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    Wilhelm Reich: A Personal Biography
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    Wilhelm Reich: A Personal Biography
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    Wilhelm Reich: A Personal Biography
    Ebook220 pages5 hours

    Wilhelm Reich: A Personal Biography

    By Ilse Ollendorff Reich

    ()

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    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Ilse Ollendorff Reich and Wilhelm Reich, both refugees from Europe, met for the first time in 1939 only a few weeks after they had both arrived in New York City. From 1940 to 1954, she was his wife, co-worker, secretary and mother of his son. In this account she describes even-handedly and with candor Wilhelm Reich’s rapid rise through Freudian Vienna’s psychoanalytic community (Character Analysis, The Sexual Revolution, The Function of the Orgasm), his sexual-socio-political engagement in Berlin (The Mass Psychology of Fascism), flight to Scandinavia and escape to America. The narrative continues to follow Reich’s life through turbulent 1950’s as she witnessed it.
    Here in the U.S., he discovered what he called Orgone Energy, a vital life force that he claimed could restore and enhance one’s life energy (The Discovery of the Orgone). By the mid-1950s, at the same time that he began experimenting with weather control, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration brought his work to a halt on the basis of mislabelling, burned his books, destroyed his medical devices, and sentenced him to two years in Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary where he died in 1957, age 60.
    This straightforward account of Reich’s life, written only a decade after his death, outlines his major contributions to psychiatric technique -- notably Character Analysis in which he identified somatic expressions of emotion and formulated a therapy that underlies many popular body-mind therapies. In the 1950’s, his experiments with Orgone Energy and the Orgone Energy Accumulator triggered a Food and Drug Administration court injunction and a protracted legal battle. Ilse Ollendorff Reich served as a witness at Reich’s trial in May, 1956 and describes the trial and his subsequent imprisonment in some detail. Her personal experience and extensive interviews with many former co-workers in Europe permit an uncommon and unique glimpse into Reich’s personality, his fears, furies, and childlike naivete.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPeter Reich
    Release dateMay 17, 2011
    ISBN9781458034212
    Unavailable
    Wilhelm Reich: A Personal Biography
    Author

    Ilse Ollendorff Reich

    For the most part, this obituary was written by Ilse; only a few small changes have been added by the family. Ilse Ollendorff Reich, 99, who spent the 1940's and 1950's in a marriage to the controversial psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich, died on Friday, December 19, 2008, at the home of her son in Leverett, MA. Ilse had moved to Amherst in 1989. Ilse was born March 13, l909 in Breslau, Germany, daughter to Georg Ollendorff and Margarete Muhr. Growing up in Nazi Germany, Ilse became an ardent Socialist; later in the United States, she became active in the American Society of Friends and the Peace Movement. She was educated and lived in Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland) until March, l933 when she fled Nazi Germany for France. She lived in Paris where she worked for the American Joint Distribution Committee until her emigration to the United States in February, l939. She met and married Wilhelm Reich later in that year, and started to work for him in early l940 as bookkeeper and administrator. After taking a course in laboratory technique, she also worked as a laboratory assistant in his research institute. A son, Peter Reich, was born in April of l944. Ilse became a U.S. citizen in 1947. Dr Reich moved his Orgone Institute and research enterprise permanently from New York to Rangeley, Maine in l949, and she lived there until l954, when she separated from Reich. Wilhelm Reich died in 1957. Ilse began her studies for a career in education in 1954, earning a BS (summa cum laude) from University of Hartford in l960, a MA in Childhood Education from Teachers College, Columbia University in l962, and a Professional Diploma in Teaching Foreign Languages from the same institution in l965. She taught both French and German in public elementary, junior high, and high schools in Connecticut for l7 years before retiring in l974. She had been active in Germany in the socialist movement, and was an activist for peace and prison reform. After her separation from Reich in l954, she renewed her social activities in the League of Women Voters and the Womens' International League for Peace and Freedom. She sought contact with Quakers through attendance in l955 at the Avon Institute, and became at that time a member of the Wider Quaker Fellowship. After moving to Fairfield County, Connecticut, in l964, she became a regular attender at Wilton Monthly Meeting, which she eventually joined in l968. She was active in that Meeting as representative to the Connecticut Friends Council and as assistant clerk in the later l970's. When she moved in l979 to the Friends Community in North Easton, she transferred her membership to the North Easton Meeting, where she held offices as treasurer and Clerk. She was a member of New England Yearly Meeting (NEYM) Ministry and Counsel Committee, of NEYM Friends General Committee (FGC). She attended FGC Gatherings for more than 20 years, and was a member of FGC's Publication Committee. She transferred her membership from North Easton to Mt. Toby MM, when she moved to Amherst in l989, and at that time became a board member of Woolman Hill. While living in Connecticut, she was a volunteer visitor and teacher at Danbury Federal Prison under the auspices of the American Friends Service Committee, and at the same time a visitor at Connecticut jails, prisons and reformatory under the auspices of the Connecticut Prison Association. In l969, her biography of Wilhelm Reich was published by St. Martin's Press, later translated and published in French, German, Spanish and Japanese editions. She also published a pamphlet on Angels. Ilse moved to Clark House, Amherst, in 1989, and in January, 2001 moved to The Arbors at Amherst, an assisted living facility. At the time of her death she was the Arbor's oldest resident. Having entered Hospice Care recently, she moved to her son's home in Leverett in mid-December.

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