Wilhelm Reich's Discoveries

[Spiritwind]

I wanted to go deeper in my understanding of Wilhelm Reich's discoveries and found it so interesting that I want to share it here. Fascinating stuff to learn about. Considering the prevalent use of trauma based mind control it's easy to see why they wanted him dead, and even burned his books.

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Wilhelm Reich's Discoveries
by James DeMeo, Ph.D.
(Lithigraph, Ashland Oregon, July 1998.)

Around 1970, during my studies at the university, 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. But the biophysical armor also blocked people's emotions and capacity for pleasure and happiness in life, including or especially their capacity for sexual excitation and pleasurable orgastic release.

Reich developed therapeutic methods to help people give up their emotional armor, to become more emotionally alive; but he also approached the problem from the social and political side of things, working to pass laws against child abuse, opposing the rigid sex-repressions and legal powers of the Church, to give women equal rights and pay, and to make divorce and contraceptives more freely available. He openly criticized the Nazis and the Communist Party for their power-mongering and threats against individual freedoms. For this, he was severely attacked from all quarters.

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. Today, bionous decay is confirmed in the modern concept of "apoptosis", but don't look for any mention of Reich's discovery in the mainstream literature.

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 radiating from animals and people, from 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 "cosmic ether" 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? Certainly! But nevertheless solidly founded upon new experimental proofs and empirical 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.

What makes the FDA's attack and the unethical judicial malpractice which led to the book-burning all the more outrageous is the equally breakthrough nature of Reich's last years of research. His later work into the properties of the orgone energy suggested new methods for detoxifying radioactive waste, in what he called the Oranur Experiment. He developed the Orgone Motor, a small electrical motor which ran directly from the background ocean of orgone energy. He developed a new understanding of weather based upon orgone energy charge variations in the atmosphere, and a new technological approach, via Cosmic Orgone Engineering (CORE) or Cloudbusting (not to be confused with the insanity found all over the internet - see here), by which copious rains could be triggered, droughts and forest fires ended, and deserts greened. He made observations of silent UFOs while engaged in a desert-greening project near Tucson, Arizona, speculating they were powered by the same cosmic energy which silently turned his orgone motor. And that led him towards an orgonomic understanding of gravitation.

Most all of Reich's experimental work has been scientifically verified, some of it at my own institute, the non-profit Orgone Biophysical Research Laboratory (OBRL) in Ashland, Oregon on the West Coast USA. Reich's original discoveries, apparatus and documents are also preserved by the Wilhelm Reich Museum and Trust on the East Coast, in Rangeley Maine. Reich's original discoveries are also presented, without compromise or dilution, in various summer educational laboratory seminars offered periodically by OBRL.

In particular, we welcome younger scientists and students to take an open-minded look at this important body of discovery. In addition, there are many books available on these subjects. My own contributions include: The Orgone Accumulator Handbook,, Heretic's Notebook: Emotions, Protocells, Ether-Drift and Cosmic Life Energy,, and 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.

- See more at: http://www.orgonelab.org/wrhistory.htm# ... Rtf1J.dpuf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Spiritwind]

Scientific Work and Verifications
by James DeMeo, PhD

(Extracted from a longer article)
Wilhelm Reich's findings and theories on human sexuality, family structure and human emotions are paramout for a clear understanding of the origins of fascist (Left or Right-wing varieties), and totalitarian warlike societies. His experiments on the biophysics of life-energy resolve an equal number of riddles and mysteries in biology, physics, meteorology and astronomy. Here, I will give a bare-bones review of Reich on these issues.

Reich's early work was not focused merely upon "sexual organs and orgasms", as his critics so freqently claim, but examined the whole complex of social issues which affect people's capacity for love and a gratifying sexuality -- these were essential prerequisites for happy families and children, and hence cooperatively stable and non-violent social structures. Reich proposed family-structure was the foundation upon which state-structure was formed, and that the two composed a self-reinforcing functional unit. Patriarchal authoritarian families based upon forced and compulsive moralism led to authoritarian state structures. Where family life was more fluid and permissive, a self-regulated morality existed, with a similarly cooperative social and state structure. From that essential standpoint, his later clinical and experimental work led forth into new territory and a host of new discoveries and findings, too much to detail here. However, I will simply note how the full sweep of his discovery is of Galilean stature, posing to envelop the modern sciences with a new all-encompassing sea-change or "paradigm shift" in our way of viewing ourselves, and the living universe we collectively inhabit. This is elucidated best in his various books which are widely available in libraries and bookstores.

Here is a list of the titles of Reich's books and major research journals, to give the reader a sense of what's at issue. Space does not allow for any explicit discussion of their contents.

