The following is a transcription of the lecture given by Dr Harry Lewis at the Institute for Orgonomic Science Conference on April 11, 2015 at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

I’m pretty much the only orgonomist working in New York City these days; which tells you something about the state of Orgonomy! But there are many who are interested in Reich’s work and it’s beginning to spread.

I’m pretty much the only orgonomist working in New York City these days; which tells you something about the state of Orgonomy! But there are many who are interested in Reich’s work and it’s beginning to spread.

More important than my personal website is that we have a group in New York that has been going for some at least 20 years or more. I want to mention that it is primarily been supported and made possible by David Silver who is up front here videoing. If you go to our website, wilhelmreich.net, you can get access to over 20 years of lectures we have run; regular lectures, dozens and dozens of lectures — both by myself and others including Dr.Victor Sobey (a close close and longtime associate of Dr. Reich) and Dr. Michael Rodenberg, who was one of Reich’s students; not trained by Reich, because Reich died before Dr. Rothenberg finished medical school; but Dr. Rodenberg was a pediatric psychiatrist and orgonomist. He was the head of pediatric psychiatry in Washington State University Medical School and was contemporary of Dr. Herskowitz. He died, unfortunately quite young from ALS. But there is wonderful range of subjects all recorded on CDs and then we have film or video, but many of these things are now on YouTube or Twitter. So I think I would recommend that you go to www.wilhemreich.net or to my own website which basically talks about our work. And I spoke to couple of people who contacted me earlier in the day before we got started, feel free if you’re in New York area to get in touch with me, we have periodic lectures. We just did, Dr. Bennett, myself and few others just did a major presentation at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, on the influence of Reich on psychoanalysis from the beginning to the end which, I guess, is a preface to my talk. Let me state, just briefly, asking me to give a presentation on who was Wilhelm Reich is a little bit of overkill! I want to point out that we have two outstanding historians present in the room and both of them will be talking a little bit today, both of them can tell you in far more precise detail who Reich was historically and development of his work. One is James Strick who has just published a spectacularly wonderful work on Reich as a scientist “Wilhelm Reich Biologist”, the other is Dr. Phillip Bennett, who is an active social historian of Reich’s work and archivist in a sense of, he’s the guy we go to get information and find out if we’re right or wrong, I’m sure he’s going to tell me about 20 or 30 things that I got wrong in my talk some of them I argue with him about. But that said, you’ll have an ample opportunity to ask questions; you’ll also have, if he stays around Dr. Morton Herskowitz, who was there for much of it. So the first thing I want to say specifically about Reich’s life and work is that really his Life and Work are functionally identical and if you know what functionally identical means in terms of orgonomic study that will be obvious in terms of what I’m trying to say. Functionally identical means that they have just different expressions of the same totality in this case the organism “Wilhelm Reich”.

So the first thing I want to say specifically about Reich’s life and work is that really his Life and Work are functionally identical and if you know what functionally identical means in terms of orgonomic study that will be obvious in terms of what I’m trying to say. Functionally identical means that they have just different expressions of the same totality in this case the organism "Wilhelm Reich".

And Reich himself often commented on the fact that from the earliest days, as James Strick points that out in his introduction, that Reich often felt that from almost birth on (he was born on a farm) that he was interested in natural phenomena in life and life forms and he was introduced to natural biological behavior and sexuality through seeing and identifying and interacting with the life on the farm. So in a sense Reich’s work is consistent from beginning to end and the thing that unifies it as Reich himself comments, towards the end of his career, looking back; the thing that unifies it all — and you’ll hear talked about actively today — is energy and the attempt to understand energetic function and not just the philosophical concept of energy which had been around from the romantic period on or even going further back this general idea of energy or life energy; elan vital. Reich was really interested in what makes us run, and not just us, but what makes life possible and what life is; and for him life is also functionally identical with energy and energetic function.

Reich was really interested in what makes us run, and not just us, but what makes life possible and what life is; and for him life is also functionally identical with energy and energetic function.

Towards the end interestingly he began to think that possibly the line between life and nonliving is not as clear as humans tend to rather arrogantly assume that the line between so called lower forms of animal life and human life is significant. For Reich I think it becomes clear that that significance is greatly diminished over the years.

Reich was born March 24, 1897 he lived to be 60. He lived a relatively short life, but it was jam packed.

Reich was born March 24, 1897 he lived to be 60. He lived a relatively short life, but it was jam packed.

He grew up on a farm in what was loosely called Russo Poland; an area of the Austro-Hungarian empire that tended to switch hands between the Russians and the Poles and the Germans and the Austrians. He lives there until he’s forced out by World War One. He joins the Austrian army becomes a lieutenant in a gunnery outfit. He makes the comment, if you read his “Passion of Youth”, that seeing real war and real fighting convinced him that the best place to be was up in the mountains looking down on it rather than being in it. So he finishes that and goes to Vienna because his farm has been confiscated. He enters, as it seems typical for many, Freud did this too; his first study at university was law. He quickly became quite disenchanted with that, moved into medicine and it’s there that I think one of the most significant points in Reich’s life begins which is not just the meeting with Freud but the sudden interest connecting to his interest in life function and biology. Actually in many ways he goes into medicine probably James Strick and Philip Bennett can address this more accurately, but he goes into it probably more because it’s connected to biology or biological research and biological knowledge then it is simple a desire to practice medicine. In a very real sense, and interestingly, (including a number of people who I know) — and I have a number of patients believe it or not who were seen by Reich and they’re still alive — he wasn’t as interested in doing clinical work per se as he was in finding out what happens and how people function and what the connection to biological life and function are or were. So in Vienna at this time, living in a cold-water flat, basically supporting himself while he did medical school, I’m saying this to give you some idea of the amazing capabilities of his mind you get a very good sense of this if you read the four volumes of his autobiography. He not only consumes masses of information while in medical school, he also supports himself by tutoring other medical students and begins to connect with a group of very very radical young clinicians or medical school students, most significant of them being Otto Fenichel who became a close friend and associate and they begin to decide that they cannot get enough information from their medical school studies or in the laboratory, their education; primarily there is no one willing to discuss human sexuality or sexual function at all or just about no one except some guy who has a seminar that meets every once in a while named Sigmund Freud and a small group around him and they begin to attend those meetings. It’s there that Reich finds the primary direction in his life in the Vienna years particularly Vienna and Berlin from roughly 1918 when he arrives to 1930 or so when he goes to Berlin in 1933; it’s the contact with the psychoanalytic community and the psychoanalytic left; the younger more vibrant and more radical thinking psychoanalysts around Freud. He is seen by Freud immediately as one of the most gifted of the potential students and at one point it’s recorded that Freud saw him as the next in line for leadership.

