Lore Kahn

Lore Kahn was born in Vienna in 1901. She was a teacher trainee at an experimental kindergarten for Jewish orphans. In 1900 she began a relationship with Karl Frank, a charismatic and radical member of the communist youth movement. After the relationship came to an end she became a patient of Wilhelm Reich, a young psychologist living in the city. (1)

Reich later recorded details of Kahn in his diary. "She was lively, clever, and somewhat 'messed up' because she had no proper boyfriend. She was in love with a brave revolutionary politician... she had attached herself to him and slept with him. But now she could no longer have him. This made her miserable. Lore became psychically ill, even though she was a strong person. She lost her self-confidence and became moody and so no longer liked herself....She fell in love with me. It was not only a case of father-transference; and where, after all, is the basic difference between a genuine, sensual love for the father and the equally real sensual feeling for a lover who is to replace father and mother and simultaneously provide the pleasure of sexual union ! In short, Lore declared one day that she was analyzed, and now she wanted me." (2)

Wilhelm Reich

Sigmund Freud warned fellow psychologists of something he called "erotic transference" when female patients acted out their Oedipal desire to be seduced by their fathers. He wrote a paper entitled Observations on Transference Love, where he tried to impose what was known as the "rule of abstinence" on the analytic process, requiring the analyst to deny the patient's craving for love. (3) Despite this several early psychologists, such as Carl Jung, Ernest Jones, Sándor Ferenczi and Wilhelm Stekel, all had affairs with patients. Reich agreed with Freud's instructions: "One should not sleep with one's patients; it is too complicated and dangerous." (4)

One day Kahn declared that she was cured and that she now loved Reich. It was decided that Kahn's analysis should be brought to an end. A few weeks later Reich attended a lecture given by Kahn on kindergartens. After the talk she invited Reich to go hiking with her in the Vienna Woods, where Reich and Kahn embarked on an affair. (5) Reich explained: "She knew what she wanted and did not hide it. After all, she was no longer a patient. And it was nobody's business. I loved her, and she grew very happy." (6)

Wilhelm and Annie Reich with their two daughters, Eva and Lore — Wilhelm Reich (c. 1922)

Lore Kahn wrote in her diary: "I am happy, boundlessly happy. I would never have thought that I could be - but I am. The fullest, deepest fulfillment. To have a father and be a mother, both in the same person. Marriage! Monogamy! At last! Never was there coitus with such sensual pleasure, such gratification, and such a sense of oneness and inter-penetration as now. Never such parallel attraction of the mind and body. And it is beautiful. And I have direction, clear, firm, and sure - I love myself this way. I am content as nature intended! Only one thing: a child!" (7)

Death of Lore Kahn

Reich and Kahn used to sleep together on their hiking outings, but back in Vienna, his landlady wouldn't permit female guests. In his autobiography, Reich rejected the idea of marriage or living together: "All was well between us. But we had no room in which we could be together undisturbed. It was no longer possible at my place; the landlady had become hostile and a threat. So Lore got a room at a friend's. It was unheated and bitter cold. Lore became ill, ran a high fever, with dangerous articular rheumatism, and eight days later died of sepsis, in the bloom of her young life." (8)

Reich responded by writing a letter to his dead lover: "To you, Lore, with your now cold, pale face and its lingering smile at a world which your free spirit outwitted wherever it could; to you, with your loose flowing hair which you tossed into my face on a bright moonlit night as we danced our way home, hand in hand, blissful over our world; to you, who made me forget the sordidness of life by telling me tales such as only you could tell as I rested my head on your lap in the warm sunshine; to you, who awaited me in a dark room, whose tender lips kissed away all my cares in a happy onslaught and sowed the seed of lighthearted laughter within me! Your will to live, your sparkling joy in life were unable to frighten away an incredibly hideous death; how you smiled and overlooked the filth which surrounded you! I send you a kiss, my beloved companion. When all else has receded into the infinite grayness, your naive, childlike freshness will still be with me." (9)

