When Albert Einstein Met Wilhelm Reich

“For let me repeat once more: above all, the way of thinking is always more important than the facts.”
–Wilhelm Reich

Exploring the broad and deep subject of worldviews and ways of knowing can help us to better understand the place of orgonomy in the human desire to know who we are, where we came from, and where we are going in this vast, unknown universe. Today’s prevailing worldviews are the context within which this new science was born and developed. A comprehension of their main aspects will be useful in helping to see the value of Reich’s perspective and discoveries.

Two Worldviews Collide

In January 1941, in the persons of Albert Einstein and Wilhelm Reich, two scientific worldviews confronted one another. The encounter of these two individuals illustrates with remarkable clarity the decisive role worldviews play when they are put into action in the social setting. Einstein was 62 years old at that time and was the most famous scientist in the world. Wilhelm Reich was 43 years old and, outside of psychoanalytic circles, was an unknown émigré physician-scientist who had been living in the in the United States for less than two years.

In 1933, with the ascent to power of Hitler and the Nazis, Einstein renounced his German citizenship and immigrated to America where he was appointed Professor of Theoretical Physics at Princeton. He became a United States citizen in 1940. In early 1939, physicists Leo Szilard, Eugene Wigner and others, wrote a letter to the US Government about the possibility that the Hitler government may have an atomic bomb program. They were ignored. A few months later, after enlisting the support of Einstein, they wrote again. Einstein’s involvement made all the difference. President Franklin D. Roosevelt believed he could not risk having Germany develop an atomic bomb first. This letter is believed to be the key factor that motivated the United States to investigate the development of atomic weapons.

Roosevelt invited Einstein to meet with him and soon after that the United States initiated the Manhattan Project. It is now known that, at that time, the US Government was aware that there was no Nazi atomic bomb project. Officials consciously lied to the scientists working on the Manhattan Project. FDR and his confidantes knew that these scientists would never build such a terrible weapon unless they believed the Nazis were working to create atomic bombs.

Einstein, a pacifist, later regretted his crucial role in the creation of the Manhattan Project (though he did not participate in this effort) and ushering in the “Age of the Atomic Bomb.” He said in an interview in Newsweek magazine "had I known that the Germans would not succeed in developing an atomic bomb, I would have done nothing." The Manhattan Project is estimated to have cost about $2 billion in 1945 US dollars or $46 billion in 2025 US dollars.

In this same period, Wilhelm Reich was also pursuing ground-breaking energy investigations. However, he worked alone and unknown, without any financial support from any social institutions. Instead of being invited to meet with the President, Reich, one of the foremost anti-fascists in Europe and the author of the 1933 classic, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, was arrested by the FBI as a possible “enemy alien.” After three weeks of incarceration, he was released.

At one point, Reich only had $200 to his name and did not know how he would survive. He was at the very beginning of his investigations of a mass-free energy that existed before matter was created, while Einstein and his colleagues were investigating energy after the creation of matter in the attempt to create a bomb. Reich was using a new way of knowing—energetic functionalism—in his research. Einstein’s research was within the accepted structure of mechanistic physics. Reich’s approach was completely outside the framework of the science of his day.

Reich was, of course, unaware of the top-secret Manhattan Project, and Einstein’s connection to it, when he first wrote to Einstein on December 30, 1940 and met with him on January 13, 1941. The key point here is that Einstein’s mechanistic, relativistic science was within the prevailing worldview and was valued by those in power. It led to a massive, secret program whose results still threaten our lives today. In contrast, Reich’s embryonic science was outside of the worldview, not valued, and rejected.

The creation of the atomic bomb, combined with the rejection of a science of Life Energy, is a perfect example of a worldview in action, with all of its devastating consequences.

For thousands of years, there has been a stream of thought in human inquiry that was focused on the living, creative aspects of the universe. In our mechanistic-mystical era, in which the life-negative aspects of both science and religion jeopardize our very existence, this life-positive line of inquiry is not accorded the respect and attention it deserves. But it is in this stream of scientific thought that Reich’s ideas flow.

