Character Analysis

Third, Enlarged Edition

By: Wilhelm Reich

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

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.