Wilhelm Reich

Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957) was an Austrian physician and psychoanalyst who connected clinical ideas about character and bodily tension with questions of politics and social authority. Trained in Vienna within Sigmund Freud’s circle, he later pursued an increasingly independent and controversial course. Character Analysis presents his account of defensive patterns and remains the most direct route into his clinical method. The Mass Psychology of Fascism extends that inquiry toward obedience, repression, and authoritarian movements. Listen, Little Man! abandons the tone of a clinical treatise for a compact, confrontational address to everyday fear and conformity. Readers seeking the foundations should choose Character Analysis first, then test its political reach in The Mass Psychology of Fascism. Listen, Little Man! works best afterward as a shorter and more polemical change of register.