Tag Archive | "Morton Herskowitz"

From Freud’s Psychoanalysis to Orgone Therapy:


The Psychiatric, Medical, and Social Consequences

Orgone therapy originated from Freud’s theory of psychoanalysis and evolved into the body of knowledge that Freud himself no longer recognized as his own. Reich described the evolution of this body of knowledge in his book, Function of Orgasm. This book provides a synopsis of the development of Orgonomy from psychoanalysis so that the interested reader will recognize its scientific basis, logical development, and its importance in people’s lives.

Reich became involved with psychoanalysis in 1919 as a student at the University of Vienna. He recounted a time during an anatomy lecture when students passed around a leaflet requesting the creation of a seminar on sexology for medical students. He attended the meeting and by fall of 1919, he was elected as chairman of the seminar. In this role, it was Reich’s job to produce literature, so he interviewed a variety of well-known professors and specialists in the field. “Freud was different,” Reich wrote. “Whereas the others all played some kind of a role, Freud did not put on any airs. He spoke with me like a completely ordinary person. . . . [Although] I had been apprehensive about going to him, I went away, cheerful and happy. From that day on, I spent 14 years of intensive work in and for psychoanalysis. In the end, I was extremely disappointed in Freud. Fortunately, this disappointment did not lead to hatred and rejection. Quite the contrary,” Reich wrote. “Today I can appreciate Freud’s achievement in a far better and deeper way than I could in those days of youthful enthusiasm. I am happy to have been his student for such a long time, without having to criticize him prematurely and with complete devotion to his cause” (#1). Reich’s statement reflects his deep involvement in and devotion to the psychoanalytic movement, as well as his knowledge of the theory and techniques of psychoanalysis. His statement also reflects his devotion to and respect for Freud, its founder.

Freud’s theory and technique in psychoanalysis was based on making the unconscious roots of symptoms conscious through free association. He contended that by free associating one idea triggers another, eventually unearthing the unconscious roots of the symptoms. Freud suggested free association connect ideas to each other like links in a chain; one link connects to the next and eventually will lead to the unconscious roots of the patient’s neurotic symptoms. By unearthing these unconscious roots, he stated that the patient would improve. The technique of psychoanalysis requires that the patient lie on a couch with the analyst sitting behind the patient’s head, preferably out of the his/her sight. The analyst then gives hints or suggestions to guide the patient to a deeper level of the unconscious and provide a timely interpretation of the patient’s verbal associations. Difficulties in this process were many, most importantly, the patient’s resistance of free associating and revealing unconscious material. Freud suggested strategies to overcome this resistance; however, they did not always work.

The seeds of orgonomy and consequent departure of Reich from Freud date back to 1920 when Freud sent a student to Reich for psychoanalysis. The young man was suffering from a compulsion to ruminate and compulsion to count numbers. Reich treated this patient for several months and eventually an incest fantasy burst into his consciousness, and for the first time the patient masturbated with gratification. All of his symptoms vanished at once, but within 8 days they gradually returned. He masturbated again and the symptoms disappeared again only to return few days later. This went on for several weeks and finally Reich and his patient succeeded in identifying the root of his patient’s guilt about masturbation and by alleviating some of these irrational feelings, his condition visibly improved. After a total of 9 months, Reich terminated the treatment and the patient’s condition had significantly improved; thus, he was capable of working again. The patient remained free of symptoms over a period of 6 years during which Reich had minimal contact with him (#2).

Simultaneously, Reich was analyzing a waiter who was totally incapable of having an erection. During the third year of the patient’s analysis, Reich stated, “We arrived at the perfect reconstruction of ‘primal scene.’ He was about 2 years old when this occurred. His mother gave birth to a child and from the adjacent room, he had been able to observe every detail of the delivery. The impression of a large bloody hole between the mother’s legs became firmly ingrained in his mind. On a conscious level, there remained only the sensation of “emptiness” in his own genitals. Based on psychoanalytic knowledge of that time, I merely connected his inability to have an erection with his severely traumatic impression of the castrated female genitalia. This analysis was no doubt correct”(#3). Reich stated, “At that time I incorrectly assessed the total personality of my patient. He was a very quiet, well-mannered and well-behaved person and did everything that was asked of him. He never got excited. In the course of three years of treatment, he never once became angry or exercised criticism. Thus, according to prevailing thought, he was a fully ‘integrated, adjusted’ character with only one acute symptom (monosypmtomatic neurosis)” (#3). Reich presented this case to the older analysts and he was praised for his precise analytical work, and they considered the analysis to be successful. However, Reich wondered that if the treatment had, in fact, been successful, then why had the patient not improved? “It did not occur to any of us that it was precisely this emotional tranquility and unshakable equanimity which formed the pathological characterological basis on which erectile impotence could be maintained . . . . I terminated the analysis several months later and the patient had not been cured” (#3). Reich stated that the patient accepted the termination of treatment as he had accepted everything else in his life: with placidity, politeness, and passivity.

These contrasting cases formed the premises of two main orgonomic theories: the theory of orgasm and the theory of armoring. The theory of orgasm is illustrated in the first patient who was able to achieve orgasm and was ultimately cured. In contrast, the theory of armoring is evident in the second patient, who was unable to have an orgasm due to the makeup of his character—resistant to and armored against the flow of biological energy which energizes manifestations of rage, anger, love and sexuality. In order for a person to have orgastic potency, he must surrender to this flow, free of inhibition, and completely discharge the dammed-up sexual energy, allowing the involuntary, pleasurable convulsions of the body. These two theories, then, are inextricably bound: if one does not resolve this armoring, then one cannot develop orgastic potency.

The concept of sexual-biological energy that Freud called it libido energy and Reich named it orgone energy, has a central importance in orgonomy and will be talked about later in this article. For now however, let’s go back to describing the theory of orgasm and the theory of armoring,- the two main theories of psychiatric orgone therapy.

Reich reported several other cases and concluded that orgastic impotence is not simply one of many symptoms of neurosis; it is, in fact, the most significant symptom as well as the cause of neurosis. Reich argued, “Not a single neurotic individual possesses orgastic potency, and the majority of men and women are neurotic” (#4). However, some of Reich’s colleagues asserted that they knew a number of patients who had completely healthy sexual lives. Nonetheless, Reich claimed that if one looked more deeply at this proclaimed sexual potency, one would find it ingenuine or insincere because although these patients were capable of having erections and sexual intercourse, these sexual relations were contaminated with strange fantasies, reflecting a pathology, and these patients often could not reach orgasm or struggled with premature ejaculation, or at the time of ejaculation they would experience no pleasure and at times opposite of it disgust and discontent. Reich further elaborates on the orgastic potency of neurotic patients and states “The more precisely my patients described their sexual behaviors and experiences, the more convinced I became that all patients without exception are severely disturbed in their genital functioning. . . . It became quite clear that although they were sexually potent, such men experienced very little pleasure at the moment of ejaculation, or they experienced the exact opposite, disgust and displeasure” (#5). This reflects the fact that although these patients were erectively potent, but they were orgastic impotent. An orgastic potent person will experience the sexual orgasm as defined by Reich “Orgastic potency is the capacity to surrender to the flow of biological energy, free of any inhibitions: the capacity to discharge completely the dammed up sexual excitation through involuntary pleasurable convulsions of the body.”(#4)

While Reich’s theory of orgasm evolved from Freud’s theory of stasis neurosis (P-1), Reich’s own clinical observation and investigation and patients’ discussions of their sexual activity, his theory of “armor” grew as a result of working on patients’ resistances to treatment. He stated that all of his data and experiences with patients led him to conclude that a patient’s “personality” or “character” creates the chief obstacle in the curing of the patient.