Published Books by Wilhelm Reich, alphabetical order:
Current editions, English language only.
Does not include many small pamphlets and archive materials.
Available from Natural Energy Works, or the Wilhelm Reich Museum Bookstore

* American Odyssey: Letters and Journals 1940-1947
* Beyond Psychology: Letters and Journals 1934-1939
* The Bioelectrical Investigation of Sexuality and Anxiety
* The Bion Experiments: On the Origins of Life
* The Cancer Biopathy (Discovery of the Orgone, Vol.2)
* Character Analysis
* Children of the Future: On the Prevention of Sexual Pathology
* Contact With Space: Oranur Second Report
* Cosmic Superimposition: Man's Orgonotic Roots in Nature
* Early Writings
* The Einstein Affair
* Ether, God and Devil
* Function of the Orgasm (Discovery of the Orgone, Vol.1)
* Genitality in the Theory and Therapy of Neuroses
* The Invasion of Compulsory Sex-Morality
* Listen, Little Man
* Mass Psychology of Fascism
* The Murder of Christ (Emotional Plague of Mankind, Vol.2)
* The Oranur Experiment
* The Orgone Energy Accumulator, Its Scientific and Medical Use
* Passion of Youth: An Autobiography, 1897-1922
* People in Trouble (Emotional Plague of Mankind, Vol.1)
* Record of a Friendship: The Correspondence of Wilhelm Reich and A.S. Neill (1936-1957)
* Reich Speaks of Freud
* Selected Writings: An Introduction to Orgonomy
* The Sexual Revolution

Research Journals edited by Wilhelm Reich:
(English language only - photocopy editions available from the Wilhelm Reich Museum.
Does not include journals published after Reich's death.)

* International Journal of Sex-Economy & Orgone Research: 1942-1945
* Annals of the Orgone Institute: 1947-1949
* Orgone Energy Bulletin: 1949-1953
* CORE - Cosmic Orgone Engineering: 1954-1955

Working as a young medical doctor in post WW-I Vienna and later Berlin, Reich directly observed the deteriorating social situations at a time when he was engaged in clinical psychoanalytical studies of people suffering from emotional and mental disturbances. These, he argued, were frequently the result of social conditions, of social structures characterized by, or degenerating into authoritarian violence and fascism, with a low appreciation of the sexual, physical and emotional needs of infants, children and adults. Masturbation and pre-marital sex were basically a crime, as was contraception, abortion, divorce and adultery, though men were allowed to have mistresses or visit prostitutes. Women were basically chattel, with few rights. Mother-love for children was systematically interfered with, as was the spontaneous magnetic attraction which always develops between children and adolescents, where adults don't make strong efforts to oppose it. Adolescent love, as with the example of Romeo and Juliet, and which by its own unrestrained natural push for emotional-sexual joining, Reich observed, was always obliterated and crushed out of existence within authoritarian societies, where violations of the female virginity taboo carried severe consequences. By Reich's view, violent authoritarian fascism within the larger social and state structure was founded upon repressive patriarchal authoritarianism within a violent and brutal family structure, where women and children could not have independence of thought or action, and where everything was ruled by dominant fathers, brothers or husbands, who themselves were trapped in hierarchical systems of political and social obedience. In such conditions, arranged and loveless marriages were the rule, and sexuality was rendered down into a loveless "discharge", or suppressed outright. Abandoned mothers with children, living destitute on the street, was one major consequence of this terrible state of affairs, inflamed by the large number of men who had been killed during WW-I. By all historical accounts of the period, the situation progressively declined into chaos, with disruption of food supplies, a migration to the cities with massive unemploment, war refugees from all over, the public awash with political movements and extremism. An ineffectual paralysis gripped the struggling post-Imperial government structures as they attempted their first tentative steps towards establishing democracy, which ultimately failed.

Reich's Sex-Economy and Sex-Pol

Into this chaos, starting in the late 1920s and lasting through around 1932, Reich established special psychoanalytic clinics, helping working-class families and working also with the Marxist political parties who at the time he believed were interested in authentically beneficial reforms. His work, with several psychoanalytic associates, grew into a social movement he called Sex-Pol. Starting with his early clinical work in psychoanalysis and continuing into Sex-Pol, Reich was able to work with and study the lives of ordinary people in their daily working conditions, to learn of their aspirations and the barriers they faced, in both love and economic-social advancement. He developed his own theoretical understandings into a new theory he called Sex-Economy. Sex-Pol also undertook political actions and published a journal devoted to sex-economic principles. Reich eventually announced several publicly-stated goals for Sex-Pol, which were aimed to benefit the sexual and family lives of ordinary people. Here's a list, taken from Myron Sharaf's Fury on Earth: A Biography of Wilhelm Reich (St.Martin's/Marek, 1983, p.162-163):

1. Free distribution of contraceptives to those who could not obtain them through normal channels; massive propaganda for birth control.
2. Abolition of laws against abortion. Provision for free abortions at public clinics; financial and medical safeguards for pregnant and nursing mothers.

