Controversial orgasm theorist regaining scientific favour

Soumya Sarkar
Indo-Asian News Service
Dec. 13, 2007

New Delhi, Nov 15 - Half a century after he died in ignominy in a US prison, physician-scientist Wilhelm Reich - best known for his claim of a cosmic life force associated with sexual orgasm - is on his way to being rehabilitated by the scientific community.

On the 50th anniversary of his death, the Jewish Museum in Vienna, Austria, is holding a major retrospective of his life and works beginning Thursday.

'It is very meaningful to me that the museum in Vienna is honouring him,' Reich's granddaughter Renata Reich Moise, a midwife and painter based in Maine in the US, told IANS on e-mail. She is in Vienna to attend the inauguration.

The American Psychoanalytic Association (APA) describes Reich, who studied under Sigmund Freud, 'one of the most brilliant, creative and controversial of the pioneering analysts'. He was the first to focus on character analysis rather than neurotic symptoms.

Today, a small number of scientists are working to advance the psychoanalyst's work on what he called 'orgone energy'.

Reich even invented a device he called an orgone energy accumulator. He believed it could charge the body with essential life energy, heightening vitality and helping to heal disease, including cancer.

'It is a matter of truth in my life that it (orgone energy) functions,' said Reich Moise.

'I use various types (small and large accumulators) on a nearly daily basis. I have no need to try to convince anyone, I just know that any burn heals immediately and using the blanket style (accumulator) for several minutes each day gives me great energy, happiness and clarity of mind, even when I have been up all night delivering babies.'

Reich linked a healthy sex life to emotional wellness, believing that failure to discharge sexual energy resulted in neurotic disorders. His work influenced Fritz Perls' popular gestalt therapy and Arthur Janov's primal therapy.

Reich developed a theory in the 1930s that the ability to feel sexual love depended on a physical ability to make love with what he called 'orgastic potency'.

He attempted to measure the male orgasm, noting that four distinct phases occurred physiologically: first, the psychosexual build-up or tension; second, the tumescence of the penis, with an accompanying 'charge', which Reich measured electrically; third, an 'electrical discharge' at the moment of orgasm; and fourth, the relaxation of the penis.

Reich believed the force that he measured was a distinct type of energy present in all life forms and later called it orgone.