Mary Boyd Higgins, the product of a privileged youth in Indianapolis, was living comfortably in New York in the 1950s when she volunteered to manage the trust of Wilhelm Reich, a highly controversial psychoanalyst who coined the phrase “the sexual revolution.”

An Austrian-born Marxist who had linked fascism with sexual repression, Dr. Reich had the rare distinction of having his writings ordered destroyed by both the Nazis in Germany in the 1930s and the United States government in the 1950s, during the McCarthy era.

When she volunteered to become his trustee, Ms. Higgins was familiar with his work but had never met Dr. Reich, who died in federal prison in 1957. Little did she know that by the time she died, on Jan. 8 at 93, she would have devoted nearly 60 years of her life to carrying out his elaborate last wishes.

Dr. Reich had appointed one of his daughters, Eva Reich, trustee, but after a year she desperately sought someone else to take on that responsibility.