HW: Orgone Accumulators and the Reich file (long)

[J Strobridge]

Here's the info on William Reich.   Names have been included to condemn
the innocent 8-)

jill
============================================================

WORD/PHRASE  : Orgone Accumulator

TRACK        : Orgone Accumulator
ALBUM        : Doremi
REFERENCE    : Invention by Dr Reich

From: Paul Mather <p.mather at sees.bangor.ac.uk>
Subject: Orgone. [long]

Stephen Swann writes:
> Paul Mather once posted an extended explanation of the historical background
> for Orgone.  As I recall, a mad (or perhaps crafty) 18th century doctor
> claimed that it was a source of physical/spiritual energy and wellbeing that
> permeated the atmosphere, albeit rarified.  His invention, the "Orgone
> Accumulator" was a box which supposedly allowed Orgone to enter, but not to
> leave, and so by remaining within the accumulator for extended periods of
> time, you would allow a great concentration of Orgone to suffuse your body
> and thereby increase your health/strength etc...

Mostly right.  Sadly I don't have the original posting to hand so here
is (a better) one from memory...

The 18th century doctor was in fact the 20th century psychiatrist Dr.
Willhelm Reich.  Reich is quite a remarkable fellow in a tragic sort
of way.  He ended his life in a US jail, dead of a "broken heart"
after his books had been burned and he'd been imprisoned over his
life's work, orgone.

Reich started his career in Europe where he was born.  He worked
closely with Freud but had a bust-up with him and ended up moving to
the USA to pursue his ideas.  Rather like Freud, Reich believed that
sex and the psyche were inextricably linked and upto moving to the US
he'd formed several theories along this line such as his theory of
"muscular armour."  I guess Reich's ideas from this period could be
summed up as "people are at their best when having sex." :-)

If I recall correctly, a big difference with Reich's theories (as
compared to, say, Freud) is that Reich became comvinced that sex had
not only an effect on the psyche but on the entire nervous system.  In
the US he continued with his research into "bions" which eventually
led to Reich's most profound discovery---that of orgone.

As has been said in other posts, orgone, so Reich held, was a basic
essence of all organic life.  It was virtually invisible to the naked
eye, except when in concentration in darkened surroundings in which
case it was a faintly bluish aura.  Reich invented the orgone
accumulator in order to concentrate orgone from the surrounding area.

Reich embarked upon a vigorous research programme into the properties
of orgone based upon his theories about it.  Because it was the basic
"essence" of living matter, orgone depletion led to ill-health and
even death.  Reich discovered that ill or depressed people showed
remarkable recovery when using the orgone accumulator.  (Treatment
involved sessions where the patient simply sat inside the accumulator
for upwards of half an hour.)

Buoyed on by his success, Reich began treating ever more serious
ailments with the accumulator, including serious cancers and other
terminal illnesses.  Reich was startled to discover a large number of
the patients go into remission, even become cured.  Convinced now of
the accumulators powers, Reich began to sell them.  Initially he sold
them to patients he was treating but later began to advertise and sell
them generally.  This was to be his downfall.

Meanwhile Reich's research into orgone continued.  The more he looked
into it the more wondrous he found it to be.  However, it wasn't until
a lab accident occurred involving a radioactive source that he
discovered a sinister side to orgone.  Mysteriously Reich's lab
assistants all fell ill, some (including his wife) very seriously so.
I believe one of the experiments he was running at the time was to
observe the interaction of orgone on a radium source inside an
accumulator.

Eventually Reich tracked down the illnesses to this experiment.  Reich
concluded that the radioactivity had reacted with the orgone inside
the accumulator to produce (I think) negative orgone energy.  In
contrast to the health-infusing properties of orgone, negative orgone
was a destructive force and dangerous to organic life.  This discovery
was to play a prominent role in Reich's future.

As a spinoff from this discovery, Reich invented the "cloudbuster."
This was a collection of a dozen or so metal pipes (arranged together
rather like a barrels of a gatling gun) mounted on a rotating
platform.  From the pipes led a metal "earth wire."  When the earth
wire was placed in a water source, the pipes served to narrowly focus
the orgone energy, directing it at the target it was pointed at.

