(026891) Reich, Wilhelm. American Odyssey: Letters And Journals, 1940-1947. New York: Farrar, Straus And Giroux, 1999. 1st Edition. Hardcover. 8vo. 453 pages. Fine in Fine DJ. B&W Photographs. Trained at the Berlin Psychoanalytic Institute, Reich (1897-1957) joined the faculty of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute in 1924. In The Function of the Orgasm (192 7) , he argued that the failure to achieve orgasm could produce neurosis. An advocate of sexual education and freedom as well as of radical left- wing politics, he left Germany in 1933 and settled in the U. S. In 1939. After breaking with the psychoanalytic movement in 1934, he developed a pseudoscientific system called orgonomy. He conceived of mental illness and some physical illnesses as deficiency of cosmic energy (measured in units called “orgones”) , which he treated by placing the patient in a cabinet with reflective inner surfaces known as the orgone box. Reich's views brought him into conflict with U. S. Authorities in the early 1950s; he was convicted of contempt of court and died in prison ISBN: 0374104360 (Psychoanalysts, Austria, Correspondence)