REICH, WILHELM 9 corps, took advantage of his financial (1965) and four German-language films dependence. By 1902 he was functioning (1925, 1930, 1955, 1984). as a double agent. His information proved BIBLIOGRAPHY. Robert B. Asprey, The invaluable, for Redlwas promoted to Chief Panther's Feast, New York: Pumam, of Counter-Intelligence and chief of the 1959; Egon Envin Kisch, Der Fall des Operations Section of the Austro-Hungar- Generalstabschefs Red1 (Aussenseiter ian intelligence apparatus. der Gesellschaft: Die Verbrechen der Alfred Red1 maintained his double Gegenwart, 2), Berlin: Verlag die Schmiedc, 1924; Georg Markus, Der Pall secret-that of his work for the Russians Redl, Vienna: Amalthea, 1984; Valentin and that of his homosexuality-until his Pikul', "Chest' imeiu. Ispoved' ofitsera death. He fell in love with Lt. Stefan Hor- rossiiskogo genshtaba" [I Have the inka (referred to as Hromodka in some Honor. Confessions of an Officer of the works) and financed his military career. Russian General Staff], Nash sovremen- nik, Horinka knew nothing of Redl's involve- No. 9 (19881, pp. 74-76. James W.Jones ment with the Russians and kept a certain distance from him on the emotional plane by having a liaison with a woman at the REFORMATION same time he was seeing his protector. See Protestantism. On May 24, 1913, Austrian au- thorities discovered Redlls treason when REICH,WILHELM he picked up two letters full of cash which (1877-1957) the Russians had sent to him under a code Psychoanalyst and sexual re- name and which had aroused the suspi- former. Born to an assimilated Jewish cions of the Austrian postal authorities. family in Galicia in 1897, he suffered a The military representatives confronted severe trauma when his mother commit- Red1 in his hotel room and left a pistol on ted suicide, as he feared that he had been the table. He committed suicide in the unwittingly responsible in revealing her early morning of May 25. Upon searching love affair with one of his tutors. His atti- Redl's apartment, the authorities discov- tude toward his father may be judged from ered the rest of his secret life when they his belief that he was not really his father's found perfumed letters from men, photo- son. graphs of nude males, and copies of docu- After serving in the Austrian army ments with state secrets. in World War I, Reich studied medicine in Redl's treason has been appraised Vienna. He spent his internship in the as a major factor in Austria's defeat in clinic of the Nobel Prize winner Julius World War I, as her enemies knew most of Wagner-Jauregg, and married a fellow her plans before the outbreak of hostili- medical student, Annie Pink, who also ties. The additional fact that Red1 was became a psychoanalyst. In the Jewish homosexual was exploited by the oppo- intellectual circles of interwarvienna, both nents of the homosexual emancipation Marxism and psychoanalysis were fash- movement which was then growing in the ionable, and Reich set about the task of German-speaking countries, and even synthesizing them. How could the discov- found mention in a United States Senate eries of Mam and Freud be placed at the subcommittee report of 1950duringthe service of the masses? He first joined the epidemic of McCarthyism-as proof that ' Austrian Socialist Party and became a clini- homosexuals were "security risks." cal assistant at Freud's Psychoanalytic Redl's lifehas been the subject of Polyclinic, which gave him close contact several fictionalized treatments, includ- with the working class. Reich aspired to ing John Osborne's play A Palriot for Me put knowledge of sexual hygiene within 9 REICH, WILHELM the reach of the industrial worker and found refuge in Norway, where he was remove the reproach that psychoanalysis able in 1936 to found the International was a middle-class luxury. Five years later, Institute for Sex-Economy to study the in 1929, he opened the first sex hygiene way the human body utilizes sexual en- clinic in Vienna that offered free advice ergy. The unifying principle of his theories on birth control, child rearing, and sex was the concept of energy, by which he education. meant no mystical klan vital, but an Reich's political interests soon actual, physical component of man and led him to question the neutrality required the universe that could be measured and of orthodox Freudian analysts. In 1927 his harnessed. The pursuit of this idea degen- book on The Function of the Orgasm was erated into an obsession in the last phase issued by theIntemationalPsychoanalytic of his life. Publishing House, and in 1928 he pub- Advised by a psychiatrist at Co- lished a paper on "Character Analysis" lumbia University, Theodore P. Wolfe, to that he subsequently elaborated into a emigrate to the United States, he joined book which is still regarded by many as his the throng of Jewish refugees from Nazi- most important contribution to the disci- ruled Europe in New York a few days pline. Idealizing the Soviet Union for the before the outbreak of war in 1939. In reforms it had undertaken after the Revo- Forest Hills, New York, he established the lution of 1917, he went to Moscow in 1929 Orgone Institute, a laboratory and later a expecting to find a new society, but dis- hospital. Despite his vicissitudes, he covered instead that the need to industri- was now convinced that he had found a alize backward Russia had taken prece- new kind of energy that could be stored dence over sexual hedonism, and that under in accumulators and used to strengthen Stalin reaction was slowly but inevitably the body against disease. He evenventured setting in. to treat cancer patients by placing