(P-1) Stasis Neurosis: Freud’s initial theory of neurosis indicating that development of neurosis is a consequence of unrelieved sexual energy.

Discovery of the concept of the emotional and physical armoring is one of the most important discoveries in psychiatry. This claim was supported by Dr. Morton Herskowitz in a speech at the IOS spring conference in 2015 . (#6)

Dr. Morton Herskowitz

Herskowitz stated: “I think that the discovery of emotional armoring is one of the most important discoveries in the history of psychiatry. I think that it reaches places that have never been reached by therapy before. I think it does things to people that have never been done before. I don’t think it’s a cure-all for all psychiatric problems. It doesn’t help psychosis unless you work the way Reich did, which most of us can’t, and it doesn’t help Alzheimer’s and lots of disorders in psychiatry that it doesn’t deal with, but in the matters that it does deal with, it has an effect like no other therapy”. (#6)

The theory of armoring and the need to resolve it for successful treatment of the patient is evident in the aforementioned case of the waiter who did not improve even though the unconscious roots of his neurotic symptoms became conscious. As the reader may recall, the waiter discovered the unconscious root of his impotence, but he maintained his rigid attitude and passive demeanor. Consequently, he did not allow his feelings to surface. After 3 years of psychoanalysis, he accepted the results of the analysis without any protest as he had accepted everything else in his life. His character armor was intact and actively functioning throughout his psychoanalytic sessions without his or his analyst’s awareness. His character structure thus caused and maintained his neurotic symptoms.

In orgonomy, armor is defined as the organism’s defense mechanism, consisting of emotional and physical rigidity, sometimes expressed by chronic muscle spasms, and functioning as a defense against the expression of emotions, primarily anxiety, rage, and sexual excitation. (#7) Armoring develops while a child interacts with his or her environment. The anti-sexual mores and authoritarian upbringing of children, prevalent in most cultures around the word, are the main cause of armoring and thus restrict the character in children and adolescents, inhibiting
natural drives and impulses.

Schematically, the process of armoring is as follows:

From the book, “Character Analysis” by Dr. Wilhelm Reich. (#8)

The primary and natural drives are prohibited by the outer world. Under prolonged prohibition of these natural drives, the primary drive force dissociates and part of it turns against itself; consequently, psychological and physical armoring sets in. Schematically, it is depicted below.

Id = Defense and change of function

C = Armoring and structural lack of contact

From the book, “Character Analysis” by Dr. Wilhelm Reich. (#8)

Children initially protest the inhibitions that are imposed on them by crying and throwing temper tantrums, but eventually they submit to the pressure for their survival and adjust. Part of them identifies with the oppressor and eventually they become the oppressor themselves and an enemy of anyone who expresses the wishes for which they had once longed. The orgonomic model of a healthy unarmored organism is the depicted as below.

Schematic depiction of psychological structure based on orgonomic theories (core, middle layer, and outer layer). (#9)

Diagram depicting basic functions in an armored organism. The inhabitation of primary impulses produces secondary impulses and anxiety.(#10)

Once the organism becomes armored, the primary impulses that are natural—rational love, natural sexuality, rational anger and rational hate—become distorted. Armoring thus changes a person’s behavior and demeanor, compelling the person to act involuntarily, a behavior that was unfamiliar to him as a child, before the armoring had set in. He does things that he had once hated when he was still healthy and unarmored. Many of my patients have told me, “Doctor, I hated it when my parents were doing this, and I never thought that I would do the same, but I am surprised that I am now doing it to my children.”

Herskowitz (1993) discussed the changes that armoring causes in human behavior:

Armoring converts free laughter into a chuckle or twitter; it may cause a woman to speak in a little girl’s voice. It does not merely change a function by degree but by a kind. It renders behavior more predictable, more stereotyped. Armoring puts life in constraint. Armoring is most often revealed in muscular tension but it is also revealed in eyes that are glazed, in excessive body fat, etc. [Armoring] is a dynamic event and it entails the consumption of energy. It constrains us physically, emotionally, and ideationally. It is a cocoon to which we gradually become accustomed. (#11)

While the human psychological structure model in psychoanalysis is based on the psychoanalytic theories of “conscious” and “unconscious” or “id, ego, and superego”, the model in orgonomy is based on the core, middle layer, and outer layer. Reich described this model as follows:

On the surface layer of his personality, the average man is reserved, polite, compassionate, responsible, and conscientious. There would be no social tragedy of the human animal if this surface layer of the personality were directly connected with the deep, natural core. This, unfortunately, is not the case. The surface layer of social cooperation is not connected with the deep biological core of one’s selfhood: It is borne of a second, intermediate layer, consisting exclusively of cruel, sadistic, lascivious, rapacious and envious impulses. It represents the Freudian “unconscious” or “what is repressed.” To put it in the language of sex-economy 2, it represents the sum total of all so-called “secondary drives”. (#12)

Secondary drives, as mentioned earlier, are distorted and perverted byproducts of natural drives that develops as a consequence of armoring. The concept of secondary drives is specific to Orgonomy (See diagram depicting basic function in armored organism).

While psychoanalytic treatment of neurosis is based on free association and its goal is making the unconscious conscious, in psychiatric orgone therapy, the treatment is designed to dissolve the armor, liberate the energy encrusted in it, and restore the natural flow of biological energy. Dissolution of the armor brings about fundamental changes in the patient’s behavior that are quite impressive. The elimination of the armor restores the natural flow of energy throughout the body from the center to the periphery and restores the orgastic potency. The treatment technique for dissolution of character armor is thus called “character analysis”.

In character analytic technique, the most important considerations are the patient’s demeanor and behavior; whereas in psychoanalysis the focus is on the content of the patient’s statements, i.e., what the patient is saying. Once the patient becomes aware of his idiosyncratic behaviors, he will likely recognize the defensive function of that behavior. For instance, one of my patients’ was unable to open his eyes without squinting. When confronted with this specific behavior, he stated, “Doctor, I feel a great deal of shame, and that is why I am unable to open my eyes.” Another patient maintained a constant smile during most of our sessions. After I pointed out that she was smiling while describing an emotionally painful event in her life, she understood the significance of her facial expression and explained, “Doctor, I’ve hidden my feelings all my life by maintaining a constant smile.” Her smile immediately faded into sadness, tears began falling and she soon broke into sobs. (P-2)

(P-2) Sex-economy is the body of knowledge within the orgonomy which deals with the economy of the biological energy (orgone energy) in the organism

A distinction between character analytic technique and psychoanalysis is the emphasis on how a patient says something rather than what he says. Words can lie, but behaviors and attitudes do not. In psychoanalysis, for example, it is common to interpret the verbal material as the patient speaks; however, in character analysis, we do not necessarily follow that pattern because by experience we know that as long as the patient’s demeanor, behavior, and attitude remain untouched and intact (i.e., as long as the armor is in place), the therapist’s interpretation will, at best, give the patient an intellectual understanding of his symptoms but no relief from them. Thus, the symptoms will persist, as described earlier in the case of the waiter. In contrast, character analysis brings unexpected, intense changes in patients. Reich provided the following examples:

Quite spontaneously, the patients began to experience the moralistic attitude of the world around them as something alien and peculiar. No matter how tenaciously they might have defended premarital chastity beforehand, now they experience this demand as grotesque. Such demands no longer had any relevance for them; they became indifferent to them. Their attitudes toward their work changed. If they had previously worked mechanically, not demonstrating any real interest, and had considered their work a necessary evil which one takes upon oneself without giving it much thought, now they became discriminating ….

