WILHELM REICH

Biography and Bibliography

— From wikipedia.org

Reich, Wilhelm. «Über einen Fall von Durchbruch der Inzestschranke» («About a Case of Breaching the Incest Taboo»), Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft, VII, 1920

Reich, Wilhelm. «Über einen Fall von Durchbruch der Inzestschranke,» Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft, VII. (1920).

Reich, Wilhelm. «Triebbegriffe von Forel bis Jung» («Forel’s Argument Against Jung»), «Der Koitus und die Geschlechter» («Sexual Intercourse and Gender»), Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft, 1921

Reich, Wilhelm. «Über Spezifitaet der Onanieformen» («Concerning Specific Forms of Masturbation»), Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse, VIII, 1922

Reich, Wilhelm. «Zur Triebenergetik» («The Drive for Power»), Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft, 1923

Reich, Wilhelm. «Kindliche Tagtraeume einer spaeteren Zwangsneurose» («Childhood Daydreams of a Later Neurosis»), Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse, 1923

Reich, Wilhelm. «Über Genitalitaet» («About Genitality»), Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse, IX, 1923

Reich, Wilhelm. «Die Rolle der Genitalitaet in der Neurosentherapie» («The Role of Genitality in the Treatment of Neurosis»), Zeitschrif für Aerztliche Psychotherapie (Journal for Medical Psychotherapy), IX, 1923

Reich, Wilhelm. «Der Tic als Onanieequivalent» («The Tic as a Masturbation Equivalent»), Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft, 1924

Reich, Wilhelm. «Die therapeutische Bedeutung der Genitallibido» («The Therapeutic Importance of Genital Libido»), and «Über Genitalität vom Standpunkt der psa. Prognose und Libidotheorie.» («On Genitality From the Standpoint of PENSA. Prognosis and Libido Theory») Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse, X, 1924

Reich, Wilhelm. «Eine hysterische Psychose in statu nascendi» («Hysterical Psychosis in Statu Nascendi»), Internationale Zeitschrift für Psychoanalyse, XI, 1925

Reich, Wilhelm. Der triebhafte Charakter: Eine psychoanalytische Studie zur Pathologie des Ich, Wien: Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, 1925

Reich, Wilhelm. Die Funktion des Orgasmus: Zur Psychopathologie und zur Soziologie des Geschlechtslebens, Wien: Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, 1927

Reich, Wilhelm. Sexualerregung und Sexualbefriedigung, Münster Verlag, 1929

Reich, Wilhelm. Geschlechtsreife, Enthaltsamkeit, Ehemoral: Eine Kritik der bürgerlichen Sexualreform, 1930

Reich, Wilhelm. Der Sexuelle Kampf der Jugend, Sexpol Verlag, 1932 (pamphlet)

Reich, Wilhelm. Der Einbruch der Sexualmoral: Zur Geschichte der sexuellen Ökonomie, Kopenhagen: Verlag für Sexualpolitik, 1932, 2nd edition 1935

Reich, Wilhelm. Charakteranalyse: Technik und Grundlagen für studierende und praktizierende Analytiker, Berlin, 1933

Reich, Wilhelm. Massenpsychologie des Faschismus, 1933

Reich, Wilhelm. «Dialektischer Materialismus und Psychoanalyse», Kopenhagen: Verlag für Sexualpolitik, 1934 (pamphlet)

Reich, Wilhelm. Was ist Klassenbewußtsein?: Über die Neuformierung der Arbeiterbewegung, 1934

SPACE.com staffwriter

posted: 05:38 pm ET

16 August 1999

On January 28, 1954, Wilhelm Reich «happened accidentally to observe 2 bright yellow-orange lights moving in front of a mountain range toward a lake.» The encounter was the opening salvo of a «war» with UFOs that would occupy the final phases of Reich’s troubled medical and scientific career.

At the time, Reich — a trained psychoanalyst who had once belonged to Sigmund Freud’s inner Vienna circle — was already facing what he called «emotional and physical misery» caused by his more terrestrial battle with the U.S. Food & Drug Administration over the use of «orgone» — a controversial form of ambient «life energy» that he claimed to have discovered.

Reich found an inexhaustible range of uses for his discovery, touting orgone as everything from the secret of anti-gravity to a tool for weather control (especially rainmaking). Most importantly, he found that he could use orgone to «interfere» with UFOs.