3. Abolition of any legal distinctions between the married and the unmarried. Freedom of divorce. Elimination of prostitution through economic and sex-economic changes to eradicate its causes.

4. Elimination of venereal diseases by full sexual education.

5. Avoidance of neuroses and sexual problems by a life-affirmative education. Study of principles of sexual pedagogy. Establishment of therapeutic clinics.

6. Training of doctors, teachers, social workers, and so on, in all relevant matters of sexual hygiene.

7. Treatment rather than punishment for sexual offenses. Protection of children and adolescents against adult seduction.

The reader may note how most of these points have already been instituted, more or less, within the Western liberal democratic nations, though it would be an error to consider that Reich was responsible for anything but a small portion of such transformations.

Reich exposed these elements of sex-repressive patriarchal authoritarianism within both the Nazi and Soviet states. Both became infuriated and banned his books, impounded and/or burned them, and wanted Reich dead. I've already written about how Reich was being tracked and hunted by both political extremes during his European period of work.

Breakthrough into Orgone Energy and the Orgone Accumulator

The reader is encouraged to make a simple review of the entries listed in the on-line Bibliography on Orgonomy. Therein one can find citations to many hundreds of articles and books which support Reich across the board, on subjects such as:

* Identification of a bioelectrical basis to emotions and sexual excitation;

* Discovery of the microscopical bions which originate from disintegrating matter, and stand at the border between the living and non-living; with a report to the French Academy of Science on the subject;

* Discovery of the bionous process by which the cancer cell arises, as well as the emotional foundation for the more systemic cancer biopathy;

* Discovery of a new radiation from sand-bion cultures, which was later identified as a unique life-energy;

* Capturing and amplification of the life-energy radiation from sand-bion cultures in special Faraday-cage type of structures;

* Identification of a similar life-energy radiation from within the atmosphere and from all living matter generally, which was thereafter called the orgone energy, and invention of the orgone energy accumulator;

* Symptomatic treatment of cancer and low-energy immune-depletion symptoms by orgone accumulator therapy;

* Discovery of unique physical anomalies within the orgone energy accumulator, such as the slowing of natural electroscopical "leak" discharge rates, a subtle heating effect, effects upon nuclear radiation detectors and high-vacuum tubes;

* Discovery of meteorological processes at work within the orgone energy accumulator, and orgone-charged high-vacuum tubes;

* Observations on the Earth's orgone energy envelope, along with the existence of an atmospheric and later cosmic orgone energy continuum which exists throughout the cosmos;

* Theory of Cosmic Superimposition for the development of raw matter in the universe, as well as for specific formation of spiral galaxies and hurricanes, sea shells and embryonic life;

* Discovery of an anti-nuclear effect, oranur;

* Invention of the cloudbuster apparatus, with field applications on the East Coast USA towards increasing rains during droughty conditions, and later demonstrating its usage in open deserts of the Southwest USA.

Reich's work on these subjects was amazing enough, and if correct and true, suitable to have earned him three or four separate Nobel Prizes. But is it true? Was Reich correct on this amazing sweep of research and discovery? I can say, the answer is Yes, and have no hesitation to stand up for Reich on this matter. And I do so not by some second-hand appeal to authority, but firstly by direct reference to the results of my own extensive experimental investigations into Reich's findings, and secondly by the legitimate authority of the many other research scientists and physicians who have likewise tested and verified them.

Independent Confirmations of Reich's Discoveries

Independent confirming studies of Reichs work by serious natural scientists and physicians go back over more than 70 years. Most all of these later studies were undertaken by individuals with MD or PhD degrees from mainstream universities, and using the best-available equipment for their time, working in private or university laboratories and employing controlled systematic procedures. A few of these studies employed double-blind procedures. My Saharasia research, mentioned below, employed a quadruple-blind procedure. These studies were published in scientific books and research journals, most of them meeting the standards for peer-review of their period (being critically reviewed and overseen by other knowledgable credential scientific people in the same field of study). Some of them are found within the academic mainstream as well, including as university theses and dissertations which typically are more ambitious works receiving a greater critical scrutiny than the average article in a research journal.