The difference in ways of knowing and worldviews is evident in the meeting of Albert Einstein and Wilhelm Reich. Reich’s reflections on the larger meaning of his discussions with Einstein are extremely valuable.

There have been scores of biographies of Einstein and a few have briefly noted the meeting between these two men. In these books, this encounter is looked at in terms of the personalities and reputations of the two individuals involved—the world-famous authority and the unknown outsider who is cast in a negative light. However, Reich came to understand his meeting with Einstein in a fundamentally different manner.

In a letter to Dr. Theodore Wolfe on February 18, 1944, published in American Odyssey Letters and Journals 1940-1947, Reich wrote “…after careful thought it seems to me that the whole affair goes back to something more profound than merely a personal conflict between Einstein and myself. Looking at the matter more closely, it appears that in effect, and entirely logically, two worlds of science have collided in this conflict. Einstein was cast in the role of representing inorganic physics, and it fell to me, often much to my regret, to represent a kind of energy which controls both the inorganic sector and the living. Neither Einstein’s personality or my own is involved here.”

On December 21, 1940, Reich wrote in his journal that he had considered writing to Einstein to ask for a meeting with him—but had decided not to do that. However, only nine days later, on December 30, he did write to Einstein asking to meet with him “to discuss a difficult and urgent scientific matter.” Reich gave his professional credentials to Einstein and then briefly explained that the visit had to do with the subject of “a specific biologically effective energy which in many ways behaves differently from anything that is known about electromagnetic energy.” In his letter, Reich emphasized that the energy “is visible and can be concentrated and measured.” Einstein quickly replied to Reich on January 6, 1941, agreeing to meet with him. And on January 13, Reich traveled to Princeton for his appointment with Einstein.

They spoke for five hours that day, from about 3:30 pm until 8:30 pm. Einstein immediately saw the scintillating orgone energy using a modified telescope Reich called an “orgonoscope.” But he wondered if the light phenomena were subjective sensations in his eyes. Einstein also observed the higher temperature at top of the orgone accumulator as compared with the room temperature (this is impossible according to mechanistic physics). However, Reich noted in his journal after the meeting that Einstein did not understand his thoughts on “free energy.”

Einstein wished to study the matter further and Reich had an experimental orgone device made for him. On February 1, 1941, Reich traveled again to Princeton and handed the device over to Einstein for study over the next three weeks. Reich had great hopes at this point for the possibility that he might work with Einstein on the investigation of orgone energy.

However, only one week later, on February 7, Einstein wrote to Reich saying that an assistant had explained the temperature difference as simply heat convection from the ceiling of the room to the tabletop on which the accumulator sat. Reich sent Einstein a long letter scientifically refuting the assistant’s objection and providing Einstein with more information about other physical manifestations of orgone energy. He stressed to Einstein that such a major discovery should not be dismissed on the basis of one misinterpretation of one experiment. He wrote, “The individual facts taken by themselves are impossible to understand—that is the reason for the difficulties I come up against.” Einstein did not respond scientifically to Reich ever again.

It is worth examining the meeting of these two scientists because major aspects of our world are evident in their encounter. As Reich noted in the quotation that opened this article”… the way of thinking is always more important than the facts.” Einstein’s assistant interpreted isolated, new facts in terms of his mechanistic scientific worldview and its way of knowing. Therefore, he came up with a misinterpretation of the results of the orgone energy experiment. Because Einstein shared the same worldview, his assistant’s conclusions made sense to him. They fit in with what he already believed.

Over the years, Reich tried to understand Einstein’s silence. On November 14, 1941, he wondered if Einstein had been turned against him by someone or if he just did not want to be involved. Two years later, he thought it likely that “pestilent rumors” about him had reached Einstein and caused this behavior. In an undated entry in late February or early March 1944, Reich wrote “Einstein’s behavior has remained a riddle to this day. Why did he not reply?”