But to the FDA, orgone simply did not exist, rendering Reich’s orgone-based therapies prosecutable under quackery statutes. Even today, 4 decades after the controversy, Reichian therapists claim to be able to manipulate the energy for a wide variety of healing effects — including the cure for cancer -­without resorting to drugs, radiation, or chemicals. Instead, Reichians work to build up a current of orgone within the patient’s vicinity in order to strengthen and heal the underlying life force itself.

Nevertheless, Reich’s legal fight with the FDA ended with his death in prison after defying a federalinjunction against the use of orgone for medical purposes.

Whatever the official status of his medical theories, Reich expected a response when he wrote to the U.S. Air Force about his UFO sighting. He reasoned that «the U.S. Air Force is the natural organization in the Western World responsible» for dealing with such phenomena because «it operates in the atmosphere and watches the frontier upward toward outer space.» When the military didn’t deal with his report to his satisfaction, Reich took matters into his own hands.

The Encounter and the Air Force

In his letter to the Air Force — reproduced in his last book Contact With Space — Reich described his sighting as «a brightly shining light» moving from west-to-east through the forest outside Rangeley, Maine. A second, similar phenomenon soon joined the first, both moving steadily in front of Spotted Mountain. He concluded that the objects were not stars due to their course and the mountain intervening between their apparent motion and the sky, but the possibility that they were military vehicles or other objects of a terrestrial type did not seem to occur to him.

At around the same time, Reich’s secretary Ilse Ollendorff also reported seeing «a similar but brighter and bigger, because closer, object.» Like the aerial phenomena observed by Reich, Ollendorff’s sighting hovered in front of a mountain but then «was seen rising once vertically upward, settling down again and then disappearing.»

The Air Force, for its part, was either unaware of Reich’s running battle with the FDA or was intrigued enough by his encounter to overlook the controversy. Lt. Steven J. Hebert, stationed at the Presque Isle Air Force Base, wrote back telling Reich that the «subject officer notified this organization to take whatever action necessary since this unit is interested in investigating unidentified aerial phenomena.»

Hebert enclosed a copy of “Technical Information Sheet Form A” (the Air Force’s UFO reporting questionnaire) for Reich and Ollendorff to fill out and return. As Contact With Space ruefully notes, Reich received the letter only 5 days before the FDA obtained the injunction forbidding the distribution of orgone equipment as medical devices.

Reich returned the questionnaire along with a copy of a short essay «Survey on Ea«, providing background on other unusual occurrences around the Orgonon research facility including the revelation that friends had told Reich «of saucers having been seen over Orgonon in 1951». However, he had taken little personal interest in the reports until 1953 when his discovery of Donald Keyhoe’s book made him wonder whether UFOs — or in his terminology, «Enigma Alpha» or «Ea» — might be propelled by orgone.

The Air Force did not reply, perhaps put off by the impenetrable nature of the «basic Orgonometric equations» included as an appendix to «Survey on Ea«. In the book, Reich includes a rather coyly self-important note saying «not all can be revealed» about his relationship with the Air Force. But there is no evidence in Contact With Space that Reich was in communication with the military until October, a full 6 months later.

Instead, during that time, Reich writes that he busied himself with appealing the FDA injunction and preparing a research trip to Arizona where he hoped to investigate the role played by orgone reactions in the formation of deserts.

Watching for hostile signs in the sky

In looking toward space to explain his sighting, Reich showed himself to be anything but an uncontaminated witness. Like most U.S. citizens in the 1950s, exposed to years of speculation that flying saucers were not native to the Earth, Reich already believed that unknown aerial phenomena were — in his words — most likely «contacts with visitors from outer space.»

Reich was familiar with Donald Keyhoe’s groundbreaking 1953 book Flying Saucers from Outer Space, leaving him predisposed to look for extraterrestrialexplanations for the unknown lights weaving across the sky near his Maine research facility. Moreover, the fact that he had seen “War of the Worlds” only 3 weeks before reporting his sighting was also likely a contributing factor — as Reich called the film «a rather realistic approach to the planetary emergency,» it evidently made quite an impression.

Furthermore, the cultural climate of the 1950s not only predisposed Reich to look beyond the Earth but also to look for evidence that his UFOs were engaged in «warlike» behavior.

The threat of war was in the air, both in Reich’s embattled personal life and in the broader political framework. The Keyhoe book popularized several apparently hostile encounters between Air Force pilots and unidentified aerial phenomena, while no less a personage than General Douglas MacArthur would warn only a year after Reich’s sighting that «all countries on Earth will have to unite to … make a common front against attack by people on other planets.»

With that in mind, the Austrian refugee who had fled to the United States from the Nazis considered it not only a scientific but also a patriotic duty to alert Air Force Intelligence to the encounter at once.

