Page "Wilhelm Reich" Paragraph 102

Luis Cordon writes that Reich's long slide from medical and scientific respectability concluded with the consensus inside and outside the psychoanalytic community that he was at best a crackpot, and at worst was suffering from a serious mental illness.

His work nevertheless influenced a generation of intellectuals, including the writers Saul Bellow ( 1915 – 2005 ), William Burroughs ( 1914 – 1997 ) and Norman Mailer ( 1923 – 2007 ), and the founder of Summerhill School in England, A. S. Neill.

The French philosopher Michel Foucault ( 1926 – 1984 ) wrote in 1978 that the impact of Reich's critique of sexual repression had been substantial.

Sharaf wrote in 1983 that Paul Mathews and John M. Bell started teaching a course on Reich in 1968 at New York University through its Division of Continuing Study, and it was apparently still being taught at the time Sharaf was writing, making it the longest-running course ever taught in that division.