Otto Fenichel & Wilhelm Reich: history of a friendship

VIENNA, 12 TH EABP CONGRESS 

Otto Fenichel & Wilhelm Reich: 

The father and the hidden uncle of 

body psychotherapy (illustrations 

added in 2012)* 

BY 

MICHAEL COSTER HELLER, DR. PHIL 

PSYCHOLOGIST & PSYCHOTHERAPIST FSP/AVP/EABP 

RUE DU MAUPAS 10, CH-1004 LAUSANNE 

CONTACT AND ARTICLES: WWW.AQUALIDE.CH 

*A CHAPTER IN: Michael C. Heller (2012). Body Psychotherapy: history, 

concepts & methods. New York: W.W. Norton.

• Even if I summarize the data, the Reich-Fenichel 

relationship yields so much crucial information 

that I may not have time to tell you all I would 

want to. 

• Instead of rushing you through more data than 

you can take, I will put my power point 

presentation on my website, next week, so that 

you can look at the information at a leisurely 

space. 

• I thank Johannes Reichmayr for some of the facts 

on Otto Fenichel contained in this presentation. 

• My website: www.aqualide.com

I. The beguining: 

Island near Bergan, in Norway, where Ola Raknes (1887-1975) and gerda 

Boyesen’s maternal grand mother were born (source: Ebba Boyesen)

• 1897: Birth of Wilhelm Reich in 

Galicia, which was the part of 

Austrian Ukraine 

http://ukrainetrek.com/eastern-district 

10 years latter, birth of 

Wilhelm Reich & Otto Fenichel 

• 1897: Birth of Otto Fenichel 

in Vienna, capital of the 

Austro-Hungarian Empire 

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Altes_Rathaus_Wien_um_18 

80.gif

II. Vienna after the 

first world war: 

anti war youth 

movements fight 

for a responsible 

sexual freedom 

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• 1915: Otto Fenichel 

enters the Faculty of 

medicine in Vienna 

• 1916: Otto Fenichel 

joins Jewish Marxist 

youth movement, who 

are fighting for a new 

way of dealing with 

sexual politics and 

morals. 

• 1916: Fenichel follows 

Freud’s conferences 

• 1915: Wilhelm Reich 

is enrolled in the 

Austrian army 

• 1918: Wilhelm Reich 

enters the Faculty of 

medicine in Vienna. 

He is an emigrant 

from the periphery of 

the empire.

1919-1921: Otto Fenichel creates the Seminar 

on sexology in the medical faculty 

• Otto Fenichel follows 

Freud’s conferences. 

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1919-1921: Wilhelm Reich becomes a student in Otto 

Fenichel’s seminar on sexology in the medical faculty 

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What Wilhelm Reich discovered in 

Otto Fenichel’s sexual seminar: 

- Youth movements and sexual revolution 

- A humanist form of Marxism 

- Sexology 

- Freud 

- The psychoanalysis of Ferenczi 

EABP Congress, Vienna 2010

1919 

- Vienna is now the capital of the Austrian Republic. It 

remains one of the capitals of German culture (e.g. It is 

still the center of classical psychoanalysis, as Freud is in 

Vienna). 

- The German empire becomes the Weimar republic. It 

now becomes the only important German speaking 

country. Berlin is gradually becoming the capital of 

German culture. (e.g. The Berlin Institute of 

Psychoanalysis, directed by Karl Abraham, is becoming 

the center of new psychoanalytic developments)

- Otto Fenichel and Wilhelm Reich become members of the 

psychoanalytic Association, and the group of Marxist 

psychoanalysts, directed by Paul Federn. 

-They have their first patients. 

1920 

-They both follow a psychoanalysis with Paul Federn. Reich only 

receives a short treatment (a few months). Reich also has a short 

treatment with Isodor Isaak Sadger. 

- Fenichel introduces Annie Pink to Wilhelm Reich. She begins a 

psychoanalysis with Reich. She then becomes Annie Reich. They 

will have two children together: Eva (1924) and Lore (1928). Annie 

Reich also became a member of Marxist psychoanalysts. Her 

friendship with Fenichel lasted until his death.