This policy of full disclosure was typical to Reich, who had taken care to keep the White House informed about developments in orgone research since 1951. While his critics point to this as another symptom of what long-time skeptic Martin Gardner called Reich’s «paranoid egoism», Reich himself seems to have considered the matter a «major responsibility» and seems to have downplayed the potential uses of his encounter as a self-promotional vehicle.

Just before the war with the UFOs

In May, however, Reich made an accidental discovery that a few Air Force officers — including General Harold Watson, chief of intelligence at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base — would find very interesting.

As Reich was scanning the sky with a «Cloudbuster» — a device he had designed to draw orgone out of the sky in order to induce rain — he saw a star «fade out» in the presence of 3 other witnesses. He pointed the Cloudbuster pipes at a second blinking light, which also faded in brightness. Meanwhile, the first star reasserted itself once the Cloudbuster was pointed away from it.

Reich repeated the experiment three more times in quick succession, reporting identical effects each time. As it was scientifically impossible that his device could have interacted with actual stars — even in orthodox Reichian literature, the Cloudbuster’s range was measured in kilometers not light-years — he concluded that his device had interfered with 2 UFOs.

Having concluded that his Cloudbuster could also function as a «Spacegun», Wilhelm Reich began to outfit his Arizona expedition as though preparing for a war with outer space.

In October 1954, Wilhelm Reich was under siege. Not only had the Food and Drug Administration stripped him of his livelihood, but also almost daily UFO sightings were leaving his friends and family exhausted and frightened.

«There is no doubt that I am at war» with the UFOs, Reich wrote hours after four bright pulsating lights hovered for hours over Orgonon, his research facility in rural Maine. «What seemed only a possibility 1-year ago is certainty now.»

The UFOs had been menacing Orgonon since Reich began experiments with super-charging his «Cloudbuster» weather-control device with small amounts of radioactive material. Reich had learned in May that the Cloudbuster not only apparently pulled rain out of clouds but also drained energy from lights in the sky, making it — in his words — a «Spacegun» effective against UFOs.

Like the Cloudbuster, the Austrian psychiatrist turned «natural scientist» was convinced that UFOs operated on orgone — an ambient energy source that interacts with life and organic matter. Reich’s claims to the contrary, the FDA had determined that orgone did not exist and so had obtained an injunction against any medical treatment purporting to effect cures through orgone manipulation.

However, Reich stayed devoted to the reality of his discovery. He trained the «Spacegun» on 2 aerial objects as they hovered ominously over Orgonon, causing both to retreat. One «disappeared after weakening, waning, and blinking, leading Reich to conclude triumphantly that «tonight, for the first time in the history of man, the war waged for ages by living beings from outer space upon this Earth … was reciprocated.»

As above, so below. On that same day, Reich informed the authorities in Portland that he would resume his orgone-oriented publishing efforts. This defiance would lead to his death in prison less than 3 years later.

An odd meeting with Air Force Intelligence

Convinced that the aliens were waging their «war» against Earth by poisoning its orgone and creating deserts, Reich decided to test his Spacegun in the drought-wracked wastes north of Tucson, AZ. According to his final book Contact With Space, it had not rained in Tucson for 5 years, making the desert a perfect proving ground for both the Cloudbuster’s rainmaking and UFO-weakening abilities.

Meanwhile, in order to share his findings with the Air Force, Reich sent his assistant William Moise ahead to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. As Reich bitterly noted, Orgonon «had received no direct help from the Air Force, financial or otherwise». But he remained eager to keep the military posted on the extraterrestrial-combat uses of orgone.

Moise, however, got a guarded reception at Wright-Patterson. General Harold Watson, chief of Air Force Intelligence, had initially seemed eager to speak with Moise about Reich’s claim to have «disabled» 2 UFOs, even insisting that Moise could arrive late in the day and the 2 men could «continue the conference after supper.»

Traveling cross-country, Moise was concerned that accidental factors could get in the way of the meeting and confirmed his appointment with Watson twice. Still, by the time he got to Dayton, Watson was unavailable due to «unexpected important business.»

Instead, a «Dr. W. H. Byers» and Harry Haberer greeted Moise at the base. Moise hated Byers on first sight, calling him «a man with a flabby handshake and eyes that don’t look at you.» As Watson had expressed concern that a group from the CIA would be visiting that week, it is a tantalizing possibility that Byers was a member of that delegation. Haberer, meanwhile, is known to UFO research as «a crack Air Force public relations man.»

