Re: Wilhelm Reich in alt.*

[jchokey@leland.Stanford.EDU (James Alexander Chokey)]

In article <CzwBut.CBK@freenet.carleton.ca>,
Farrell McGovern <ai474@freenet.carleton.ca> wrote:
>
>In a previous article, anders.hultman@unisource.se (Anders Hultman) says:
>
>> It has, as far as I can see, nothing to do with "our" Wilhelm Reich,
>>of Cloudbusting fame, 
>
>	Actualy, it does.
>
>	Robert Anton Wilson was totally freaked when he heard about US
>Governement burning Reich's books in 1957. 

	As well he should have been, considering that no such thing
ever happened.  Reich died in prison in 1957, having been there as
a result of his failure to appear in court.  There was no book-
burning or anything of the sort.  Whoever told you otherwise didn't
know what they were talking about.


>He has researched Reich's works
>over the years, and has even gone through Reichian Theropy. Here is what
>RAW has to say: 
>
>	"William Bulter Yeats once said that we make rhetoric out of out
>dispute with others and art out of our dispute with ourselves, and
>'Wilhelm Reich in Hell', a Punk Rock Opera, is my attempt to make dramatic
>art out of my sipute with myself about the ambiguities and unsolved
>enigmas of the life and persecution of Dr. Reich."

	Reich was hardly persecuted--  although he certainly believed
himself to be.  As Paul Robinson notes in his chapter on Reich in
_The Freudian Left_, Reich "developed a sense of persecution which was 
just short of paranoiac."  He repeatedly identified himself with almost 
every intellectual martyr who had ever existed-- especially Socrates and 
Jesus. See Reich's _The Murder of Christ_ and "The Emotional Plague" (a 
savage ad hominum directed generally at anyone who criticized any of
theories) for examples.  And all this persecution mania was being expressed
in the 1940's, over a decade before the FDA brought charges against
Reich.  The man was just plain paranoid.
	The only reason Reich went to prison was because he deliberately
disobeyed an order to appear in court and answer charges made by the
FDA that he was renting fraudulent therapeutic devices across state
lines.  The devices in question were, of course, his famed Orgone 
Accumulator Boxes, which were simply telephone-booth sized chambers
made of wood and covered with metal on the inside.  These "Accumulators,"
Reich believed, absorbed excess "Orgone energy" from the bodies and minds
of whoever sat inside them and relieved them of whatever psychic or
physical ills they happened to have.  (Orgone energy, for those of you
unfamiliar with Reich was originally defined as a sort of electrical
energy that formed the libido, but Reich had decided in the late 40's
that it was the primordial stuff out of which the universe was composed--
and that his Orgone Accumulators could absorb this energy from the human 
body.) The FDA, on the other hand, charged that these "Accumulators" were, 
in fact, simply wooden boxes which were lined with metal and which had no
real therapeutic value whatsoever.  Reich decided that he had no need
to appear in court to defend his therapeutic practices (which, I might
add, he charged quite dearly for), and he was arrested and imprisoned
for contempt of court.  Is that persecution?  I don't think so.

        --  Jim C.
 
 
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| James A. Chokey                            jchokey@leland.stanford.edu |
|                                                                        |
|                   Alas! Coquettes are but too rare.                    |
|                                               --  Disraeli             |
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