Psychobiography Reading Group
of the Psychohistory Forum
11th Meeting
January 11, 2025 (11:00am – 1pm EDT; room opens at 10:45 am)
This meeting is free to attend, but RSVP is required.
Please RSVP by using the Registration Form below
Wilhelm Reich belongs to the trinity of twentieth century psychoanalysts that also includes Freud and Jung. When he died in 1957, he had become the most revolutionary figure in psychoanalysis and the only student of Freud’s to carry the libido theory into experimental science.
Reich’s legacy includes such essential volumes as Character Analysis, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, and The Function of the Orgasm – his most famous work which inspired the sexual revolution in the West of the 1960s and ‘70s.
Reich’s life, the subject of Passion of Youth – the latest of his writings to appear posthumously, is no less provocative and instructive. In a reminiscence composed in 1919 entitled Childhood and Puberty, Reich tells of his earliest years spent on a country estate in Bukovina. He describes his first conscious experiences of sexuality and the further development of his sexual life, his schooling and, above all, the catastrophic infidelity that led to his mother’s suicide in 1910 and then to his father’s death in 1914.
In the second section Reich describes how he fled Bukovina at the outbreak of the First World War to enlist in the Austro-Hungarian army. He became a battalion commander. But, in an excerpt from his 1937 History of Sex-Pol, he recounts how his four years in the military impressed on him the masses’ numb obedience to authority and the automatic quality of a ceaselessly operating war machine.
Reich began his study of medicine at the University of Vienna in 1919 and graduated in the summer of 1922. The diaries of these years record his encounter with Freud; the growth of his conviction that sexuality is the core around which all social life, and inner life, revolves; his first political stirrings; and his analysis of the woman who would become his first wife. Here, in writing rich with the questing turbulence of youth, is the vital insight into Wilhelm Reich, the man and his work.
For this Psychobiography Reading Group session, we will read:
- Reich, W. (author), Boyd Higgins, M. & Raphael, C.M. (Eds.) (1988). Passion of Youth: An Autobiography, 1897-1922. Chapter One: Childhood and Puberty, I897-I9I4. Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Download this chapter from here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/r0z91o3m1ysfcbiincf2d/1a.-Wilhelm-Reich-Childhood-and-Puberty-I897-I9I4-chapter-1-from-Passion-Of-Youth-An-Autobiography.pdf?rlkey=5ddfddb5gqbfoufwv46walkam&dl=0
- Atwood, G., & Stolorow, R. (1993). Faces in a cloud: Intersubjectivity and personality theory. Chapter 4: Wilhelm Reich. Jason Aronson.
Download this chapter from here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/lrs1zv8o511guzb3sx11y/2a.-Atwood-Stolorow-Faces-in-a-Cloud-Intersubjectivity-in-…-Chapter-4.-Wilhelm-Reich.pdf?rlkey=30todr0ugfypghl73c2ossci7&dl=0
Parts of this chapter cover the following areas:
Nonmandatory readings include:
Reich, W. (author), Boyd Higgins, M. & Raphael, C.M. (Eds.) (1988). Passion of Youth: An Autobiography, 1897-1922. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. [full manuscript] Download the manuscript from here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/7yrocwxe046hjhzt7voan/1.-Wilhelm-Reich-Passion-Of-Youth-An-Autobiography-1897-1922.pdf?rlkey=xwbmeuv6mevnw2elo9lr57t6k&dl=0
Atwood, G., & Stolorow, R. (1993). Faces in a cloud: Intersubjectivity and personality theory. Jason Aronson. [full manuscript] Download the manuscript from here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/zzd1c8d3z5vjq57kyrpze/2.-Atwood-Stolorow-Faces-in-a-Cloud-Intersubjectivity-in-….pdf?rlkey=xtt95jvu15txhrjrvhy277a9x&dl=0
Reich, W. (1973). Character analysis. Doubleday. Download from: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/9keu01a54phymkih9zra3/Wilhelm-Reich-Character-Analysis.pdf?rlkey=chrnmfqai0fhju7qh4uhticcs&dl=0
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The Psychobiography Research and Publication Group of the Psychohistory Forum created the virtual Psychobiography Reading Group in 2023. We meet in alternate months, with a summer break, and we work hard to keep it as a serious psychoanalytic approach to psychobiography. Subsequently, our focus will be on classic works of psychodynamic psychobiography, with the bottom-up approach rather coming from explicit underlying theories.
Please note that we choose short readings to ensure that they will be read ahead of time. Individuals who have not done the readings for this group will need to stay muted to establish this as a true discussion group.
Membership in the Psychohistory Forum is not required, although it is recommended, but your RSVP is required – see the form below.
You will get the response to your RSVP that includes the Zoom information. Zoom link reminder will also be sent out the day before the meeting.