Moise refused to talk to the 2 men and instead waited until the next day when he briefed the base’s deputy commander, who reportedly became «excited» by the revelation of a weapon against UFOs. Haberer and Byers were apparently less impressed but took notes.

The battle of Tucson begins

According to Reich, the Air Force continued its tacit interest in his work, sending numerous jets to fly by his Cloudbusting experiments but making no overt gestures because the Spacegun was «hot because it wasn’t official, and the reason it wasn’t official was because it was so hot.»

When his group arrived in Tucson from heavily-wooded Maine on October 19, they were shocked by the Arizona desert which was apparently much more severe than it is today. «We were impressed by the bare ground, giving a general impression of whiteness, hardness,» Reich wrote. «The river beds had all been dry for about 50 years … No prairie grass was to be seen anywhere.»

Over the next few weeks, the party — composed of Reich, his daughter Eva and son Peter, Moise, and another assistant — suffered almost immediately from dehydration, exhaustion, and general discomfort, all of which they attributed to poisonous «deadly orgone radiation». However, harassment from UFOs was sporadic-but-persistent, leading Reich to theorize that the «thirsty» aerial phenomena were actively fighting his rainmaking efforts.

The researchers fought back throughout November, apparently encouraging a rich growth of winter prairie grass but no rain. Transportation difficulties had forced Reich to leave his supply of radioactive material behind at Orgonon, leaving the cloudbusters at a sharp disadvantage against the UFOs. Without the radioactive charge, Reich’s team could only annoy the lights in the sky but not hinder their inscrutable activity in any real sense.

Meanwhile, the UFOs kept making the researchers miserable. One of Reich’s assistants suffered a «breakdown» while training his cloudbuster on the sky, forcing him to return to his family for a month of recuperation. In his absence, Reich speculated that the man had drawn too much poisonous orgone from a lurking alien object.

By December 7, Reich decided it was time to strengthen his hand by sending for his radioactive hole card — 2 radium needles charged with orgone. After a plane trip marked by misadventure and bad weather, the needles arrived a week later.

«A planetary Valley Forge»

Once Reich had his radium, he was ready to retake the offensive against the UFOs and the desert simultaneously.

«On December 14 about 16:30 hours, a full-scale interplanetary battle came off,» he wrote. «A battle which would have appeared incredible as well as incomprehensible to anyone who knew nothing about the (UFO) problems or who adhered to the illusion» that neither UFOs nor orgone existed.

First, the Orgonon team had to shake off «a special kind of deadly orgone attack» that left them «in very bad shape … sick … dulled, somehow out of balance.» A «tremendous black cloud — looking like smoke from a huge fire» — grew over Tucson, eventually taking on an angry reddish-purple coloration and triggering readings of 100,000 counts-per-minute on Reich’s Geiger counter. All of the researchers «suffered from nausea, quivering, pain in the upper abdomen, and discoloration of movements» while «about a dozen Air Force planes of various kinds» flew over the team’s camp.

Matters of orgone — beneficial or poisonous aside — Reich’s description of the event is reminiscent of a nuclear bomb test: a strong military presence, radiation, smoke, queasiness. However, it is unlikely that the Government would set off a bomb apparently targeted directly on Tucson — a thriving regional center of commerce.

Reich brought his radium needles into contact with the Cloudbusters and started firing away at the cloud to dissipate its power. The operation took about 20 minutes, at which time the cloud had broken up and the Geiger count returned to normal.

It rained 3 weeks later. In the meantime, Reich’s journal is filled with dozens of UFO sightings –«red-white-blue pulsations», «yellow pulsations», «silvery disks», «green-yellow steady» — on which to train his Spacegun sights. Most «grew fainter», were «extinguished» or «blinked out». The grass covering the desert grew to a height of «several inches to a foot deep», encouraging local ranchers to drive cattle into the region in herds.

After a brief side trip to Jacumba, CA, the team headed home to Maine at the end of April, 1955. «Our job in Arizona was done,» Reich said.

He was dead 18 months later, and all available copies of his books were burned by court order. Only a few copies survived, forcing his scattered disciples to rely on private printings of his works -­including Contact in Space — for direction.

Bibliographic material present in the microfilms (Wilhelm Reich Collected Works Microfilms) in PDF form, made available by Eva Reich.