The change in the sexual sphere was just as pronounced. Patients who had felt no qualms about going to prostitutes became incapable of doing so….Wives who had patiently endured living with unloving husbands and had submitted to the sexual act out of “marital obligation” could no longer do so. They simply refused; they had had enough. (#13)

Discovery of character armor and its treatment technique character analysis has a deeper biological base. The demeanor and the behavior, the tone of speech and muscular attitude of the patient, muscular contractions etc. reflect a physical state which its manifestations are the character of the patient that we are able to observe on the surface, in the realm of psychology. Chronic muscular and physical attitude of the body inevitably brings changes to the tissues. Body and psyche in the depth are connected with each other and in orgonomy their relationship is depicted as the following schema.

From the book, “Function of Orgasm” by Dr. Wilhelm Reich. (#14)

Currently, neither medical nor psychiatric professionals deeply understand the relationship between psyche and soma partly due to their lack of familiarity with orgonomic theories. Therefore, they are unable to treat psychosomatic illnesses. Psychiatry textbooks that discuss these topics usually start with the promising idea that psyche and soma are inseparable entities, but as one continues to read, he soon discovers that the author is, in fact, discussing two distinct entities, psyche here and soma there. Consequently, current psychiatric suggestions for treating psychosomatic illnesses are vague and ultimately confusing and ineffective.

In treating psychiatric patients, doctors often encounter patients with psychological symptoms who are also suffering from physical symptoms without any detectable medical reason. For instance, patients with high levels of anxiety often suffer from shortness of breath, pressure on the chest, contraction of the throat, feeling of suffocation, gastrointestinal symptoms, and skin disorders such as rashes or itching and so on. These somatic sensations can, at times, reach delusional proportions. Because of this experience, a patient might see a number of physicians, and he may subject himself to many unnecessary tests to no avail.

One instance of psychosomatic response is describe in detail by Reich in 1933:

I treated a man who offered considerable resistance to the uncovering of his passive homosexual fantasies. This resistance was overtly expressed in the extreme stiffness in his throat and neck (“stiff neck”). A concentrated attack on his defense finally caused him to yield, though in an alarming way. For three days he was shaken by acute manifestations of vegetative shock. The pallor of his face changed rapidly from white to yellow to blue. His skin was spotted and mottled. He experienced violent pains in the neck and back of the head. His heartbeat was rapid and pounding. He had diarrhea, felt tired, and seemed to have lost control. I was uneasy. True, I had often seen similar symptoms, but never in such a violent form. Something had happened here that, while somehow a legitimate part of the work, was not immediately intelligible. Affects [emotions] had broken through somatically after the patient had relinquished his attitude of psychic defense. Apparently the stiff neck, which emphasized austere masculinity, had bound vegetative energies [bio-sexual energy] which now broke loose in an uncontrolled and chaotic manner. A person with an ordered sexual economy [healthy and natural sexual function] is not capable of such a reaction. Only continuous inhibition and damming-up of biological energy can produce it. The musculature has served the function of inhibition. When the neck muscles relaxed, powerful impulses, as if unleashed from a taut coil, broke through. (#15)

Treating a patient’s psychological symptoms by recognizing and treating corresponding somatic manifestations has been an advancement in psychiatry and psychology. This connection between the psyche and soma in humans and higher animals is controlled by the vegetative nervous system, also referred to as the autonomic nervous system, which functions automatically , involuntarily. For instance, the pulse or heartbeat in higher animals as well as in humans is controlled by the vegetative nervous system. Understanding this connection prompted Reich to transcend treating physical and psychological symptoms separately. Instead, he began to treat patients by considering both psychological and physical symptoms as an interrelated entity, an approach that he referred to as vegetotherapy. By comprehending emotional armoring and its connection to physiological conditions, orgonomists comprehend the depth of psychological symptoms that are anchored in the body. Psychological symptoms can only be fundamentally changed if the physical roots in the somatic realm are also changed. Otherwise, the changes are superficial and often only provide a patient with an intellectual understanding of symptoms that continue to persist.

The combination of character analysis and vegetotherapy is referred to as psychiatric orgone therapy. The application of vegetotherapy, described by both Reich and Herskowitz in the book of emotional armoring, brings about impressive, observable changes. Clinicians may become inclined to use a vegetotherapeutic approach more often than character-analytic approach . However, Reich advised that both be used alternately depending on the patient’s response since s/he may respond better to one approach at one point in therapy and the other at another point. (#16)

The dissolution of character armor and its corresponding muscular, physical armor, releases emotions embedded in the armor. Consequently, doctors may observe patients expressing intense emotions such as sadness, crying, anger, or fear. At times, doctors may also see unexpected episodes of laughter, often resulting from patient’s sense of relief from the armor that had constricted the patient with painful feelings of irrational fear and anxiety throughout their lives. In such episodes, one can observe a period of elation in patients whose laughter may last for an unexpected period of time. Dissolution of the armor often is accompanied with revival of distant and forgotten memories that are attached to these feelings. Dissolution of the armor ultimately improves the flow of biological energy that has otherwise been blocked or distorted. Often, these distorted impulses manifest themselves as secondary motives which were described earlier. At times, patients are aware of these strange, irrational impulses. Secondary motives evaporate and disappear by dissolution of the armor. For example, a distorted sexual impulses contaminated with sadistic impulses evaporates and disappears not because the patient continues to suppress the expression of these impulses but because the energy source of it cease to exist and consequently the impulses disappear altogether. Everyone knows that it is far superior not to have a sadistic impulse than to have one and suppress it. In essence, dissolving one’s armor enables patients to function well by expressing primary impulses without distortion. As such, these patients attain a sense of morality that is self-regulated.

While Reich provided some explanation and description of the technique psychiatric orgone therapy in The Function of Orgasm and Character Analysis, Herskowitz, Reich’s last student, describes this therapeutic approach in detail in his book Emotional Armoring. (#17)

The biological energy which often was mentioned in this article has a central importance in orgonomy. Its source is considered to be autonomic ganglions, mostly concentrated in the lower abdominal area, solar plexus, and hypogastric and lumbosacral plexus. This assumption was supported in the experiment done in 1961. (#18)

The initiation and propagation of this energy is depicted in the following diagram. (#19)

The basic functions of the vegetative nervous system. From book, “Function of Orgasm” by Wilhelm Reich. (#19)

The concept of biological energy was first postulated by Freud, who had observed human psychological functioning and could explain certain phenomena only by acknowledging the existence of an energy, which he termed libido energy. While Freud’s followers and students began to dilute or ultimately abandon this concept, Reich recognized its fundamental importance and began to expand on it; he called it orgone energy and demonstrated its’ function in the living organism. Thereafter, he designed instruments that physically accumulated this energy and manifested its effect. (P-3)

(P-3) For further knowledge in this subject the reader is referred to the books by Dr. Wilhelm Reich, “Function of Orgasm, “Cancer Biopathy”, “Ether, God, Devil”, “Bion Experiments” and so on.

The discovery of emotional and physical armoring and the theory of orgasm has far-reaching effects in medicine, psychiatry, biology and sociology, for if psychological symptoms are rooted in the body and one’s psychological state corresponds to changes and distortions in the body tissues, then one can assume that some physical illnesses are a consequence of armoring as well. In fact, contemporary physicians and psychiatrists acknowledge the relationship between the psyche and the soma, evidenced in physical disorders such as cancer, asthma, gastrointestinal and dermatological illnesses as well as immunological deficiencies. And Reich discussed this psychosomatic relationship in the book “Cancer Biopathy”.

