Wilhelm Reich: the strange, prescient sexologist who sought to set us free
He believed orgasms could be a healing force and coined the term ‘sexual revolution’. Reich’s understanding of the body is vital in our age of protests and patriarchy, writes Olivia Laing
Wilhelm Reich in the mid 1950s. Photograph: AP
Wilhelm Reich in the mid 1950s. Photograph: AP
Sat 17 Apr 2021 04.00 EDT
There are certain people who speak directly into their moment, and others who leave a message for history to decipher, whose work gains in relevance or whose life becomes uncannily meaningful decades after their death. It’s hard to think of a better example of the latter right now, in this year of protests and plague, than the renegade psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, one of the strangest and most prescient thinkers of the 20th century.