We suggest that all students study it very carefully, and to include its scientific a n d philosophic contents in our future seminars, debates and chats.
Also, please
visit the Wilhelm Reich Web Site, indicated below,
-- http://www.orgonelab.org --
for further relevant information. We thank Carl Zimmerman most cordially
for having
made the document available to us.
The Developing Science of Orgonomy
Following is a short descriptive article on Reich and
Orgonomy which was recently published.
(Lithigraph, Ashland Oregon, July 1998.)
Wilhelm Reich's Discoveries
by James DeMeo, Ph.D.
About 25 years ago, I became intrigued with the writings of the late Dr.
Wilhelm Reich on the controversial subjects of "biological energy" and his
thesis that blocked emotions and sexual repression led to mental illness and
neurosis. I met and studied with some of the scientists who had worked with
Reich, experienced the orgone therapy Reich had developed, undertook simple
experiments, and eventually became the first student at a mainstream American
university to earn a Ph.D. for scientifically
testing Reich's ideas.
For those who don't know, Reich was one of Freud's inner circle -- some
say he was being groomed to take over leadership of the International Psychoanalytic
Association (IPA) -- but he was ultimately centrifuged out of that organization
for his social reform and anti-Nazi work. Historians have since documented
the general capitulation of German psychoanalysis to the Nazis, but not so
Wilhelm Reich, an Austrian-Ukranian of Jewish background. Freud's early work
strongly suggested emotions and sexuality were expressions of a tangible energetic
"something", but it was Reich who provided the clearest evidence that the
Freudian libido was a real energy, discharged during emotional expression
and sexual orgasm.
Parental or social punishments against the youthful expression of emotion,
or of sexual love, led to internalized repression -- but this was accomplished
only by literally tightening one's muscles, binding the energy down within
the body and creating a powerful conflict of internal bioenergetic tension.
If repression became chronic, the consequent chronic internal tension formed
a neuro-muscular armoring (much like the metal armor of a Medieval knight)
by which the individual protectively walled themself off from an outer world
of painful experiences. Reich developed therapeutic methods to help people
give up their emotional armor; but he also approached the problem from the
social and political side of things, working to pass laws against child abuse,
to give women equal rights and pay, and to make divorce and
contraceptives more freely available. For this, he was severely attacked
by the Nazis, who were in fact very extremist "moral majoritarians".
By the mid-1930s, Reich had been kicked out of the IPA, his books attacked
and burned by the Nazis and German Communist Party. He fled to Denmark, and
later to Scandinavia; while there, he undertook some of the first bioelectrical
experiments on the subject of human sexuality and emotional expression. Reich's
bioelectrical experiments proved that human emotion, sexual excitation and
orgastic discharge were measurable phenomena. It was a breakthrough discovery
in the field of human sexuality and psychology -- but the first of a series
of discoveries that would
increasingly put him at odds with the prevailing academic/scientific status
quo of his time, and of the present time as well. Science of the 1930s was
intolerant of open
discussion of "orgasm", and Reich's books uncompromisingly focused upon
such issues: The Function of the Orgasm, The Sexual Revolution, People in
Trouble, and The Mass Psychology of Fascism are classics hardly mention even
today. Reich's later microscopical experiments with ameba would produce other
breakthroughs in the biological sciences, in the discovery of the specific
process of bionous decay of tissues, which lay at the basis of cancer cell
formation. Reich's findings on cancer are directly
observable, and not just some speculative theory -- his observations on
pre-cancerous cellular processes significantly predated those of George Papanicolaou
(of "Pap-test" fame), and Reich believed his scientific priority had in fact
been stolen. Unlike conventional medicine, Reich's discovery also revealed
the role of emotional-sexual energy in the psychosomatic process. What at
first appeared to be only "bioelectricity" was later clarified by Reich as
a much more powerful bioenergetic force -- a form of life-energy at work within
living organisms, expressing itself as emotion and sexuality, but also directly
observable in the microscope as a bluish-glowing field around living blood
cells and other substances. This bluish-glowing energy, which he eventually
called orgone energy (to preserve its relationship with living processes),
was later observed as a blue-glowing aura-like phenomenon around organisms,
trees and even mountain ranges. The blue orgone also exists in a free form
within the atmosphere --
Reich wrote about an "envelope" of blue-glowing energy surrounding the Earth
long
before the first satellite photos confirmed it.
