Wilhelm Reich

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[[File:Wilhelm Reich in his mid-twenties.JPG|thumb|165px|Wilhelm Reich, in his 20s]]
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'''Wilhelm Reich''' {{lived|1897|1957}} was an [[Austria|Austrian]]-[[United States|American]] [[Psychoanalysis|psychoanalyst]] who claimed to study a form of [[energy]] he called [[orgone energy]].  Heavily influenced by [[Freud]], he wrote about and researched [[sex]] extensively. He went on to develop increasingly questionable therapies, mostly focused on orgone, and even thought he could control the weather with it.

Over six tons worth of copies of [[Book burning|his books, journals, and papers were ''burnt'']] in New York,<ref name=sharaf>''Fury on Earth: A Biography of Wilhelm Reich'' by Myron Sharaf (1994) Da Capo Press. ISBN 0306805758.</ref>{{rp|460}} at the Gansevoort incinerator, a public incinerator on 25th Street, under FDA supervision, on August 23, 1956. The material included copies of several of his books, including The Sexual Revolution, Character Analysis and The Mass Psychology of Fascism. It has been cited as one of the worst examples of censorship in U.S. history.<ref> Encyclopædia Britannica, 2015: "From 1956 to 1960 many of his writings and his equipment were seized and destroyed by FDA officials. In the 21st century some considered this wholesale destruction to be one of the most blatant examples of censorship in U.S. history." [http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/496351/Wilhelm-Reich]</ref> The FDA also supervised the destruction of all accumulators in circulation, making Reich's friends and Peter Reich, Wilhelm Reich's son, chop them up.<ref name=sharaf/>{{rp|458-461} He was arrested for distributing his equipment in 1956 and died the next year in prison of heart failure. Despite being thoroughly debunked in his lifetime, his theories still pop up in quack circles sometimes.

==Life and work==
Reich was a psychoanalyst, and a radical one at that. Despite his eventual [[Crank|utter crackpottery]], however, Reich's orthodox work on [[psychology]] — called ''character analysis'', which both built upon and departed from [[Freud]]'s psychoanalysis — proved to be quite influential to future generations of psychoanalysts. He contributed to what is called Freudo-[[Marxism]] as well. He studied sex and sexuality extensively. Reich's work on sex was also deeply political. For example, in 1933, he wrote ''The Mass Psychology of Fascism'', which posits that [[Fascism|authoritarianism]] gains power through sexual repression. He fled [[Europe]] during the run-up to [[World War II]] because he was both of [[Jewish]] descent and was a [[communism|communist sympathizer]], albeit one who had accomplished the unique feat of being expelled from both the German and Danish Communist Parties. He emigrated to the United States, where he settled in Rangeley, [[Maine]].

===Orgone===

His field of study, "orgonomy", was essentially a form of [[vitalism]] that claimed that orgone energy was the fundamental energy of [[life]], and was particularly expressed in [[Sex|sexual activity]]. As is often the case with such "discoveries," Reich spent a great deal of time and effort on his belief without ever actually successfully proving it, even going so far as to get [[Albert Einstein]] in on an experiment (the results of which, however, Einstein was not convinced by). In particular, Reich believed that orgone energy could be used to great effect in both [[Medicine|medical]] and [[Engineer|engineering]] applications, building "orgone accumulators" (actually, capacitor-like cabinets said to concentrate orgone on the [[human]] inside) and special orgone cannons called [[Cloudbusting|cloudbusters]] said to be able to force clouds to rain. Reich also had some highly idiosyncratic points of view regarding microbiology, claiming that [[cell]]s were made up of smaller units called bions (essentially blobs of orgone-charged protoplasm), and that these bions aggregate into protozoa and then eventually into larger animals and [[Plant|plants]]. His application of the orgone hypothesis even extended into [[cosmology]] and [[astrophysics]], claiming that galaxies were in fact huge clouds of orgone energy. 

As Reich attempted to discover more about orgone, he became increasingly self-aggrandizing and [[Paranoia|paranoid]] as he failed to gain any traction in the [[Science|scientific]] world (Reich's "bions" were suspected to be [[bacteria]] by outside observers, and much like Prosper Blondlot's N-rays in 1903, orgone energy itself proved to be illusory).  He became aggravated over this rejection enough to collaborate with cartoonist William Steig (a Reich supporter) on a screed called ''Listen Little Man!''<ref>[http://wikilivres.info/wiki/Listen,_Little_Man! Complete text]</ref> published in 1948, lambasting the [[Scientific consensus|scientific establishment]] for [[WOMBAT|ignoring his work]].