He is seen by Freud immediately as one of the most gifted of the potential students and at one point it’s recorded that Freud saw him as the next in line for leadership.

Why and how that changes is a very interesting question, which I think again some of the other speakers can address or you can ask questions once I finish. He gives one of his first lectures on to the general psychoanalytic community and is criticized for being a little bit too interested in sex which is an interesting comment, but he continues with Freud’s approval through the initial stages and most significantly during this period of his historical rundown. He encounters the fact that training is almost nonexistent so the way one became a psychoanalyst as Reich enters this community, was — you met one of the older guys who thought you were bright and they said to you, “you seem like a bright young fellow or young woman”, –Freud was very supportive of women entering psychoanalysis and often he is not given enough credit– you seem like a bright young fellow or young lady, here is a card and tomorrow someone will come and present my card to you and start doing treatment and listen and when you have a question and don’t understand something come to me and we’ll talk about it. That was how you became a psychoanalyst. Reich very quickly said that this wasn’t adequate and began to appeal to Freud for permission to set up a training seminar and this led to the founding of the first formal training seminar in psychoanalysis. Reich, a little bit to his dismay, was not chosen to be the leader but moved into that position and became a dominant figure in that group; and is out of that group that he produces his first two significant works, one would be the “Impulsive Character” and the other being “Character Analysis” which is in a sense our textbook to some degree for doing not only character analytic treatment but orgonomic treatment;

Reich began to appeal to Freud for permission to set up a training seminar and this led to the founding of the first formal training seminar in psychoanalysis. Reich, a little bit to his dismay, was not chosen to be the leader but moved into that position and became a dominant figure in that group; and is out of that group that he produces his first two significant works, one would be the “Impulsive Character” and the other being “Character Analysis” which is in a sense our textbook to some degree for doing not only character analytic treatment but orgonomic treatment.

Although most people are always shocked that it’s not at all a textbook in a way that you would expect a textbook to be, it doesn’t tell you how to do it, it really tells you how to engage and what questions to ask and what to think about and what to expect in studying the human organism and its behavior and its ways of basically weaseling out of responsibility for being alive. It offers as Dr. Reich would later say: A Method of Approach! It is also during these years, between early 1920’s to 1930, that Reich becomes significantly radicalized; meaning that he becomes actively involved with the left in Vienna and Berlin; but mostly in Vienna. This might not seem very significant to people today since the left is who knows where these days; not the kind of organized movement that it was when Reich encountered it. He joins the left socialist and communist movement. He becomes active. He also becomes very interested in how you can bring treatment to the masses and becomes very involved in the leadership of the movement called the SexPol, in which they created mental health hygiene and sexual health hygiene clinics throughout Vienna;

He also becomes very interested in how you can bring treatment to the masses and becomes very involved in the leadership of the movement called the SexPol, in which they created mental health hygiene and sexual health hygiene clinics throughout Vienna;

in the ghettos, in the working communities and brought treatment but most importantly brought the ability for individuals to come in and get answers to questions that they wanted to ask. He also starts giving active speeches to the young and to youth and from all accounts these gatherings were equivalent to rock concerts today; they were very well attended, and very active. He even allowed people who were not supporters to come, provided that they were respectful and he answers to all questions seriously. This was a very unique kind of event. He was obviously a very charismatic and a strong leader.

He was obviously a very charismatic and strong leader. I would say that Reich was a psychoanalytic Marxist and basically always, through his entire work, a radical, not conservative, not left not right but radical; that means active, energetic, Reich was actually one of the early phenomenologists in the sense that he was interested in studying phenomena, particularly the energy that drives phenomena.

It’s during this period of time that he also sits down and begins, and this is typical of the way Reich works; and I think James Strick makes the point that he works this way as a scientist too; that’s all of a piece. He decides that he’s going to write about and access Marxism; so what he does is — he consumes the entire works of Marx and Engels. I think it is significant to mention Engels here since all too often he is pushed to the side; but Reich was very interested in Engels; Engels made some very salient and very important contributions to understanding of mass behavior, and it’s out of his studies for about six months or so (his intensive studies of Marx and Engels) that he begins to come up with a way to connect his psychoanalytic character analytic studies and work and at the community activism with Marxist theory and Marxist socialist action. As a result of this he begins to write on the subject and I think Dr. Bennett will give you more details on his early attempts to write on the connection between Marxist materialist theory and psychoanalysis. This sets the pattern for the rest of Reich’s life; which angers a significant portion of the psychoanalytic community particularly the older, more established psychoanalytic community; it also disturbs the more conservative elements of the left, particularly the communist party and some of the socialist adjuncts; so again Reich tends to be on his own, he has some clear supporters, he’s very charismatic, he attracts both young people and other scholars and artists, he was very involved with arts and he begins to build a circle around him and gain great deal of attention, but also a great deal of distrust by the psychoanalytic establishment as well as the leftist establishment in that he’s pushing for a kind of initiative that they’re not comfortable with; that is a little bit unsettling. Reich is not a communist! I would say that Reich was a psychoanalytic Marxist and basically, always, through his entire work, a radical, not conservative, not left not right but radical; that means active, energetic, actually with one of my colleagues here, Dr. Bingham, who is working phenomenology, Reich was actually one of the early phenomenologist in the sense that he was interested in studying phenomena, particularly the energy that drives phenomena. So as things would have it, you know it’s pretty obvious by 1933 he is not really welcome anywhere near Vienna or Berlin and has to escape! and there is a very dramatic escape under false names and on trains at night and he winds up after various attempts getting established first in Denmark, where he is not welcomed, finally settling in Oslo Norway. Now it’s very important to understand that the Norwegians, the Scandinavians in general, were extremely supportive of Reich and many of them had come to Vienna and Berlin to study with Reich specifically. So it’s very hard for us, who have a small and nice group, but small, to understand that for Reich was one of the key figures; but that as Reich himself later said, it’s wonderful to be the shark in the waters until the goldfish realize that they can organize and stop you and he begins to get attacked both from the social activists political side as well as from the psychoanalytical movement and unbeknownst to him, Freud is persuaded to abandon his support for Reich and gradually Reich is isolated in the psychoanalytic community, and without going into great detail, is essentially expelled, although he would argue that he quit before they expelled him; again Dr. Bennett has been researching some of the history of this as to the exact details. What happened specifically is that Anna Freud acting as her father’s agent arranged for him to be removed from the International Psychoanalytic Association; with a promise from the Scandinavians that he can join the Scandinavian Norwegian analytic community. He arrives in Oslo and decides that he no longer wants to be a formal member of the psychoanalytic community and establishes at this point an independent organization. In Oslo, where I’ve been beginning to work actively and where there is still a deep connection to Reich’s work. In Oslo Reich accomplishes two major shifts in his work that will determine the latter part of his life. First, he begins to build an organization that begins to incorporate his discoveries in character analytic work and in biology and physiology; he begins to develop a technique that he calls vegetotherapy. Some of you might have heard of this. In Norway it is still one of the primary forms of clinical practice. He begins to work actively on the human body; he begins to work actively on the human character structure and the armor and he begins to set a goal that will become central to orgonomic practice and one of the big problems, that non-orgonomist have with Reich’s work, is he sets a goal that health requires full pulsation of the organism — meaning: the ability of the organism to expand and contract freely or fully to its fullest potential and that can only be regulated through work but most significantly through the orgasm reflex the orgasm function.