them The rapprochement between in boxes resembling telephone booths Marxism and Freudianism for which Reich which supposedly collected orgone energy. was striving was doomed to fail, so that in This practice spawned the rumor that the end he was expelled from both the orgone accumulators could restore International Psychoanalytic Association waning potency. and the Communist Party. Moving to Such activities were not only Berlin in 1930, he promoted the German denounced by the American Medical As- Association for Proletarian Sexual Poli- sociation, but also investigated by the Food tics, which advocated abolition of the laws and Drug Administration, which in 1954 against homosexuality, and also reform of enjoined him from distributing orgone the marriage and divorce laws, free birth accumulators and operating the Orgone control counseling and contraceptive Institute Press. When a court order was devices, abolition of laws prohibiting sex issued for the destruction of all accumula- education, and an end to the restrictions tors, Reich defied it and soon found him- on abortion-all measures that have since self the defendant in a trial that ended with won general acceptance by reformers. a verdict of guilty and a two-year prison After publishing The Mass Psy- sentence. In March 1957 he entered chology of Fascism Reich returned to Danbury Penitentiary where he was diag- Vienna, but the rise of Nazism in Germany nosed as paranoid, but he disdained treat- and the complete repudiation of the sexual ment and died of heart disease in Lewis- reform movement in Stalinist Russia burg Penitentiary on November 3. marked the onset of a period of trials and Although Reich has become reverses that undoubtedly embittered him. almost synonymous with "sexual free- Rejected in one country after another, he dom" in some quarters, and his admirers RENAISSANCE, ITALIAN 6 include some gay activists and theoreti- until the bcginning of the sixteenth cen- cians, there is not a single favorable refer- tury, when it was introduced from Italy; ence to homosexuality in his writings. He yet it lasted somewhat longer there, at loathed homosexuals, never knowingly least in Protestant countries. accepted a homosexual for treatment; and The word Renaissance (literally: avoided overt homosexuals in his social rebirth) alludes to the impression, wide- and professional life. When a Norwegian spread in the period itself, that the ongoing physician recommended an individual for cultural and artistic flowering was a kind training with Reich, no sooner had the ofrevival--on achristian base, to besure- latter learned of the candidate's homo- of the glory of the ancient Romans, a sexuality than he rejected him with the revival attained on thevery soil from which words; "Zch will mit solchen Schwein- Rome itself had arisen. ereien nichts zu tun haben" (I want noth- A notable feature of the Italian ing to do with such filthiness).In a letter to Renaissance was an intense drive to re- A. S. Neil1 in 1948, Reich stated that while cover the authentic character of classical his discipline of sex economy dealt with antiquity. This impulse led to the redis- the problems of natural genitality, the covery of original texts, chiefly Latinonee sexology promoted by the World League though the study of Greek and Hebrew for Sexual Reform (Hirschfeld's bailiwick) was also promoted. As a result of this concentrated on lingams, condoms, and trend, ancient manuscripts thought to have homosexual perversions. He had earlier been lost were copied and disseminated, maintained that homosexuality was a and a new branch of learning, philology, disease of fascism that would "wither was foundcd. away" under socialism. Despite all this, The roots of the Renaissance lie the radical wave of the 1960sand later saw in the great upsurge of commerce and counterculture homosexuals tllrn to Reich industry that occurred in Italy after the as an authority for repudiating conven- year 1000. These advances required cul- tional morality and equating socialism tural changes: merchants needed to know with the untrammeled gratification of their how to read and write and to keep ac- own sexual impulses. counts. A surplus of wealth accumulated that sufficed to maintain a number of BIBLIOGRAPHY. David Boadella, scholars and investigators in "full-time Wilhelm Reich: The Evolution of his Work, London: Vision Press, 1973; employment." Since the traditional train- Eustace Chesser, Reich and Sexual ing that religious schools provided was Preedom, London: Vision Press, 1972! inadequate, lay schools appeared, from Ilse Ollendorff Reich, Wilhelm Reich: A which a number of prestigious Italian Personal Biography, New York: St. universities developed. Becoming famous Martin's Press, 1969. Warren Johansson throughout Europe, the universities were one of the channels that diffused the Ital- ianRenaissance, permanently injectingits RENAISSANCE,ITALIAN values into Western civilization. In Italy the term Renaissance Social Background. With respect designates a period somewhat different to homosexuality the Renaissance atti- from that in the rest of Europe: the Italian tude was not uniform. The beginning of Renaissance embraces the epoch that the Renaissance-the late fourteenth stretches from the late fourteenth century century-coincided with increased perse- through the later decades of the sixteenth cution of homosexuals. Toward the middle century, when the Catholic Counterrefor- of the fifteenth century, however, a more mation took hold. On the other side of the tolerant atmosphere began to prevail, and Alps, the Renaissance did not commence capital punishment became uncommon.