McF 404 The Cancer Biopathy. 1948

McF 517 Oranur Project . Orgone Energy Emergency Bulletin No. 1 1950

McF 402 Cosmic Superimposition. 1951

McF 518 The Orgone Energy Accumulator, its Scientific and Medical Use, 1951

McF 520 Construction of a Three-fold Orgone Energy accumulator and Five-fold

McF 521. How to use the orgone energy accumulator

McF 519 Conspiracy Incomplete Set 1952

McF 320 The Murder of Christ. 1953

McF 401 People in trouble. 1953

McF 516 Wilhelm Reich The Einstein Affair, 1953

McF 513 Wilhelm Reich OROP Desert No. 1 February 1954

McF 514 Wilhelm Reich OROP Desert No. 1 March 1954

McF 512 Wilhelm Reich Biographical Material, History of the Discovery of the Life. Response to Ignorance 1955

Books by Wilhelm Reich

The Cancer Biopathy

The Discovery of the Orgone – Vol. 2

Original Publication: Orgone Institute Press – 1948
Banned from circulation by U.S. Federal Court order – 1954
Burned under FDA supervision – 1956 and 1960
Re-published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux – 1973

«I hope and believe this volume will be accessible to the scientifically untrained reader who has familiarized himself with the principles of scientific research in general and orgonomy in particular. Sections that are too technical can be passed over by such readers without undermining their understanding of the whole. The present volume comprises the results of work done over a period of seventeen years, between 1930 and 1947…I do not publish this book without serious concern, mainly that many readers of our literature will now assume that a cure for cancer has been found. This is not at all the case. It is true that the riddle of cancer has become fully accessible through the discovery of orgone energy. But it is incorrect to believe that every cancer victim can now be saved.»

Wilhelm Reich, M.D.

(from the Preface)

What is cancer? Traditionally, medical science has thought of it as an invasive tumor arising spontaneously in an otherwise healthy organism. Consequently, it has naïvely devised increasingly intricate techniques to eradicate the tumor and treat its complications. These techniques have had varying degrees of success.

In contrast, Reich defines cancer not as a tumor–the tumor is merely a late manifestation of the disease–but as a systemic disease due to chronic thwarting of natural sexual functioning. The ensuing biopathic shrinking of the organism is revealed initially in emotional despair and resignation, which leads eventually to a disturbance of cellular metabolism, with the tumor as its most visible manifestation.

In this radically different scientific investigation of a process that ends, literally, in the putrefaction of the living body due to chronic suffocation of the tissues, Reich has arrived at the conclusion that «cancer is the most significant somatic expression of the biophysiological effect of sexual stasis.» If this is so, there is a far greater possibility for the prophylaxis of cancer than for its treatment.

Reich’s contribution to an understanding of cancer is based on his years of clinical, social, and laboratory study of human emotions and his discovery of the specific energy processes manifested in them. A detailed account of this discovery forms the opening chapters of the book, providing the experimental and theoretical basis for the later chapters in which he presents his findings on the emotional background of the disease, the crucial role played by inadequate sexual functioning that causes a general devitalization and shrinking, the origin of the cancer cell, experimental therapy with laboratory animals and human beings, and, finally, the problems and possibilities of prevention.

Der Krebs(German Manuscripts)

The Cancer Biopathy

Ether, God, and Devil / Cosmic Superimposition

Original Publication: Orgone Institute Press – 1949 and 1951

Banned from circulation by U.S. Federal Court order – 1954

Burned under FDA supervision – 1956 and 1960

Re-published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux – 1973

«The cosmic orgone energy was discovered as a result of the consistent application of the functional technique of thinking. It was these methodical, rigidly-controlled thought processes that led from one fact to another, weaving–across a span of about twenty five years–seemingly disparate facts into a unified picture of the function of nature; a picture which is submitted to the verdict of the world as the still unfinished doctrinal framework of Orgonomy.»

Wilhelm Reich, M.D.

(from Chapter One of Ether, God and Devil)

There is great excitement and interest today in what is described as the «paradigm shift» in science. Humanity’s understanding of the universe and its place in it is changing dramatically. Wilhelm Reich’s Ether, God and Devil (1949) and Cosmic Superimposition(1951) are two groundbreaking books that helped initiate the current paradigm shift long before the concept was popularized in Thomas Kuhn’s 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, and the later works of such best-selling authors as Fritjof Capra, Gary Zukav, Timothy Ferris, and many more.

In Ether, God and Devil, Reich describes his process of thinking–which he called orgonomic functionalism–and shows how the inner logic of this objective thought technique led him to the discovery of the cosmic orgone energy.

In Cosmic Superimposition, Reich steps out of our current framework of mechanistic-mystical thinking and comes to a radically different understanding of how man is rooted in nature. He shows clearly how the superimposition of two orgone energy streams–demonstrable in the human genital embrace and in the formation of spiral galaxies–is the common functioning principle in all of nature. Concluding this work, Reich ponders what is perhaps the greatest riddle of all: «the ability of man to think, and by mere thinking to know what nature is and how it works.»

