Wilhelm Reich
Elsworth F. Baker, M.D.
Reprinted from The Journal of Orgonomy Volume 1, 1968
The American College of Orgonomy
greater the pleasure, the higher the charge which showed on the galvanometer. Also, in unpleasurable situations, the charge disappeared. Here was concrete evidence of a real energy. Reich called it "bioelectric energy." Later, he showed that this energy radiated out beyond the skin surface as an energy field. In a satisfactory sexual experience, this energy was somehow discharged, relieving stasis in the organism. Where anxiety was present, no charge reached the skin, and discharge could not occur. The genital could thus be looked upon as a specialized organ of the skin capable of discharging energy. With these findings, Reich left the psychic realm of psychoanalysis and entered the realm of biophysics, where he found a new concept of health. That concept was based on the energy metabolism of charge and discharge which Reich called "sex economy." He improved his therapy by working on the muscular armor directly and releasing the pent-up emotions. He called this character-analytic vegetotherapy and found that it was faster and more thorough than psychoanalysis or even character analysis, and effective in a greater number of patients.
To research into the origin of life, he studied the breakdown of food, reasoning that from food came the energy that supported life. Employing sterilization against contamination, he studied the disintegration under a magnification of 2000-3000x. He found that it broke down into tiny luminating globules which moved about freely and could be cultured. When germs or cancer cells were brought near them, the germs and cells were paralyzed and killed. These globules seemed to be an intermediate stage between the living and the non-living. Reich called them "bions". Bions are tiny blobs of energy held in a membrane and can be created from anything that can be made to swell and break down; from sand, coal, earth, and from living tissue. Reich was not the first to discover bions, nor was he the first to study them. H. Charlton Bastian, a contemporary of Pasteur, wrote about them in a book called The Beginnings of Life and argued that they were the origin of germs and disease. The world accepted Pasteur's view that germs were immutable and unchanging. But Bastian was closer to the truth. Reich did not learn of Bastian's work until several years later.
Reich studied bions all one winter (1939) in his basement laboratory and noticed that he began to tan and that his eyes burned. The eye condition, produced from looking through the microscope, developed into a conjunctivitis. It became obvious that bions must emit a radiation. He discovered that metal instruments near the bion cultures showed a charge on the electroscope. One day, he discovered that a pair of rubber gloves also had become highly charged. He remembered the Curies and radium, and he became frightened. What rays did they emit, these tiny things that showed such an effect? He tried to protect himself from them by building a metal-lined box to contain the radiation. Much to his surprise, the effect was much greater inside the box, and there were observable effects of the radiation outside of the box, also. There seemed to be no defense from this energy. It seemed to be everywhere; but as time passed and he did not appear harmed, he lost his fear and increased his research. He decided this was released energy that had first come from the sun. Later, he identified it as free in the atmosphere. He found it everywhere, in blood that was allowed to disintegrate, in tissue, and in grass. He identified it as the same energy he found at the skin surface and renamed it "life energy" or "orgone energy" from "organism" or "orgasm". Eventually, he concluded this was cosmic, primordial energy from which all matter, animate and inanimate, came: the ether man has discussed for ages. Reich considered this his greatest discovery following the discovery of the orgastic pleasure contraction. His later years were spent in studying this energy and were, thus, years spent in research in orgone physics.
Reich succeeded in developing protozoa from bions, and this gave him the idea that cancer might develop similarly. Concentrating on cancer research, he produced a motion picture film of cancer cells developing from the breakdown of living tissue and demonstrated cancer to be a biopathy resulting from sexual repression, with resignation and dying of the organism. Through these and other studies, he identified the specific life energy, which he called "orgone" (organism) energy.
In 1938, he published Die Bione and, in 1939, Bion Experiments on the Cancer Problem. A group of psychiatrists at the University of Oslo became very antagonistic toward his work and started a newspaper campaign against him. Reich maintained silence throughout, concentrating on his research. The situation, however, became untenable, and, in 1939, Reich accepted an invitation to come to America and lecture on medical psychology at The New School for Social Research in New York City. He lectured there for two years. On December 20, 1939, he was married a second time, to Ilse Ollendorff, who became a faithful assistant in his work, continuing that work even after their divorce in 1951. They had one son, Peter, born in 1944. Reich purchased a home in Forest Hills, New York, and it was here that he founded the Orgone Institute.
As "emotions" more and more came to mean to him the manifestations of a tangible bioenergy, and "character" to mean simply specific blockings of the flow of energy, he found that it was possible to change character directly by freeing biological energy, rather than indirectly through the use of psychological techniques. His therapy thus came to be called medical orgone therapy. Nevertheless, the psychological aspect was not ignored; its importance depended on the individual case. In some cases, character analysis is still the major approach; in others, it is largely unnecessary, and verbal communication, consisting of education, understanding of goals, and discussion of problems and resistances, suffices.