The term biopathies refers to all disease processes caused by a basic dysfunction in the autonomic [vegetative] life apparatus. Once started, this dysfunction can manifest itself in a variety of symptomatic disease patterns. A biopathy can result in carcinoma (carcinomatous biobathy), but it can just as easily lead to angina pectoris, asthma, cardiovascular hypertension, epilepsy, catatonic or paranoid schizophrenia, anxiety neurosis, multiple sclerosis, chorea, chronic alcoholism, etc. We are still ignorant of the function that determines the direction in which a biopathy will develop. Of prime importance to us, however, is the common denominator of all these diseases: a disturbance in the natural function of the pulsation”. (#20)

Understanding emotional and physical armoring has illuminated the concept of psychosomatic illnesses, transcending the disciplines of psychology and psychiatry and entering the spheres of physiology and biology. Once the concept of emotional armoring is fully understood, we will understand its causes as well as its social and cultural ramifications. If children are to be raised as healthy individuals as ordained by nature or God, then social and cultural institutions that cause emotional armoring should ultimately be changed, for these institutions cause armoring and emotional and physical illnesses en masse.

Neurosis in the individual is not always manifested in disturbing, torturous symptoms that torments the patient inflicted with it. These individuals may live less productive lives due to anxiety, depression, obsession and compulsions, or phobias. However, distorted impulses caused by armoring can also manifest themselves as sadistic impulses that harm others. In ogonomy such impulses are referred to as an emotional plague, and those afflicted create leaders who cause catastrophes like war and genocide. Thus, recognizing and ceasing the epidemy of armoring will inevitably create social and cultural change. Preventing armoring therefore becomes an important goal of orgonomy, transcending the spheres of psychology and medicine and impacting the social and cultural domains.

Like any other institution that combats armoring and emotional plague, institutions promoting orgonomy are vulnerable to destructive attacks from both outside and from within. But this vulnerability should not dissuade us from teaching and promoting Reich’s scientific foundation of orgonomy. I end this article with Reich’s advice to his students to persist in the discovery of scientific truth without compromise:

The scientist is duty-bound to preserve the right of freely expressing his opinions under all circumstances, and not to abandon this privilege to the advocates of the suppression of life. There is so much talk about the soldier’s duty to give his life for his country and there is too little mention of the scientist’s duty to defend, under all circumstances, what has been recognized to be true, no matter the cost” (#21).

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References

  1. Reich, W. (1973). Function of orgasm, 2nd Edition, translated by Vincent R. Carfagno (Page 35) – Original edition was published in 1942.
  2. Ibid (Page 84).
  3. Ibid (Page 85).
  4. Ibid (Page 102).
  5. Ibid (Page 100).
  6. Journal of Psychiatric Orgone Therapy
  7. Orgonomy Glossary Selected Writings, and Introduction of Orgonomy Chester M. Raphael M.D. 1973.
  8. Reich, Wilhelm Character Analysis 1972.Third and Enlarged Edition (Page 299) – original edition was published in 1945.
  9. Reich, Wilhelm Ether, God, and Devil (Page 120) – original edition was published in 1949.
  10. Reich, Wilhelm 1973 Function of Orgasm Second Edition (Page 294) – original edition was published in 1942.
  11. Excerpts from Dr. Herskowitz lecture in Germany December 1993. Journal of Psychiatric Orgone Therapy. https://www.psychorgone.com.
  12. Reich, Wilhelm Mass Psychology of Fascism 1970. Third Edition Revised and Enlarged (Page XI) – original edition was published in 1946.
  13. Reich, Wilhelm 1973 Function of Orgasm Second Edition (Page 175) – original edition was published in 1942.
  14. Ibid (Page 266).
  15. Ibid (Page 269).
  16. Ibid (Page 330).
  17. Morton Herskowitz D.O. 1997 Emotion armoring, and introduction to psychiatric orgone therapy.
  18. Zamiatine, N. (1961). Electrophysiological analysis of excitation conduction through ganglia of the solar plexus. Journal of physiology of USSR. 47(6), 1-8.
  19. Reich, Wilhelm 1973 Function of Orgasm Second Edition (Page 293).
  20. Reich, Wilhelm Cancer Biopathy the Carcinomatous Shrinking “Definition of Biopathies”. 1973, (Page 151) – original edition was published in 1947.
  21. Reich, Wilhelm 1973 Function of Orgasm Introductory Survey (Page 16) – original edition was published in 1942.

 

Posted in Biopathies & Physical Orgone TherapyComments (2)

Malinowski Revisited and Reich’s Children of the Future


Editor’s Note

In many of his writings, Dr. William Reich suggests that Malinowski’s anthropological and sociological studies affirm Reich’s psychological and social theories. For example, in The Function of Orgasm, Reich says:

Malinowski’s principle work,The Sexual Life of Savages, appeared in 1929. This book contained a profusion of material which made it quite clear that sexual repression was of a sociological and not of a biological origin. Malinowski himself did not discuss this question in his book, but the material spoke for itself. In my essay “Der Einbruch der Sexual-moral” (“The Invasions of Compulsory Sex-Morality,”  2nd edition, 1934/1971), I attempted to demonstrate the sociological origin of sexual negation on the basis of available ethnological material. I shall summarize what is important for the present discussion.

The Trobriander children are not familiar with sexual repression and sexual secrecy. The sexual life of Trobriander children develops naturally, freely, and without interference through all stages of life with full sexual gratification. The children engage in sexual activity in keeping with their age. In spite of this, or, rather, precisely for this reason, the Trobriander society, in the third decade of this century, was ignorant of any  sexual perversions, functional mental illnesses, psychoneuroses, sexual murder; they had no word for theft. In their society, homosexuality and masturbation were looked upon as incomplete and unnatural means of sexual gratification, as a proof that the capacity to experience normal gratification is hampered. The strict, compulsion-neurotic toilet training which saps the civilization of the white faces is unknown to the Trobriander child. Hence, the Trobriander is spontaneously clean, orderly, naturally social, intelligent, and industrious. Non-compulsive, voluntary monogamous marriage, which can be dissolved at any time without difficulties, prevails as the social form of sexual life. There is no promiscuity.

The latest issue of Annals of The Institute for Orgonomic Science (December, 2011) includes Dr. Morton Herskowitz’s article, “Malinowski Revisited and Reich’s Children of the Future.”

Dr. Herskowitz has granted us permission to publish this article in our journal, and we thank him and the editor of the Annals for this permission.

Here is the article:

“ … societal customs and laws that hobble individuals not only sentence them to lives of frustration and desperation, but also deplete the stock of available human talent. "

Anna Quindlen

In the teens of the 1900’s and the early twenties Bronislaw Malinowski conducted research into the structure of society in the Trobriand Islands and its cultural effects. The Trobriands are a group of islands off the New Guinea coast. Malinowski chose to study these islands because of long-standing reports from mariners of "wild" sexual goings-on in that place.

Malinowski was a student of psychoanalysis who had reservations about some analytic concepts, particularly the theory of the universality of the Oedipus complex. He assumed that there was no place better to examine these questions than in a society that reportedly varied so widely from our own. He reported his findings in several books, the most widely known a book he called The Sexual Life of Savages. [ What follows represents life among the Trobriand islanders as observed by Malinowski. It must be remembered that missionaries and globalization have effected some changes since then. ]

The publication of the book occasioned hearty acclaim in some sectors of the anthropological community and spirited rebuke from the psychoanalytic brotherhood. The contest goes on to this time, though more quietly.