Together, these two works usher in a fundamentally new view of humanity, nature, and man’s place in the cosmos.

The Invasion of Compulsory Sex-Morality

Original Publication: Sexpol Verlag – 1931 and 1935

3rd edition prepared by Wilhelm Reich – 1951

3rd edition published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux – 1971

«The clinical and ethnologic material for this book was compiled between 1920 and 1930. It was rounded out by the extraordinary material Bronislaw Malinowski presented in 1930 in his comprehensive book The Sexual Life of Savages. My study of the origin of human sexual morality was written in September 1931 in the midst of the social storm that rocked the German republic before Hitler’s ascendancy to power; and the strong political slant of this book stems from the experiences of that period. Nothing of what shook our social existence at that time (1930-45), in the political sense, has survived. However, the facts about the history of human character development have not only survived the last twenty years but have gained in consistency and social influence, which is, in the long run the true social power.»

Wilhelm Reich, M.D.

(from the Preface – 1951)

This study of the invasion of compulsory sexual morality into human society, written in 1931, was Reich’s first step in approaching the answer to the problem of human mass neuroses, preceding The Mass Psychology of Fascism and The Sexual Revolution. Growing out of Reich’s involvement with the crucial question of the origin of sexual suppression, this attempt to explain historically the problem of sexual disturbances and neuroses draws upon the ethnological works of Morgan, Engels and, in particular, Bronislaw Malinowski, whose remarkable studies of the sexual life and customs of the primitive people of the Trobriand Islands confirmed Reich’s clinical discoveries.

Repudiating Freud’s idea that sexual repression is an essential component of the development of human society, and rejecting Géza Roheim’s anthropological efforts to substantiate it, he grasps the problem of the relationship of socio-economic living conditions and the formation of human character structure. Reich writes, «The organization of social life determines the quanitity and the quality of the equalization of tension and discharge in the psychic apparatus. If there is a lack of social possibilities for genital gratification…if the measure of unpleasurable stimuli is too great owing to distress and want, the psychic apparatus works with substitute mechanisms that seek to bring about some discharge at any cost. The results are neuroses, perversions, patholiogical changes of character, anti-social manifestations of genital life and, not least, work disturbances.»

Contact With Space

Oranur – Second Report, 1951–1956

Original Publication: CORE Pilot Press – 1957

Bound photocopy issued by The Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust

«No President, Academy, Court of Law, Congress or Senate on this earth has the knowledge or power to decide what will be the knowledge of tomorrow.»

Wilhelm Reich, M.D.

(from the Preface)

Wilhelm Reich’s final publication, Contact With Space contains the result of six years of intensive research and field work: a natural scientific account of and the basis of practical measures for combating the DOR emergency. This volume is an exposition of the newest developments in the technology of Cosmic Orgone Engineering, which involve the use of «Spacegun,» an extension of the cloudbuster made possible by the discovery of ORUR.

During Reich’s scientific expedition to southern Arizona (1954–1955)–which he documents in this book–it was Cosmic Orgone Engineering that caused desert land to turn green with prairie grass. Here Reich submits a natural scientific explanation of the metabolism of the Life Energy, a study which goes into the nature of primal vegetation, and the nature of dying or death of vegetation, i.e. desert development.

Nature being one, Contact With Space examines the new basic energetic facts brought into the open by the Oranur Experiment in terms of the various branches of science into which they ramify: biophysics, Oranur medicine, astrophysics, meteorology, chemistry and pre-atomic chemistry, space technology, man’s reactions to these events, etc. It also deals with the methods of the functional scientist.

The Murder of Christ

Original Publication: Orgone Institute Press – 1953

Banned from circulation by U.S. Federal Court order – 1954

Burned under FDA supervision – 1956 and 1960

Re-published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux – 1966

«The social crisis we are living through is basically due to the inability of people to govern their own lives. From this inability cruel dictatorships have grown over the past thirty years, with no rational social ends at all. Serious men and women everywhere are deeply concerned with the misfortune which is threatening to extinguish our lives, our happiness, and cause disaster to our children. These men and women want blunt truth. They want blunt truth about people’s true ways of being, acting and emotional reacting. To tell the people everywhere the full truth about themselves means paying respect to their social responsibilities.»

Wilhelm Reich, M.D.

