Celebrating Wilhelm Reich, Pioneer of Orgone

wilhelm reich

March 24th was the birthday or Wilhelm Reich. This is actually a day that is horribly under-celebrated in the world. Wilhelm Reich was born on a farm in the Austria-Hungary empire. At the age of fourteen, he realized that his mother was having an affair with his private tutor. He reported the affair to his father. As a result, his mother committed suicide. Three years later, his father died of natural causes.

After losing the farm during a Russian invasion, Reich decided to study medicine. He was actually one of the first hires to Sigmund Freud Pychoanalytical Polytechnic. It was here that Reich developed his theory about bions and orgone energy. Reich believe that orgone energy (or the energy released by having an orgasm) was being improperly stored in the human body as well as improperly released.

foreplay

He believed that having too much orgone energy in the body caused a neurosis and a partial release of the energy would lead to bodily imbalances. He even believed that the storage of orgone energy in the cells would cause the cells to overflow with the orgone energy and cause cancer. This man, once again, graduated with a degree in medicine.

The alternate problem to Reich lies in the release of the orgone energy. If the orgasm was inhibited in any way (possibly due to the persons social or religious values) then their ability to release the maximum amount of orgone energy and avoid such things as cancer would also be inhibited. So Reich would prescribe and was a proponent of a person having a DOR (Daily Orgone Release.) He lectured extensively on this topic on college campuses.

Reich saw an alternate problem in the world, what was being done about all of this released orgone energy in the atmosphere? The atmosphere had to be crawling with all of the energy of millions of properly and improperly released orgone from orgasms.

earth surrounded

To this end, Reich had a few solutions. He built a machine guaranteed to release a proper orgasm in his patient as well as capture the energy. He believe that the proper release of this stored energy by the machine would in turn cause clouds to release rain by the influx of orgone. So, enough sexual activity and properly released orgone energy resulted in rain making according to Reich.

There was also a serious and pressing issue about all of this not harvested orgone energy in the atmosphere. Surely, aliens had a way of detecting unused or collectible orgone. The mere presence of atmospheric orgone had to be a lightning rod for unidentified flying objects.

Things ultimately went wrong for Reich when he tried to see if giving mice a DOR treatment would successfully counteract the effects of bombarding them with radiation. Somehow a daily orgasmic experience did not manage to save the mice from cancer even though they were releasing a proper amount of orgone.

mice in afterglow

In 1954, the Food and Drug Administration concluded that orgone accumulators were a fraudulent medical device and ordered Reich and a colleague to stop distributing them. Reich defied the order and was found guilty of contempt of court. Reich was then sentenced to a federal penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania where he died two years later. This would be presumably due to acute psychosis from an inability to have a proper free release daily of orgone.

prisoners of love