===UFOs===

Reich wrote two books about his claim of contact with [[extraterrestrials]] from 1947-1956, ''Oranur Experiment: First Report''<ref>''Oranur Experiment: First Report, 1947-1951'' by Wilhelm Reich (1951) Wilhelm Reich Foundation.</ref> and ''Contact With Space: Oranur Second Report'',<ref>''Contact With Space: Oranur Second Report, 1951-1956'' by Wilhelm Reich (1957) Core Pilot Press.</ref> which probably explains a lot about his other kookie ideas.

==Arrest and death==
[[File:Wilhelm Reich as Prisoner 1957.jpg|thumb|165px|Wilhelm Reich's police mug shot, from 1957.]]
Amid much suspicion about the sexual aspects of orgonomy and the general lack of supporting data outside the Orgonon campus in Maine, Reich had much of his writing and equipment seized by the United States [[Food and Drug Administration]] in 1954. Some of his writings were taken to the local garbage dump and destroyed in the incinerator, which allows Reich's modern followers [[Galileo gambit|to point and say "They burned his books!"]]. The heavy-handed court injunction, which allowed the FDA to take such action against Reich, was handed down because Reich didn't appear in court to defend himself. His decision not to appear in court stemmed from a combination of personal friction with his lawyer, and a sense of himself as a Christlike [[martyr]] figure [[Persecution complex|unjustly persecuted by those who were emotionally incapable of accepting the obvious truths of his discoveries]].<ref>''The Murder of Christ'' by Wilhelm Reich (1953) Orgone Institute.</ref>

The injunction forbade Reich or any of his 
cult followers
 colleagues from transporting orgone accumulators across state lines. Officially, Reich told his colleagues to stop sending out accumulators, but unofficially there was much winking and nudging in his "instruction". Eventually, one of his colleagues got caught doing so, and Reich was arrested. At his trial for violating the injunction, Reich didn't deny the allegations. Instead, he did his best to come across as the poor, downtrodden champion of Truth and Justice being suppressed by the evil establishment. The jury didn't buy it.

Reich ultimately was sentenced to federal prison for contempt of court, where he died in 1957, just prior to being eligible for parole.

The Orgonon campus is now the Wilhelm Reich Museum, and Reich still has supporters in the [[alternative medicine]] community.

==In popular culture==
Orgonomy got a boost in the general culture in 1971, with the release of a very daring full-length (84 min.) movie ''{{wpl|W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism}}'' by [[Serbian]] director Dušan Makavejev, starring Milena Dravić as Milena, a Serbian woman who sets out to seduce a [[Russian]] ice skater. The fictional narrative takes second place to a montage of documentary sequences, some highly relevant to Reich's life and work, others merely exploring the role of sex in contemporary society. In one notable sequence, the plaster-caster Nancy Godfrey shows how to make a plastic model of an erect [[penis]]. Her model is the valiant Jim Buckley, then editor of ''Screw'' magazine. Roger Ebert included this work in a list of great movies.

Reich's arrest and trial were dramatized in a 1987 play by Robert Anton Wilson, entitled ''Wilhelm Reich in Hell''.

Reich's son Peter released an admittedly touching memoir of his father ''A Book of Dreams'' (1973), which was the inspiration for Kate Bush's song "Cloudbusting", arguably the best thing to come out of his quackery. The music video for "Cloudbusting" features Donald Sutherland as Wilhelm Reich, and Kate Bush as Peter Reich, and shows Wilhelm being arrested after they use a cloudbuster together. Unlike reality, the cloudbuster actually works in the music video. Don't trust everything you see on TV, folks!
{{#ev:youtube|pllRW9wETzw|300}}

==Bibliography==
*{{wpa|Wilhelm Reich}}
*Gardner, Martin. ''Fads and Fallacies In The Name Of Science'', Dover Publications, 1957, ISBN 0486203948.
*[http://skepdic.com/orgone.html Skeptic's Dictionary on Reich and Orgone]
*[http://www.rogermwilcox.com/Reich A Skeptical Scrutiny of the Works and Theories of Wilhelm Reich]
*[http://www.quackwatch.org/11Ind/reich.html Some notes on Wilhelm Reich] - [[Quackwatch]]

==References==
{{reflist}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Reich, Wilhelm}}
[[Category:Austria]]
[[Category:Communists]]
[[Category:Jews]]
[[Category:Pseudoscience promoters]]
[[Category:Psychologists]]
[[Category:Psychoanalysis]]
[[Category:Sexuality]]
[[Category:Ufology]]

Categories: Austria, Communists, Jews, Pseudoscience promoters, Psychologists, Psychoanalysis, Sexuality, Ufology