Several major conferences have been held in recent years, where clincial physicians and research scientists have presented their work. For example, there was a 2004 Summer Conference at the Wilhelm Reich Museum, on The Orgone Energy Accumulator: Its Medical and Scientific Use wherein Dr. Jorgos Kavouras, a German physician and author of Heilen mit Orgonenergie: Die medizinische Orgonomie, reported his many years of successful treatments of various disorders and diseases using the orgone accumulator. Also a Conference on Wilhelm Reich in the 21st Century: 2007 International Conference on Orgonomy, organized by the Reich Museum in honor of the 50th anniversary of Reich's death. That event hosted a group of around a dozen natural scientists, historians, and physicians who reported on their various research topics. These included a presentation by Dr. Stefan Muschenich of Germany, author of the book Der Gesundheitsbegriff im Werk des Arztes Wilhelm Reich (1897 - 1957) and one of the principal investigators of a double-blind and controlled study of human physiological response to the orgone accumulator, undertaken at the University of Marburg in Germany. This study demonstrated statistically-significant biological effects upon the heart-rate, blood pressure, body core temperature and other parameters within a group of volunteer subjects who knew nothing about the accumulator; the effects were not observed in other volunteers who sat in a nearly identical but non-accumulating dummy box. A similar controlled-blinded verification study was undertaken by Gunter Hebenstreit at the University of Vienna a few years later, it should be noted, and both those studies as well as many clinical case-studies have been published over the years, exactly verifing Reich's published accounts on the biological effects of the orgone accumulator.

(See: Mueschenich, Stefan & Gebauer, Rainer: Der Reichsche Orgonakkumulator: Naturwissenschaftliche Diskussion, Praktische Andwendung, Experimentelle Untersuchung, Nexus Verlag, Frankfurt, 1987; Hebenstreit, Guenter: Der Orgonakkumulator Nach Wilhelm Reich. Eine Experimentelle Untersuchung zur Spannungs-Ladungs-Formel, Diplomarbeit zur Erlangung des Magistergrades der Philosophie an der Grung- und Integrativ-wissenschaftlichen Fakultat der Universitat Wien, 1995.)

At this 2007 Conference, I also gave an hour-long PowerPoint presentation on my experimental findings with the Reich cloudbuster, detailing field experiments starting in the late 1970s at the University of Kansas, now published in a book bearing the same title as the original study: Preliminary Analysis of Changes in Kansas Weather Coincidental to Experimental Operations with a Reich Cloudbuster. My later work was undertaken at many different places in the USA, and later still in Israel, Namibia and Eritrea, Africa, with the assistance of entire teams of volunteer associates; all of those projects were evaluated using official weather records and showed positive rainfall increases, in keeping with Reich's original findings. Detailed reports were written up and published, some being available on internet. My results thereby mirrored and supported not just Reich, but the many prior cloudbusting studies undertaken since Reich's death, as by Dr. Richard Blasband, Mr. Jerome Eden, Dr. Courtney Baker and others. A publication by the Italian natural scientist Roberto Maglione, Wilhelm Reich and the Healing of Atmospheres: Modern Techniques for the Abatement of Desertification makes a complete survey of work done in this field since Reich's time, and it has been available in English translation since 2007.

In addition, every two years starting more than 10 years ago, there have been the New Research In Orgonomy Conferences, held every two years at different locations around the world. Several were held in the USA, one in the United Kingdom, and another in Greece. These events typically host research scientists and physicians who present on a variety of subjects relevant to Wilhelm Reich's discoveries. These include Reich's early work on human sexuality and therapeutic methods, gentle childbirth issues, disease treatment and controlled physiological tests using the orgone accumulator, the bion discovery and origins of life research, physical effects in the orgone accumulator, documentation of the life energy, orgone as a cosmic force in nature, and the issues of weather and cloudbusting.

Aside from these important Conferences, I can also speak to Reich's biophysical work in a more direct and personal manner, as I've confirmed much of it in my own early university work, and later by experiment in my own laboratory at my private institute, the Orgone Biophysical Research Lab. Most of my research and experimental reports are published in books and journals, some being peer-reviewed within the university system or by professional reviewers of mainstream science journals or book-publishers. I will summarize only:

One of my earliest and most central research projects was a systematic test of Reich's sex-economic theory on the origins of human irrationalism and social violence. My work on this subject constituted what was (and probably still is) the largest global cross-cultural review of human behavior ever undertaken. My findings, made over a 7-year period during the 1980s and now published in the book Saharasia, involved a systematic review of human family and sexual life, and tendencies towards social violence, in over 1000 separate human cultures, each of which was pinpointed on world maps to review the regional similarities and differences. I produced the first-ever world maps of human behavior and social institutions, and it verified Reich's positions exactly, to wit: Human violence originates and exists most strongly within cultures which have two major characteristics:

