Reich was also possibly the first post-victorian sex positive person, actively promoting his support for people to be sexually liberated (and therefore not physically and bodily repressed). He was chased out 3 countries by authories and then targeted by Hoover's FBI when he should have being safe with freedom of expression in the USA (with its constitution that Hoover was busy shredding).
I totally agree that Reich's more open and positive attitude towards sexuality and orgasm only contributed to his marginalisation, on both sides of the Atlantic.
But I remain unconvinced that Reich was subject to any kind of real persecution by the US Gov. The FDA's case against Reich looked so weak it seemed more like the kind of thing a gov dept does just to make it seem like it's going through the motions, in reaction to the media articles denouncing him as a fraud. According to Sharaf, Reich had lawyer friends, from within the psych scene, who were only too happy to represent him. Yet Reich refused them, choosing to represent himself in court, something no one in the States ever does.
I think that because Reich fitted so well into the "persecuted genius" archetype, a whole mythos has grown up around him that is likely grossly inaccurate. Reich's orgone theory, for example, as I'm trying to put out in this article, is really not so radical by the standards of German philosophy at the time.
He did good work. He stuck to his guns. But I'm not convinced he was seriously persecuted.
Interesting take on a man with perhaps a bit of a 'Prometheus complex.,' However, regarding his work to prove the existence of Orgone, Robert Temple's 2022 work on recent (and ancient) discoveries in plasma physics, 'A New Science of Heaven,' seems to validate Reich's claims. The discovery and confirmation of the existence of the Kordylewski Clouds in 1961 and 2019, respectively, as well as the reality that the sun is not a thermonuclear ball of hydrogen, but a plasma-electric entity are but two findings among dozens in Temple's work that suggest Reich was simply too far ahead of his time.
Reich tried to formulate orgone as a concept and write about it. If orgone has innate intelligence, as well as drive, that isn't going to be possible. Yet I don't think Reich could see that.
Alas Reich was indeed persecuted for his ideas much as Giordano Bruno was persecuted by the church is his time. There is a universal curse to people who are to much ahead in their thinking compared to were society at large is. The only response a armored society is capable of is that a emotional plague response or demonic force (taken from a Alexander Lowen's perspective) as with to kill the individual and to destroy their work in general. There is a book written by James Demeo called: In defense of Wilhelm Reich, that goes well into how Reich was persecuted by people and authorities.
I mean, personally, I'm a bit more neutral on Reich. It struck me from what I read that if he had had proper legal counsel, as his friends were offering him, then he would likely have avoided jail. I don't know for sure. I suspect that because he fits the archetype for "persecuted good guy" so well, people easily become convinced that foul play was involved in his downfall.
As a therapist working professionally with Reichian and related techniques, it's also clear to me that his work was a great first draft but by no means the final article. There are a heap of issues with armouring theory, segmental armouring too. He had a pioneering spirit and pushed open the door to a more body-based way of looking at psychology. But that's a big room.
At the end of 'How the World Thinks', Julian Baggini writes '...ideas are neither tethered to specific cultures nor free-floating, universal and placeless. Like people they are formed by a culture, but can travel. If we truly aspire to a more objective understanding of the world, we have to make use of the advantages to be gained by occupying different intellectual places...' I think this chimes well with your suggestion that Reich's ideas are better understood as philosophical arguments rather than rational scientific facts. Whether Orgone is a scientific phenomenon or a numinous feeling seems to say more about the culturally imposed limitations of its various supporters or detractors rather than contributing to any understanding of what it might be. I don't know about anyone else, but for me when sex becomes concerned with the union of elemental forces there may be observable and measurable phenomenological occurrences but what one actually feels is unique to the individual yet common and purely numinous - in short, one 'thing' is manifest in different ways. Might Orgone not be an example of this plurality?
Yes, I think I agree. Our tendency to intellectualise about experience creates effects somewhere downstream. I suspect that there is an optimal level of thinking about life and going above this is counterproductive. Like if we overly embed the mind in the brain, the armouring effects lead to destructive dynamics. Perhaps this is why ancients loved the golden mean so much.
Reich and Einstein corresponded extensively, and I believe Einstein measured the same temperature differenced Reich did. Because Einstein could not reconcile this 'free energy,' it was suppressed.