(from the Introduction)

In this profound and moving work, physician and scientist Wilhelm Reich captures the meaning of Christ’s life and reveals the hidden, universal scourge that caused his agonizing death–The Emotional Plague of Mankind. Reich contends that man is faced with full responsibility for the murder of Christ all through the ages–for the murder of fellow human beings, no matter what the circumstances. Here is the blunt truth about people’s true ways of being, acting, and emotionally reacting.

Here, also, the lesson of the murder of Christ is applied to the contemporary social scene. The tragedy of Reich’s own death points up the fact that the problems presented in The Murder of Christ are acute problems of present-day society.

People in Trouble

Original Publication: Orgone Institute Press – 1953

Banned from circulation by U.S. Federal Court order – 1954

Burned under FDA supervision – 1956 and 1960

Re-published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux – 1976Reich, Wilhelm (1953). People in Trouble.

«Natural scientific thought bears witness to its own impartiality when it describes social events that occurred at various times that reflect both the paths of error and of remedy. I did not write this book out of emotion or preconceived theory. Nor did I write it as a result of an arbitrary thought process or because I envisioned a state of improved social organization. I gathered the insights summarized here just as a settler in an uninhabited wilderness must gather impressions and experiences if he wishes to survive.»

Wilhelm Reich, M.D.

(from the Introduction)

First published by Reich in 1953, People in Trouble is an autobiographical work in which Reich describes the development of his sociological thinking from 1927 to 1937. In simple narrative form he recounts his personal experiences with major social and political events and ideas, and reveals how these experiences gradually led him to an awareness of the deep significance of the human character structure in shaping and responding to the social process.

The importance of Karl Marx’s work and its distortion by communist politicians plays an important role in Reich’s account, as does the political activity in the International Psychoanalytic Association which led to his expulsion from that organization in 1934. The Norwegian press campaign against his biological experiments is also discussed.

People in Trouble is the story of one man’s courageous struggle to understand the political activity of his fellow men.

Menschen im Staat(German Manuscripts)

People in Trouble

The Einstein Affair

15 Wilhelm Reich The Einstein Affair 1953

McF 516 Wilhelm Reich The Einstein Affair, 1953

Interval 1-102 Pag. I-V and 1-102

On December 30, 1940, Reich wrote a letter to Albert Einstein in Princeton, New Jersey, asking to meet with him to discuss a difficult and urgent scientific matter, i.e. the discovery of a «specific biologically effective energy which behaves in many respects differently as all that is known about electro-magnetic energy.» Two weeks later, on the afternoon of January 13, 1941, Reich met with Einstein in Princeton for approximately four hours. Einstein was sufficiently intrigued by Reich’s discussion of a temperature difference phenomenon in the orgone energy accumulator that he agreed to investigate this anomaly. During the next two weeks, Reich prepared an experimental apparatus for Einstein to study. And on February 1st, Reich visited Einstein a second time to deliver this apparatus, which they studied together. Einstein requested that Reich leave it with him for a couple of weeks, so he could investigate it further.

This publication comprises a collection of the protocols, correspondence and experimental documentation involved in the Reich-Einstein interaction. Those interested in this fascinating chapter of Reich’s scientific research are advised to also read the pertinent entries in Reich’s personal journals which are collected in American Odyssey – Letters and Journals (1940-1947).

Articles by Reich

The Schizophrenic Split(1945 & 1949)

In this chapter from Character Analysis, Reich documents the dramatic and moving case history of the first schizophrenic treated with orgone therapy, presenting revolutionary insight into one of the most serious problems in mental health.

Reich’s third, enlarged edition of this classic study (Character Analysis) of human character includes all of the previously published material–taken between 1928 and 1934, from psychoanalysis to the bioenergetic study of the emotions–and adds a new section expounding Reich’s later discoveries.

This includes three later papers: «The Emotional Plague,» «The Expressive Language of The Living in Orgone Therapy,» and «The Schizophrenic Split,» an extensive case history of a paranoid schizophrenic. This case history will convince the reader that the organismic orgone energy is the physical reality that corresponds to the merely psychological concept of «psychic energy.»

In this enlarged edition, Reich illustrates how his study of character led to a comprehension of the biological basis of neuroses and finally to the discovery of the cosmic orgone energy. Thus, character analysis is taken out of the realm of psychology and put on the firm basis of natural science, in the form of orgone biophysics.