1) They treat their infants and children with heavy-handed ritualized violence which is consciously or unconsciously designed to inflict painful trauma, and otherwise to destroy the maternal-infant bond, and establish male dominance over childbirth and child-rearing.
2) They also crush down heterosexual love by punitively obliterating the sexual interests of the child and unmarried adolescent (ie, Romeo and Juliet) with sexual phobias, demands for virginal sexual ignorance, compulsive love-less marriages, vaginal blood taboos, prohibiting women the rights to control their own fertility and life-destiny, and also by simultaneously permitting adult rape of emotionally-crushed children and adolescents -- mainly: pedophilia of boys, and child-marriages of old men to young girls.

The more a culture engaged in such practices, the greater was its quanta of bottled-up emotional misery and rage, out of which developed higher levels of social violence and the tendency to engage in aggressive wars and other atrocities against other cultures, and against minorities and social dissenters within their own society.

Like many before me, I've also made basic replications of Reich's bions, which is a most amazing discovery. Bions are a transitional microbial form of around 1 micron diameter and visible in the light microscope. They develop and exist between the worlds of living and non-living matter, with relations to what are today called archaea or extremophiles, and provide an answer to many mysteries in biology, as well as a solution to the Origins of Life question. Just recently, I posted a YouTube video of photomicrographs from my own laboratory, as presented in a PowerPoint to an International Symposia on Pleomorphic Microbes in Health and Disease. My laboratory has hosted laboratory seminars on this subject for about 10 years starting in 1996, led variously by Dr. Richard Blasband, Dr. Stephen Nagy, and/or Prof. Bernard Grad.

Reich's own published journals carried many microphotos of bions and bionous organizational forms, by himself and others such as Prof. Grad, and specialized journals have published numerous papers by physicians and scientists on this same subject, in both Europe and North America. These findings on the bions also underscore Reich's important discoveries on the origins of cancer, and the cancer cell. I'm not a physician so do not treat people with cancer, but others have done so, and go the additional step to verify Dr. Reich's findings on the orgone energy accumulator, as a powerful therapeutic device. Again, these studies are published, and can be identified via the online Bibliography on Orgonomy.

Years ago, having seen several of my loved relatives pass away from cancer (or due to the heroic/horrific cancer treatments) I wrote a book on this subject: The Orgone Accumulator Handbook: Wilhelm Reich's Life Energy Science and Healing Tools for the 21st Century, with Construction Plans. That book is more of a "how to" help for people wanting to break free of the allopathic medical system, to insure Reich's discoveries on the orgone accumulator could never again be wiped out by a power-drunk FDA or medical societies, and gives a listing also of various research papers on the clinical use of the orgone accumulator against various diseases and conditions.

- See more at: http://www.orgonelab.org/wrhistory.htm# ... jWorf.dpuf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Spiritwind]

Myths and Disinformation About Wilhelm Reich

1. Q. Was Reich a member of the Frankfurt Group of cultural Marxist radicals?

A. Absolutely Not.

The "Frankfurt Group" (FG) or "Frankfurt School" got its start in Germany at the University of Frankfurt around 1923, when a group of radical Communists founded the Institut für Sozialforschung, (Institute for Social Research). They promoted Soviet and other Marxist-authoritarian ideology and agendas through the writings of hard-left radicals such as Felix Weil, Karl Korsch, Carl Grünberg, Max Horkheimer, Georg Lukacs, Theodor Adorno, and Freudians such as Eric Fromm and Abraham Maslow.

While during his early period in Europe as an anti-Nazi freedom-fighter, Reich joined the German Communist Party (KPD), attempting to merge the ideas of Freud and Marx. He openly called for the Marxist parties to accept various social-sexual reforms, such as legalization of divorce and contraception, aimed at increasing human happiness and prevention of neurosis. Within a few years, however, he became critical of anti-freedom Marxist policies and leaders, rejecting their ideas about "class struggle" and pointing out how difficult human problems such as sexual impotence, wife-beating, child-abuse and neurotic behavior was present in both "bourgeois Nazi" and "revolutionary Soviet" society. Reich emphasized the need to end arranged marriages, legalize divorce, contraception and abortion, to support abandoned women with children, and give women equal rights before the law, with equal pay, and to end pornography and prostitution by eliminating their causes in repressive obstacles to natural sexual love. For such radical ideas, he was attacked by both the Nazis and the Communists, who banned and sometimes burned his books; he quit the KPD in 1933, which also formally expelled him in the same year. Reich was subsequently publicly denounced in both the Nazi and Communist newspapers of Germany and Scandinavia, having fled to Denmark and Norway. In 1936 he was placed on an NKVD (Soviet secret police) death list, something the Nazis had done in prior years. Reich was factually expelled from every socialist-communist organization he ever joined during his youth, and broke with them completely in 1933, far earlier than most other notable Western socialists.