The Communism of Fenichel and Reich 

• Otto Fenichel belonged to 

the Austrian more socialist 

form of Marxism, close to 

Kautsky’s branch of 

communism, which 

remained close to Marx’s 

notion that communism 

should influence historical 

processes through 

democratic procedures. 

• Wilhelm Reich belonged 

to the soviet Leninist 

branch of communism, 

which believed that 

communists should take 

power through a 

revolution. 

Among Marxist psychoanalysts, the socialist branch was 

dominant. Reich wanted to convert them to his point of 

view.

The context 

• Freud looks for new trainers who can teach his second 

topography (id, ego, super-ego). Fenichel and Reich are ideal 

persons for this task. 

Psychoanalytic A- 

Team, 1922. Seated, 

left to right, Freud, 

Ferenczi, and Hans 

Sachs; standing, Otto 

Rank, Karl Abraham, 

Max Eitingon, and 

Ernest Jones 

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1922-1923: Berlin, I 

- Fenichel asked Reich to direct the sexual seminar and 

left for Berlin. 

- There, Karl Abraham and his colleague had created a 

Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute of psychoanalysis. After 

the war, Vienna was only the capital of psychoanalysis 

because Freud lived there… a bit like Washington is the 

capital of the USA. The New York of psychoanalysis had 

moved to Berlin. This where the new development were 

forged. This is where psychoanalysts developed the 

implications of Freud’s Second Topography (Id, Ego & 

Super-Ego) and the dynamics of transference.

1922-1923: Berlin, II 

The institute offers the first serious training for 

psychoanalysis. It requires an in depth psychoanalysis 

and regular supervision. In Vienna this was not proposed 

because Freud did not want to be the therapist of all his 

colleagues. He wanted collegial relationships. In Berlin 

there was enough eminent psychoanalysts to carry out 

such a training program.

Abraham also created a psychoanalytic 

clinic for people who needed support from 

psychoanalysts but who cannot afford a 

classical psychoanalytic cure. 

Each person who wanted to become a 

psychoanalyst had to follow one patient 

for one year without pay, or support the 

clinic by paying 4% of what he earned in 

his private practice. By working at the 

clinic a young psychoanalyst could have 

practical supervised experience. 

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1922-1923: Berlin, III 

Most of the famous psychoanalysts of that 

generation are there. For example: Erich Fromm, 

Karen Horney, Edith Jacobson from Germany, 

Melanie Klein et Helene Deutsch from Austria, 

Edward et James Glover from England, Sándor 

Radó et Franz Alexander from Hungary, Nic Waal 

et Ola Raknes from Norway, and Trygve Braatøy 

from the USA. 

Most of you have read at least one of these 

psychoanalysts.

Fenichel and Gindlerian gymnastics (1925-1940), I 

In Berlin, Otto Fenichel fell in love with Clare 

Nathansohn. She soon became Clare Fenichel. They gave 

birth to a daughter called Hanna. This Hanna is not the 

same Hanna who became Fenichel’s second wife, in 

California. 

The reason why we need to include this marriage in our 

discussion is that Clare Fenichel was also a teacher in 

gymnastics, trained by Elsa Gindler, who was presented 

to you this morning by Ulf Geuter.

Elsa Gindler 

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Elsa Gindler 

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Fenichel and Gindlerian gymnastics (1925-1940), II 

- Otto Fenichel followed Elsa Gindler’s school, 

where he discovered body work. There he got rid 

of his migraines which nobody, including his 

psychotherapists, could cure. 

- As we shall see in Johannes Reichmayr’s 

presentation, Fenichel began to imagine that one 

could use gymnastics and psychoanalysis as 

complementary modes of intervention for certain 

person’s.

Fenichel and Gindlerian gymnastics (1925-1940), 

III 

To integrate gymnastics into psychoanalysis, Fenichel 

developed the following formulation the relation 

between Ego and motor functions imagined by Freud: 

« The ego is first and foremost a body-ego, » says 

Freud in The Ego and the Id, and he means by this 

that the distinction between ego-and non-ego is 

first learned by the infant in the discovery of its 

body in such a way that in its world of ideas its 

own body begins to be set off from the rest of the 

environment. (Otto Fenichel 1938, The drive to 

amass wealth: 97)

Fenichel and Gindlerian gymnastics (1925-1940), IV 

- He developed a model in which the libido coordinated 

the mental, physiological and body dimensions. In this 

model all these dimensions continuously influenced 

each other. 