Orgonotic Light Functions

From Orgone Energy Bulletin, Vol. 1, Nos. 1,2,3, 1949

Three articles on orgone physics:

1. «Searchlight Phenomena in the Orgone Envelope of the Earth (1942-44)»
2. «X-Ray Photograph of the Excited Orgone Energy Field of the Palms (1944)»
3. «Further Physical Characteristics of Vacor Lumination (1948)»

Cosmic Orgone Energy and «Ether»

From Orgone Energy Bulletin, Vol. 1, No. 4, 1949

Reich describes the characteristics and functions of cosmic orgone energy which have been observed directly and reproduced experimentally, and shows the extent to which they coincide with the characteristics described by many researchers to the ether.

Meteorological Functions in Orgone-Charged Vacuum Tubes

From Orgone Energy Bulletin, Vol. 2, No. 4, 1950

In this preliminary report, Reich describes the influence of weather conditions on orgone charged vacuum tubes.

Rules to Follow in Basic Research

Writen in 1951, these twelve rules represent Reich’s approach to basic research and constitute a valuable guide for any serious worker.

11 Orgone Biologics. Rules to Follow in Basic Research 1951

McF 307 Orgone Energy Bulletin. Vol. 3, No. 1. Jan. 1951

Interval 34-35 Pag. 63-64

The Leukemia Problem

From Orgone Energy Bulletin, Vol. 3, No. 2, 1951

Reich presents his initial observations on leukemia, emphasizing the significance of the red blood cell system in this disease.

Bibliography on Orgonomy

Orgone Institute Press, 1953

Prepared under Reich’s supervision, Bibliography On Orgonomylists all books and articles by him and his associates, as well as lectures, information about newspaper campaigns, and reviews of orgonomic literature.

The Medical DOR Buster, Part One

Reich discusses the significance of Deadly ORgone (DOR) in living and non-living nature.

06 Wilhelm Reich CORE. The Medical DOR-BUSTER(1942-1955)

McF 319 CORE. Vol. 7, No. 3,4. Dec. 1955

Interval 2-10 Pag. 97-113

Laboratory Manual for Bion Experiments

Notes by a Laboratory Worker – Norway, February 1938

(Handwritten & Typed Pages in German only – 105 pages)

In his 2009 Summer Conference lecture, «Reich’s Unpublished Laboratory Notebooks and Correspondence,» Professor James Strick, Ph.D.–author and science historian–showed excerpts from this 1938 laboratory manual which he discovered during a visit to the Archives to research his new book about Reich’s bion experiments.

Professor Strick strongly urged the Trust to make this manual available in our bookstore for those seriously interested in Bion research, despite the fact that we currently have neither the time nor resources to translate this document into English and issue it as a regular book. We agreed, realizing that this primary resource has tremendous value for the serious scientific researcher.

We caution everyone that this publication will have limited interest and accessibility to the average reader. It is a bound-photocopy edition of the manual’s original pages: all of the content is in German, some of is typed and some of it is handwritten. It also has an Introduction in English by Professor Strick, which we include below:

Introduction to: A Laboratory Manual for Bion Experiments

by
James Strick, Ph.D.

Franklin and Marshall College

Strick, James E. (2015). Wilhelm Reich, Biologist, Harvard University Press.

Psychoanalyst, political theorist, pioneer of body therapies, prophet of the sexual revolution—all fitting titles, but Wilhelm Reich has never been recognized as a serious laboratory scientist, despite his experimentation with bioelectricity and unicellular organisms. Wilhelm Reich, Biologist is an eye-opening reappraisal of one of twentieth-century science’s most controversial figures—perhaps the only writer whose scientific works were burned by both the Nazis and the U.S. government. Refuting allegations of “pseudoscience” that have long dogged Reich’s research, James Strick argues that Reich’s lab experiments in the mid-1930s represented the cutting edge of light microscopy and time-lapse micro-cinematography and deserve to be taken seriously as legitimate scientific contributions.

Trained in medicine and a student of Sigmund Freud, Reich took to the laboratory to determine if Freud’s concept of libido was quantitatively measurable. His electrophysiological experiments led to his “discovery” of microscopic vesicles (he called them “bions”), which Reich hypothesized were instrumental in originating life from nonliving matter. Studying Reich’s laboratory notes from recently opened archives, Strick presents a detailed account of the Bion experiments, tracing how Reich eventually concluded he had discovered an unknown type of biological radiation he called “orgone.” The bion experiments were foundational to Reich’s theory of cancer and later investigations of orgone energy.

Reich’s experimental findings and interpretations were considered discredited, but not because of shoddy lab technique, as has often been claimed. Scientific opposition to Reich’s experiments, Strick contends, grew out of resistance to his unorthodox sexual theories and his Marxist political leanings.