Shortly before his move to America in 1939, Reich became disillusioned with Marxist concepts as well, beyond his opposition to the Communist political organizations, and in a few years became a vocal anti-Communist. In November 1940, writing to his friend A.S. Neill in England, he wrote:

"... this so-called bourgeois society has done more in the course of seven years under capitalistic rules in the field of social security than any communist in Russia would dream of getting... I feel myself completely confused and inclined to revise most of the things I ever learned in Europe about what socialism should be... If you hear from socialists and communists coming over here and claiming that Roosevelt is a dictator or fascist, then your stomach simply turns around. I started to hate them." (Wilhelm Reich, American Odyssey, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999, p.38)

In America, Communists led the major smears and attacks against Reich in their many mainstream news outlets, triggering US Government actions against him based upon communist disinformation. This predominantly Marxist-Leftist persecution of Reich led to his death in prison in 1957, and to the burning of his books. While a small group of Reich's authentic followers kept his work alive in the subsequent years, republishing his books and advancing the scientific research he had begun, he remained a nearly unknown figure for many years thereafter.

Around 10 years after Reich's death, all that was to change when his early Marxist writings, which he had repudiated during his American period, were resurrected by the 1960s New Left Communist radicals. They distorted his findings on authentic sexual freedom and heterosexual genitality, and inappropriately mixed them up with the unscientific sexual license "anything goes" poly-sex and pornography-promoting ideology of writers such as Alfred Kinsey. While Reich's writings on heterosexual genitality advocated for a freer sexual life and lessening of laws prohibiting people from living a self-regulated and healthy-responsible love-life, his ideas were nearly always exaggerated to extremes by the New Left radicals. For reasons of their own anxiety-driven inner turmoil, they wrongly claimed an equivalence of loving genital heterosexuality with neurotic sexual expressions such as homosexuality, bi-sexuality, group sex, sado-masochism and coercive polygamy, or criminal expressions such as pedophilia, child pornography and so on. Reich by contrast wrote that such non-genital or pre-genital fixations were neurotic in character, or seriously criminal activity as with pedophilia, from which children had to be protected.

Reich's original and authentic healthy conservative findings and ideas about sexual freedom were never adopted by any Communist, Leftist or Marxist group, much less by the Frankfurters. However, similar perverse Leftist groups frequently hated Reich to extremes, and in later years used the "reversed Big Lie" to attack him. They falsely claimed he was advocating such things as they were promoting themselves, as a means to destroy his credibility in the eyes of the conservative majority, as well as to discredit his pointed anti-Communist writings among their fellow Leftists. Reich had written how the German Nazi movement was dominated by sexually disturbed characters, including many "macho" type homosexuals and pedophiles, with a decided homoerotic and anti-female content in their artwork, public policy and laws. He called the Nazis Black Fascists, and this got him on the Nazi death lists. However, he later called the Communists Red Fascists, showing their close functional identity to the Nazis with regard to such sexual matters, and that got him on the Communist death-lists.

By contrast, neither the Frankfurt Group leaders nor their Institutes were never attacked by the Communist Party nor placed on any Red death-lists, nor attacked in Communist-run American media, as was the case with Reich. Instead after moving to America, the Frankfurters were given a welcomed greeting at Columbia University, where they formed a new International Institute of Social Research, and a new journal, Studies in Philosophy and Social Science. And it was from that mainstream-accepted high social position, in addition to the voluminous writings of their individual members, that radical-left cultural Marxist influences were spread across the USA and internationally. Reich, by contrast, died a nearly forgotten man, destroyed primarily by Communist radicals who distorted his message of healthy heterosexual love into one of pornographic license, either to discredit Reich in the eyes of conservatives of the 1950s, or to advance their pornography and related themes during the rebellious 1960s.

While some of Reich's concepts and writings were occasionally cited by the Frankfurters and their step-children in the New Left (ie, Alan Ginsburg) -- notably his criticisms of the severe obedience-demanding patriarchal authoritarian family structure of Nazi Germany -- they ignored his criticisms of the Soviet collectivist family, and distorted his ideas into a basic "anti-family" and "anti-love", or poly-sex and homoerotic extremism which Reich never advocated. They also considered him to be a "bad Marxist". For example, Reich never advocated for "class warfare", murdering of oppositionists, nor for "dictatorship of the proletariat" or dictatorship of any variety. He wrote in favor of human freedom and self-regulation, even during his early "Marxist" period. As an older man, better aware of the social disaster that awaited nations who converted over into socialist or Communist organization, he became openly anti-Communist.

