Theodor Reik was born in Vienna in 1902. He received his doctorate in psychology from the University of Vienna, where he was a student of Sigmund Freud. Reik joined the psychoanalytic movement in 1924, when he published his first book, The Trauma of Birth. He became famous for his work on trauma and was particularly associated with Freud's theory of the Oedipus complex
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From 1930 to 1933, Reik worked as a psychoanalyst at the Austro-Hungarian Psychoanalytic Institute in Vienna. In 1934 he emigrated to the United States, where he taught at New York University and analyzed Rene Spitz for several years. In 1954, Reik again immigrated to the United States, settling in Evanston, Illinois, where he taught at Northwestern University until his death in 1975.