Orgone energy in the atmosphere was a physical phenomenon similar to the
older ideas of "vital force" and "aether" combined. It behaves lawfully, fills
all space, expands and contracts in pulsatory rhythm, and interacts differently
with different material substances: every kind of matter appears to attract
the orgone, but at different rates of speed. Water strongly attracts the
orgone, or life-energy, giving rise to the phenomenon of living water (described
classically as "activated" or
"structured" water) which is fundamental to life processes, and to the Earth's
weather as well. Orgone was also demonstrated in high vacuum (as with "zero-point"
vacuum fluctuation, etc.) proving it filled all space much as a cosmic aether.
Reich's experiments in these directions led to even more controversy: new
methods for ending drought and greening deserts, and new approaches to the
problem of nuclear waste detoxification.
His experiments suggested a new source of pollution-free energy, which some
day might propel humankind to the stars. Fantastic? Sure, but solidly founded
upon new experimental tests and observations in the best tradition of the
natural sciences.
During the course of Reich's investigations, he developed a special metal-lined
enclosure which attracted a high charge of orgone energy inside itself, directly
from the atmosphere: the orgone energy accumulator . The orgone accumulator
was proven to charge seeds and increase garden plant growth, speed the healing
of burns and cuts, and there are a number of physical experiments which demonstrate
anomalous phenomena inside the accumulator. Reich observed that certain kinds
of
low-energy illness, such as cancer, would symptomatically yield to careful
application of the orgone accumulator. After he moved to the USA, he treated
people experimentally with his combined emotional/orgone-energetic approach.
Within a few years, however, he was attacked by US Food and Drug Administration,
which was at that time (1955) in an all-out "war" against natural healing
methods (the
repression of natural healing methods has always been a major agenda of
the
FDA. The FDA obtained a court injunction which ordered the banning and burning
of Reich's books -- any book containing the forbidden word "orgone" was ordered
destroyed, even his classics on human sexuality which only mentioned orgone
energy in the preface! The FDA factually burned Reich's books and journals
on several occasions (most recently in 1962, while Reich was given a 2-year
jail sentence for a misdemeanor technicality, dying in prison in 1957. The
FDA's attack against Reich
constituted a fraud upon the courts and the American people, and the Reich
legal case continues to overshadow the better-known Scopes Monkey Trial in
constitutional
significance, in that an American court authorized the burning of scholarly
books and the jailing of scientists for maintaining unorthodox viewpoints.
Today, through the non-profit Orgone Biophysical Research Laboratory (OBRL),
Reich's original discoveries are preserved, and presented in summer educational
laboratory seminars. This year, several are offered, to
include:
* "Bions and the Reich Blood Test: Laboratory Microscopy Seminar"
* "The Orgone Energy Accumulator: History, Experimental Use and Construction"
In particular, we welcome younger scientists and students to take an open-minded
look at this important body of discovery. In addition, there are several books
available on these subjects: The Orgone Accumulator Handbook, and my latest
title Saharasia: The 4000 BCE Origins of Child-Abuse, Sex-Repression, Warfare
and Social Violence
In the Deserts of the Old World.
This latter work was a 7-year global cross-cultural research project which
evaluated Reich's sex-economic hypothesis of human behavior, demonstrating
the existence of uniformly peaceful human social conditions prior to c.4000
BCE ... but that discussion must wait for another time.
NOTE: See the Educational section of this web site for more information
on
OBRL seminars.
Orgone Biophysical Research Laboratory, Inc.
A Non-Profit Science Research and Educational Foundation, Since
1978
Greensprings Center, PO Box 1148
Ashland, Oregon 97520 USA
www.orgonelab.org
E-mail to: info@orgonelab.org
This
page, and all contents, Copyright (C) 1996
by the
Orgone Biophysical Research Laboratory, Inc.
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