He sets a goal that health requires full pulsation of the organism—meaning; the ability of the organism to expand and contract freely or fully to its fullest potential and that can only be regulated through work but most significantly through the orgasm reflex the orgasm function.

He is particular and meticulous in his study of this and he begins to do laboratory research on the nature and function of the orgasm, attempting to demonstrate the existence of Freud’s theoretical premise of the libido; the libido energy. Remembering that Freud very specifically states that he believed eventually somebody would study the human organism and proof the existence of libido energy as a real substance, not as a theoretical or philosophical premise.

He is particular and meticulous in his study of the nature and the function of the orgasm, attempting to demonstrate the existence of Freud’s theoretical premise of the libido, the libido energy. Remembering that Freud very specifically states that he believes eventually somebody would study the human organism and prove the existence of libido energy as a real substance not as a theoretical philosophical premise.

Reich, in a sense, always had this quality of being at the right idea at the wrong time; he decides to demonstrate this and he does; he successfully demonstrates the existence of this energy and its function at the very time that the psychoanalytic community and most other scientists are moving away from that, because it’s not comfortable and it’s leading to attacks by the moderates and the conservative right. This leads in Norway (if you’ve never been to Norway– it’s a small community where everybody knows everybody and it was smaller even so in his day. So he becomes a target for increasing attacks, he retreats more and more into his laboratory. I was there this last summer and it’s unusual for those of us who are interested in Reich.(But used to his being very marginalized here in the United States…) His home and laboratory has a plaque on it which is continuously stolen and replaced but it says that this was the home of Wilhelm Reich and this is where his laboratory was and this became an active center and landmark. He became active and he was so active he complains in “Beyond Psychology” that he couldn’t go out to a café without being either attacked or adulated and so he felt that he didn’t have any private life; which he longed for. But in Norway as he becomes more and more visible, more and more active, more and more central to the issues in Norway; key figures begin to emerge and become his students. He begins to attract so many students that move away from the center of psychoanalytic study that psychoanalysts begin to attack and particularly his closest associate and friend Otto Fenichel begins to organize an active campaign against him. Reich was often accused of being paranoid but we now know, from the archives and from the letters and from the writings, that this was not Reich’s invention. Fenichel was actively plotting against Reich and using Reich’s first wife, Annie Pink, to slander him; and Eric Fromm, another great hero of American new left, was also one of the people, who had been a student of Reich’s, and who begins to spread rumors about Reich at that time. The only one of Reich’s students, (…if you saw a list of Reich’s students and people who studied and attended his seminars, it’s quite amazing in terms of American intellectual life in the 60’s) who doesn’t lie and spread rumors is Karen Horney. Eric Fromm, Herbert Marcuse and on and on and on. Fromm actively steals and lifts, plagiarizes, work of Reich, changes bits and pieces; and then spreads the rumor along with Fenichel, in the United States, that Reich is psychotic. So Reich becomes more and more surrounded and he begins to spend more and more time,and this solution will become consistent with the rest of his life, he goes to the laboratory and work. For him work becomes central and it’s while doing this work and studying the libido where he attempts to prove the function of energy in the organism that he makes what he considers next to or even more important than his initial two major discoveries: the “Function of Orgasm” in the human organization of life function, and the discovery of what he will to name orgone energy or life energy. It is in Oslo, just before he leaves in his laboratory that he — and I won’t go into specific detail! ( If you want the actual details, which is an astounding story of science and science betrayed, by those who called themselves the keepers of science, you should read Dr. Strick’s book that was just published from Harvard University Press). It’s during this time that he discovers the existence — the literal and material existence — of this energy which he names orgone; the name is of no great significance the discovery is what it’s important. He discovers this just roughly at the time that he has to pack up and leave; literally has to pack up and leave, because the Nazi’s are coming to Norway; they’re in Scandinavia and are moving down and he gets out just in time. His choices are to move to England, where AS Neill, the founder of Summerhill, his closest and longest lasting friend, has offered him asylum and a future. I often speculate that had he gone to England he probably would’ve lived much longer and a more independent life. But he chooses the United States, basically encouraged by the idea that this is the place where democracy has the greatest opportunity, plus he has a number of students who have come from United States who have been very devoted to him; probably the most significant of which is Theodore Wolf, who is the first translator of most of Reich’s works into English;

Reich chooses the United States, basically encouraged by the idea that this is the place where democracy has the greatest opportunity, plus he has number of students who have come from United States who have been very devoted to him probably the most significant of which is Theodore Wolf, who is the first translator of most of Reich’s works into English.

