ABSTRACT
Wilhelm Reich was born in Dobrzynika, Galicia, on 24 March 1897. His parents were well-off Jewish cattle-farmers and were snobbishly devoted to high German culture. Reich began practising psychoanalysis in late 1919 or early 1920, while still a medical student, when Sigmund Freud began referring patients to him. He gained membership to the Vienna Psycho-Analytical Society in the autumn of 1920. Reich had obtained his clinical experiences of the treatment of impulsive characters at the Vienna Psycho-Analytical Policlinic. Although analysts in Vienna commonly devoted two hours a week of their working time to providing free treatment for those who could not afford to pay, this was clearly insufficient for meeting the needs of the Viennese proletariat. Freud induced Anton von Freund, a wealthy brewer and benefactor of the frequently impoverished International Psycho-Analytical Association, to fund such a clinic in Berlin in 1920, and he wanted to open a second one in Vienna.