- What psychoanalysts called resistances structured the 

following dimensions: Ways of thinking, instinctual 

dynamics, muscular tone (hypertone and hypotone), 

breathing, metabolism, and the texture of the skin. 

- Each of these dimensions allowed the therapist to 

contact specific dimensions of emotional and 

psychological dynamics.

Fenichel and Gindlerian gymnastics (1925-1940), V 

- Otto and Clare Fenichel organized seminars in the 

psychoanalytic institute, on psychoanalysis, 

gymnastics and breathing. 

- In 1928 Fenichel published an article on organ 

Libidinization, in which he described how gymnastics 

and psychoanalysis could be used as complementary 

modes of intervention to explore the dynamics of the 

emotions and of the mind. For him body and mind 

function in clearly differentiated ways, that 

nevertheless interact with each other within the 

organism.

Fenichel and Gindlerian gymnastics (1925-1940), VI 

- Because body and mind do not function in the same 

way, they need to be approached through different 

methods. This was at least the vision Otto fenichel 

and Elsa Gindler, who never tried to combine their 

methods with a single process, but who sometimes 

recommended to a patient that he could follow both 

forms of treatment in parallel. 

- Here is an example:

Fenichel and Gindlerian gymnastics (1925-1940), VII 

A patient reported that her gymnastics teacher 

continually called her attention to the intensity with 

which she kept her neck and throat musculature in a 

constant spastic tension. Attempts to loosen this tension 

only increased it. The analysis showed that as a child the 

patient saw a pigeon’s head being torn off and the 

headless pigeon still moving its wings a few times. This 

experience lent her castration complex a lasting form: 

she had an unconscious fear of being behaded, and this 

fear also manifested itself in numerous other symptoms, 

modes of behavior, and directions of interest. (Otto 

Fenichel, Organ Libidinization, I: 133)

Fenichel and Gindlerian gymnastics (1925-1940), VIII 

In this example it is the gymnastic teacher who 

isolates a body phenomenon that should be explored by 

the psychoanalyst. The psychoanalyst discovers what 

unconscious situation is related to that body 

phenomenon. He also discovers that transference 

prevented the gymnastic teacher from being efficient. 

The patient identified herself with the pigeon and the 

gymnastic teacher to the force that cut the pigeon’s 

head. 

In other cases, as with Fenichel’s headaches, it is the 

gymnastic teacher that holds the relevant handle to 

explore a symptom, not the psychoanalyst.

• It is probably in the context of these discussions 

that Berliner analysts became interested in 

psychosomatics. The most famous of these was 

Franz Alexander, who later, in the USA, like 

Fenichel, also integrated Cannon’s organismic 

model of homeostasis. 

• 

• This is the nest in which Reich developed in own 

form of integration of body and mind dynamics in 

the organism. The theme of body and 

psychoanalysis was a hot issue for several 

members of the Berlin Institute. Reich brought 

many creative issues into this discussion.

Reich in Vienna (1920-1930), I 

In Vienna Reich developed the following themes: 

1. The libido generates stasis when it cannot express 

itself through orgasm. It will then generate neurosis 

as described in Freud’s model. Orgasm is a basic 

reference model of how all the dimensions of two 

organisms can interact with each other in a 

constructive and synergic way. 

2. Reich participates in the creation of a Viennese clinic 

which more or less worked like the Berlin clinic. There 

he studied the sexual behavior of people. 

3. He directed a training seminar where supervision of 

young psychoanalysts was used to improve their 

technique. It is in this context that he created his first 

model of Character Analysis.

Reich in Vienna (1920-1930), II: Organismic approach 

- Reich became interested in the biological concept of 

the organism, on the organism as an individual 

organism capable of self regulation while it interacted 

with is environment. This notion was fashionable in 

many intellectual circles in these days. 

- This individual system has its own particular biological 

or life energy, which forces biological organisms to 

evolve and look for increasingly efficient and 

functional modes of functioning. 