although much of the translation becomes increasingly collaborative in the sense that Reich again in quite typical fashion his one of those guys who just consumes and seems to be able to incorporate knowledge. He gets English down very quickly and begins to use it very actively both in his writing and in his presentations. I’ve talked to a number of people who were present in New York City when Reich arrived by boat. In those days you can’t come by plane…so it was a long trip. When Reich arrived they reported it in the newspapers as a major event. A lot of exiles were coming from Europe. He was significant enough to be noted and his arrival was attended to by many of the key intellectuals in the Columbia and basically in Manhattan intellectual community or the East Coast intellectual community. One of the things that Reich points out in the “American Oddesy” and in some of his letters is that he chose not to socialize very much. He’d been very social in Europe in interpersonal relationships; in Europe he was referred to as Willie even by students. In United States he becomes more formal as Dr. Reich and he removes himself from active social process causing hostility. I’ve spoken to a number of people who were around when he was invited to parties that he declined to be the guest of honor and people were offended, but he removes himself actively into research and immediately sets up his laboratory again begins research on his discoveries and begins to train new and young therapist many of whom we’ve had contact with. Many of these young people came into contact with Reich very much the way Reich came into contact with Freud; they were told that there is this guy in New York who has some really interesting ideas that no one else is talking about and they went to hear lectures at The New School and these lectures were by all accounts often standing-room only and he begins to build a circle around him and he begins to train orgonomists. The more he sees at this point that the training is, for him, a means of earning the money needed the fund his research into his discovery of orgone energy. Now it’s very important I think to understand that Reich arrives in the United States at the beginning of The Second World War with the idea that he is now a major presence in the scientific world; the world of natural science, and his discoveries are, if controversial, significant and taken seriously. This will change over the war years and the events that take place in the 1950’s and on, but he begins to do more active research into the nature and function of this energy and makes incredible discoveries that will lead to his studying of what he later called the shrinking biopathy… although he’s best known to most of you, if you know it at all as the cancer biopathy, the study of cancer and its function. He later felt that cancer was too limited a focus that it was a much more profound and complex natural process of shrinking in living organisms. He begins to experiment and do treatment in this area.

He felt that the cancer was too limited a focus that it was a much more profound and complex natural process of shrinking in living organism. He begins to experiment and do treatment in this area.

Things begin to turn in on him again from both directions: both the medical establishment, and the pharmaceutical establishment, which is in its infancy. He warns, by the way, as early as the 1940’s, that the great threat to American health and wellbeing is the pharmaceutical industry and he sees it coming and of course it doesn’t gain the support of those corporate interests. But the scientific community has also moved, as James Strick points out, away from the line that Reich’s natural science is following. He increasingly becomes marginalized, for variety of reasons… and you can ask questions about that and explore that as others will present. And he demonstrates another quality I think that’s very crucial to understanding Reich as a person as well as scientist. He’s very open and trusting… sometimes too trusting and he allows reporters particularly, Mildred Eddy Brady to come in and very politely introduce herself as a friend, has a very lovely conversation with him and then publishes a scurrilous article condemning him as a crank and fraud and charlatan! This is often used as a key to Reich’s downfall. It is actually only a trigger. In fact what was behind this interestingly enough were groups like the Menenger brothers the famous Menenger clinic, who were actively participant in attacking Reich and in going after Reich. The American Psychoanalytic Association also supported by Otto Fenichel, who dies shortly around that time… very young — from a massive heart attack. He was writing letters actively throughout the psychoanalytic community undermining Reich and accusing him of all sorts of things. Reich’s wife and younger daughter become enemies; Lauri Reich, who is still alive is in her 80’s. She has now, finally after reading a number the archival materials; Laurie Reich, his daughter, has come to the conclusion that she was wrong, her father was not “the bad man” that she thought he was. The older daughter, Eva Reich, remains very close to him and becomes an orgonomist; becomes involved with the orgonomic work.

As a result of these attacks, these organized attacks; and it’s hard to understand how big these attacks were, he was sent to jail formally for failure to adhere to injunction.

So that brings me to the final stages, when, as a result of these attacks, these organized attacks; and it’s hard to understand how big this attack was… I could remember being 12 years old or so and hearing a news report on television, in Brooklyn, about this guy being sent to jail in 56 and so he was a significant player and that’s something often sadly lost on contemporary audiences or in the limited number of people who even know who Reich is and care; but he is sent to jail. And this is very important to understand: He is not sent to jail for anything to do with his scientific work, although behind it this is clearly the backdrop. He is sent to jail formally for failure to adhere to an injunction. ..and actually he never violated the injunction he just technically violated the injunction in a sense that he was the President of The Trust and since he was the President and signed off on it the fact that one of his associates, Dr. Silvet, continued to do work with the research and treatment of illness with orgone accumulators, he was found guilty of violating the injunction and he was sentenced, to everyone’s surprise, sentenced to 2 years in jail; to which even the judge who imposed sentence, thought was extreme. There were petitions signed by international circles of people who you would quickly recognize by name saying that this is a serious scientists and to not take action. He was sentenced to jail. He went to jail and he died in jail. He died essentially… probably from complications from the flu.

He died in jail essentially probably from complications from the flu.

There are conspiracy theories that continue to insist that there were something else but all indications in the evidence appear that he died from complications of the flue and heart failure. Then all hell broke loose: the estate was in disarray, the doctors and people working with him didn’t know what to do. Eventually things stabilized and through the intercession of one of the orgonomist who knew a young woman who was interested in, was interested in the work and wanted to find some real vital work in her life, took on the incredible task of saving and preserving Reich’s legacy, that was Marry Higgens who is still alive and up in Orgonon.

A young woman who was interested in the work and wanted to find some real vital work in her life, took on the incredible task of saving and preserving Reich’s legacy, that was Marry Higgens who is still alive and up in Orgonon.

Kevin Hinchy when he arrives will present that. Kevin Hinchy is the co-director now of the Wilhelm Reich Trust. The archives were slowly and arduously found and preserved with some missing sections and that’s a historical side track… but overall those archives have now been collected standardized and are as you have been told at the Countway Library, at Harvard; and for serious scholars there is access to an amazing amount of vital material.

Overall those archives have now been collected standardized and are as you have been told at the Countway Library, at Harvard, and for serious scholars there is an access to an amazing amount of vital material.

I’ll end with one anecdote… since I’m famous for my anecdotes — or infamous for my anecdotes: Dr. Sobey, who I studied with many years and who spent the last 12 years of Reich’s life very close to him and was at times his assistance, once asked Reich about his reputation as a lover and who he had been with and this and that and he told Dr. Sobey that… “You know I have a black book that I keep privately and which I listed every woman I have been with and every detail of each… and I will not allow it to be released for at least a 100 years after my death!” I asked Mary Higgens and Kevin Hinchy and I’ve asked everyone else who have been in the archive if they found such a book and evidently it doesn’t exist. We can assume that this was Reich’s way of saying that this is a stupid concern. He was evidently a very deeply committed father and husband and as deeply committed in his relationships as he was in his work. If you listen to the tapes of Reich and if you ever have an occasion to see some of the little active footage you’ll be shocked and surprised as many of you I think have been to know that he was quite lively… I felt when I first heard him I was going to hear this deep dramatic and Germanic power but he is very lively… and that’s my overview of who Reich was I don’t know if it serves you but hopefully it gets you started.