The specific modern myth of Reich as a "cultural Marxist" or "member of the Frankfurt Group" was specifically fabricated by conservative critics of the 1960s sexual and Red-political rebellions, but only based upon what they had read by leftist writers who had distorted Reich's ideas into sexual license. While many of the conservatives were rationally critical of the Leftist agendas towards poly-sex, homoeroticism, pornography and the sexual abuse of children, they were misled by the Leftist writers to believe Reich was one of them, a life-long Communist radical who had approved of such things. This is simply not true.

For example, Reich's books The Sexual Revolution and Mass Psychology of Fascism were written by Reich during his Marxist period, but were redrafted by Reich after his emigration to America, to eliminate much of the Marxist jargon. But they still retained lingering references to Marxist ideas which, in my opinion, were historically releveant, but scientifically irrelevant to the most centrally-important sexual-social discoveries he had made, about the roots of totalitarian social movements in patriarchal sex-repressive social, family and character structures. Both references -- the outdated Marxist concepts and the fully accurate social-sexual relationships -- served to elicit severe scorn by right-wing theocratic extremists opposed to divorce, contraception and abortion, or those espousing "old time religion" or "women out of schools and workplace, and back to the kitchen". As Reich showed, those were views and attitudes predominant within both the Nazi and Soviet social systems. Reich consequently was attacked by the Hard-Left for being "too conservative" in his abandonment of rigid Marxism and Communist dictatorship, and attacked by the Hard-Right for being "too liberal" in his advocating of peer-oriented adolescent and premarital sexual freedom and family planning measures.

To this I can add the following proof: My own subsequent cross-cultural research made a serious investigation of Reich's sex-economic theory, proving beyond question the relationships between infant trauma, child-abuse, sex-repression and patriarchal social institutions. All those variables, however, were also strong predictors for a larger hierarchy of family and social violence, and of totalitarian-fascist social structures. Most notably, my work exposed a similar "Mass Psychology of Islamic Fascism", quite similar in nature to Nazism and Communism. And yet, my work made no inclusion or even mention of Marxist-Communist ideas or theory. They were completely unnecessary for the evaluations and important discovery of the Saharasian geographical patterns (* see below) which exposed and resolved the Origins of Violence question. This was something Reich had correctly and intuitively felt was of an ancient-historical nature. My work, utilizing Reich's sexual-familial discoveries and concepts, proved this was so, without any reference to Marxist nor any other politically-driven ideas. And not surprisingly, my work on Saharasia is also hated by both the Left- and Right-wing extremists.

The bottom line is, Reich never joined the Frankfurters' Institutes, in Europe or America, nor was he ever invited by them to give lectures at their Conferences, nor to join them at the big university in America. Philosophically, he was at odds with them, in sharp disagreement on centrally-important aspects. The influence of the New Left and cultural Marxists flourished only years after Reich died, with no honest reference to his writings. While the Frankfurters and the New Left which was spawned by them have taken up some of his ideas on the sex-repressive psychology of authoritarian societies, they predominantly eschew his analysis that Communist societies founded on International Socialism are quite similar to National Socialism or Nazi-type dictatorships in this respect. The Frankfurter's writings make scant reference to his name. He was simply not sufficiently radical for their liking, and nearly all Marxist histories present the false view that Reich went insane shortly after his break from the German Communist Party in 1933, and with the onset of his biophysical research into the bions and orgone energy.

2. Q. Did Reich promote or support pornography, prostitution, homosexuality, pedophilia and sexual perversions?

A. Again, Absolutely Not!

As detailed in the essays above, Reich considered all such behavior as expressions of sex-frustration or neurosis, or as with pedophilia, a criminal act requiring police to protect children from adult seducers or rapists. He considered pornography and going to prostitutes as evidence of a sexually disturbed society, being the consequence of loveless marriages and forbiddance of divorce. Partners in healthy loving relationships would not seek out either pornography nor prostitution, nor engage in things like "group sex" activity of any sort -- those, Reich argued, were founded upon sexual impotence and lack of full sexual gratification. He considered homosexuality to be a neurosis but argued for its decriminalization, believing it was borne from traumatic early childhood experiences, as from violent and fierce actions of adult caretakers, or child seduction, molestation and rape by adults. Sado-masochism he viewed as a deep neurosis, where people only could obtain sexual excitation and a bit of release by the breaking of the skin. Pedophilia he viewed as a violent psychopathic assault upon children, from which they had to be protected. All those who claim Reich was "for pornography" or similar things, are either lying outright, or repeating lies as they got from his most malicious slanderers. One can look forever through Reich's writings and never find statements by him which support such things.