Reich was also possibly the first post-victorian sex positive person, actively promoting his support for people to be sexually liberated (and therefore not physically and bodily repressed). He was chased out 3 countries by authories and then targeted by Hoover's FBI when he should have being safe with freedom of expression in the USA (with its constitution that Hoover was busy shredding).
I totally agree that Reich's more open and positive attitude towards sexuality and orgasm only contributed to his marginalisation, on both sides of the Atlantic.
But I remain unconvinced that Reich was subject to any kind of real persecution by the US Gov. The FDA's case against Reich looked so weak it seemed more like the kind of thing a gov dept does just to make it seem like it's going through the motions, in reaction to the media articles denouncing him as a fraud. According to Sharaf, Reich had lawyer friends, from within the psych scene, who were only too happy to represent him. Yet Reich refused them, choosing to represent himself in court, something no one in the States ever does.
I think that because Reich fitted so well into the "persecuted genius" archetype, a whole mythos has grown up around him that is likely grossly inaccurate. Reich's orgone theory, for example, as I'm trying to put out in this article, is really not so radical by the standards of German philosophy at the time.
He did good work. He stuck to his guns. But I'm not convinced he was seriously persecuted.
Fascinating read
Interesting take on a man with perhaps a bit of a 'Prometheus complex.,' However, regarding his work to prove the existence of Orgone, Robert Temple's 2022 work on recent (and ancient) discoveries in plasma physics, 'A New Science of Heaven,' seems to validate Reich's claims. The discovery and confirmation of the existence of the Kordylewski Clouds in 1961 and 2019, respectively, as well as the reality that the sun is not a thermonuclear ball of hydrogen, but a plasma-electric entity are but two findings among dozens in Temple's work that suggest Reich was simply too far ahead of his time.
Reich tried to formulate orgone as a concept and write about it. If orgone has innate intelligence, as well as drive, that isn't going to be possible. Yet I don't think Reich could see that.
Alas Reich was indeed persecuted for his ideas much as Giordano Bruno was persecuted by the church is his time. There is a universal curse to people who are to much ahead in their thinking compared to were society at large is. The only response a armored society is capable of is that a emotional plague response or demonic force (taken from a Alexander Lowen's perspective) as with to kill the individual and to destroy their work in general. There is a book written by James Demeo called: In defense of Wilhelm Reich, that goes well into how Reich was persecuted by people and authorities.
I mean, personally, I'm a bit more neutral on Reich. It struck me from what I read that if he had had proper legal counsel, as his friends were offering him, then he would likely have avoided jail. I don't know for sure. I suspect that because he fits the archetype for "persecuted good guy" so well, people easily become convinced that foul play was involved in his downfall.
As a therapist working professionally with Reichian and related techniques, it's also clear to me that his work was a great first draft but by no means the final article. There are a heap of issues with armouring theory, segmental armouring too. He had a pioneering spirit and pushed open the door to a more body-based way of looking at psychology. But that's a big room.
At the end of 'How the World Thinks', Julian Baggini writes '...ideas are neither tethered to specific cultures nor free-floating, universal and placeless. Like people they are formed by a culture, but can travel. If we truly aspire to a more objective understanding of the world, we have to make use of the advantages to be gained by occupying different intellectual places...' I think this chimes well with your suggestion that Reich's ideas are better understood as philosophical arguments rather than rational scientific facts. Whether Orgone is a scientific phenomenon or a numinous feeling seems to say more about the culturally imposed limitations of its various supporters or detractors rather than contributing to any understanding of what it might be. I don't know about anyone else, but for me when sex becomes concerned with the union of elemental forces there may be observable and measurable phenomenological occurrences but what one actually feels is unique to the individual yet common and purely numinous - in short, one 'thing' is manifest in different ways. Might Orgone not be an example of this plurality?
Yes, I think I agree. Our tendency to intellectualise about experience creates effects somewhere downstream. I suspect that there is an optimal level of thinking about life and going above this is counterproductive. Like if we overly embed the mind in the brain, the armouring effects lead to destructive dynamics. Perhaps this is why ancients loved the golden mean so much.
Reich and Einstein corresponded extensively, and I believe Einstein measured the same temperature differenced Reich did. Because Einstein could not reconcile this 'free energy,' it was suppressed.
Thank you