If you listen to the tapes of Reich and if you ever have an occasion to see some of the little active footage, you will be shocked and surprised to know that he was quite lively… and that’s my overview of who Reich was, I don’t know if it serves you but hopefully it gets you started.

The following is a transcription of a lecture which was given by Dr. Philip Bennett on April 30, 2011. “Video – From Psychoanalysis to Vegetotherapy (Part 1 & 2)”

I first got interested in Wilhelm Reich in 1962 when I read The Function of the Orgasm, and in 1963 I started therapy with someone trained by Dr. Reich, someone known to people in this room, Dr. Victor Sobey. So I was familiar with the material, but I took a break from it for a long time. There was a period of my life when I felt knowing this stuff was useless, there was nothing I could do with it except weed my own garden and I was doing that. But in 2004, I got reenergized and for the last few years I’ve been working on a book on Reich’s social and political thought. It is that material which I’ve mostly spoken on in the past. Today I’m going to branch out a little bit.

I have a Ph.D. in philosophy from NYU, so we’re going to start with a philosophy class. There are four philosophical commitments that Wilhelm Reich manifests in his work. I would like to say a few words about each of them.

Reich was a naturalist. What this means is that he had a commitment to the belief that what is natural is good. In fact, he didn’t think you really needed to teach morality or teach people to do the right thing. He felt that if people were not interfered with, they would naturally do the right thing, and what they would do would be a good thing. So for example, with children his belief in self regulation wasn’t just about eating and sleeping; it was also about their interaction with other children. If the kids had not been emotionally and sexually repressed, they would naturally do the right thing. What is natural is good for Reich, but what is not natural is not only bad but also irrational. Here’s a quote from Reich Speaks of Freud. I went back and reread this carefully because I’m talking about psychoanalysis; this is the book where Reich is reflecting on his relationship with Freud. So if you haven’t read this book it’s a really interesting book. Basically, half of the book is an interview that Reich gave to Kurt Eisler to be stored in the Freud archive.

“If you have a stream, a natural stream you must let it stream. If you dam it up somewhere it goes over the banks. That’s all. Now when the natural streaming of the bio-energy, is dammed up it also spills over, resulting in irrationality, perversions neuroses and so on. What do you have to do to correct this? You must get the stream back into its normal bed and let it flow naturally again.”

So you here the word “natural” being used and the assumption that, if it’s flowing naturally that everything is fine, and it’s only when it gets dammed up and when you move away from what’s “natural” that problems occur. This puts Reich on a direct collision course with Freud as we will see, because Freud as you may know believed that repression of sexuality was absolutely necessary. It was necessary because the young child was polymorphous perverse, it was also necessary because he felt civilization was impossible without the damming up or what he called the sublimation of sexual energy.

It’s interesting that Freud’s clearest statement of this is in the book Civilization and its Discontents. The last time Reich spoke in Freud’s inner circle was Thursday, December 12th, 1929, when he spoke of the prevention of neurosis. (The next night Reich caused a riot, and you’ll hear more about this in the third talk of the day.) It is in this book that Freud discusses at length the necessity for repression in society; and in Reich Speaks of Freud, Reich claims that Freud wrote Civilization is response to what Reich said about the prevention of neurosis in December, 1929.

In any case, It’s clear that there is a big difference between Freud and Reich on this issue of what’s “natural.”

Now there’s a related concept that’s not philosophical but there was a movement in Europe called Naturism. Naturism is this notion that being exposed to the sun is very good. It gave rise to nude sunbathing in a very popular way, not at all in the way it sometimes gets translated in more repressive cultures like ours, like how the nude beach is hard to find. Naturism was about getting out into the woods, etc, etc. There’s this great picture of Reich with Elsa and Eva and they are stripped to the waist dancing on the beach, and there are these wonderful pictures of Reich sitting and you have the impression from the way he’s sitting that he himself is probably naked, etc. That’s different from Naturalism. So I think this movement of Naturism which was very popular in Europe may explain the easy move towards having patients disrobe. Having patients disrobe, which he stared around 1937 or 38, was not such a big deal in Europe the way in this country–you’re going to jail, you’re abusing your patients, you’re doing this terrible stuff. Naturism is different from naturalism; naturism is about going out into nature and taking off your clothes. Naturalism is this whole notion that what is natural is good.

Reich is also a materialist. That is, he clearly believes that there are no disembodied psychic entities, there’s no such thing as a mind, there’s no such thing as a soul. Whatever psychological entities we talk about, like thoughts, emotions, and feeling, he had a philosophical commitment to the belief that those were instantiated in some physical way, even if we didn’t know quite how they were instantiated. That is for Reich, and he ultimately comes to believe this, psyche and soma are one, they are just two different ways of thinking about one thing. You know the famous orgonomic symbol (you have it on your schedule today), you see these two arrows pointing at each other. Well you can put psyche and soma on those two antithetical but nonetheless identical beings or aspects of the underlying reality. This means that if you recognize something on a psychological level, for example characterological armor, he had to believe that this would be manifested physically somehow. And he eventually develops this concept of muscular armor. He came to believe that when working with patients you could work either way, you could work characterologically, or you could work on the musculature, but you would be working on one and the same thing: it’s not like there two different things, they are just two different ways of working on the one thing.

In any case, he was a materialist. Next he was a rationalist, and this is more complicated. It combines with his naturalism; as I said earlier for Reich, what is natural is also rational, and what is irrational is unnatural. Reich believed that there was a rational universe the secrets of which one could come to understand, could uncover through scientific investigation. He had certain fundamental commitments, for example he believed that if two things appeared the same, there was probably a reason that would explain it and thus he draws incredible analogies between the formation of galaxies and the formation of hurricanes. etc… He also talks as if he’s an instrument of the logic of his discoveries. It’s funny language, let me read it, it’s from The Function of the Orgasm; “Everything owes its existence to the remarkable course of scientific logic. It is not false modesty when I say that I feel myself to be merely an instrument to thislogic.”