- For the moment he does not know what to do with 

this interest.

Reich in Vienna (1920-1930), III: psychoanalytic 

Character Analysis 

- The psychoanalytic Character Analysis focused on 

behavior and non verbal communication to contact the 

emotions that are associated to representations in the 

mind. 

- When I use the term body, I used it in its most restricted 

sense, referring to posture and muscular tone, as in 

Gindler’s gymnastics. This type of body work does not 

yet exist in Reich’s thinking, except, sometimes, when he 

speaks of sexual behavior and physiological arousal.

V. 1930, Reich in Berlin (1930-1933) 

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The discovery of Fenichel’s body 

In 1930, the Reich’s move to Berlin. 

There they are welcomed by the 

Fenichel’s. Reich is presented to every 

one not only as a close collaborator of 

Freud, but as Otto Fenichel’s best friend. 

- Annie and Eva Reich follow courses of 

Gindlerian gymnastic with Clare 

Fenichel. They seem to love it and speak 

of it to Wilhelm Reich. Annie and Eva 

Reich (6 years old) are thus those who 

introduced body work to Reich. 

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Wilhelm Reich falls in love with Elsa Lindenberg. She is a ballet 

dancer who was trained by, among others, Rudolph Laban, who is still 

very influential in dance therapy and a reference in studies of 

nonverbal communication. 

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Reich et Lindenberg 

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Laban

Laban in Berlin and Monte Verita 

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Laban 

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Laban 

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Reich in Berlin (1930-1933): The discovery of Fenichel’s 

body, II 

- It is during this period that Reich slowly but 

surely begins to include interventions on the 

body, using message and breathing techniques, 

during his sessions. It is therefore, once again 

clearly under the influence of Fenichel that 

Reich began to combine body work within the 

same sessions.

Reich in Berlin (1930-1933): The discovery of Fenichel’s 

body, II 

- We thus have two forms of psychoanalytical 

body psychotherapy by 1933: 

- 1. The Fenichel-Gindler way of associating a body 

work that is sensitive to the mind (Gindler’s 

gymnastics) and an approach of the mind that is 

sensitive to body dynamics (Fenichel’s approach). 

- 2. The Reichian method which includes highly 

simplistic body techniques in a psychoanalytic 

treatment.

The crisis : 1933 – 1935, I 

- History now intrudes it what was a smooth 

story, with the following events: 

- Reich is also an important member of the 

German Communist Party and of the 

communist youths. He is also involved in his 

sexual revolution project, in which he wants to 

include new sexual politics, based on 

institutional and political reforms- 

- Hitler is elected, promoting war on 

Communism and Jews alike.

The crisis : 1933 – 1935, II 

- For political reasons he is simultaneously, within a 

year, thrown out of : 

- 1. Fascist Germany, because he is a communist and a Jew. 

- 2. The communist party because in The Mass Psychology of 

Fascism Reich criticizes the communist party in ways that are 

incompatible with the rising Stalinism. 

- 3. The German Association of Psychoanalysis, who wants to be 

able to survive in Nazi Germany. Technically Reich could have 

been recognized as a psychoanalyst again by enlisting in the 

Norwegian psychoanalytic association. This solution was 

supported by Otto Fenichel.

The crisis : Reich abandons psychotherapy and creates 

organismic therapy 

- When Adler, Jung and Lacan where kicked out of the 

International Psychoanalytic Association, they 

developed their kind of psychoanalysis, without being 

able to really compete with the popularity of Freud’s 

psychoanalysis. 

- Reich did not want to finish his career as an ersatz 

psychoanalyst. He remembered his old passion for 

organismic theories, and decided to create a new 

form of therapy which focused on the global 

regulation systems of the organism.

IV. Oslo (1934-1939) 

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The house of Elsa and Wilhelm in Oslo 

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Fenichel & Braatøy 

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Reich & Raknes 

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The crisis : Reich abandons psychotherapy and creates 

organismic therapy 

- Reich turned his back on psychotherapy and 

communism, leaving these domains to psychoanalysts 

such as Otto Fenichel and Annie Reich. 