Dr. Morton Herskowitz

Malinowski expressed unhappiness with the book’s reception. He spoke of regrets that most of the discussion centered on the sexy aspects of the book rather than his emphasis on the functional relationship between the structure of a society and its cultural and behavioral consequences.

What Malinowski Found:

Trobriand society is matrilineal, that is, inheritance is through the female line; the clan is a female product. Sexual intercourse is thought to play no part in conception of children. Birth results from the spirit of a dead female who has long rested in some afterlife island and who now wishes to live again. It enters the mother’s body, carried from the afterlife island via sea water. The only concession to sex in the process is that the hole must be opened, but sea water or exposure to a constant drip can accomplish this. The male is an accessory to this process in that sexual intercourse after the seed is planted can maintain its growth; this is why children can sometimes resemble their father.

The father’s role is to provide the heavy work and to care for the child. The father is the sweet nourisher of the child, the role our ideal mother plays. He also, along with his brothers, is a donor of supplies and gifts to his sisters’ daughters.

Children of the Trobriands are breast-fed for four or five years. A fascinating aspect of child-rearing is that children are never given orders. They are addressed as equals. There are discussions, but never commands. Even the chief of the village participates in this behavior toward children. Children from the ages of four or five to preadolescence have their own community. They make their own rules, travel as a group to places of retreat. And they have very active sexual lives.

There is an abundance of sexual activities which could be characterized as Trobriand children’s play. There is some evidence that in the latter years of childhood the play may extend to the introduction of the penis into the vagina. In adolescence what was formerly play becomes more seriously erotic and is attended by sexual attractions. Adolescents typically spend most time adolescents’ hunts occupied by several groups of couples. Apparently the sexual activities are not communal, and the sexual couplings are conducted in privacy.

The fact that the birth of a child has no relationship to male-female sexual coupling is "proven" to the Trobrianders by the fact that in adolescence when there is superabundant sexual activity in the adolescent hut there are very few pregnancies. Those pregnancies that occur are attributed to some aberrant behavior in the girl’s past for which she is viewed as immoral.

A possible explanation for the rarity of childbirth in adolescence is the fact that there is such intense sexual activity in the hut that the uterus is in an over stimulated state – not the best condition for implantation of a fertilized ovum.

Social status in the Trobriand village depends on several factors. First there is heredity. The closer to the chief’s family, the higher the rank. Next there is wealth. The family that raises more food and has more possessions gains status. Finally there is magic. There are formulaic recitations for overcoming all types of adversity. Some members of the community have memorized more of these recitations than others; this gives them power. People in trouble go to them to purchase the magic, which helps to overcome the difficulty, whether it is a matter of health, a social problem, an enemy who has cast a spell, etc.

There is an exaggerated aversion to excreta and bad odors in Trobriand society. Carrying off a child’s excreta are reasons for the child’s eternal gratitude to parents. Urinating or defecating in the brush is always done privately. Sodomy is repulsive. Alimentary gases are never released in public.

Even though the penis cover barely conceals the genitals it must never be moved minutely. Skirts must not reveal genitals in the wind or in movement.

Homosexuality, bestiality, oral or anal sex, exhibitionism and masturbation are reproved. Sex is forbidden in war, overseas sailing, gardening, pregnancy, and lactation. Sex must be performed in private, except on the very few sexual holidays. There must be no sex within the clan. In the time of Malinowski’s visit the sexual holidays were only a memory. There is an abundance of sexual jokes, except in the presence of persons of higher rank.

The mother’s clan is the child’s. The mother’s brother’s village is the child’s village.

Marriages in the Trobriands are usually between couples who were one another’s favorites in the adolescent hut. The exceptions are in the high-caste families where infant betrothals are arranged to keep wealth within the family. The persons assigned in these relationships never go to the adolescent huts. If either party breaks this rule the arrangement may be annulled.

Married persons live in the husband’s parents’ hut at first. There is little sex in this "honeymoon" period. Husband and wife sleep in the same bunk, but don’t remove their garments. In a period that may last for more than a year the wife makes herself unattractive by darkening her face, etc.

In a culture that shows latitude in so many sexual areas it is interesting to note that to talk factually about sex (humor is an exception) is a gross breach of good behavior. It can even lead to murder or suicide on rare occasions. One does not even mention that a man’s wife is pretty. The grossest insult is to "copulate with your wife." A married couple never shows tenderness in public. When Malinowski suggested that a man offer physical support to his seriously limping wife, the couple was sorely embarrassed. Marriages are generally congenial and caring.

Malinowski’s tent was next door to a rare quarreling couple. He writes, " … it almost made me forget that I was among savages and not back in civilization." Marriage is very easily dissolved in these circumstances.

Breach of marital fidelity is condemned, as with us. Marriage puts the males in the wife’s family in perpetual tribute (food and gifts) to her family. The ideal marriage is to an only sister of many brothers.
Reich was clearly impressed with Malinowski’s research; both by the functional relationship of how a matrilineal core determined so much of the culture and character of that society and by the sexual practices which differed so markedly from our own.

It is unfortunate that aside from the fact that quarreling within a marriage was regarded as deviant from the norm there is a paucity of information on the character of the members of Trobriand society. There are several features of the society which are most interesting from an orgonomic view. To quote Malinowski, "magic, the attempt of man to govern the forces of nature directly by means of a special lore, is all-pervading and all-important in the Trobriands." What is significant is that though there is a mystical element here, as in the organized religions, the power is available to members of the community rather than ascribed to a divinity.

The other characteristics which command our attention are the free play of childhood and adolescent sexuality and the respect paid to children by adults. Reich assumed that sexual freedom and respectful regard of children would be attributes of the society of "Children of the Future" (2).

"Children of the Future" implies a world of the future, which is different from our own. It infers an existence closer to the natural order, freer of emotional armoring and consequently from "lives of quiet desperation.”

Reich did not anticipate that in that "future" children would live lives of angelic perfection. In a letter to A.S. Neill he wrote, "I would like to grant every healthy child of the future the right to have a fit, whooping cough, an occasional accident and similar innocent neurotic happenings. By all means don’t have them perfect! What counts is the foundation and not the surface."

In another letter to A.S. Neill, Reich wrote, "Would you be willing to sound a warning about the difficulties of ‘self-regulation’ in education to all you can reach? It is very necessary to kill a new false religion of easy-going heavens before it is too late."

In answer, Neill writes (concerning his daughter Zoe), "Damned annoying all the same to find how strong a hold the other side gets on a kid. Ena (his wife) and I counter-act all the time of course" (3).

In a world of "Children of the Future" it is obvious that there is an implication of "adults of the future." "Children of the Future" cannot eventuate without the guidance of parents and communities free of the emotional plague, sentient to the values generated by their own natural core. This must be a long, long time coming. A time of countless questions.

One takes note of the fact that in an existing society in which there is already a heady degree of self- regulation in childhood and little interference with the natural flow of sexual energy in childhood and adolescence, in adulthood there is supreme regard for magic as the way of dealing with adversity and it is taboo for unmarried men and women to share a meal. The cultural pathology trumps nature.

In a recent survey of Samoa (4), a society with many similarities to the Trobriands in Malinowski’s time, it is noted that there is a change in the economy, which is now based on money, with the father holding economic power in the family. The family structure has shifted from matrilineal or bi-lineal to patrilineal, patriarchal and authoritarian. "Fathers now have much more power and are abusing it – raping daughters and sons, physically abusing wives and children. Families are exceptionally strict in their discipline. Shame is a major issue."

Within recent decades Samoa had the highest adolescent suicide rate in the world.