That language could be very confusing or sound mystical. Like someone or something is guiding Reich, but he’s not saying that. He’s just saying that he was following this thread, and that lead him to great inferences, but there was a logic to the world and a logic to his uncovering the world. He’s also a rationalist in the sense that he has certain fundamental commitments such as this notion of antithetical aspects being at the heart one, so you have two things like sexuality and anxiety they seem antithetical, but they are both expressions of life energy, and the life energy can either express one way or another, so beneath the antithetical there’s a unity, and that’s almost a direct quote from Reich. This is a quote; “Out of a unitary force a splitting, an antithesis develops, that is my way of thinking about natural scientific things.” Well that’s what I’m calling a rationalist commitment which he then has to instantiate empirically, he has to get out and do the work.

And finally he was an empiricist. From everything I’ve heard, Reich was incredibly intuitive as a therapist; he was brilliant that way and I think also intuitive about the universe. He might attributed that to his contact-fullness or to his orgonomic sense, but what ever intuitions he had, they then needed to be substantiated empirically. He was a scientist.

I want to now move to the relationship between Freud and Reich and then I’ll turn to the movement from psychoanalysis to vegetotherapy. First, both Freud and Reich were natural scientists. Freud’s laboratory was the treatment room initially in hospitals and then later in his own private treatment room and then his incredible intellect; he just read a lot and synthesized a lot. Reich’s laboratory was the private treatment room, the clinic, because in addition to working in Freud’s free clinics he started his own clinics in Vienna in 1929, the streets because he was in the streets, the political organizations he belonged to and his non-political organizations, but eventually the laboratory. And of course his great intellect; he also read a lot and synthesized a lot.

In terms of the sciences relevant to both Freud and Reich, Freud was very much interested in chemistry and the biology of his day, he even considered at one point that psychology could be put on a neurological basis. Some of you may know The Project for a Scientific Psychology, that he wrote in 1895; it was never published in his life. All this is discussed at length in Frank Sulloway’s book, Freud: Biologist of the Mind. He was very much interested in evolutionary biology, Freud that is.

Reich read widely on chemistry, physics, biology and when he comes to the U.S. he develops orgone biophysics, but that’s beyond our talk today– we’re going to stay in Europe. They were both materialists. Freud never doubted for a second that there was some physical basis to libido, that there was some physical basis to the unconscious, etc..He just didn’t know exactly what it was, he looked various places. Neither Freud nor Reich believed that there was such a thing as a mind trapped inside the body or that it could somehow live beyond the body except maybe through their works. (There was a guy in Germany who makes accumulators who insisted that for years he was channeling Reich, he would go into séances and speak to Reich. Well he didn’t agree with Reich because Reich was clearly a materialist.) Though there were some points at the very end of his life when Reich said things that sounded potentially mystical, but I don’t see him as a mystic.

Both Freud and Reich focused on human irrationality in a variety of ways. For Freud the focus was on the neurotic symptoms, for Reich it was more character structure, etc. They were both therapists, and they used a variety of therapeutic modalities. Freud used cocaine initially. He then studied with Charcot in France and became interested in hypnosis, so he then used hypnosis. Later he hears of this incredible case from his friend Breuer about this poor young women Anna O. and she in fact says what went on between them was a “talking cure”, and out of that grows psychoanalysis. So he moves from cocaine to psychoanalysis.

Reich also was a therapist who used different modalities. Reich started as a psychoanalyst as you know: his therapeutic mode was initially psychoanalytic though he quickly adapted psychoanalysis into what can be called character analysis, and then developed this embodied form of therapy which came to be known as vegetotherapy. But they were both therapists using a variety means and a variety of modalities.

If you read the book Freud: Biologist of the Mind, you can see clearly that Freud assumed that there was some physical basis for all this stuff. But there’s a difference between believing there’s a physical basis of something but then what kind of explanation do you use. Let me give you a quick example. It’s actually from my Ph.D. dissertation; you can go to NYU and read it. I’m going to bend over. When I did that, certain muscles tensed certain muscles relaxed, neurons fired, so you could explain what I did from a purely physiological level, but you can also explain it psychological, why did he do this, he was looking at his shoes, he wanted to greet his Japanese business partner and was showing respect, he was stretching his lower back… In other words, you could explain what I did in a variety of ways, but clearly what I did was a physical thing. Thus Freud offered psychological or psychoanalytic explanations for human behavior, but he certainly believed that beneath them or behind them was some physical reality even if he didn’t know what that reality was.

In this first talk, I’m going to focus just on therapy, I’m not going to talk about Reich’s problems with the psychoanalytic organization, I’m not going to talk about the history of that, I just want to focus on therapy.

One key feature is the existence of infantile sexuality. A second key feature is repression. Freud wrote a book called, The History of the Psychoanalytic Movement, and in this book he said “repression is the corner stone on which the whole of psychoanalysis rests.” Originally Freud believed that all neurosis were sexual in origin; Reich never gave that belief up. Freud does eventually when he introduces the concept of a death instinct that might explain human behavior, but originally, Freud and Reich were on the same page about the sexual origin of all neurosis. For Freud, we live in a culture where the repression of that sexual energy or libido is necessary, and this gives rise to an unconscious which often motivates our beliefs and actions and this unconscious has it’s own kind of language and reveals itself often symbolically. So through the use of free association to get past the censor, dream analysis, slips of the tongue, etc., the psychoanalyst interprets or looks at what the patient is saying and comes to understand the hidden meaning, and through this, the coded language of the unconscious. For example, as I recall, if you have a dream about a train, that’s always about sex. There are these standard kind of symbolic elements. You try to bring the unconscious to consciousness and hopefully when that occurs, the client has some kind of emotional expression, some kind of emotional release, abreaction, and then the symptom is diminished, that’s sort of psychoanalysis in four minutes. Takes a little longer to learn it and to practice it.