This concentration on freeing bioenergy by dissolving the muscular armor led to an understanding of the manner in which an organism frees itself from its restrictions and, conversely, how it develops its armor in the first place. Reich was able finally, in 1947, to identify seven segments in the organism, each largely independent of the others but at the same time, interdependent for unitary functioning. The seven segments are ocular, cervical, thoracic, diaphragmatic, abdominal, and pelvic. He also determined the importance of the eye segment in schizophrenia and epilepsy, which offered a rational therapeutic approach and hope for many patients who had previously been considered untreatable.
Reich went on to train students and to continue his research on cancer and orgone energy, particularly experimenting with the orgone energy accumulator (ORAC) on animals and humans. The ORAC was a six-sided box, consisting of alternate layers of organic material and metal, which he had experimentally determined produced a concentration of orgone energy. (One remembers, here, the construction of an atomic pile with alternate layers of carbon and uranium, as well as the Leyden jar, which is simply a jar lined with tinfoil). It was in 1940 that Reich discovered orgone energy in the atmosphere and experimented with the orgone energy accumulator, testing it with an electroscope and a thermometer and by observing the energy activity with the magnifying glass and a fluorescent screen. He could feel with his hands the rays which came from the metal walls, and his body felt warm and tingled as he sat in the box, while, over a period of time, his skin tanned. He also felt more vigorous and was not subject to colds. Blood tests showed an increase in his red cells which he had developed with wider energy fields and took longer to disintegrate. He experimented with both healthy and cancer mice, the latter living definitely longer than the control mice, which were not kept in the accumulator. Experimenting with different metals, he found that an ORAC lined with aluminum caused a loss of fur when used on mice, while a lining of iron gave the best results, probably because iron is contained in the body. Accumulator experiments with humans showed that the pain of burns was eliminated or radically diminished in a few minutes, and the healing took place quickly, without scar; skin conditions would either clear up or be made worse, depending on the type; cancer cases did not develop anemia, and the patient's blood improved. In all cases, the results seemed to be due to a building up of energy in the organism. Where the energy was already high, patients could not tolerate the accumulator; depressed patients were helped in rebuilding their energy.
Dr. Theodore P. Wolfe, who had gone to Norway to study under Reich and was instrumental in persuading him to come to America, became this translator, and Reich's books began to appear in English, published by the Orgone Institute Press. Journals were published regularly with reports of current work: The International Journal of Sex-Economy and Orgone Research from 1941 to 1945, and the Orgone Energy Bulletin from 1945 top 1953.
In 1945, Reich performed an experimental investigation of primary biogenesis, which he called "Experiment XX." He boiled screened garden soil for one hour, or autoclaved it at fifteen pounds pressure for a half-hour, and then filtered the water from the boiled soil. The yellowish liquid was then sealed in vials and frozen in the freezer compartment of a refrigerator. Freezing produced a concentration of the yellow in the center of the ice after a week, and upon thawing at this time, white and brown plasmatic flakes appeared. The flakes increased markedly in two to three weeks, and microscopic study revealed that they increased both by adding substance and by division. In a few more weeks, they changed to strongly radiating bionous heaps, and, kept sterile, the spherical bions developed into bean-shaped, immobile forms, which later became mobile protozoa. Reich was thus able to demonstrate that living protozoa forms could develop from mass-free orgone energy which was released from the soil by the boiling.
In 1947, he discovered the motor force of orgone energy, and built and successfully ran an orgone energy motor the following year. The energy was obtained by the excitation of an orgone energy accumulator by ½ volt of electricity to run a 25-volt motor. Since energy could not be stored, the motor would not work in damp weather. Research in this area has not continued, but it seems likely that someday a similar motor will be used for powering space ships, and, probably all other motored devices since, as Reich found, it ran much faster, more smoothly and noiselessly than conventional ones. It was also in 1947 that Reich discovered the emotional plague of man, a disease of bioenergetic equilibrium.
In the same year of 1947, following a vicious smear article in the New Republic by one Mildred Edie Brady, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration began an investigation of the orgone energy accumulator. The Brady article had led them to believe that Reich was conducting a sex racket, and they insisted that there must be pornographic literature, also. Since they were uninterested in scientific information about the accumulator, Reich's full cooperation, which had formerly been freely extended, had to be withdrawn, and the investigation bogged down, lacking any evidence against the accumulator. (1)
Reich continued his work quietly. He had by this time (1947) trained several physicians in psychiatric orgone therapy and had many workers in other fields of orgonomy: physics, biology, education, and social work. He conducted seminars and laboratory courses. The Cancer Biopathy was published in 1948; and I succeeded in persuading him to make Listen, Little Man available to the public, a work which was not originally written for publication.
The year 1948 also saw Reich succeed in producing a lumination of concentrated orgone energy in a vacuum tube, demonstrating that orgone energy, which could exist in a vacuum, could exist in space.
