Character Analysis

Background

Reich finished the manuscript in January 1933. He submitted it to the Psychoanalytic Press in Vienna, presided over by Sigmund Freud, who initially accepted it for publication. However, Freud cancelled the contract, wanting to distance himself from Reich's politics. Reich borrowed money and published the book privately in Vienna.

Summary

Reich argues that character structures were organizations of resistance with which individuals avoided facing their neuroses: different character structures — whether schizoid, oral, psychopathic, masochistic, hysterical, compulsive, narcissistic, or rigid — were sustained biologically as body types by unconscious muscular contraction.

Reception

Harry Guntrip wrote that Freud's The Ego and the Id only gained practical importance when Reich's Character Analysis and Anna Freud's The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence were published, as these books first placed ego-analysis at the centre of psychoanalytic therapy. Character Analysis is referenced in A Thousand Plateaus (1980), by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.

References

References

1. Kevin Hinchey, [http://www.wilhelmreichtrust.org/legacy_of_wilhelm_reich-2010_10_30.pdf The Legacy of Wilhelm Reich, M.D.] {{Webarchive. link. (2016-06-23 , First International Congress on Wilhelm Reich, 30 October 2010)
2. Guntrip, Harry (1961) ''Personality Structure and Human Interaction'', London: Hogarth Press, quoted in Boadella, David (1985) ''Wilhelm Reich: The Evolution of His Work'', London: 54.
3. (1993). "A Thousand Plateaus". University of Minnesota Press.