In Defense of Wilhelm Reich: an Open Response to Nature and The
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WATER In Defense of Wilhelm Reich: An Open Response to Nature and the Scientific / Medical Community DeMeo J1*, Albini A2, Aronstein WS3, Bingham A4, Del Giudice E5, Haralick RM6, Herskowitz M7, Heimann M8, Hillman H9, Kavouras J10, Koblenzer J11, Maluf N12, Maglione R13, Mazzocchi A14, Müschenich S15, Odent M16, Ok- ouma PM17, Pollack G18, Pryatel W19, Reyes A20, Salat A21, Taylor R22, Tosi M23, and Vecchietti A24 1 Director, Orgone Biophysical Research Lab, PO Box 1148, Ashland, Oregon 97520 USA 2 Physician, Rome, Italy 3 Physician, Glendale OH, USA 4 Psychologist, New York, NY, USA 5 Physicist (Retired), National Institute for Nuclear Physics, Milan, Italy 6 Distinguished Professor, Computer Science, Graduate Center, City University of New York, USA 7 Physician, former President, Institute for Orgonomic Science, Philadelphia, PA, USA 8 Doctoral Candidate, Psychology, Toulouse University, France 9 Director, Unity Laboratory of Applied Neurobiology, Sussex, UK 10 Physician, Podeldorf, Germany 11 Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, USA. 12 Doctoral Candidate, History of Science, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brasil 13 Engineering Scientist, Moncrivello, Italy 14 Physician, Bergamo, Italy 15 Physician, Munster, Germany 16 Physician, Primal Health Research Centre, London, UK 17 Doctoral Candidate, Applied Mathematics, University of Cape Town, South Africa 18 Professor, University of Washington, Seattle, USA 19 Physician, North Dakota State Hospital, Jamestown, ND, USA 20 Physician, Reading, PA, USA 21 Physician, Bonndorf, Germany 22 Immunologist (Retired), University of Bristol, UK. 23 Psychotherapist, Centro Studi Eva Reich, Milano, Italy. 24 Biologist, Orgonomic Consulting and Research, Corridonia, Italy *Correspondence E-mail: [email protected] Key Words: Wilhelm Reich, Albert Einstein, psychoanalysis, bioenergy, orgone energy, orgone accumulator, interstel- lar medium, history of science, book burning, censorship Received November 15th, 2012; Accepted November 16th, 2012; Published November 22nd, 2012; Available online November 30th, 2012 WATER 4, 72-81, November 25 2012 72 WATER Summary 2012), the very fact that sexual slander and WATER falsehood could appear in Nature in the first A recent technology-comment article place demonstrates how widely-believed in Nature magazine (Glausiusz 2012) popular fictions can undermine authentic exemplifies a growing problem in the peer review. Here, we have updated the sciences, in the reliance upon unfactual original article submitted to Nature, and material sourced only to popular literature or wish to sound an alarm on the dangers to the “skeptic” press and generally written of combined popular media distortions, by prejudiced journalists, for evaluations government censorship and book burning, of controversial scientific findings. There and academic/medical scientism. is no greater example of this than how the biography and work of the late Wilhelm Brief Overview of Reich and Confir- Reich continues to be maliciously distorted and attacked. Reich’s writings and research mations on emotions, human sexuality, bioelectricity and biogenesis originally triggered a Wilhelm Reich was a central figure in massive attack with sexual slander, in the Freudian psychoanalysis during the period German and Norwegian press in the 1930s of Weimar Germany. His therapeutic work lead-up to Hitlerism. These slanders were contributed to, but later departed from repeated and amplified in the American traditional psychoanalysis, (Reich 1967) press after 1947, after his findings on leading to an entirely new set of approaches bioenergetics and claims of a specific life- for dealing with emotional, family and energy, the orgone energy, were publicly sexual problems. This part of his early announced. A terribly biased US Food and work, while controversial, was historically Drug Administration investigation and adopted by various health practitioners and alarming judicial reaction was triggered by today is sometimes called (with greater or the media assault, resulting in Reich’s death lesser accuracy) orgone therapy, Reichian in prison, and the most outrageous episode therapy or body-oriented psychotherapy. of government-ordered book burning in His methods are practiced in many nations American history. Reich’s life and research by various health practitioners including findings thereafter became a target for psychologists, general practitioners repeated slander and defamations. (Wolfe and board-certified psychiatrists, as an 1948, Baker 1972, 1973, Blasband 1972, alternative to psycho-pharmaceuticals. Greenfield 1974, DeMeo 2012a, 2012b, Web (Baker 1967, Hochberg 1977, Von Uexkill Reference 1) 