Cultural Corrupter - Wilhelm Reich

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Wilhelm Reich (March 24, 1897–November 3, 1957) was an Austrian-American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst.

Reich was a respected analyst for much of his life, focusing on character structure, rather than on individual neurotic symptoms.[1] He promoted adolescent sexuality, the availability of contraceptives and abortion, and the importance for women of economic independence. Synthesizing material from psychoanalysis, cultural anthropology, economics, sociology, and ethics, his work influenced writers such as Alexander Lowen, Fritz Perls, Paul Goodman, Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, A. S. Neill, and William Burroughs.

He was also a controversial figure, who came to be viewed by the psychoanalytic establishment as having succumbed to mental illness or somehow gone astray. His work on the link between human sexuality and neuroses emphasized "orgastic potency" as the foremost criterion for psycho-physical health. He said he had discovered a form of energy, which he called "orgone," that permeated the atmosphere and all living matter, and he built "orgone accumulators," which his patients sat inside to harness the energy for its reputed health benefits. It was this work, in particular, that cemented the rift between Reich and other prominent psychoanalysts.

He was living in Germany when Adolf Hitler came to power. As a communist of Jewish descent, he was in danger, and he therefore fled to Scandinavia in 1933 and subsequently to the United States in 1939. In 1947, following a series of critical articles about orgone and his political views in The New Republic and Harper's,[4] the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) began an investigation into his claims about orgone, winning an injunction against the interstate sale of orgone accumulators. Charged with contempt of court for violating the injunction, Reich conducted his own defense, which involved sending the judge all his books to read, and arguing that a court was no place to decide matters of science. He was sentenced to two years in prison, and in August 1956, several tons of his publications were burned by the FDA.[5] He died of heart failure in jail just over a year later, days before he was due to apply for parole.[6]

Reich joined the Austrian Army after school, serving from 1915-18, for the last two years as a lieutenant.

In 1918, when the war ended, he entered the medical school at the University of Vienna. As an undergraduate, he was drawn to the work of Sigmund Freud; the men first met in 1919 when Reich visited Freud to obtain literature for a seminar on sexology. Freud left a strong impression on Reich. Freud allowed him to start seeing analytic patients as early as 1920. Reich was accepted as a guest member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Association in the summer of 1920, and became a regular member in October 1920, at the age of 23.[16]

He was allowed to complete his six-year medical degree in four years because he was a war veteran, and received his M.D. in July 1922.

Reich agreed with Freud that sexual development was the origin of mental illness. They both believed that most psychological states were dictated by unconscious processes; that infant sexuality develops early but is repressed, and that this has important consequences for mental health. At that time a Marxist (see article Freudo-Marxism), Reich argued that the source of sexual repression was bourgeois morality and the socio-economic structures that produced it. As sexual repression was the cause of the neuroses, the best cure would be to have an active, guilt-free sex life. He argued that such a liberation could come about only through a morality not imposed by a repressive economic structure.[22] In 1928, he joined the Austrian Communist Party and founded the Socialist Association for Sexual Counseling and Research, which organized counseling centers for workers — in contrast to Freud, who was perceived as treating only the bourgeoisie.

Reich used touch to accompany the talking cure, taking an active role in sessions, feeling his patients' chests to check their breathing, repositioning their bodies, and sometimes requiring them to remove their clothes, so that men were treated wearing shorts and women in bra and panties. These methods caused a split between Reich and the rest of the psychoanalytic community.

Fleeing Nazi Germany

In 1930, he moved his practice to Berlin and joined the Communist Party of Germany. His best-known book, The Sexual Revolution, was published at this time in Vienna. He again set up clinics in working-class areas and taught sex education, but became too outspoken even for the communists; after his book, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, was published, he was expelled from the party in 1933.

