The following is a transcription of the lecture given by Dr. Morton Herskowitz at the Institute for Orgonomic Science Conference on April 11, 2015 at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
The essence of life as I have learned is change and one of the first things that struck me as I walked into this room today is that I recalled a time probably 30 or 40 years ago when we used to give speeches and talks about Orgonomy at NYU. Now I forget how frequently we did it whether it was once a week or once a month, I do remember that a room almost as large as this was filled, and I walk into this room and it’s hardly filled, and I think what the hell has happened. Why is this room not more full than they were in NYU? And the fact is that at that time Reich was hot and the village was full of Reich, Greenwich village that is. Intellectuals talked about Reich and that was a hot subject. And today Reich is spoken of by relatively few intellectuals. Very few people are applying to become therapists in the psychiatric orgone therapy and the scene is totally different. It doesn’t worry me particularly because I remember many years ago when the decline was already in progress and I had a speaking engagement in Montevideo and the opening session was held in a room not dissimilar to the academy of music with one balcony after another and on opening night the city hall was filled in Montevideo which was amazing to me, and as I have spoken to many places around the world I know that for example there is immense popularity of Reich in Finland and in Spain, so I think the fact that we are a few is simply a phase. One thing I think is that the praise of Dr. Strick’s book is going to start a little fuss and perhaps our numbers will increase again.
I want to talk about something that I can’t get out of my mind which is a book review written by the head of psychiatry at Columbia University called Shrink, and I had not yet read book I have only read the book review in the New York Times. The thesis of the book is that psychiatry is finally awakening from a time almost of stupor, he thinks that we spend a half a century listening to Freud who he thinks is full of empty talk and finally we have arrived at a time of scientific psychiatry that is medicine. Included in his review is a brief section on Reich who he includes in a section devoted to fakes, magicians, quacks and he describes Reichian therapy thus, “people put tubes around our throats and squeeze into orgone accumulators for various sensations.” Now that’s his description of psychiatric orgone therapy. It’s wild and it’s the fantasy of a sick adolescent and I can’t get it out of my mind. The fact that the head of psychiatry of Columbia University first of all had such a fantastic imagination to think that his description describes psychiatric orgone therapy but secondly to have the chutzpah to put Freud down who has awakened the lives and minds of people all over the world as easily as he does, can’t help but make me think of this guy standing at the judgement of Copernicus, or Galileo or Bruno and yelling “burn them! burn them!” Because that’s essentially the kind of character type who would write such a book. I think that’s all I’m going to say now.
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Scientific theory is a contrived foothold in the chaos of living phenomena.
Freud has been pretty much relegated to the dustbin of history. In colleges today, students are taught he has been debunked and the current chemical-based treatments for mental illnesses are called “evidence- based medicine”. Reich is mentioned only as a follower of Freud, and any differences between them are ignored.
I recently met a college student who had never heard of Reich, and I began to tell him about Reich, but when I started out by telling him Reich began his career as a student of Freud, he immediately spoke up to say Freud has been shown wrong and therefore nobody starting from Freud’s mistakes could have ever gotten anywhere worth bothering with.
Modern medicine is never going to catch up to Reich because it is not going in the same direction. Every year, every new “discovery”, every “advance” in treatment, every new drug to treat some other form of mental illness, takes it further and further from Reich’s insights and practices. Orgonomy, if they know of it at all, is considered a thing of the past, not the future. I have been told several times that orgonomy is outdated and obsolete. The only reason orgone therapists can still make a living is that there are so few of them.
I want to give mine impressions and also mine worries. Around 30 years ago I was partecipating my first orgonomy conference, I was happy, exited, full of hope on the importance of orgonomy and also my personal orgone therapy was improving my life. Now, 30 years after, i’m a father and my…daughter is not a “child of the future” and she dont live in a genital world..and more bad she is not a genital girl. Why? what has this fact to do with the future of orgonomy? Another example: one day one orgone therapist of the IOS tell me…Francis, orgonomy is dead..I was without words..and inside me i dont believe in this..and i continued to prepare the conference on orgonomy in Rome. There was many partecipants, but after the conference nothing of important happen. Third example: in the summer of 2014 i organize a small meeting , in my house, with an orgone therapist, only 10 people come, I invite also the director of pubblic healthy system in my town, his answer was.. Reich is very old…we have more new and modern tool available. Also after this, nothing happen. Last example.. we organize the second international conference of orgonomy for 2015, only 19 partecipants, we decided to delete. So the future of orgonomy appear difficult and we need to understand why. Mine answers are these:
– Orgonomy is wrong to search approvation from official medicine
– Orgonomy has to pass from conferences, journal, theoretical diffusion to real application of his wonderful understanding of emotional life. This means some concrete applications like:
– places where children can born, develop and live a factual genital life.Speak of genitality without no place where to live in genital mode can transform the word..genitality..in an empty word..or in obsessive dream.
– The cloudbuster application is rare and not developped…so another important tool is without real application…
– the Reich blood test and the cancer biophaty with the use of accumulator is not diffuse and i dont know clinic where the orgone therapy is applied togheter the use of orgone accumulator.
. Who is using really Sapa bions or bionic water to help people? I dont know.
We need to trasform in..real life.. the work of Reich..behind the official medicine, the official style of life and behind..our intellectual narcisistic enjoyment in reading Reich. I want to remember that more genital life we have found in Trobrianders, Muria people…and all this know nothing of Reich. Maybe this means only one thing…now …we need..orgonomic life..and not only ..orgonomic students.