From: bwhite@oucsace.cs.ohiou.edu (William E. White )
Newsgroups: talk.religion.newage,alt.consciousness,alt.dreams,alt.drugs
Subject: Re: chrysalis by Peter Reich
Date: 9 Sep 92 18:13:44 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: O.U., Harvard on the Hocking, Berkeley in the Boondocks!

In article <1992Sep9.101007.16762@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> tkirby@nyx.cs.du.edu (Thomas Kirby) writes:

>     Noticed Bill White "debunking" orgone.  His one objection is the
>"violent opposition" Wilhelm Reich supposedly gave to any "facts"
>"proving" that orgone "doesn't exist".

I didn't debunk it, I merely gave my personal opinion of it ... one
shared by an awful lot of people, I might add, but it's up to you to make
the assessment yourself.  Your mileage may vary.


>     Have you read the works of Wilhelm Reich, and the follow-up books? 

Yes, as a matter of fact I have, about seven years ago.  Found it
interesting reading I must say.

>Everything he has written is very lucid.  

I personally found much of what he wrote towards the end of his life to
be somewhat less lucid.  However I will grant you that initially, he was
a very lucid writer.  So was Lovecraft, but I haven't seen all that many
shoggoths milling about.

>I have noticed that some of the
>ideas debunkers are fond of misquoting were presented as speculation, and
>WR made that very clear!  He made observations that were very easy to
>understand, that is the descriptions were easy to understand.  Some of
>these observations were impossible to explain by classical physical
>theory.  He did repeat his experiments, and he did have other people
>observe the same phenomena.  Others have later repeated his experiments,
>and achieved similar results with the orgone accumulator, the bion
>cultures, and the cloudbusting.

In all of what I read I never found any evidence of experimentation which
adequately took placebo effect into account.  Often, people feel what they 
expect to feel or what they believe they will feel.  It's up to you to
decide how much you think is real and how much you think is quackery.

>     Have you read Wilhelm Reich vs. the USA?  It is written a few years
>after WR's death, and explains in great detail how the case the FDA made
>against WR was entirely bogus.

Haven't read it, no.  Incidentally, who published this book?  Who wrote it?
What is their political agenda?  "Wilhelm Reich vs. the USA" sounds a little
too much like a conspiracy theory but I'll grant that titles can be
misleading.

There are some things I disagree with the FDA over.  And frankly, if people
want to spend their money on dubious devices, in my opinion that's their
perogative.  I personally still think it's bunk, and will continue to do
so until I see evidence of some good double-blind experiments (or some
other way of separating bias from outcome).  (And yes I know no experiment
is without bias).

Like I said, believe what you want.  If it makes you feel better and makes
you happy, who am I to say you can or can't do it?  All I am saying is this:

Keep an open mind, but not so open that your brain leaks out.


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