- It is in this context that he created Vegetotherapy, and 

ways of studying the energy of life that had fascinated 

him during his youth. 

- At the same time Reich’s seems to be so deeply 

wounded that he becomes bitter and hostile with all 

those that had been his friends. These worried for his 

mental equilibrium. It was the case for Otto Fenichel 

and Annie Reich.

Vegetotherapy: I 

- Henceforth, the psychological and body dimensions 

only interested him as ways of influencing the global 

regulation systems of the body. He had no intention of 

creating a body psychotherapy, for two reasons: 

- 1. He agreed with Fenichel and Gindler that one cannot not 

work simultaneously on dimensions such as the mind and the 

body, which follow completely different procedures. 

- 2. He was interested on the mechanisms that coordinate and 

structure the mind and the body. 

- What interested Reich was to heal the organism by 

working on the mechanisms that generate thoughts, 

behavior and body dynamics. Such work would allow 

him to cure whatever occurred in these dimensions.

1935 : Fenichel’s Theory of psychoanalytic technique 

- When Fenichel wrote this article, he still believed that 

one could openly discuss with Wilhelm Reich on his 

Vegetotherapy. 

- This discussion summarizes points that have recently 

been taken up by many body psychotherapist (E.G., 

Peter Levine, Pat Ogden, etc.). Fenichel clearly saw 

what was problematic in Reich’s approaches. What he 

did not realize, is that Reich did not bother to remain 

compatible with notions that characterize 

psychotherapy in general. 

- This discussion only takes into considerations issues 

related to psychotherapy, and does not take into 

consideration Reich’s argumentation on energy.

1935 : Fenichel’s Theory of psychoanalytic 

technique: Fenichel agrees with Reich General 

Theory 

- Fenichel still believes that Wilhelm Reich is 

one of the best psychoanalyst alive. 

- Fenichel agrees with Reich’s general 

proposition, that body dynamics and 

psychological dynamics are dimensions of 

the organism. 

- Fenichel agrees with Reich’s that the 

vegetative dimension of the organism plays 

a crucial role in affect regulation.


technique: Fenichel disagrees with some 

aspects of Reich’s therapeutic techniques, I 

- In the Vegetotherapy model, Reich proposes an 

analysis of the organisms in 7 segments. Fenichel 

is not convinced that the human organism has an 

organization that is as well organized as Reich’s 

theory on the organism. 

- For Fenichel, Reich’s general conception has 

already been accepted by many. He can therefore 

leave simplifications aside, an include more 

complexity in his thinking. Fenichel’s approach to 

the body is, for example, better informed (through 

Gindler) than what Reich is willing to learn.



aspects of Reich’s therapeutic techniques, II 

- It seems to Fenichel that Reich believes that a 

defense system should be attacked, and that 

patients should learn to live without one. 

- For Fenichel, the defense system is the regulation 

of the mind. Wanting to destroy the defense 

system of a patient is as stupid as wanting to 

destroy is physiological immune system. He thus 

finds Reich recent way of working intrusive and 

dangerous. 

- If Reich could change this, it would enhance his 

technique, without requiring any change of Reich’s 

general theory.



aspects of Reich’s therapeutic techniques, III 

- The article contains several such critics which still 

remain valid today. They are integrated in several 

schools of body psychotherapy, as they were 

passed on by some of Fenichel’s pupils, like Trygve 

Braatøy in Oslo, and Laura Perls in Esalen 

(California). Those that use this analysis today 

usually do not know that these ideas initially came 

from Fenichel, yet his writings prove that this is 

the case. 

- Reich took this discussion as a personal insult and 

as a proof that Fenichel wanted to destroy him; 

while Fenichel just wanted to engage in a 

discussion on psychotherapeutic technique with 

some one he loved and admired.

1935 : Fenichel goes to Prague, Reich turns to 

vinegar 

- In 1935 Fenichels group of Marxist 

psychoanalysts, which includes Annie Reich, meet 

in Prague. Their aim is to save their friend and 

colleague Edith Jacobson, who was imprisoned by 

the Nazi Germans. Edith Jacobson is also an 

acquaintance of Reich. Fenichel & Co. manage to 

save Edith Jacobson. They than went to America. 

