Character Analysis

Character Analysis

The German edition
Author	Wilhelm Reich
Original title	Charakteranalyse
Language	Originally German, translated into English
Publisher	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Media type	Print
Pages	545
ISBN	0-374-50980-8

Part of a series of articles on
Psychoanalysis
Concepts Psychosexual development Psychosocial development (Erikson) Unconscious Preconscious Consciousness Psychic apparatus Id, ego and super-ego Libido Drive Transference Countertransference Ego defenses Resistance Projection Denial Dreamwork
Important figures Alfred Adler Michael Balint Wilfred Bion Josef Breuer Nancy Chodorow Max Eitingon Erik Erikson Ronald Fairbairn Paul Federn Otto Fenichel Sándor Ferenczi Anna Freud Sigmund Freud Erich Fromm Harry Guntrip Karen Horney Edith Jacobson Ernest Jones Carl Jung Heinz Kohut Melanie Klein Jacques Lacan Ronald Laing Margaret Mahler Jacques-Alain Miller Sandor Rado Otto Rank Wilhelm Reich Joan Riviere Isidor Sadger Ernst Simmel Sabina Spielrein James Strachey Harry Stack Sullivan Susan Sutherland Isaacs Donald Winnicott
Important works The Interpretation of Dreams (1899) The Psychopathology of Everyday Life (1901) Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905) Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) The Ego and the Id (1923)
Schools of thought Self psychology Lacanian Jungian Object relations Interpersonal Relational Ego psychology
Training Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis British Psychoanalytic Council British Psychoanalytical Society Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research International Psychoanalytical Association World Association of Psychoanalysis
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Character Analysis (German: Charakteranalyse) is a 1933 book by Wilhelm Reich.

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.^[1]

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 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.^[2] Character Analysis is referenced in A Thousand Plateaus (1980), by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.^[3]

References

External links

• Reich, W. (1990) Character Analysis (Chapters I-III), 3rd, enlarged edition, trans. Vincent R. Carfagno, Archived from the original on 25 September 2012.