Character Analysis
(Third, enlarged edition – 1949)
Paperback $24.00
Original Publication: Sexpol Verlag (1933) and Orgone Institute Press (1945 & 1949)
Banned from circulation by U.S. Federal Court order – 1954
Burned under FDA supervision – 1956 and 1960
Re-published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux – 1963
"In the fifteen years since the publication of the first edition,
I had to redesign and rewrite our picture of emotional disease.
During this time, many important developments took place:
'character' became a term signifying typical biological
behavior. The 'emotions,' more and more, came to mean
manifestations of of a tangible bio-energy of the organismic
orgone energy. Slowly, we learned to handle it practically
by what is now called 'medical orgone therapy.'"
Wilhelm Reich, M.D.
(from the Preface)
In 1933, Reich published Charakteranalyse in German. In 1945, his second edition in English went further, adding the inevitable leap from depth psychology to biology predicted by Freud. Reich's third, enlarged edition of this classic study of human character includes all of the previously published material--taken between 1928 and 1934, from psychoanalysis to the bioenergetic study of the emotions--and adds a new section expounding Reich’s later discoveries.
This includes three later papers: "The Emotional Plague," "The Expressive Language of The Living in
Orgone Therapy," and "The Schizophrenic Split," an extensive case history of a paranoid schizophrenic.
This case history will convince the reader that the organismic orgone energy is the physical reality that
corresponds to the merely psychological concept of "psychic energy."
In this enlarged edition, Reich illustrates how his study of character led to a comprehension of the
biological basis of neuroses and finally to the discovery of the cosmic orgone energy. Thus, character
analysis is taken out of the realm of psychology and put on the firm basis of natural science, in the form
of orgone biophysics.
Read an excerpt [PDF]
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