Beyond Psychology: Wilhelm Reich's Letters and Journals, 1934-1939 edited by Mary Boyd Higgins translated by Derek and Inge Jordan and Philip Schmitz. New York:  Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994,  xxiii + 256 pp., $25.00.

Wilhelm Reich's life (1897-1957) was one of marked metamorphosis. Politically, Reich was by turns socialist, communist, and conservative. Professionally, he was a psychoanalyst and then biological and physical scientist. To the psychoanalytic world he has long been a challenging and problematic character—brilliant in some respects and delusional in others. Many orthodox analysts of the past dismissed him as “crazy,” but in doing so they avoided confronting Reich in his complexity.

Mary Boyd Higgins, of The Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust, has recently published a selection of Reich's letters and journals from his 37th to 42nd years. They make for fascinating reading and also work well dramatically. The years covered show us Reich's early activities as a scientist, the increasing momentum of his discoveries, and the external scientific reaction. We also get glimpses into Reich's repeated and unsuccessful attempts to keep alive the links with his children by a first marriage and his stormy relationship with his subsequent lover. All builds to the climax of his leaving Europe and emigrating to the United States in 1939.