Eva Reich, 84, Lectured on Reichian Psychology
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Eva Reich, daughter of Wilhelm Reich and lecturer on the controversial work on orgonomy that he pioneered more than a half century ago, died Sunday at her home in Hancock, Maine. She was 84.
Eva Reich, a native of Vienna who moved to America in 1938, participated in many of her father’s experiments, including those concerning UFOs and the “orgone energy” he said permeated the atmosphere and all living things. Wilhelm Reich, a psychiatrist who had studied with Sigmund Freud, died in prison in 1957 after his conviction for ignoring an injunction that outlawed devices he developed to accumulate energy associated with sexual orgasm.
Eva Reich was a physician and a graduate of the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania. With her husband, artist William Moise, she moved to Hancock in 1952 and set up a rural practice. After her divorce in 1974, Reich traveled to 30 countries to lecture about her father’s work and her own.
Focusing on infant emotional health, she developed a treatment for upset and colicky babies that involved a gentle touch she called butterfly baby massage.