Lore Kahn's parents had urged her not to see Reich and claimed that their daughter had died after a botched illegal abortion, possibly performed by Reich himself. She visited him and accused him of being a murderer. Reich recorded in his diary: "This is the hysterical comedy of a woman in menopause, who has identified with her daughter and is lustfully wallowing in the idea of an operation despite its obvious absurdity. This wallowing is the hysterical symptom of a desire for an operation she really wanted - from me!" (10)

According to one of Reich's biographer's, Christopher Turner, she found some of her daughter's bloodied underwear in a cupboard and accused Reich of having arranged an illegal abortion for her daughter and suggested that it was this that killed her. Later, Reich confessed to Elsa Lindenberg that Lore Kahn had died as a result of an illegal abortion. (11)

In December, 1920, Mrs. Kahn committed suicide. Reich wrote in his diary: "There is no way to avoid the feeling that I am the murderer of an entire family, for the fact remains that if I had not entered that household, both of them would still be alive! And with this on my mind I continue my life-more lectures, analysis, concerts. I am acting out a comedy, while causing the people around me to die! Didn't my own mother also die-better said, also commit suicide - because I had told all? I seek relief from this heavy burden; who will help me? Who am I and what can I do? Why do I bring about such tragedies of life and death? (12)

Primary Sources

(1) Wilhelm Reich, The Passion of Youth (1988)

She (Lore Kahan) was lively, clever, and somewhat 'messed up' because she had no proper boyfriend. She was in love with a brave revolutionary politician... she had attached herself to him and slept with him. But now she could no longer have him. This made her miserable. Lore became psychically ill, even though she was a strong person. She lost her self-confidence and became moody and so no longer liked herself.... She fell in love with me. It was not only a case of father-transference; and where, after all, is the basic difference between a genuine, sensual love for the father and the equally real sensual feeling for a lover who is to replace father and mother and simultaneously provide the pleasure of sexual union ! In short, Lore declared one day that she was analyzed, and now she wanted me.

(2) Lore Kahan, diary entry (27th October, 1920)

I am happy, boundlessly happy. I would never have thought that I could be - but I am. The fullest, deepest fulfillment. To have a father and be a mother, both in the same person. Marriage! Monogamy! At last! Never was there coitus with such sensual pleasure, such gratification, and such a sense of oneness and inter penetration as now. Never such parallel attraction of the mind and body. And it is beautiful. And I have direction, clear, firm, and sure - I love myself this way. I am content as nature intended! Only one thing: a child!

(3) Wilhelm Reich, The Passion of Youth (1988) page 126

All was well between us. But we had no room in which we could be together undisturbed. It was no longer possible at my place; the landlady had become hostile and a threat. So Lore got a room at a friend's. It was unheated and bitter cold. Lore became ill, ran a high fever, with dangerous articular rheumatism, and eight days later died of sepsis, in the bloom of her young life.

(4) Wilhelm Reich, letter to the dead Lore Kahan (20th November, 1920)

To you, Lore, with your now cold, pale face and its lingering smile at a world which your free spirit outwitted wherever it could; to you, with your loose flowing hair which you tossed into my face on a bright moonlit night as we danced our way home, hand in hand, blissful over our world; to you, who made me forget the sordidness of life by telling me tales such as only you could tell as I rested my head on your lap in the warm sunshine; to you, who awaited me in a dark room, whose tender lips kissed away all my cares in a happy onslaught and sowed the seed of lighthearted laughter within me! Your will to live, your sparkling joy in life were unable to frighten away an incredibly hideous death; how you smiled and overlooked the filth which surrounded you! I send you a kiss, my beloved companion. When all else has receded into the infinite grayness, your naive, childlike freshness will still be with me.

(5) Wilhelm Reich, diary entry after hearing that Lore Kahn's mother had killed herself (10th December, 1920)

There is no way to avoid the feeling that I am the murderer of an entire family, for the fact remains that if I had not entered that household, both of them would still be alive! And with this on my mind I continue my life-more lectures, analysis, concerts. I am acting out a comedy, while causing the people around me to die! Didn't my own mother also die-better said, also commit suicide - because I had told all? I seek relief from this heavy burden; who will help me? Who am I and what can I do? Why do I bring about such tragedies of life and death?