Submission for rec-music-gaffa

[dsr@uvacs.cs.virginia.edu (Dana S. Richards)]

Path: uvacs!dsr
From: dsr@uvacs.cs.Virginia.EDU (Dana S. Richards)
Newsgroups: rec.music.gaffa
Subject: Re: Wilhelm Reich
Date: 30 Dec 88 16:53:01 GMT
References: <8812290926.AA09569@hop.toad.com>
Reply-To: dsr@uvacs.cs.virginia.edu.UUCP (Dana S. Richards)
Organization: U.Va. CS dept.  Charlottesville, VA
Lines: 46

In article <8812290926.AA09569@hop.toad.com> Love-Hounds writes:
>Really-From: tim@toad.com (Tim Maroney)
>Wilhelm Reich was one of the three main post-Freudian psychoanalytic
>theorists, the other two being Adler and Jung.
  [There follows a discussion of his early (and uncontested!) work,
   wholly unrelated to orgonomy which is the only topic of discussion,
   I thought.]

>Wilhelm Reich was killed for scientific heresy, and that is the part of
>his story that Kate Bush deals with in her excellent song
>"Cloudbusting".
   
Compare and contast with IED.

> In the late 1950's, Reich was arrested
>by US government agents for publishing unauthorized medical books based
>on his research into orgonomy.  All his books, including his
>psychoanalytic books from earlier in the century which contained no
>orgonomic references, were burned.  Reich never left prison; he died of
>prison sickness less than a year later.  The episode is a shocking and
>disgusting one in the history of the country, and that the scientific
>community did not object to Reich's execution for heresy is a powerful
>discredit to that community.  To dismiss or trivialize it on the
>grounds that Reich had become a crank is to endorse the execution of
>heretics.

Reich was not just a crank; we do not arrest cranks -- there are not enough
jails.  Reich was proposing dangerous medical treatments.  Perhaps the case
was mishandled by today's standards, but I do not think so.
I, personally, believe more quacks should be prosecuted; witness the rash of
misery-mongering AIDS remedy peddlers.  Its even worse for cancer patients.

Reich was not even a minor martyr.

>An excellent and skeptical biography of Reich can be found in the Readers
>and Writers series of "Beginners' Books", entitled "Reich for Beginners".
>Serious students should also examine his "Mass Psychology of Fascism" and
>"The Function of the Orgasm".

Serious students of what?
(H. G. Wells reviewed `Function' by saying it is `an awful gabble of 
competitive quacks. Reich misuses every other word.... There is not a gleam 
of fresh understanding in the whole bale.')
For a reliable biography is `Fury on Earth', by Myron Sharaf.

dana