Reich considered various reasons for Einstein’s failure to write to him. For example, he thought that Einstein may have not understood the orgone energy at all because it contradicted fundamental laws of physics. Or perhaps Einstein had understood orgone energy and saw that it could contribute to the collapse of Einstein’s life’s work. But Reich did not know for sure if either of these two thoughts were correct.

He concluded this entry by writing, “As the years went by, I increasingly tended toward the opinion that the meeting on 13 January 1941 was an encounter between two completely hostile worlds: mechanistic and functional astrophysics—the former a giant with infinite means of waging battle and wielding power, the latter a mere baby that had just been born. The newborn baby held in one fist the fact ‘cosmic energy’ and in the other fist the fact ‘sentient matter.’ This is enough to scare even the most courageous man.”

Einstein had seen the orgone energy with his own eyes but doubted his sense impressions. Although he observed the temperature difference in the thermometers above the orgone accumulator and in the room for over a week, he easily accepted his assistant’s views which “explained away” the phenomenon. In addition, Einstein ignored Reich’s detailed scientific refutation of the assistant’s misinterpretation. The subjective and objective manifestations of orgone energy were thought to be impossible in physics then. This is still true today.

I had an experience in 2004 with a well-known, highly regarded physicist from the Max Planck Institute demonstrating this. A mutual friend asked me to tell this physicist about the experiment that Reich had demonstrated to Einstein, a version of which she had seen at the Wilhelm Reich Museum. As soon as I mentioned the temperature difference, he grimaced, looked down, pounded the table at which we were sitting with his fist, and repeated over and over, “Impossible! Impossible!!” He never allowed me to describe the experiment. Here again, we see the power of a worldview in action in daily life.

In the decades since Reich met Einstein, our culture has done everything in its power to support the development of mechanistic science and its ways of knowing, notably the spread of the destructive, life-inimical nuclear science and its technology. It did so while simultaneously attacking and defaming the embryonic, life-positive energy investigations Reich was pursuing through his functional way of knowing.

Our life on Earth today is shaped at every level by the presence of the mechanistic worldview represented by Einstein and the absence of the functional worldview represented by Reich. We live in the same culture, with the same dominant worldview and ways of knowing, as did Einstein and Reich. It is crucial for each reader to be aware of the power of his or her own worldview since it will affect the very reading of this article. It also has been essential that I, as the author, be aware of my worldview while writing this.

We all have conscious beliefs, as well as unconscious and unexamined assumptions, as a result of being raised within today’s prevailing worldview. There is a strong tendency in all of us to interpret new knowledge in terms of our prior beliefs and assumptions. If readers unconsciously interpret new knowledge according to previous beliefs, they will not understand the information presented here.

Reich’s “way of knowing,” the tool of thinking he used in his exploration of Life Energy, is called “orgonomic functionalism” or “energetic functionalism.” It is as fundamentally different from both mechanistic scientific materialism and metaphysical idealism as orgone energy is from electromagnetism or metaphysical premises. It led him to a very different view of the universe and our place in it. In a powerful statement, written on December 22, 1952, Reich summarized his thoughts on the differences between his scientific view of the universe and Einstein’s:

“Einstein succeeded in fascinating the first half of the twentieth century just because he had emptied space. Emptying space, reducing the whole universe to a static nothing, was the only theory that could satisfy the desert-like character structure of man of this age. Empty, immobile space and a desert character structure fit well together. It was a last attempt on the part of armored man to withstand and withhold knowledge of a universe full of life energy, pulsating in many rhythms, always in a state of development and change; in one word, functional and not mechanistic, mystical or relativistic. It was the last barrier, in scientific terms, to the final breakdown of the human armoring.”

The struggle between those asserting a worldview of a meaningless universe filled with dead energy and matter, with life present only on our planet, and those describing a vibrant, dynamic cosmos with life everywhere, is ongoing today. The issues and conflicts that arose in the meeting of Reich and Einstein in 1941—a meeting of mechanistic and functional science—remain unresolved in 2025. But, importantly, the thrust of the development of science in the last 85 years has been in Reich’s direction. Our survival as a species hangs in the balance.