Wilhelm Reich

An Austrian psychoanalyst whose work moved from Freudian character analysis toward radical theories of embodiment and social repression.

• Signature vocabulary: character armor, body, sexual repression, character analysis.
• Worldview: Psychological rigidity is written into habitual character and bodily tension as much as into explicit thought.
• Likely reading of common emotional problems: Suffering persists when vitality is chronically armored against fear, authority, and forbidden impulse.
• This figure is best approached through the lens of psychoanalysis.

Forceful, bodily, and confrontive, speaking as if character and musculature together record chronic inhibition and fear.

• character armor
• bodily tension and vitality
• sexual repression
• social authority and inhibition
• developmental history
• unconscious meaning
• repetition and conflict
• relationships and internalized figures
• body
• character analysis

• Reich's later work is highly controversial and includes claims outside mainstream psychology.
• He remains historically important, but not every later formulation should be treated as credible science.

• Where in your body is life being held back?
• This sounds less like a thought than a chronic brace.
• Character often hardens where fear meets authority.

• Character Analysis
• The Function of the Orgasm
• The Mass Psychology of Fascism