- Reich has mean while become such an angry, 

bitter and hostile person, that the only thing he 

can think of is his ambitions. He doses not seem 

to have the least interest for what happens to 

Edith Jacobson. Only he is the victim of historical 

circumstances.

1935 : Fenichel goes to Prague, Reich turns to 

vinegar 

-All Reich can say about this episode is that 

all the Norwegian colleagues loved his new 

proposals, and found Fenichel boring. That 

Fenichel had used Edith Jacobson as a 

pretext, so as not show that he had been 

defeated by Reich. 

- He now presents Fenichel as somebody who 

became a Marxist thanks to Reich, and whose 

theory is mainly based on Reich’s ideas (Oslo, 

16.12.1934). From then on Fenichel was 

presented by Reich as an ancient student who 

had become a Judas.

Fenichel dies in 1945, I 

• In Los Angeles, where he lived, Fenichel 

published The psychoanalytic Theory of 

neurosis, which is his testament. In it he shows 

that his interest for organismic processes is 

only one chapter, but an important chapter. 

This article states all the issues which, even 

today, body psychotherapists should be aware 

of when they work with the body in the spirit 

of a psychodynamic body psychotherapy.

Fenichel dies in 1945, II 

• He shows that one needs psychoanalytic work for 

the psyche and refined body work for the body. 

For him, Reich’s approach has become 

dangerous, because it lacks respect for defense 

systems and the chore self. This model is 

relatively close to today’s models of body 

psychotherapy inspired by the neurosciences. 

• Meanwhile Reich has advanced in his orgonomy, 

and now regularly combines body and 

psychological work in a global organismic model.

1945 : Reich on Fenichel’s death 

That man died of his structural cowardice, I cannot judge whether 

my publication of his misdeed which appeared in April 1945 gave 

him a push. In his book he plagiarized absolutely everything from 

me and since he was aware of this it must have been a terrible 

ordeal for him. Wilhelm Reich (1999). American Odyssey: Letters & 

Journals, 1940-1947. Edited by Mary Boyd Higgins. : 335. New York: 

Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 

Chapter 16 in Character Analysis.

1945 : Reich on Fenichel’s death 

These are Reich’s final comments on Fenichel: 

That man died of his structural cowardice, I cannot judge 

weather my publication of his misdeed which appeared 

in April 1945 gave him a push. In his book he plagiarized 

absolutely everything from me and since he was aware of 

this it must have been a terrible ordeal for him. 

Wilhelm Reich (1999). American Odyssey: Letters & Journals, 1940- 

1947. Edited by Mary Boyd Higgins. : 335. New York: Farrar, Straus 

and Giroux.

Conclusion 

• Reich is the roc around which an organismic vision of 

psychotherapy could be built. 

• When pupils of Reich (e.g., Alexander Lowen) decided that 

orgonomy was not a psychotherapy, they created a body 

psychotherapy inspired by orgonomy. To achieve this aim 

they began by integrating Ferenczi’s and Fenichel’s analysis 

to construct the psychotherapeutic dimension of what is 

now known as body psychotherapy. 

• Finally, if I look at today’s discussion on body 

psychotherapy, I have the impression that Fenichel is the 

source of a river that changed as it found ways of flowing 

around the reichian rock. 

• E.g.; Alexander Lowen (1958) : The language of the body

Modes of intervention in body 

psychotherapy 

• Gindler : Body + Psy = organismic 

• Fenichel : Psy + Body = organismic 

• Reich : Psy -> Organism

Recommended bibliography 

• Fenichel, O. (1928). The collected papers of Otto Fenichel, 

I. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 

• Fenichel, O. (1945a). The psychoanalytic Theory of 

neurosis. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996. 

• Jacoby, R., The Repression of Psychoanalysis 

• Makari, G. (2008). Revolution in mind. The creation of 

psychoanalysis. New York: Harper. 

• Reich, W. (1999). American Odyssey. Letters and journals, 

1940-1947. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 

• Present synthesis: Michael C. Heller (2012). Body 

Psychotherapy: history, concepts & methods. New York: 

W.W. Norton.

Otto Fenichel & Wilhelm Reich: history of a friendship

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