- See more at: http://www.orgonelab.org/wrhistory.htm# ... jWorf.dpuf" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Christine]

Information overload right now ... LOL and it is simply awesome! Think I'll go shopping with my daughter to digest the big deep droughts of incoming all day. Makes the body spin!

[Naga_Fireball]

This truly worth reading; thank you for sharing his story.
I didn't know any of this stuff, or his influence on modern science. Very interesting how some people are suppressed particularly prior to a war.

[finaltom]

Seems this is close to the same work as what Tesla did with his wireless energy. Also Max Freedom Longs work with the pendulum and Huna, is also of the same concept. Here is a link to Max's Audio's of his work. http://www.maxfreedomlong.com/library/audio" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Great read, very interesting.
Thank you for sharing.

[Eelco]

Has anyone here ever tried reichian breath therapy or work?

I've tried his method, rebirthing, the adaptations made by Lowen and later in Transformative Breathwork.
The few times I tried it with a therapist i seem to just cramp up severely in my hands and face. Without any kind of relief.
Now from the therapists I get no explanation of why this happens only that with more sessions it will pass. When my hands are cramped up like claws like that it's easy to say something like you're holding on to much which is exactly what is said... I tend to give up after 4 to 5 session as by then the remembrance of previous attempts to master breathwork (i.e. come to the promised cathartic experience of a total free breath or emotional release) doesn't seem worth the painfull breathing for hour after hour. It starts to feel artificial by then...

With Love
Eelco

[finaltom]

Has anyone here ever tried reichian breath therapy or work?

I've tried his method, rebirthing, the adaptations made by Lowen and later in Transformative Breathwork.
The few times I tried it with a therapist i seem to just cramp up severely in my hands and face. Without any kind of relief.
Now from the therapists I get no explanation of why this happens only that with more sessions it will pass. When my hands are cramped up like claws like that it's easy to say something like you're holding on to much which is exactly what is said... I tend to give up after 4 to 5 session as by then the remembrance of previous attempts to master breathwork (i.e. come to the promised cathartic experience of a total free breath or emotional release) doesn't seem worth the painfull breathing for hour after hour. It starts to feel artificial by then...

With Love
Eelco

I get an impression of over thinking something as simple as breath, (not you personally but the therapy). The mind will naturally get bored after a time. It will get to a point which it will just say, enough is enough and make things start to make things hurt as a coping mechanism, from stagnation. I see here, that you can already see this, by noticing how artificial it feels after a time.

I know nothing about this therapy or its purpose. What is the intention behind this therapy and what is your intention/goal to useing this?

Quote: "Now from the therapists I get no explanation of why this happens only that with more sessions it will pass." This response to me sends up a red flag, saying, "Something isn't right". Either the therapist doesn't have faith in what they are doing, or the belief from the therapist isn't his/her own.
When someone has a practice, you would think that, they would know every aspect of their work. from a legal point of view.

[Eelco]

I was really looking for other peoples experiences with the above mentioned breath-work.
I agree completely with the ref-flag therapists. It's why I discontinued, But since we are discussing Reich's work in this thread I was wondering if any else used his breathing. Apart from Orgonite and cloud-busters Reich has set the stage for many "modern" day therapies which base themselves around the insights of body types and body armor. Lowens Bioenergetic analysis for instance expanded on Reich's work. Reichs Body types also find there way into many massage related therapies. From rolfing(deep tissue massage) to esalen massage therapies.

Anyway I did Reich's Breathwork oh 25 years ago? Some rebirthing sessions say 20 years ago and the transformational breathing was something i tried between 4 to 6 years ago. So it's not something that is very much in the front of my awareness at the moment.

My own breathwork has become way more easy going and subtle through basic theravadan buddhist vipassana and samatha practises.
Which means I know full well the boredom you spoke of. But also have I glimpsed the silence it brings when we persevere to gently guide our attention back to the breath..

WIth Love
Eelco

[Eelco]

Edit.. Reich did not invent Orgonite. He build orgone accumulators.
Slightly different concept. I'm not looking up the name of who did invent it. Maybe it's in the orgonite art thread somewhere.
The reason for this edit is that for a few days now people seem to be nudging me to get my facts straights..
So yeah there..

With Love
Eelco