As for Reich’s relationship to psychoanalysis, Reich was born in 1897, so in 1918 he’s 21. He’s in the army of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He develops psoriasis and is given a furlough and goes to Vienna to get treated for his psoriasis. He’s in Vienna when it’s clear that the war is over, and while still a soldier because he was never formally removed, he enters the University. The University had an arrangement where if you are a veteran you could do courses in a less time consuming way. He enters law school, quickly decides that that’s not for him, then enters the medical school and almost immediately starts practicing psychoanalysis. In those days you didn’t have to go through formal training, you would do it and then consult with your therapist. So he starts doing psychoanalysis while he’s a medical student. Reich’s major contributions to psychoanalysis
The first contribution was the movement from symptom to character structure, and this shows up in his very first book. The first book that Reich publishes is in 1925, The Impulsive Character, and in the introduction, let me read a sentence, this translation is by Dr. Koblenzer. This is Reich in 1925: “For a long time, psychoanalysis has not been a merely symptomatic treatment, rather it has consistently been evolving into a therapy of the character. This technical change dates from Freud’s first realization that what is essential in the analytic work does not consist of guessing the unconscious meaning of the symptom and communicating it to the patient but a detecting and removing resistances.” It’s interesting he attributes this to Freud, but actually Reich continues to focus on resistance, and if you think about resistance, that’s something that underlies the symptom, and that’s how he saw the resistance. There was a characterological way of resisting life energy that gives rise to the symptom, but Reich begins to see the importance of character structure as opposed to symptomology as early as 1925.

Here’s a quote from Reich speaks of Freud where Reich is looking back on psychoanalysis, he says “You see in the psychoanalysis of the early 20’s, the neuroses or the neurotic symptom was considered to be something sick in an otherwise healthy organism. That was the idea then. It was my character analysis which introduced the basic concept that the character structure is ill or sick while the neurosis, the neurotic symptom, is only an outgrowth of a general characterological condition.”

It’s very interesting, there’s this interesting parallel between symptom and character structure like the symptom is a growth of the deeper character structure. It is analogous to Reich’s later work on cancer, where the cancer tumor is a symptom of a deeper pathology. In any case, there is an interesting parallel you see between saying that the tumor is an outer symptom of a deeper illness and in saying the neurotic symptom is one sign of a deeper characterological structure. In any case you have Reich’s movement from symptom to character.

The second contribution is Reich’s continued focus on resistance. This is very important because one of the things that Reich quickly observed is that while you could bring the unconscious material to consciousness–the patient can recall “the primal scene” (“Oh I remember now when the dog bit me”), but if there was no emotion, there would be no relief from the neurotic symptom–there had to be an emotional expression. So what was getting in the way? Well the resistance to giving in to the emotions. So Reich just kept focusing on the resistance, and that was also one of the roots of later vegetotherapy. What do I need to do to get this person capable of expressing emotion, if for example, their chest is constricted or something else is getting in the way of their expression.

So you have the movement from symptom to character structure, you have the focus on resistance, and then of course Reich felt it was incredibly important to focus on the negative transference, that is, all of the ways in which the therapist in the eyes of the patient becomes the abusing parent or whatever. Most of my time in therapy with a certain therapist who will remain nameless involves hating his guts and trying to kill him. And that’s the negative transference part. (He and I’ve come to a reconciliation; I only mildly loath him now.) So that’s Reich’s contribution to psychoanalysis. To the body The movements of the body has three major players. First there is Sandor Ferenczi, a Hungarian. He was part of the original circle of Freud’s, dismissed by Jones of being mentally ill. I don’t know if he had any basis for that dismissal, but then the use of the phrase “mentally ill” for people in that circle was pretty liberal. As you know it was used to describe Reich. So Ferenczi is one of the sources. Another source is a name that may be new to you and that’s Elsa Gindler, and then the third source is Elsa Lindenberg.

Reich refers to Ferenczi in The Function of the Orgasm. Reich says, “Ferenczi was that talented and outstanding person who was perfectly aware of the sad state of affairs in therapy. He looked for a solution in the somatic sphere and developed an “active” technique directed at the somatic tension states but he did not know of stasis neuroses and failed to take the orgasm theory seriously.”

In 1928, Otto Fenichel, Reich’s good friend at the time, wrote an article called, “Organ Libidinization Accompanying the Defense Against Drives.” In it he summarizes all the ways in which people have hinted at a muscular basis for neuroses. This is as early as 1928, and Ferenczi was the main person Fenichel is summarizing in this article.

Obviously Reich read what Fenichel had read, so he knew this literature; moreover it’s inconceivable he didn’t read this article by his then close friend, Fenichel (a friendship which disappears some years later. I just want to call your attention to some aspects of this article. This is Fenichel about Ferenczi: “In the study of the organic phenomena accompanying instinctual conflicts of the psychic apparatus, Ferenczi talked about what he called “pleasure physiology.” He observed that with progress in the analysis and the consequent resolution of psychic tension, the somatic tensions may also vanish.” So he’s beginning to see some correlation between musculature and psychoneuroses. This is again quoting from Ferenczi in the Fenichel article: “Sometimes we find it necessary to call the patients attention to his bearing, the tensions of his musculature, and through this to some extent to mobilize him. As a result, he usually begins to talk about something that was hidden or unconscious.” And he actually used “relaxation” exercises. Ferenczi also came out from behind the couch. You know in the classic psychoanalysis the patient is lying and the therapist is back here sleeping or texting, writing letters.

Ferenczi had the therapist sitting right next to the patient and he saw therapy as much more of a collaborative effort between patient and therapist, so you see a lot the roots of what later becomes standard in Reich’s therapy is in Ferenczi’s work. And maybe it’s no accident that Jones, who from all that I’ve learn was one of the most rigid, uptight Britishers, dismissed Ferenczi as being mentally ill. (Jones’ behavior in regards to Reich was just unbelievably lacking in integrity. But that’s another story.)

One of the things that Ferenczi noted was a pelvic block; he said, this is again Ferenczi’s observation, “The most extreme degrees of cramp occur in the musculature of the pelvis.” An observation which is in agreement with the fact that what succumbs to repression is in the main representative of sexual drive. So Ferenczi is seeing all this stuff but he never develops a therapy around it. But he’s making these observations. If you’ve read Reich or if you’ve been in therapy, this whole idea of a pelvic block being very important. There’s two other names I want to quote. One is Vilma Kovacs, another Hungarian psychoanalyst. In a 1925, Kovacs says, “The continuing spasm of her [that is, a patient’s] total skeletal musculature served the purpose of maintaining and hiding sexual excitement.” So here is the insight that not only is psychoneuroses manifested muscularly but it has to do with sex, it has to do with a way of binding up sexual excitation. Again this will become incredibly important to Reich’s therapy. Also Felix Deutsch had talked about somatic health: he said it “means, in the psychoanalytic sense, freedom from pathologically bound organ libido.” So you see all of these fascinating things. Sometimes people think Reich was a genius, which he was, but he didn’t make this stuff up, he was a very smart reader. He absorbed and took in so many different things, and out came his unique therapy. I really encourage you to someday read this Fenichel article. Now Reich clearly read all of this.