In the times when American Indian tribes were self-governing, there were ceremonies performed honoring the spirits of the buffalos they slaughtered for food. In some tribes the bodies governing the passage of new laws instituted an invariable consideration. They asked, "How will the execution of this law affect the seventh generation?"

Today our Native Americans have gained a reputation for their high level of alcoholism, for their ownership of gambling casinos and for their facility in traversing the high beams of skyscrapers in construction.

In the contest between the striving to regain what nature implies vs. what the armored culture decrees, nature is often the loser. Over concern with baubles is an easy distraction. To the Central American Indians, the Spanish conquerors on horseback seemed superior specimens; therefore their values were adopted. Truth does not march on in a straight, ascending line.

Aside from the perils of cultural distortion the vagaries of Nature can be chancy inhibitors. Species die off constantly because of acute changes in the environment. There is no guarantee that our species will continue until the day that we reach a far greater perfection. We could succumb in the great battle for the last waterhole.

Despite the musings on the negative possibilities that face the "children and adults of the future," there is a lively hope in current reality. Since the time that Reich dreamed of relatively unarmored humans there has arisen a host of scientists who investigate how the earliest armoring is created in the   relationship between mother and newborn. They do not make their own observations with "armoring" in mind. Some of them may even be unaware of Reich’s work in this area. They simply seek to gain more intimate knowledge of mother-infant relationships. And in their studies they provide the evidence for how the earliest armoring is produced.

These scientists study how, when mothers avoid the child’s gaze, the infant turns away, the eyes lose their light, and the infant sometimes may ultimately vomit. They portray a breast-feeding mother with unerect nipples who makes no attempt to aid her baby to find her nipple while she reads her book.

The earliest armoring is the deepest. It represents an expectation that life will not be fulfilling, that there is no purpose in seeking to connect with others.

Reich once stated that he was building unfinished structures. Others would come to fill in the doors and windows. The new group of researchers in neonatology is satisfying that function. They are providing the hard, scientific knowledge with which to instruct mothers.

Given the inestimable advantage of improved mothering in the earliest years there is no doubt that  armored humans and the emotional plague will continue to provide funding for [studies of 7] armoring in growing organisms into the indefinite future.

The insights of Reich, Brazelton (5), Bowlby (6), Harlow (7)’ Kennell and Klaus (8), Stem (9) – and there are many others – represent a revolutionary beginning for the "Children of the Future." Perhaps by the time there is scientific correction of all the missteps of human existence we will have arrived as a neo- species in the hominid family.

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If you benefited from this article, please help to preserve and promote Wilhelm Reich’s legacy by donating any amount. Your contribution is tax deductible and will be used to help orgonomy institutes including Wilhelm Reich’s museum and infant trust.

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References:

1. Malinowski, B.: The Sexual Life of Savages, New York, NY, Harcourt Brace Publishers, 1929.

2. Reich, W.: Children of the Future: On the Prevention of Sexual Pathology, New York, NY, Farrar,
Straus & Giroux, 1983.

3. Placzek, B.R. (ed.): Record of a Friendship: the Correspondence of Wilhelm Reich and A.S. Neill, London, UK, Victor Gollancz, 1982.

4. McDade, T. W.: "Status Incongruity in Samoan Youth: A Biocultural Analysis of Culture Change, Stress, and Immune Function,"Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Vol. 16,
No.1, 2002, pages 123-150.

5. Brazelton, T. B.: Touchpoints: Your Child‘s Emotional and Behavioral Development, Reading, MA,
Addison-Wesley, 1992.

6. Bowlby, 1.: Attachment and Loss. Vol. L Attachment: New York, NY, Basic Books, 1969 and Vol. II, Separation, New York, NY, Basic Books, 1973.

7. Harlow, H.: Learning to Love, New York, NY, Aronson, 1974.

8. Kennell, J. H., and Klaus, M.H.: "Bonding: Recent Observations that Alter Perinatal Care," Pediatrics in Review, Vol. 19, No.1, 1998, pages 4-12.

9. Stem, D.: The Interpersonal World of the Infant: A View from Psychoanalysis and Developmental Psychology, New York, NY, Basic Books, 1985

Posted in SociologyComments (2)

Wilhelm Reich and the History of Orgonomy


In the fall of 2009, The Institute of Orgonomic Science (IOS), held a one-day seminar in Philadelphia.  In this seminar, Dr. Morton Herskowitz talked about Wilhelm Reich and the history of orgonomy.  We have posted the video of this seminar in our journal, however for those of you who may like to read Dr. Herskowitz’s lecture, we have prepared the transcription below.

I want to welcome you all, this is an extra kind of pleasure for me because about 50 years ago, Dr. Oller and I gave annual presentations on orgonomy for a period of about 5 years.  It’s a pleasure to be in this room and see at least partly a new generation as my audience. Today you’ll hear about some of the advances that Wilhelm Reich made to our civilization. Reich was a very special person; he had things in common with electromagnetic forces. He attracted and he repelled, and some of us who read Reich, as we were reading we said “yeah, yeah,” and others who read Reich or more often read articles about him, said, “this guy’s got to be stopped!” That alone makes for an interesting lecture.  The scientist Max Planck said it’s difficult for people with new ideas to get into the flow of conventional science. That the orthodox scientists have a special brand of cultural lag, and that they tend to reject what’s new.  To some extent he thought that it was a good thing, because most of the new ideas didn’t deserve a place in conventional science. So they should have been rejected.  The other ideas that eventually were accepted were accepted not because of their essential validity, but instead because the old guys died off and the younger scientists saw their value more clearly.  In our case, not only do the ideas themselves have to be examined, but all of the misinformation and enmity has to be dissolved before people can hear the argument clearly.

Wilhelm Reich was born in 1897.  He was a paranoid schizophrenic, a sex panderer, the head of sexual cult and he claimed to cure everything from the common cold to caner.  Those were the rumors. When I was in therapy with Reich, he lived in Forest Hills, and at that time he had a professorship at the New School for Social Research. He practiced on patients and taught students. One of my friends who was a respected member of the faculty at Jefferson Medical School, said to me, “Mort, what do other psychiatrists think of Reich?”  And I said, “They think he’s nuts.”  He said, “No, I mean the respectable ones, the academic ones.”  And I said, “Joe, do you know any of the psychiatrists on staff at Jefferson?” He said he knew a couple of them, and I said,  “Ask them.”

So he asked the first of his acquaintances who was a psychiatrist, “What do you think of Wilhelm Reich?”  And the psychiatrist answered, “He’s in a mental institution.”  And my friend said, “Are you sure?”  He said, “Yeah, I don’t know where but I know he’s in some institution.”  And he said “Well, I know someone who goes to therapy with Reich in Forest Hills.”  And he was amazed, because he knew Reich was in some mental institution.  And exactly the same thing happened with the second psychiatrist that he questioned.

Reich’s father was a prosperous farmer, they lived in Galicia which was then a part of Austria.  Reich was educated by tutors, which is ideally the way to be educated because the ideal tutor answers every question that the kid asks, and if he doesn’t know the answer, he goes home and looks it up and comes back with the answer the next day.  So the children who are tutored –at least by the old-fashioned tutors – have all of their questions answered, which keeps alive their feeling of inquiry and satisfaction and the pleasure of being educated. Unlike parents who say “Why?  Because I said so, that’s why!”  Or teachers who deprive them of the running around and the play that every kid needs and teach them what they want the kid to learn rather than what the kid wants to learn. Reich was fortunate in that respect.

