‘I Fear this will Drive us Apart’: The Break Between Otto Fenichel and Wilhelm Reich as Told in Unpublished Documents, 1933–1934

In the early 1930s Wilhelm Reich and Otto Fenichel were the two best-known members of the ‘left-wing’ opposition within the psychoanalytic profession. The article draws on newly rediscovered documents to highlight their different views and approaches in regard to the International Psychoanalytic Association's strategy of adaptation to the Nazi regime. While Reich prioritized pressing ahead with a socially critical and antifascist form of psychoanalysis, with or without the IPA, Fenichel felt that his work could only continue within the IPA framework and was prepared to make many more compromises than Reich. This difference is evident in their correspondence in 1933 and would lead to the end of their friendship in 1934. Reich's expulsion from the IPA, consummated at the IPA Congress in Lucerne, made official his earlier expulsion from the German Psycho-Analytic Society, which had taken place behind closed doors in 1933. Reich did not receive the support he hoped for from Fenichel in the confrontations that followed. This brought their friendship and collaboration to an end. Their argument over the mission and social responsibility of psychoanalysis remains of topical importance given the present-day backdrop of a political shift to the right. The translation of this article was generously funded by Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing.