Weird Wilhelm Reich
Weird Wilhelm Reich
In 1940 Wilhelm Reich had constructed his first “accumulator.” This contraption consisted of a box insulated alternately with organic and inorganic substances.
In brief, the goal of sexual suppression is that of producing an individual who is adjusted to the authoritarian order and who will submit to it in spite of all misery and degradation. . . The formation of the authoritarian structure takes place through the anchoring of sexual inhibition and sexual anxiety.
Wilhelm Reich
This essay is an expanded edition of my previous write-up, Weird Wilhelm Reich, originally posted on November 8, 2020.
Introduction
Many years ago, an acquaintance of mine claimed that the experiments and “psychology” of Wilhelm Reich (1898-1957) have merit. Since this person made an oblique reference to the “sexual nature” of Reich’s works, I was skeptical. Sure enough, after some research, it is no stretch to consider that the experiments of Dr. Reich are the product of a “mad scientist.”
Background
Wilhelm Reich was born in Austria and graduated from the Medical School of the University of Vienna in 1922. Reich’s autobiography, Passion of Youth, published posthumously in 1988, provides a detailed account of his childhood. The book's content is similar to the life of Alfred Kinsey in that it is both shocking and disturbing. Reich describes his early fascination with sex without any hint of shame. He recounts his first sexual experience at age eleven with the cook and his erotic fantasies, which included sexual involvement with farm animals and addiction to brothels. Reich also describes witnessing the sexual act between the housemaid and the coachman at age four, an experience that gave him “erotic sensations of enormous intensity.”1
Reich, originally a student and protégé of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), emerged as a prominent figure among the psychoanalytic pioneers, eventually leading him to delve into experimental research. His primary focus in the laboratory was the exploration of natural energy. Some even hailed him as Freud’s potential successor during this phase due to his early contributions. However, as Reich became deeply engrossed in studying human sexuality, certain complications arose. His preoccupation with the sexual aspects of human beings posed challenges and controversies in his work. The Austrian psychiatric profession questioned Reich’s motivation. It was his involvement with the early Communist Party in Europe that broke the camel’s back.
In 1933, Reich left Germany and settled in Norway because the Nazis were going after the communists. Reich came to the United States in 1939, continuing his experiments about the “energy” that occurs during human orgasms. As such, he performed bioelectrical experiments on subjects in various states of sexual arousal. Reich found a new force detected during these experiments. He claimed it to be the same energy that decaying matter emits. Reich also claimed that microscopic “bions” develop from lifeless matter and organize themselves into living cells. Now we know where the writers of the 1960s Outer Limits television show may have gotten their inspiration for the episode The Man With The Power!
The Accumulator
By 1940 Reich had constructed his first “accumulator.” This contraption consisted of a box insulated with organic and inorganic substances. Reich arranged these subsartnes in alternating patters. He claimed that the particles seen in his microscope formed unidentified energy. Reich named it “Orgone” power because he believed in the similarity between human orgasms and the energy from decaying matter. He placed a milligram of radium in one of his accumulator machines during his experiments. Reich’s eyes started to burn, which caused a form of conjunctivitis, and he received a skin tan. People as far away as 90 feet from his building became sick. As a result, he tried many methods to shield and contain this energy.
In 1941 Reich met with Albert Einstein to discuss his theories with the famous physicist. Einstein ignored the claims about Orgone. It simply did not exist. Undaunted, in 1948, Reich founded the “Orgone Institute” at Rangeley, Maine. Experiments with orgone energy and electromagnetism continued.
The mainstream scientific community criticized these experiments. Reich took every criticism as a personal attack. Even so, in his mind, these experiments “proved” that his works were the most significant discoveries in the history of science. He blamed mainstream media for his problems because he felt that his findings were too disturbing for them to accept.
Undaunted, Reich built accumulators large enough for people to enter for mental disorder cures and arrest cancer. He called these gadgets “Orgone accumulators” and sold them to anyone willing to take the plunge. As Reich distributed these machines, the government started investigating him.
As the story goes, workers and visitors got sick during experiments as ominous clouds appeared over the Orgone Institute. Additionally, the vegetation near the area died. Reich claimed “Deadly Orgone Radiation” caused plant life to expire. Thus he insisted that he had to produce the “good” Orgone Radiation (he claimed this was a life-giving process). So, he developed a “Cloud Buster” machine made from piping on a revolving platform. Reich claimed that this latest gadget could make or dissipate clouds.
The Experiment Ends
A 1947 FBI investigation occurred to determine the extent of Reich’s communist connections.2 The finding: Orgone did not exist. In 1954, the U.S. Attorney General filed a complaint seeking a permanent injunction to prevent the interstate shipment of devices and literature published by Reich’s group. That same year, Reich faced incarceration for contempt of Court for violating the Attorney General’s injunction (he refused to go to Court). The Food and Drug Administration ordered Reich’s literature banned and destroyed.3
Reich asserted, “Man’s right to know, to learn, to inquire, to make bona fide errors, to investigate human emotions must, by all means, be safe, if the word freedom should ever be more than an empty political slogan.” The Court rejected this defense, convicted Reich of contempt of Court, and imprisoned him in Lewisburg Pennsylvania Penitentiary. He died of heart failure in prison on November 3, 1957.4
Reich’s Works Defended
While Reich had his detractors, some defended his works. Enter one Phillip Rieff (1922-2006), an advocate who wrote in his 1966 book The Triumph of Therapeutic – Uses of Faith After Freud:
The chief institutional instrument of repressive authority is the family. As a political revolution must overthrow the power of the state, moral revolution must overthrow the power of the family – all families. Reich makes the standard point: the family, being the training ground of morality, is authoritarian by nature. It is the “factory of reactionary ideology and structure”… A revolution must sweep out the family and its ruler, the father, no less cleanly than the old political gangs and their leaders. However radical the revolution, so long as the family persists, authority will creep back. …
The destruction, then, of the ancient mystique of fatherhood defines the revolutionary task. For this eminently theoretical reason, Reich became a fierce feminist... Because “political reaction favors the patriarchal theory,” Reich supposed that matriarchy must be the “natural” and free form of social organization... The patriarchal family became the main device for suppressing freedom... A triumphant father supposedly ended the primitive utopia of freedom.5
Philip Rieff looked to Wilhelm Reich once more while seeking a remedy for reorganizing society through sex education:
Set into the context of Reich’s attack on the family as the nucleus of all authoritative institutions, his repeated calls for a do-it-your-self adolescent sex education acquires political significance. Sex education becomes the main weapon in an ideological war against the family; its aim was to divest the parents of their moral authority.6
That revelation is astonishing and validates the apprehensions shared by numerous individuals who have opposed schoolroom sex education since the mid-1960s. For the capstone, Reiff wrote:
There is something adolescent about the Reichian theory; for him all hope rests with the possibility of creating revolutionary children. Because Marx theorized in terms of an adult world, he could not possibly be subversive enough. With John Dewey [father of modern public education], Wilhelm Reich is one of the great therorists of the child as the agent of social change … though publiclay labeled an eccentric, Reich was anyting but a fool.7
Reich’s book, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, advocating for adolescent do-it-yourself sex education as a means to undermine the family, was published in 1946. Rieff’s book endorsed Reich’s theories and became readily accessible to high school guidance counselors in 1967-68.
Reflection
Reich’s major works include The Mass Psychology of Fascism, The Function of the Orgasm, The Cancer Biopathy, Children of the Future, Passion of Youth, Beyond Psychology, and American Odyssey. His other works are available in the book section of the Wilhelm Reich Museum website.
The Orgasmatron from Woody Allen’s motion picture Sleeper remains unforgettable for those who have watched it. This comedic depiction of the future draws significant inspiration from the ideas of Wilhelm Reich, the originator of the term “sexual revolution” during the 1930s.
Conclusion
With the above historical background, today, we are witnessing the fulfillment of Wilhelm Reich’s collectivist worldview. If alive today, Reich and his fellow travelers, such as Alfred Kinsey, John Money, and Phillip Rieff, would rejoice at the dawning of the Age of Aquarius. However, with rose-colored glasses removed, it shows a dark world. Grade school children get instruction about unnatural sexual activity in the name of diversity. The natural beauty of a male and female is now blurred in an official program to transform children into eunuchs. Merely discussing these factors brings on the Pavlovian bark of those who cherish this blatant attack on the classical family and natural sex/gender. Yet legacy media and their programmed human subjects pontificate about the virtues of surgical and chemical castration for children.
The modern Reichian cult holds the hammer. The hammer handle includes the total weight of the government (all levels), education, academia, medical, pharmaceutical, and crony big business. The hammer’s head is the Department of Justice. The nail symbolizes cogent thinking people who see the dark cloud. On the other side of this visual barrier, we can see the reality of this pogrom and thus face tagging as potential domestic right-wing terrorists.
The bottom line: that hammer is mental torture for cogent-thinking folk, as we see thru the accumulator cloud. 📕
Sources
None Dare Call it Treason 25 Years Later ~ 1992, John A. Stormer
The 70 Greatest Conspiracies of all Time ~ 1998, Jonathan Vankin & John Walen
Architects of the Culture of Death ~ 2004, Benjamin Wiker Ph.D. & Donald Demarco
Passion of Youth ~ 1988, Wilhelm Reich, p. 45, as quoted in Architects of the Culture of Death.
FBI Press release February 25, 2000, according to Nosubject.com: “This German immigrant described himself as the Associate Professor of Medical Psychology, Director of the Orgone Institute, President and research physician of the Wilhelm Reich Foundation, and discoverer of biological or life energy. In 1940 FBI began a security investigation to determine the extent of Reich’s communist commitments. In 1947, a security investigation concluded that neither the Orgone Project nor any of its staff was engaged in subversive activities or violated any statute within the jurisdiction of the FBI.”
Reich’s strange experiments notwithstanding, the government nor social media giants should not engage in blatant censorship. Nevertheless, it is genuinely for the good of society we prevent harmful reading materials from reaching children.
A reading of history suggests an introspection on the passing of Reich. Despite his peculiar behavior, inquisitive minds might question the FBI’s handling of that case. Irrespective of individuals’ worldviews, ensuring equal application of justice is crucial. Regrettably, the conditions reminiscent of the Gulags that some individuals from the events of January 6 raise concerns about that event. Additionally, if January 6 had been associated with left-wing groups, those facing charges should also be afforded their constitutional rights and due process.
The Triumph of Therapeutic – Uses of Faith After Freud, Haper and Roe 1966, Wilhelm Reich, pg. 156, as quoted in None Dare Call it Treason 25 Years Later.
Ibid., pg. 159
Ibid., pg. 160
WR requires constant exposure for what he was and all the bad he did - good and important work.
What is with Germans and their hair?! 🤣