1990, Herskowitz 1998) Nature and journalist Glausiusz (2012) Reich’s larger sex-economic theory on repeated some of these same discredited human behavior (Reich 1942, 1945, 1953a, pop-media slanders against Reich, along 1967) has also been confirmed outside of with inaccurate history. A rebuttal article clinical contexts, via anthropological cross- was submitted to Nature in response, but cultural evaluations. His therapeutic, sexual- was refused within 24 hours, the on-line reform and experimental work argued for submission also deleted, making appeals a social causation to neuroses and mental impossible. A subsequent short Letter to illness, addressing how people were driven the Editor was submitted, and was also into miserable situations by such things refused. While Nature did eventually print as traumatic childhoods, compulsive ship- their own minimalist correction of a few of wrecked marriages, multiple unplanned the errors in the Glausiusz article (anon. pregnancies, loveless ungratified sexuality, WATER 4, 72-81, November 25 2012 73 WATER and socio-economic factors (i.e., the bioelectric studies on human sexuality forbiddance of contraception or divorce, and emotions, at the University of Oslo or deep poverty) which exacerbated all Department of Psychology. (Reich 1937) His other problems. Societies that were heavily work remains unique in the field of sexual burdened with pain inflicting, pleasure research, even today, in his focus upon the destroying and sex-repressive rituals and antithesis between pleasure and anxiety, social institutions developed inevitable or parasympathetic versus sympathetic sadism and violence, which welled up nervous excitation. Reich’s specific inside individuals and entire cultures. Such experiments were recently confirmed in an emotive content was typically scapegoated investigation undertaken at the University and periodically expressed in the outbreak of Vienna. (Hebenstreit 2010) of aggressive wars or ethnic genocides. These relationships as detailed by Reich Reich’s discovery of the bions, transitional for Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet micro-vesicles standing between the worlds Union (Reich 1945, 1946, 1953a) were of the living and non-living, provided systematically evaluated and confirmed critical clues on the origins of life question. in later years, by two separate and robust (Reich 1938) Bions could be produced from cross-cultural studies applying standard either disintegrating organic materials, or ethnographic data as widely used for social from incandescently heated rock, sand or theory testing. (Prescott 1975, DeMeo 1986, metal powders which were then plunged 1991, 2006) The largest of these studies, into sterile nutrient broths, with additional undertaken at the University of Kansas by freezing and thawing. Today the bions would DeMeo (1986, 2006), reviewed 63 different be classified as extremophiles or possibly variables for over 1100 individual world Archaea, while for biological processes cultures, and revealed a high degree of his bionous disintegration discovery positive correlation for factors predicted by finds parallels in the modern concept Reich’s theory to be coherent and causally of apoptosis. His findings on bionous associated. High-violence societies are disintegration of inorganic materials, such characterized by high levels of infant as sand, rock and metals, pre-dated similar trauma, child-abuse, sexual repression work by modern investigators of biogenesis and subordination of women. Low-violence and astrobiology, and anticipated such societies have low levels of trauma, abuse discoveries as the deep-ocean hydrothermal and repression, with a more equal status for vents, or life-like structures in Martian women. World maps developed from the meteorites. These findings also lay at the variables in that study revealed additional foundation of Reich’s later work on the new geographical-historical findings, cancer process (Reich 1948, Dew 1981), and notably in how the world regions of large also provided a bridge into the discovery of harsh deserts (Sahara, Arabia, Central Asia) the orgone energy. The bion experimental are characterized by the highest global proofs have been widely repeated under levels of social violence and war within sterile conditions, with many published their tribal subsistence-level cultures. The microphotos of the bions. (duTeil 1938, geographical patterns thereby affirmed Grad 1955, Dew 1989, Shanahan 1993, Reich, in that human violence did not Snyder 1997, DeMeo 2002a) develop from anything genetic or inherent to the human species. Unfortunately, Reich’s therapy methods, sexual theories, bioelectrical experiments Reich also undertook the first-ever and bion discoveries were all slandered and WATER 4, 72-81, November 25 2012 74 WATER WATER attacked in the German