Wilhelm Reich

• 1. Childhood And The First Wound

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  Wilhelm Reich was born on the 24th of March 1897 in Dobzau, Galicia. He grew up as the first son of Leon Reich and Cäcilie Roniger. His family moved to Jujinetz shortly after his birth. There his father ran a cattle farm leased by his mother's uncle. Wilhelm attended home schooling until he turned twelve years old. That year his mother committed suicide on the 1st of October 1910. She had been having an affair with their live-in tutor. Reich wrote about this trauma in his first published paper in 1920. He described feeling ashamed and jealous when he followed her to the tutor's bedroom at night. He briefly considered forcing her to have sex with him but instead told his father. After protracted beatings from her husband, she took her own life. Reich blamed himself for her death. This event haunted him throughout his medical career.

• 2. Vienna Ambulatorium And Character Analysis

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  Reich graduated from the University of Vienna in July 1922. He became deputy director of Freud's outpatient clinic known as the Vienna Ambulatorium. The clinic opened on the 22nd of May 1922 at Pelikangasse 18. Between 1922 and 1932 it treated 1,445 men and 800 women. Many suffered from shell shock after World War I. Reich worked there until his move to Berlin in 1930. He argued that neurotic symptoms were unconscious attempts to gain control of a hostile environment. He called these patterns character armour or Charakterpanzer. His book The Impulsive Character appeared in 1925. It won professional recognition including from Sigmund Freud. Freud arranged for his appointment to the executive committee of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society in 1927. Reich found the society dull and wrote that he behaved like a shark in a pond of carps.

• 3. The Orgasm Formula And Vegetotherapy

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  Beginning in 1924 Reich published papers on orgastic potency. He defined this as the ability to release emotions from muscles during an uninhibited orgasm. Freud later called this idea his Steckenpferd or hobby horse. Reich argued that psychic health depended on full discharge of libido. In 1934 he presented principles of vegetotherapy at the 13th International Congress of Psychoanalysis in Lucerne. He asked patients to undress down to shorts or underclothes. He pressed hard on their jaws necks chests backs and thighs. This painful massage aimed to dissolve muscular rigidity. If successful waves of pleasure moved through their bodies. He called this the orgasm reflex. Reich briefly considered calling it orgasmotherapy but changed his mind. His second wife Ilse Ollendorf said vegetotherapy replaced psychoanalytic neutrality with physical attack by the therapist.

• 4. Bion Experiments And Norwegian Expulsion

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  Reich moved to Oslo Norway in October 1934. He stayed there for five years. During this time he conducted bion experiments. He grew cultured vesicles using grass sand iron and animal tissue. He heated materials to incandescence with a heat-torch. He claimed to see bright glowing blue vesicles. He called them bions and believed they were rudimentary life forms. From 1937 onward Norwegian scientists opposed his theories. Pathologist Leiv Kreyberg examined one preparation under a microscope. Kreyberg concluded bacteria were ordinary staphylococci from airborne infection. The newspaper Tidens Tegn launched a campaign against him. By February 1938 his visa had expired. A royal decree later required licenses for psychoanalysis which Reich could not obtain. More than 165 articles appeared in thirteen newspapers denouncing his work. The most prominent appeared in Aftenposten on April 19th and 21st 1938. It alleged Reich knew less about bacteria than a first-year medical student.

• 5. Orgone Accumulators And Cancer Claims

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  Reich arrived in New York in August 1939 aboard the SS Stavangerfjord. In December 1940 he built the first human-sized orgone accumulator. It was five feet tall and made of plywood lined with rock wool and sheet iron. Patients sat inside naked. Reich claimed these boxes concentrated orgone energy three to five times stronger than air. He tested accumulators on mice with cancer and plant growth. He wrote to supporters in July 1941 that orgone definitely destroyed cancerous growth. Although unlicensed in medicine he began testing boxes on humans diagnosed with cancer and schizophrenia. One case stopped prematurely because the subject heard rumors Reich was insane. Another father complained to the American Medical Association. Reich believed he developed a grand unified theory of physical and mental health. He even discussed this discovery with Albert Einstein at Princeton in January 1941. Einstein concluded the effect was due to temperature gradients not orgone.

• 6. The FDA Injunction And Book Burning

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  Articles by Mildred Edie Brady appeared in Harper's and The New Republic in April and May 1947. They called orgone a fraud of the first magnitude. The Food and Drug Administration investigated his claims. By February 1954 the United States Attorney filed a complaint seeking permanent injunction. The judge granted it by default on the 19th of March 1954. All accumulators parts and instructions were ordered destroyed. On the 5th of June 1956 FDA officials supervised destruction of remaining devices. Reich's friends and son Peter chopped them up with axes. On August 23rd six tons of books journals and papers burned at Gansevoort incinerator. This included copies of The Sexual Revolution Character Analysis and The Mass Psychology of Fascism. It has been cited as one of worst examples of censorship in U.S. history. The psychiatrist Victor Sobey later noted the event.