Critiques yet to be written:

Introduction

Wilhelm Reich (1898-1957) is one of the most colorful characters ever to
tackle the mysteries of the universe. He was charismatic, strong-willed,
well-read, imaginative, and unflinchingly devoted to his ideals. And he
was also, beyond doubt, a crackpot.

Reich's initial work was in the area of psychoanalysis. In fact, he was a
protege of Sigmund Freud. His technique of
Character Analysis expanded on Freud's
psychoanalysis and was well-received. Some at the time even considered
Reich to be Freud's successor. However, his involvement with the early
Communist Party in Europe eventually got him kicked out of the psychiatric
community — and ironically, his involvement with the psychiatric
community got him kicked out of the Communist Party at around the same
time. His relentless insistence that sexuality was central to emotional
health earned him more critics than supporters, as well. Reich eventually
fled Germany for Norway in 1933 for fear of the rising power of the Nazis, who
showed a great deal of enmity toward members of the Communist Party (even
former members).

From there on, though, Reich began to delve into areas of research for which
his medical and psychiatric training left him ill-equipped. He performed
bioelectrical experiments on subjects in
various states of sexual arousal, somewhat reminiscent of the experiments
Masters and Johnson would perform two decades later. He claimed to see
microscopic bions develop from lifeless matter and
organize themselves into living cells. And he eventually came to believe
he had discovered a primordial energy essential for life, which he called
orgone energy, and which he was obsessed with
for the rest of his life. Along the way of making these various
"discoveries," his works were either ignored or heavily criticized by the
mainstream scientific community. Reich seemed to take every criticism of
his work as a personal attack. He was convinced he had made the greatest
discoveries in the history of humanity, next to which the discovery of
electricity or the law of gravity or the wheel or fire were
insignificant. He felt that mainstream scientists only attacked his work
because his discoveries were too emotionally disturbing for them to
tolerate. (Why was such obstinant resistance to Reich's "obvious truths"
so prevalent? Why, because of the emotional
plague, of course.) And Reich surrounded himself with people who
agreed with his assessments of his discoveries' greatness, people who all
lacked any formal training in the natural sciences — training which, if
it had been present, might have helped Reich see the real, concrete reasons why
his work was criticized.

Thus far, hardly any skeptics have seen Reich to be worth the time and energy
necessary to debunk all of his claims in detail. Almost all skeptical
treaments of his works focus on the more outrageous claims he made about orgone
energy, or simply poo-poo his research and theories out-of-hand. This,
unfortunately, lends a false air of legitimacy to the various Orgonomy groups
that promulgate Reich's ideas. Modern orgonomists come across like poor,
downtrodden underdogs, attacked without reason by those few obviously
orgastically impotent skeptics and
mainstream scientists out there who still take potshots at Orgonomy.
Since the skeptics and scientists never seem to show why the Orgonomists are
wrong — at least not to the satisfaction of the Orgonomist groups,
who always seem to have a rebuttal up their sleeve — the Orgonomists must
therefore be right, of course.

This situation might be improved if the criticisms levelled against Reich by
his contemporaries were easily accessible in English today. But sadly,
most of them, such as Kreyberg's criticism of bions in the 1930s, are
practically lost to history. Martin Gardner's Fads and Fallacies
in the Name of Science contains one of the few critical treatments of Reich
that has survived to this day, but even this is lacking in sufficient details
to answer the rebuttals of the modern orgonomists.

My personal experiences with Orgonomy go way back. Some people are raised
in a Catholic family. Some people are raised in a Jewish family. I
was raised in an Orgonomy family. And despite Reich's insistence to the
contrary, Orgonomy is a religion, filled with sacred truths which can
never be experimentally verified, a single central theme which tries to explain
everything in the universe, a Fall from Grace in the mythical past, and even a
Christ figure in Reich himself. I was forced
to endure years of orgone therapy the way
many other children are forced to go to church. I became a "convert" to
Reich's works in late puberty thanks primarily to his pro-sex attitude. I
was a "true believer" until the late 1990s, when my skeptical instincts finally
caught up with me, and I at last acknowledged the similarities between the
writings of Reich and the ravings of various other cantankerous crackpots who
were trying to hawk their own all-encompassing theories.

This collection of articles, then, is the culmination of my skepticism toward
the works and theories of Wilhelm Reich. Reich's work encompassed many,
many areas, not all of which he documented in the detail necessary to critique
them properly. So, yes, some of my critiques involve my personal,
educated guesses as to what Reich might "really" have been seeing or
measuring. But enough of Reich's writings do give sufficient
detail that Reich's own shortcomings as a self-proclaimed scientific researcher
come through plainly. For unlike Sir Isaac Newton, Reich was not willing
to stand upon the shoulders of giants. He stood only as high as his own
experiences would allow, and from this low perch imagined himself to be a lone
eagle soaring higher than any other man had ever reached.

Comments? Suggestions? Criticisms? Got any other tidbits
that I can incorporate into any of these articles? Are you an angry
orgonomist who feels that I'm spreading the emotional plague? Then
write to me at:
rogermw@ix.netcom.com.
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