In 1916, Reich was conscripted into the Austrian army and he rose to Lieutenant. In 1919, when he was a senior in medical school, he became interested in psychoanalysis. He was interviewed by Freud and invited to join the Vienna society of psychoanalysis. In 1924 to 1930, he was the head of the Vienna clinic for Vienna Seminar for psychoanalytic settings – which was the teaching arm of psychoanalysis in Vienna.  And in that capacity he taught many American psychiatrists who came over to be treated and to learn about psychoanalysis.

In 1928 he wrote his book, Character Analysis, and the story of how he came to character analysis is one that he wrote about.  Psychoanalysis at that time was the means of reaching the unconscious and it depended on techniques like free association, slips of the tongue, dream analysis.  It discovered a great deal about the unconscious, but as a tool for therapy it caused Freud to change, from claiming that discovering the truth in the unconscious would cure patients to sometimes it would cure patients. And Reich had a patient that he wrote about who was affable, pleasant, a comfortable patient to be treated. His problem was that he had sexual impotence, and Reich treated him for a period of three years.  At the end of which, having discovered the root of his impotence, which was that the patient had witnessed at a very young age sexual intercourse by his parents and was overwhelmed by it.  He was congratulated at the seminar for having achieved this psychoanalytic result, but the patient was absolutely unchanged symptomatically from the time that he had begun his therapy. Reich said to him, “I’m not helping you, and I think we should end our pathway here.”  The patient’s response was completely accepting, he didn’t say I paid you good money and this is where we end, or we should have ended it before if you knew you couldn’t help me.  He accepted it perfectly reasonably.  Reich went home and thought about this patient. He wondered why: Had I not helped him? What is it about him that made him unhelpable? And Reich thought about his passivity, his pleasant demeanor, of his total acceptance no matter what the hell happened. And he thought that’s where the pathology is.  It’s in the character – it’s not hidden somewhere in the unconscious. And from that point on he developed character analysis.  The character analysis is a big departure from the previous psychoanalytic methods, particularly, when, as he thought about it, he recognized that character is revealed in the body. That one’s stubbornness is recognized by a tight neck; that ones dulled eyes means that one is separated visually from the external world.  That a tight ass means that you are tight-assed. This was a total departure from previous analytic therapy. When he wrote Character Analysis, it was recognized as a milestone in psychoanalytic therapy.  But when he came to the next step, which was discovering how deeply it’s armored in one’s body, he was regarded as beyond the pale and there were rumors within the psychiatric community of him going off the deep end. That’s probably the first hint of calling Reich psychotic – the literature about his departure into the physical realm.  And that departure into the physical realm, which Reich called the process of armoring, lead to further advances in his thinking because he realized that somehow, the physical armoring impedes the width of experience of one’s life.  Everything that lives has a pulse; there are several pulses: the pulse of our heart, which is the representation of our cardiovascular system, there’s the pulse of our breathing, there’s the pulse of our gastrointestinal system, there’s the pulse of our central nervous system and our peripheral nervous system.  All of these parts of us pulse separately, everything that lives pulsates, and Reich recognized that the presence of armoring interfered with that pulsation, he thought in terms of an energetic flow through the body that is the essence of that pulse. And so he came to create a new paradigm totally distinct from the paradigm of psychoanalysis. He thought in terms of energy flow, the impedance of energy flow, and how the energy flow determines how one lives one’s life.  There are people who live their lives with a pulsation like this [hand gesture showing narrow, constricted pulsation], and people who live their lives with a pulsation like this [hand gesture showing wide pulsation].  That distinction between recognizing the flow of energy and the pulsatile nature of one’s life is what distinguishes psychiatric orgone therapy from every other pre-existing therapy. The idea of the physical armoring and its consequences labeled Reich as outside of the community and was the beginning of the hostility of the psychiatric community toward Reich.

Reich had caused some unease in the psychiatric community before that time. He thought that what was discovered in psychoanalysis gave insight that should be taken outside of the therapist’s treatment room.  At that time most analysts thought that psychoanalysis belongs with the patient on the couch – the therapist sitting behind the couch – and that was the extension of its utility. Reich said the insights we’ve gained in psychoanalysis should be brought to the community at large because that could be very helpful. And so he started a clinic for adolescence in which he talked about birth control, sexual hygiene, rearing of children. And these became popular, and he became a popular lecturer to the community and his clinics spread.

This caused unease in the psychiatric community because this was going beyond where the psychiatric community wanted to go.  Because of his popularity – which was growing – and because Reich was a political animal, he had first joined the Social Democratic party, became unhappy with it, and ultimately joined the Communist party. And the Soviets saw a use for Reich being a member of the party, and gaining popularity in the community. So in 1929, they invited him to tour the Soviet Union to visit schools, hospitals, wherever he wanted to go.  He toured for a number of months and came back totally dismayed by what he saw and wrote his book The Mass Psychology of Fascism, in which he referred to the Soviet Union as red fascism. This caused him to become one of the prime targets of Soviet hostility.  He had already made enemies in psychiatric community, and now he had a bigger enemy, the Soviet Union.  In the period between 1946 and 1947, there were articles written. The first was by Werthan, a prominent psychiatrist.  He wrote a review of The Mass Psychology of Fascism titled “Nuttier Than a Fruitcake.”  In that article Werthan called Reich a psycho-fascist, which is almost like one kid being called fascist and the kid arguing with him calling him a fascist.  Psycho-fascist is not in the DSM IV; is a category not yet recognized in the classification of psychiatric disorders, and from what I have learned is not in DSM V either, which is still not out.  Following Werthan’s article, Mildred Edie Brady wrote two articles, the first in Fortune called “The New Cult of Sex and Anarchy.”  A few months later she wrote practically the same article for The New Republic. Brady wrote that Reich was the head of a vice racket, a sexual cult, and that what he was espousing was a pornographic form using psychiatric principles of emotional yearning. I don’t know what the hell that means – that he was a case of paranoia and delirium and he promised to cure all diseases.  This article caused conversation in the media circles because there was such great material to write about.  For years thereafter newspapers and magazines published this same material over and over again.  None of it depended on anyone reading Reich; it all depended on Mildred Edie Brady’s article.  And Mildred Edie Brady had a nice relationship with the Food and Drug Administration. In the early days, the FDA had gone through some tough periods and Mildred Edie Brady wrote articles in defense of the FDA, so they owed her.  And the year that her articles were published, an investigator from the FDA came to see Reich in Maine and he mentioned that he had come to inspect the place because of the Brady article.  So there was no doubt about it.  From that point on, investigators from the FDA came periodically to Reich’s place in Rangley, Maine for inspections. And it wasn’t until about 10 years after the initial inspection that the FDA formulated a complaint presented to the government about Reich.  By the way, I forgot to say that Mildred Edie Brady also said that there should be a license prepared for people who were scientifically pestilent the way Reich was and that there had to be some new government agency to stop people like Reich.

Well, 10 years later, the FDA prepared a claim against Reich, including all the Brady material. There was no intent to investigate Reich’s side of the matter. The complaint claimed that Reich claimed he could cure all diseases; that he had invented a device the size of a telephone booth in which people sat and their libido was stimulated. Reich was presented with this complaint.  Despite Reich’s clear insights that no one had had before, there was another side of Reich, which was that he was naive, and it was amazing to hear some of his naiveté when one knew that he had discovered such critical and crucial new material.  So, with his naiveté, Reich would have had to go before the board and answer their complaint. Instead, he sent all of his books – a pile of his books, many of which were written before Orgone energy was ever thought of – and he said, read these books and you’ll see all of it is lies.  Obviously, the judge didn’t read all of the books, and so pretty quickly a judgment was issued against Reich which said that all the written matter containing instructions for the use of any orgone accumulator device, all documents, bulletins, pamphlets, journals and booklets but not limited to those, shall be destroyed.  And consequently, FDA agents came to orgonon, Reich’s place in Maine, chopped up all the accumulators, piled all of the written materials into trucks and delivered it to an incinerator in New York City where it was burned.

