Psychoanalysis During National Socialism; Present-Day Consequences of a Historical Controversy in the “Case” of Wilhelm Reich: Bernd Nitzschke (translated by Zvi Lothane)

A few years ago, Wenda Focke, who wrote W. G. Niederland's authorized biography, sent me a clipping from the German intellectual weekly Die Zeit containing a review of Kurt Eissler's study of Leonardo da Vinci. The reviewer was Bernd Nitzschke (1993) and he caught my attention because he cited Freud's words from the Schreber analysis: A delusion “which we take to be the pathological product, is really an attempt at recovery, a process of reconstruction” (Freud, Standard Edition 12:71, emphasis in original). Clearly, Nitzschke was a kindred spirit, and I decided to track him down; this impression was confirmed in our ensuing exchanges.

In 1997 Nitzschke sent me a book he coauthored and coedited with his Austrian colleague, Karl Fallend, titled The Case of Wilhelm Reich, which appealed to me because of my interest in Wilhelm Reich since my medical school days. One of the most creative psychoanalysts in prewar Vienna and Berlin, Reich became an outcast among psychoanalysts, a sensation in the United States because of his orgone research and “orgone box,” and a martyr following his trial and death in 1956, although his reputation was later to be revived and rehabilitated. Nitzschke's chapter on Reich opened my eyes to a hitherto unknown aspect of Reich: All these years I have believed that in 1934 Reich was expelled from the International Psychoanalytical Association (IPA) because of his heretical views as a psychoanalyst, whereas Nitzschke maintains that he became persona non grata because of his opposition