Reich found in trials of the cloudbuster that he could both cause
clouds to form and also to make them disperse.  He conducted rigorous
tests, even in desert terrain, and reported rainfall occurring or at
the very least, clouds forming on each occasion.  His new discovery
excited him because it spelled the end of drought in the USA.

Meanwhile, whilst he was working on the cloudbuster (and before) the
Food and Drug Administration had become aware and had taken an
interest in Reich's vending of orgone accumulators.  (The success of
the orgone accumulator had led Reich to begin selling them in more
than just his home state, hence the federal interest.)  They were to
say the least skeptical of the claims made for the accumulator and
wanted Reich to provide scientific evidence to back him up.

Reich had no time at all for these "pests" and simply ignored them.
He did, nevertheless, try to interest the government in his
cloudbuster though they declined to attend any demonstrations.
Furious, he threatened to flood the entire eastern seaboard to prove
himself no charlatan as claimed by them.  However, even this dramatic
act brought him no support.  (Strangely enough on the date Reich said
he'd "flood" the east, greater-than-average freak rainfall did indeed
fall in many eastern parts, though not the "flood" that Reich had
promised.)

It was when Reich was working with the cloudbuster that he made one of
his most startling discoveries.  One night he was out watching the
stars.  He'd known for a while that the sky was permeated with orgone
and had conjectured that space must be also.  Indeed, to his delight
he noticed that most of the stars had a bluish aura to them.  However,
this one night he noticed something strange.  He'd never looked
closely before but now he noticed that not all the stars were like
this and that one or two were pure white.  Idly Reich pointed the
cloudbuster at one of these and to his amazement he saw it fizzle
out!!!

After experimentation Reich came to the horrific conclusion that the
"white" stars were not stars at all but UFOs!

This led directly to the development of Reich's "space gun", basically
a cloudbuster designed to shoot down UFOs.  As with the cloudbuster,
Reich threw himself into this new discovery.  However, this time Reich
realised the stakes were much higher.  He reasoned that the advent of
the atom bomb, and all the a-bomb tests had caused a massive rise in
"deadly orgone radiation" (the negative orgone energy) and this
weakened state had drew the space aliens.  Fortunately, Reich had
discovered a way of combatting them in the nick of time.  In effect,
Reich was fighting to save the world!!

Reich built several space guns and he and his colleagues manned them
in the war against the aliens.  Surprisingly, the US government
declined both to heed his warning of impending doom or to lend
tangible support.  However, once when he was out with one of the guns
he saw a US fighter flying high overhead in the general direction of a
group of UFOs he was firing at.  Reich realised then that Communist
infiltrators in the US High Command had prevented President Eisenhower
from lending him help, and that this lone plane was a signal from the
President of his tactit, albeit powerless approval.

Though the battle was hard fought, and took a severe toll on Reich's
own psychical and mental health, he managed to fight off the space
aliens.  Little did he know that he had further battles to fight...

The FDA case against him had been building and building.  They'd taken
a grudge against him because of the way he largely ignored them and
this had made them yet more tenacious.  Eventually they brought him
to trial.  It was a bad time for Reich and at the trial, against the
advice of his counsel, he defended and thereby destroyed himself.

Consumed by paranoia he railed against everyone, making wild
accusations about how the "Communist-infested" government was out to
get him, how the whole trial was a sham, how these "cretins" couldn't
understand or accept the importance of orgone, and so on and so on...

In the end the court ruled against Reich and judged that selling
orgone accumulators across state lines was an offence in this case and
sentenced him to a short jail term.  In addition, the court ruled that
all advertising or promotional material relating to orgone be
destroyed.  The FDA were rather over-zealous in carrying out this part
of the ruling and seized *all* of Reich's published works (even his
philosophical writings) and carted them off down to the incinerator
and burned them.

The judgement turned out to be a mortal blow to Reich, one that he
never recovered from.  Despite frequent visits from his family and
friends his depression deepened until he eventually died in jail, a
broken man, his genius unrecognised.

Today many of Reich's theories on child-rearing are standard practice
and Reichian analysis is an established form of psychotherapy.  Only
now are people realising the true genius of Dr. Willhelm Reich.

Err...  I guess so now you know... :-)



 ==========================================================================
J.D.Strobridge at ed.ac.uk                         eset08 at holyrood.ed.ac.uk
                                                ELIJSA at srv0.arts.ed.ac.uk
---------------------------------------------------------------------------