In the same year, The American Association for Medical Orgonomy was formed, and the first International Congress of Orgonomy was held at Orgonon, Reich's headquarters in Rangeley, Maine. In 1949, Reich had moved from Forest Hills to remain the year round in Orgonon. In the same year, he formed The William Reich Foundation.
In 1951, Ether, God and Devil, his first book on the method of orgonomic functionalism, Cosmic Superimposition, and a monograph on "The Orgone Energy Accumulator" were published. Cosmic Superimposition was based on the hypothesis that the cosmic superimposition of two energy systems is the basis of hurricanes, galaxy formations, the aurora borealis, and gravity. Reich was by this time thinking and writing in English. This year, he initiated the Oranur Experiment to ascertain whether orgone energy could successfully combat nuclear radiation.
On January 5, 1951, Reich put 1 mg. of radium, still in its lead container, into a 20-fold accumulator in a metal-lined room. He left it there for five hours. This was repeated daily for a week, and, on the last day, it was left in for only one half-hour. The results ware described in his The Oranur Experiment, First Report (1947-1951), (an account since burned by the Food and Drug Administration). I know what happened. I was there. The count on the Geiger counter went up alarmingly and finally jammed. The building and atmosphere around it glowed at night. One physician went into shock and nearly lost her life when she put her head in a metal cabinet in the laboratory. The mice died, and a peculiar, sickening, acrid odor pervaded the atmosphere while clouds hung over the area constantly. Reich fell ill and hovered between life and death for weeks. The whole area became uninhabitable. Although the radium was finally removed to a place eleven miles away, the process did not let up. I am confident that science will one day discover that this type of reaction accounts for the radioactive layer about our atmosphere (The Van Allen Belt) due to cosmic rays (perhaps X-rays from the sun) meeting the earth's energy envelope.
Besides near disaster and disease, this experiment brought about the discovery of a new type of energy (actually already matter since it was visible) which Reich called "deadly orgone" or "DOR." This resulted from the effect of nuclear radiation on orgone energy. DOR is black, lusterless, toxic, carries a high charge, and is oxygen and water-hungry. It appears as black specks in the atmosphere, as though someone had sprinkled the air with black pepper. One can clearly see the sun through it, but photographs appear as though they were taken in shadow. Leaves droop and lose their luster, birds and insects become quiet, and even the air is still. Humans become uncomfortable, the skin blue, mouth parched, and the scalp tight, causing headache and nausea. Reich called this "DOR sickness." The blackening effects of DOR on rocks led to considerable research into the chemistry of the process, designated preatomic chemistry by Reich, and the discovery of melanor, orite, brownite and orene, all of which are described in the later orgonomic journals.
Early in 1952, to combat DOR, Reich devised a cloudbuster consisting principally of hollow pipes grounded in water, which was able to draw this energy out of the atmosphere into water. This led to an interest in weather, and he experimented with both the production and prevention of rain. On two occasions, his weather work was televised, and once, in 1953, he produced rain for a group of Maine farmers whose crops were dying because of drought. They had agreed to pay him if he produced rain within a prescribed time, and did so when he achieved this. In the early days of cloudbusting, Reich used five pipes, two above the other three. On one occasion, I saw him point the cloudbuster at a heavy cloud, and in a few moments, five holes appeared in this cloud, two above, and three below. I was convinced. Thinking a bit further, Reich decided that this principle might be of value in treating neuroses, to make energy move. He modified the cloudbuster for use on humans and called it a "medical DOR-buster." Where energy is stuck in muscular contraction, it can be moved by use of the medical DOR-buster, and, as the holding gives, the emotion pours out. It can be a dangerous tool if used irresponsibly. Fantastic? Yes. Even when you see it work you scarcely believe it; it seems too simple, too simple for science to accept, but this was so of the orgone accumulator, as well. I have seen both work effectively on many occasions, but only time can bring acceptance; now they are under suspicion and looked upon as quackery.
Reich's discovery of armor and orgasm anxiety explained many enigmas of human functioning, such as mysticism and mechanistic thinking. One of the most important of these enigmas he termed "emotional plague." This is the character structure that consistently blocks all progress towards natural functioning. No one is completely free of this malady, but there are certain persons who function essentially as emotional pests. These individuals are generally capable, intelligent, and energetic, but they are anti-sexual and prone to attain positions of authority where they can dictate rules of living; they are the bulwarks of society. They cannot tolerate natural functioning because it creates an intolerable longing in them, so their prime purpose in life is to place restrictions on any natural living. At the same time, they rationalize their behavior so very well that it is accepted as being for the common good.
As a specific example of the aforementioned, all of Reich's books were banned by the injunction brought against him, and all the orgonomic periodicals were burned, with the given reason that they represented labeling for the orgone energy accumulator; to mention orgone energy was forbidden because it was supposed not to exist. Assuming for a moment that orgone energy does not exist, one would have to ask why the ban included such volumes as Character
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