The persecution of Dr. Wilhelm Reich by the government of the United States

Abstract

Most people who recognize his name are aware that Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) was considered to be one of Freud's most brilliant students and an important contributor to psychoanalytic theory. But it is also widely known that this innovative thinker, who is still read with interest over 50 years after his death, died in a federal penitentiary in the USA. The case against Wilhelm Reich, brought by the Food and Drug Administration, has been admirably detailed in Wilhelm Reich vs. the U.S.A. by Jerome Greenfield. Less well known are two other intertwined investigations of Reich, the first by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which led to his imprisonment for nearly a month after the USA declared war on Germany in 1941; and the second by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, in an attempt to remove his naturalized citizenship and deport him. This paper examines in detail these two assaults on Reich, placing them within the historical context of a lifetime of marginalization and denunciation by authorities, from the Communist Party in Germany to the International Psychoanalytic Association to academic biologists in Norway to right-wing Christian moralists in the USA and finally to agencies of the US government.

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