Now, I’m not sure of this, but I think that that was the only time in American History that the government has burned books. All of Reich’s literature was destroyed.  Then there was a trial held in Maine.  Before the trial, we the doctors tried to enter into the case, because Reich refused to have a lawyer. He wanted to defend his case himself.  He ultimately hired a lawyer not to plead his case in court but to consult on legal points in court. So he conducted his own defense, and it went like this: The prosecutor was a gentleman who had been Reich’s lawyer when he moved to Maine. He had done all the paperwork, and organizing the legal aspects of orgonomy.  So there was already a case –  it was a conflict that the prosecutor had been Reich’s lawyer.  At the trial the prosecutor would say, “Did you disobey this piece of the judgment against you?”  And Reich would say, “Yes I disobeyed it because […]”  Then the judge would say, “I don’t want to hear because we have only a very simple question: Did you or did you not disobey the injunction?”  And Reich would say “I did.” And over and over again it was the same procedure: the prosecutor would read another piece of the complaint, “Did you disobey this?” and Reich would say, “yes I did, because […]” And the judge would say, “I don’t want to hear that.”  So it was a very clear open and shut case in the eyes of the law. And Reich was sentenced to two years in prison. Those of us who knew Reich knew that putting Reich in prison was like putting an eagle in a cage.  We knew that it would be very, very great hardship for a man with Reich’s energy to be contained in a jail cell, and he died in jail, just a few days before he would have been released. He died of a heart attack.

The legacy that Reich leaves us, those of us who do psychiatric orgone therapy, is this: we know in our bones how superior our therapy is to conventional therapies.  We know that what we accomplish, if one thinks in terms of atoms and quantum theory, we make a leap into a depth that no other therapy makes, we change, in successful therapies.

We’re not a cure-all either.  We change the depth of ones life. We also take care of symptoms, but our goal is to widen the pulse of one’s life, and we usually succeed.  In regard to the scientific material, Reich was expelled from the German psychoanalytic society and invited to Norway by the Norwegian psychoanalytic society.  So he lived in Norway for several years, and he met the same fate that Reich usually met, which was that he gathered devotes and he gathered fierce enemies, and the Norwegian newspapers ran a series of articles.  In Norway, Reich lived very closely with Leon Trotsky, they were very close friends, and the Norwegian papers would have headlines about the two Jews who were seeking to destroy Norwegian culture.  In Norway, Reich began his biological experiments. Some of the top Norwegian scientists were fascinated by it, and most were repelled by it.  With regard to life science, I know that I never saw in biology laboratories in college, anything like what I saw in Reich’s student laboratory in Maine.

For orgonomy to eventually be acceptable for standard science, there will have to be double-blind studies of large numbers of people, and people who are not sympathetic to orgonomy will have to see these phenomena and decide fore themselves that it is valid, and there’s a difficulty because to have a study with large numbers of people, you need a large amount of money, which is hard to come by, so when this will happen is unknown. My guess is that it will happen, and that finally Reich will be invited to the larger society of Great Scientists, where we think he belongs, but that’s a matter for the future.

I want to end with something that is not directly pertinent to Reich but is tangential, which is the idea that we call somebody crazy, and thereby indicate that whatever they did is without value because it was done by a crazy person. There are many instances of people having serious emotional problems, I can think in music, Schulman apparently was psychotic at the end of his life, as were Mahler, Tchaikovsky; others went through very severe depressive episodes, but the fact is that it is not important. Reich often said, I don’t care what people think of me; the only thing that is important to me is what I do. And the fact that various composers have had serious emotional problems has no meaning at all when one listens to their music.  Isaac Newton – one of the greatest figures of all time in science – was a firm believer in astrology. What he produced is the only important issue, but I think that’s about enough for the history.

By the way, all of Reich’s books have been re-published and are available at the museum in Rangely, Maine.

I have a few interesting things to add. Mildred Edie Brady and Dr. Werthan were both members of the American-Russian Friendship society, which in subsequent years was revealed as a socially approved arm of the Soviet Union. At one point, Dr. Reich wrote to Einstein and indicated that he had things that he felt might be interesting to Einstein.  Reich was invited to visit, and had a four-and-a-half hour session with Einstein where he demonstrated some experiments he felt would arouse Einstein’s interest.  And Einstein said that he was interested and that he would investigate. The answer came back in subsequent weeks that Einstein’s colleague, a physicist named Leopold Infeld, had worked with this material. Infeld concluded, for example, the temperature differences Reich claimed occurred in the orgone accumulator versus those in a dummy box were due simply to convection currents. Heat rises, said Infeld, from the floor to the ceiling and the reason the temperature were higher at the top of the accumulator and above the accumulator was due to convection currents. Reich went back and at least to his own satisfaction, made new models and hung some of them in air so there wouldn’t be the floor to ceiling difference and wrote back to Einstein asking to come again with his improved models that didn’t have the problem of convection current and received no answer. Not that much long after Reich’s visit, it was found that Leopold Infeld was a card carrying communist and not too long after that he left Einstein to teach in Soviet-dominated Poland, at the University of Warsaw.  So there is this trail of Soviet agents who interfered at some point in the progress of Reich’s scientific efforts.

The second interesting incident occurred in forming the complaint: the FDA tried to reproduce Reich’s experiment with cancerous mice exposed to accumulator devices.  In Reich’s experiments what happened was that the tumors in the cancerous mice had shrunk, but ultimately all of the mice died.  Reich never claimed to cure anything, so that all of these instances of calling Reich a master of cure-alls is preposterous.

Now at the Jackson Laboratory where the FDA had the experiments reproduced, what happened was that the accumulator exposed mice died sooner than the unexposed mice, and it was a joke around the laboratory that if you wanted to see a mouse die sooner than the average mouse you just expose them to the accumulator. By chance, one of our trainees was working at the Jackson Memorial Laboratory that summer. And he observed that the room in which the experiment was conducted was adjacent to the room where radiation experiments were being conducted. And Reich had already discovered that radiation and orgone energy cause a big disruption in the atmosphere and should never be in close proximity.  When the student asked the man who had conducted the experiment if he aware that Reich had discovered this fact, the “scientist” said he didn’t bother to read Reich because he didn’t want to bias himself.  Now there are two things: you can bias yourself to the extent that you make sure you conduct the experiment the way it’s meant to be conducted; and secondly, the fact that the accumulator-exposed mice died sooner should have given somebody the idea that something is happening here. If nothing were happening, the mice would have died at the same as the unexposed mice.

If one proceeded with that kind of intelligence, penicillin would never have been discovered.   It was discovered because bugs died when they shouldn’t have. These are just two of the kind of things that happened in the scientific community during Reich’s lifetime.

I’ve been delighted with what I have seen with my patients, what I’ve been able to witness, and the children they have raised.  In Yiddish, there is a word, nachas, which means the glory you get from the good work you’ve done. And my nachas is continuous from patients that I’ve treated. This is kind of bragging, but I’ll indulge myself. I have five books dedicated to me by significant people, professors of philosophy at NYU and Columbia, Professors of History in UCLA, etc. And I’m sure that is unusual in a psychiatric practice. I have letters of thanks from loads of people and what they all say is that their lives have been considerably widened because of therapy. And that is my goal.

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