Now movement therapy. This woman Elsa Gindler who I mentioned a moment ago, and that may be a new name to some of you, she developed a form of therapeutic movement and breath. She like Reich suffered at one point from TB. I don’t know if you’re aware that both Reich’s father and brother died of tuberculosis, and Reich himself got tuberculosis early in 1927; he went to Davos where he finished writing The Function of the Orgasm, the first one. While she was curing herself from tuberculosis she made observations about breath, and the way movement could facilitate breath. So that’s Elsa Gindler. Now she wasn’t doing this out of yoga, she was doing it this with her own body.

When Fenichel moved to Berlin in 1922 (I don’t know what took him to Berlin), a woman named Clara Nathenson who later becomes Clara Fenichel studied with Gindler and apparently Fenichel himself studied with this woman. Apparently when Annie and Wilhelm Reich moved to Berlin in the fall of 1930 (they moved together though there relationship wasn’t too strong) according to Eva Reich (I don’t know if this is correct), Annie studied with Clara, together with Eva. Eva must have been 6 years old, and when they would come home, Reich would always ask questions, what is this thing that you’re doing, what is this movement stuff, so if this is correct Reich is getting this idea through Annie and Eva and through the Fenichels that there is some kind of muscular, there’s a way of addressing this muscular correlation or correlative of neurotic symptomology or neurotic character.

Mayday, 1932, Reich meets Elsa Lindenburg, who becomes his second “wife;” he never legally married her but she was his wife. She was a dancer, she studied with Laban in Berlin, and he believed in democratizing dance, dance for the masses. He also developed this elaborate notation system for noting the choreographed piece. (He was also a Nazi, but we’ll leave that out.) So you have this sense that perhaps Reich, through his relationship with Elsa, through his learning about this Elsa Gindler, is developing this notion that we can do therapy on this bodily level.

Indeed, in turn he is influencing Elsa. So Reich leaves for the states in August 1939, Elsa stays behind in Norway, and this was a pretty iffy thing even though she wasn’t Jewish, but she was certainly a communist, and you know the Germans occupied Norway pretty easily and quickly. My buddy, known to some in this room, Bjorn Blumenthal, after the war when Blumenthal entered the University, he took classes with Elsa Lindenberg and it was through taking these classes that he first came to Reich; that’s how he learned about Reich and now he runs the Norwegian Institute of Vegetotherapy– I guess it’s one of the main training institutes in Oslo for new therapists. So his contact with Reich was through Elsa Lindenberg and again this bodily therapy.

So you have a theoretical commitment, things must be instantiated on the body, you have the influence of Ferenczi and these other people I mentioned, also this notion of breath, and slowly Reich begins to develop this therapy. In 1937 he writes an article about the respiratory block, so he’s already noticing a correlation between the musculature and breathing and the way this is inhibiting the flow of life energy. And by 1938 his patients are disrobing so he can more clearly see the armor, but also call it to their attention perhaps by touching or something of that sort. Reich by the way, I forgot to mention this earlier, was an incredible mimic: he was a very very good actor, so he could play back to his patient their typical facial or bodily expression or something like that to try to make it public. When Neill comes over, Neill and Reich meet in Oslo, Neill comes over in the summers for therapy, he talks about disrobing. So this disrobing begins around 1938, but remember folks were much more casual about nudity than they are in the U.S.

When Reich first comes to the U.S., he puts out his English language journal, The Journal of Sex Economy and Orgone Research. The first issue occurs in 1942, and the opening article is The History of Our Institute, and in that article he says, “We’re relatively new here, there is as yet no pedagogical group nor anyone doing therapeutic gymnastics.”

What is this therapeutic gymnastics? Well, the following year, and article appeared in the IJSO, by Lucille Bellamy, and I’ll just read a few paragraphs: “The principles of vegetotherapeutic gymnastics was first worked out by Elsa Lindenberg, a coworker of Dr. Reich’s in Norway, beginning in 1936. Thus although I developed my method independently, during a time I myself underwent vegetotherapy, I am not the first to use such a method.” And then she says, “The underlying principle of vegetotherapy is the establishment of the orgasm reflex. This is also my goal as a teacher of vegetotherapeutic gymnastics, however it would be untrue for me, to assert that orgastic potency may be achieved through gymnastics; it must be plainly understood that I consider such results for my work impossible. It is only through the treatment of the vegetotherapist that orgastic potency is made probable. I consider vegetotherapeutic gymnastics as a correlate of vegatotherapy.” The point here is that Reich recognized the need for or possibility of a correlative to the ongoing therapy in the form of exercises of various sorts, at least at this point.

My final thing I would like to show you, In Reich Speaks of Freud, there is an article of Reich’s from 1938 where he distinguishes vegetotherapy from psychoanalysis. And you can read it yourself. Where psychoanalysis talks about repression, vegetotherapy talks about vegetative block. Where psychoanalysis talks about sexual origin of neurosis etiology, vegetotherapy talks about the function of the orgasm and emotional disturbances caused by disturbances to this function, etc. So the goal of psychoanalysis is the discovery of unconscious emotional mechanisms, the goal of vegetotherapy is discovering the vegetative physical mechanisms, etc. All of this is in Reich speaks of Freud, I strongly encourage you to read it in that book on pages 270-274.

Dr. Philip W. Bennett Biography:

Philip W. Bennett, PhD, has a long standing interest in Wilhelm Reich which began in the mid-sixties and included therapy with Dr. Victor Sobey. His main focus these days is on Reich’s social and political thought, in an attempt to understand fully what Reich means by work democracy. His recently published article, “Wilhelm Reich’s Early Writings on Work Democracy: A Theoretical Basis for Challenging Fascism Then and Now,” appears in the current issue of Capitalism. Nature. Socialism. (March, 2010). His article, “The Persecution of the Dr. Wilhelm Reich by the Government of the United States,” appeared in the International Forum of Psychoanalysis, earlier this year (Vol 19, #1, 2010). His article, “Double-Blind Controlled Experiments and the Orgone Energy Accumulator,” will appear in the next issue of the Annals of the Institute of Orgonomic Science. Prof. Bennett has spoken a summer conferences at Orgonon and at one-day conferences in New York City, sponsored by The Institute for the Study of the Work of Wilhelm Reich.