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Etheric Technologies 7: Wilhelm Reich and Orgone, Part One
One of the things that makes the history of modern etheric technologies complex is that there isn't a nice straightforward sequence of researchers, each of whom picks up where the previous one left off. More precisely, such a sequence exists -- the development of radionics from Albert Abrams through Ruth Drown to George and Marjorie de la Warr, T. Galen Hieronymus, and David Tansley, among others -- but other researchers such as Leon Eeman and Walter Kilner have stumbled across the same realm of etheric energy and explored it in their own unique ways, coming up with their own terminology and techniques. The subject of this week's post is far and away the most colorful and controversial of these figures: that astonishing force of nature, Wilhelm Reich. The whole sweep of Reich's career requires a book, not a journal post, and Myron Sharaf's biography Fury on Earth is a good option if you're interested. Even his work in the realm of etheric technologies is complex and important enough that it will require two posts, of which this is the first.
To summarize a complex biography very quickly, Reich was one of Sigmund Freud's students in Vienna immediately after the First World War, and unlike most Freudians, came to the conclusion that the best solution to the psychological ills caused by sexual repression was, ahem, less sexual repression. He's the man who invented the phrase "the sexual revolution." He was involved with Marxism in the giddy early days after the Russian Revolution, but ditched it (like many other intellectuals of the time) once Stalin showed conclusively just now nightmarish Marx's theories were when put into practice.
Over time, his research led him deeper and deeper into the complicated territory of sex, where biology meets psychology. He figured out that dysfunctional emotional habits are reflected in specific patterns of body tension, which he called "character armor." He also focused much of his research on the role of orgasm as a release of tension -- a kind of reset button for the body. All this while he was being thrown out of one country after another, because the Communists, the Fascists, the mainstream Freudians, and the churches all found him a convenient punching bag and made as much trouble for him as they could.
He was living in Norway with his second wife when he began to stray across the border into the nonphysical realms. He was researching cancer, which seemed to be associated with certain patterns of character armor and emotional dysfunction, and claimed to find microbes of an unknown type in tissue cultures taken from cancers. Some of these, he noted, appeared through a microscope to be surrounded by little haloes of blue light. Some other people could see those, others couldn't; a close reading of Reichenbach's books could have clued Reich in to what was going on, but I haven't encountered any evidence yet that he read Reichenbach. So he continued his researches, convinced that what he was studying was a physical reality rather than an etheric one.
In 1939, just before war broke out, he relocated to the United States and continued his researches on the mechanism of the orgasm. His theory while he was in Norway was that the orgasm was an electrochemical release of energy, but around the time he arrived in the United States his experiments convinced him that he had discovered an energy unknown to science, which behaved a little like electricity but was closely linked to biological life. (Sound familiar?) He called this energy "orgone." Experiments with Faraday cages, which are used to shut out electromagnetic radiation, led him to the discovery that certain material structures appear to concentrate orgone. If you make a box of alternating layers of conductive and insulating materials, orgone appears to concentrate within it. Remember Mesmer's baquets, with their layers of conductive metal or water separated by glass and other insulative materials?) That led him to construct boxes large enough to sit in, like the one above, as orgone accumulators. This is where we'll leave him for this week, recruiting volunteers to sit in orgone accumulators and testing the effects on their physical and mental well-being. In next week's installment we'll talk about the strange places Reich's researches led him, and the savage response of the American medical industry to his discoveries.
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(Anonymous) 2021-04-14 12:05 am (UTC)(link)If I remember right, both Reich and Rolf equally said that intense muscle tension locks up unresolved emotional/psychological tension. And, that it can be relieved by intensive therapeutic touch. Which is said to be an uncomfortable thing, not like a soothing massage.
Young Elephant, what would be a good way to learn about the elements of neo-Reichian therapy, from which to pick and choose?
Is the Reich essay on economics readily available?
"Oh and Robert Anton Wilson wrote a play about Reich." Just supposin' here... I'd love to learn that Philip Glass or Robert Fripp set it to music!
Today I saw two news headlines, about research papers published in the standard medical peer review system based on large population studies.
One said that the Moderna RNA-splicing genetic modification injection, often mislabeled a vaccine even though it's not, is 90% effective after six months.
The other said that having already had the worrisome infection (as I had last year) is 84% effective at producing long-term immunity.
Therefore, it seems to me that exhortations to get my RNA modified come from people who claim a 6% reduction in risk MUST BE worth it to me to participate in a historically brand new, novel, unprecedented mass exploration in RNA splicing.
Am I missing anything in my analysis?
I worry about the prospect of RNA-splicing injection proof becoming mandatory.
