceptions about Reich's life and works.

When I came to New York in the fall of 1947, Wilhelm Reich was the talk of the town. Reich had at that time a large and enthusiastic following, especially among young intellectuals and people whose sympathies were clearly on the left but who, like Reich himself, had become totally disenchanted with communism as it had developed in Russia.

The main source of Reich's attractiveness was not the orgone theory, which was received with a good deal of skepticism even by many of his warmest admirers. It was first and foremost Reich's new therapy that seemed an exciting advance over the techniques of establishment psychiatry of the Freudian and other schools...