Wilhelm Reich

From SkepticWiki

Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957) was an Austrian-born psychotherapist whose works and theories grew progressively more and more crackpottish over the course of his life, and whose charismatic attraction of dogged admirers may have contributed to this progression.

[edit] Biography

Reich is credited with the development of Character Analysis in 1933, an extension of Freud's psychoanalysis wherein the patient's bodily movements (or lack thereof) were interpreted as indicators of emotional health. At that time, he was a member of both the Communist Party and the psychoanalytic association. However, shortly thereafter, he was kicked out of both groups for his membership in the other group and for his insistence on the importance of sex. From there, he conducted bioelectrical experiments wherein he measured the tiny voltage potentials on subjects' skin in response to anxiety and pleasure, which may have inspired some of the later experiments of Masters and Johnson.

Thereafter, he claimed to have discovered microscopic vesicles he called "bions" that were supposedly the origin of life, and then to have discovered a primordial cosmic energy he called "orgone" which was present everywhere and whose movement within the body was crucial to having an emotionally healthy orgasm.

His work seems to have readily drawn the ire of his neighbours, to the point where he was reported to the FBI in the mid 1940s for running a "sex cult." When the FBI failed to find any evidence of such a cult, the FDA began investigating his claims about the curative powers of his Orgone Accumulator boxes, and in 1954 filed a Complaint for Injunction against him. Reich failed to appear in court to defend himself against the FDA's Complaint, and so the judge granted every one of the FDA's requested actions against Reich in an Injunction (including one action that resembled government-sponsored book burning). One of Reich's disciples eventually violated one of the terms in that Injunction, and Reich was subsequently convicted of contempt and died in prison.

[edit] Claims

Reich's work covered a wide variety of disciplines, some of which he knew more about than others. Among the numerous claims Reich made during his lifetime are these:

• Strong emotions whose expressions have been stifled are locked up in a person's "muscular armor." These emotions can be released via orgone therapy.

• Sexual excitation, and anxiety, can create electical currents in the body. These electrical currents are not merely the actions of nerves carrying impulses; the electricity is the emotion.

• Microscopic vesicles mid-way between living and non-living matter (which Reich called bions) are created spontaneously by soaking sterilized organic matter (e.g. dirt) in sterile water and letting it sit around for a month or two. Eventually, these vesicles will join together to form full-fledged bacteria or amoebas. (Reich claimed the test tubes containing these preparations were sealed; he rejected the notion that these were bacteria from the air that had infected his samples.)

• Putrefying material and carcinoma tissue will spontaneously produce microscopic vesicles too, but these vesicles are super-tiny (requiring magnifications upward of 2000x to resolve) and disease-causing. Reich called them S-bacilli (for Sarcoma), and later changed the name to T-bacilli (for Todes, the German word for death).

• Beach sand subjected to the same procedures as the dirt in Reich's bion experiments create a yellow powedery substance that glows blue (at least to one who is sensitive to the glow) and causes strange radiation-like effects. He called these sand-packet bions, or SAPA bions.

• The blue glow given off by SAPA bions is actually orgone energy.

• Healthy red blood cells glow blue under the microscope, due to orgone energy.

• Cancer is a "biopathic" ailment, caused by blocked or insufficient orgone energy. A person with cancer will have foreign, amoeboid cells in his blood and sputum -- these amoeboid cells are the T-bacillus equivalent of the bacteria/amoebas that form out of bions. The presence of these cells in the blood or sputum of someone who appears cancer-free indicates that the biopathic forces that cause cancer are at work in this person, and he'll probably get cancer later if his orgone energy imbalances aren't fixed.

• When subjected to a nuclear radiation source, orgone energy turns into its evil twin, called DOR.

• In Experiment XX, he made a bion preparation that had all the dirt strained out of it, so that only clear yellow water remained and no particulates showed up in the microscope, and froze it in the ground for a few weeks. After thawing, it contained microscopic plasmatic flakes. Instead of concluding that these flakes were precipitates of whatever dissolved substances had turned the water yellow, Reich concluded that the flakes were new matter that had been created ex nihilo from atmospheric orgone energy.

• Two free orgone energy streams will naturally spiral in toward one another. Every spiral shape in nature, from snail shells to hurricanes to galaxies, is caused by spiralling orgone energy streams. The Earth doesn't orbit the sun due to the sun's gravity; it's following a spiral path through the galaxy because that's where its orgone energy stream is going.

• A cloudbuster (a set of pipes connected to a running water source via hoses) can make clouds appear in a cloudless sky, and can break existing clouds apart.

• Alien space ships, which he called Energy alphas, were observing his work and intentionally polluting the area around his laboratory with DOR. These alien space ships could be disabled by pointing a cloudbuster at them.

• A few weeks before he died in prison, Reich confided to his son Peter that he'd discovered the secret to anti-gravity.

[edit] External Links

A Skeptical Scrutiny of the Works and Theories of Wilhelm Reich.

The Skeptic's Dictionary entry on Reich and orgone energy.

The Straight Dope article on Reich, orgone energy, and the Federal government's actions against him.

Wikipedia biography of Wilhelm Reich.