In this book, Reich categorized fascism as a symptom of sexual repression. The book was banned by the Nazis when they came to power. He realized he was in danger and hurriedly left Germany disguised as a tourist on a ski trip to Austria. Reich was expelled from the International Psychological Association in 1934 for political militancy.[23] Reich moved to Scandinavia in the early 1930s, first to Denmark where he was not allowed to settle permanently, and he then moved on to Sweden, however, he only stayed there for a short time before again moving on, this time to Norway in the fall of 1934. Reich stayed in Norway five years and did much seminal research here, in the beginning under the auspices of the University of Oslo, however there existed strong opposition to his work also here, which came to a head with a veritable smear campaign in late 1937 and throughout much of 1938, involving prominent authorities of the medical and psychiatric establishment. One of Reich's most fervent apologists during this period was his friend and colleague Ola Raknes. Raknes' influence on Reich has been asserted to have been considerable but mostly overlooked. Reich left Norway for the United States in the fall of 1939.

Reich was a respected analyst for much of his life, focusing on character structure, rather than on individual neurotic symptoms.[1] He promoted adolescent sexuality, the availability of contraceptives and abortion, and women's economic independence.[24] Synthesizing material from psychoanalysis, cultural anthropology, economics, sociology, and ethics, his work influenced writers such as Alexander Lowen, Fritz Perls, Paul Goodman, Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, A. S. Neill, Robert Anton Wilson and William Burroughs.

He was also a controversial figure, who came to be viewed by the psychoanalytic establishment as having gone astray or as having succumbed to mental illness.[24][26] His work on the link between human sexuality and neuroses emphasized "orgastic potency" as the foremost criterion for psycho-physical health. He said he had discovered a form of energy, which he called "orgone," that permeated the atmosphere and all living matter, and he built "orgone accumulators," which his patients sat inside to harness the energy for its reputed health benefits. It was this work, in particular, that cemented the rift between Reich and the psychoanalytic establishment.

In 1947, following a series of critical articles about Reich's "psychofascism" in The New Republic and his "dubious professional standing"[28] in Harper's, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) began an investigation into his claims, and won an injunction against the interstate sale of orgone accumulators. Charged with contempt of court for violating the injunction, Reich conducted his own defense, which involved sending the judge all his books to read, and arguing that a court was no place to decide matters of science. He was sentenced to two years in prison, and in August 1956, several tons of his publications were burned by the FDA.  He died of heart failure in jail just over a year later, days before he was due to apply for parole

The Brady article and the FDA

Reich was investigated by the FBI when he arrived in the U.S. because he was an immigrant with a communist background. The FBI released 789 pages of its files on Reich in 2000; a State Department press release stated:

    This German immigrant described himself as the Associate Professor of Medical Psychology, Director of the Orgone Institute, President and research physician of the Wilhelm Reich Foundation and discoverer of biological or life energy. A 1940 security investigation was begun to determine the extent of Reich's communist commitments. A board of Alien Enemy Hearing judged that Dr. Reich was not a threat to the security of the U.S. In 1947, a security investigation concluded that neither the Orgone Project nor any of its staff were engaged in subversive activities or were in violation of any statute within the jurisdiction of the FBI.[45]

On May 26, 1947, an article appeared in The New Republic entitled "The Strange Case of Wilhelm Reich" by Mildred Edie Brady. The subhead was "The man who blames both neuroses and cancer on unsatisfactory sexual activities has been repudiated by only one scientific journal."[46]

Brady wrote:

    Orgone, named after the sexual orgasm, is, according to Reich, a cosmic energy. It is, in fact, the cosmic energy. Reich has not only discovered it; he has seen it, demonstrated it and named a town — Orgonon, Maine — after it. Here he builds accumulators of it which are rented out to patients, who presumably derive 'orgastic potency' from it.[46]

Sharaf writes that the implication was clear: the accumulators gave orgastic potency, the lack of which causes cancer. Therefore, the claim for the accumulators was that they cured cancer. Brady argued that the "growing Reich cult" had to be dealt with.[47]

On July 23, Dr. J.J. Durrett, director of the Medical Advisory Division of the Federal Trade Commission, wrote to the FDA asking them to look into Reich's claims about the health benefits of orgone.[48] The FDA assigned an investigator named Wood to the case, who learned that Reich had built 250 accumulators; the FDA concluded that they were dealing with a "fraud of the first magnitude".[49] Sharaf writes that the FDA suspected a "sexual racket" of some kind; questions were asked about the women associated with orgonomy and "what was done with them".[50]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Reich