At least you'll be able to choose the barcode on your wrist or your forehead, I suppose!
My doctor's clinic is closed for remodeling. I haven't been able to get a call through to the alternate location. Worrisome to me that I might have to start anew with a randomly assigned doc, who might not have the respect and rapport I had with the previous one.
I have a deep sense of intuition, philosophy, do well at discursive meditation, get some good results from a couple of different types of divination. Banishing is new to me. I have no current affiliation with a deity, but do feel a sense of keen respect for Shiva. Are Mercury and Venus the best to meditate upon for help getting a reliable medical establishment professional on my side?
- Mr. New-Writer
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(Anonymous) 2021-04-14 02:39 am (UTC)(link)Oh, that makes sense with the technology theme as the unifying thread.
"Oom the Omnipotent aka Pierre Bernard"
I don't think I've heard of him before. Another interesting lead to follow!
"As for meditating to get a new physician"
I meant to ask a more open ended question. Something like, "What's a good way for me to either reconnect with the previous physician, or get another one just as good?" Maybe I need to back up a step and start by asking, "What's even the right question to ask here?" The whole thing feels boggling, intimidating, very uncertain and stable in a hard to process way.
- MNW
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(Anonymous) 2021-04-14 10:00 pm (UTC)(link)This is not to say study of the French and Indian War is not valuable—it is—only that the curriculum was unbalanced.
And, lo these many years after passing the test, what do I remember about the F & I war? That it happened, probably in the 18th century (I no longer remember the dates, the matter not having come up once since 1975). I’d have to look it up even to find out which side, if either, won.
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(Anonymous) 2021-04-15 05:23 am (UTC)(link)I wonder if we spent so much time on long-ago events so the class wouldn’t have to cover the Vietnam War and maybe ask awkward questions that could get the teacher in trouble if he answered.
—Lady Cutekitten
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The "French and Indian War" is known everywhere besides the US as the Seven Years War, and it was a colonial war fought between France and England everywhere their overseas empires had conflicting interests-which by the late 18th century, was pretty much the entire planet. (I had one teacher, not afraid to teach against the book, who pointed out that the Seven Years War could, with some justification, be called the first World War).
Arguably, the most important events of the Seven Years War took place not in the Americas, but in India. European traders had been coming to India for centuries, but in the decades leading up to the Seven Years War, they began to form their own private armies, using European infantry tactics that Indian armies didn't really know how to fight. The Indian states (the last pan-Indian empire, the Mughals, had broken apart several decades earlier, and India was now a giant free-for-all of competing warlords) had responded to this situation by playing the French and British off against each other. During the Seven Years War, however, this would end-the British, led by a brilliant general named Robert Clive, decisively routed the French armies, effectively becoming the dominant power of India, and in the process annexed Bengal, among the wealthiest of the Mughal successor states and then one of the richest and most industrialized regions of the world. Following the Seven Years War, Britain was top dog in India, and the native Indian states had to follow its dictates or be crushed-and increasingly, they were crushed, with Bengal serving as a base for further British campaigns into the rest of northern India.
But this does not capture just how profoundly the British conquest of Bengal would affect world history. In 1756, when the war began, Britain (and France, for that matter) were places of mediocre prosperity, which just happened to have developed a way of fighting (coordinated lines of musketmen) that was reliably, lethally effective against the cavalry-based armies everywhere outside Europe still used. By contrast, Bengal was a wealthy, industrial region whose products were sold all over the world, and whose ports were some of the most important centers of world trade. Its artisans made high-quality luxury fabrics whose production techniques have been completely lost today. In the years after the British conquest, Britain purposefully destroyed Bengal's industry and converted it into a colony-a region that sold raw materials to Britain, bought British products, and didn't do anything to compete with British producers. Furthermore, British administrators would play Bengal's Hindu and Muslim populations off against each other, and then "solve" the communal tensions they'd inflamed by splitting Bengal in half.
Today, Britain is a united, independent nation, and furthermore one of the richest places in the world. Bengal, by contrast, is still divided-the "Hindu" half became the Indian province of West Bengal, whose capital, Calcutta, is now a byword for slums and poverty (Mother Theresa spent most of her adult life there). The "Muslim" half of Bengal went though several tribulations and is now the independent country of Bangladesh. You may have heard of it, its one of those places that regularly pops up in "please donate to feed the starving children of X" commercials.
Of course, the fact that the prosperity and affluence the West currently enjoys was basically stolen from the rest of the world would interfere with the whole "Heroic Men of Enlightenment" narrative "Western Civ" courses usually push. But you know, that's just one of those things.
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