Beyond Psychology: Letters and Journals, 1934-1939

Ostracized as a charlatan, divorced from his embittered wife Annie Pink, under attack by Freudians and communists alike, embattled emigre sexologist/psychoanalyst/socialist Wilhelm Reich spent the years covered by this collection mostly in Norway, having fled Hitler's Berlin in 1933. Opening with his expulsion from the International Psychoanalytic Association at the instigation of orthodox Freudians, this unbuttoned autobiographical portrait reveals Reich's preoccupation with his theory of sexual repression, which he identified as an underlying cause of neurosis, fascism and cancer, among other ills. Reich's lab experiments seeking a bioelectrical basis of sexual energy and life, and his controversial cancer research are recorded here. We see his anguish over his separation from his two young daughters, and his tortured affair with dancer/political activist Elsa Lindenberg, which ended with his relocation to New York City in August 1939. Higgins is trustee of the Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust Fund in New York City. (Dec.)