"Orgone" is the name given by the research scientist and physician, Wilhelm Reich, M.D., to the cosmic life energy which he discovered between 1936 and 1939 in Norway.

 

As Dr.Reich wrote in 1952: "The existence of a specific kind of energy which directs and maintains LIFE has been theoretically assumed for a long time by many natural philosophers and scientists. Wilhelm Reich succeeded in connecting known facts and in finding new facts which he coordinated with the known facts in such a manner that the existence of a specific life energy became concretely demonstrable, usable and measurable."

Dr.Reich was able to demonstrate on a scientific basis that orgone energy exists both within the living organism and outside, in the atmosphere. The colour of this cosmic, life energy is BLUE, and this explains the blueness of the sky: "Classical physics tries to explain the blueness of the sky by the scattering of the blue end of the spectral colour series in the gaseous atmosphere. However, it is a fact that blue is the colour seen in all functions which are related to the cosmic or atmospheric or organismic orgone energy." (W.Reich)

 

Orgone energy is luminescent and can be seen moving about in a completely darkened room. It is: "..patterned like slow-moving fog, i.e., more or less evenly dispersed, with ever-changing, thread-like concentrations. If excited in any way, e.g., by the presence of living organisms or electromagnetic energy, the concentrations increase in density and speed; they appear in the completely darkened room as heavy streaks changing into bright, fast-moving, yellowish sparks."

Invented by Wilhelm Reich in 1940, in the U.S.A., the Orgone Energy Accumulator is: "..an instrument assembled and materially arranged in such a manner that LIFE ENERGY, present in the atmosphere of our planet, can be collected, accumulated, and made usable for scientific, educational, and medical purposes."

 

It is a cabinet made in six pieces, layered with organic and metallic material, in such a way that the organic matter is toward the outside and the metallic toward the inside. This allows orgone to be directed into the accumulator from the outside, due to the absorbing/holding of organic matter and the attracting/reflecting of metallic material with respect to orgone.

[*The quotes in this brief introduction to the subject are from 'The Orgone Accumulator: It's Medical and Scientific Use' by Wilhelm Reich (Orgone Institute Press, 1951). Many books by Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957) have been published - at least a few are currently in print, others can be obtained from The Wilhelm Reich Museum, libraries, secondhand bookshops etc.]

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Kate Bush On Wilhelm Reich

CLOUDBUSTING

"This doesnt mean that Kate's words are less important than her music. If they seem hard to understand, that's because there's often quite a story behind them. In the case of 'Cloudbusting', it's a whole book...

'It's not very often that I have actually written songs about books. 'Wuthering Heights' is a well-known one. But there's this incredibly emotional book I picked up years ago called The Book Of Dreams by Peter Reich. He was the son of Wilhelm Reich, who I suppose you'd call a psychoanalyst. This book is about their relationship. Reich had this theory about an energy called Orgone. He also had a machine he'd built that could make it rain. It's a terribly sad book because people don't understand what he's trying to do. He ends up being arrested and dies soon after - and his son is left without his father who has been absolutely everything to him. It's a true story. The book's so full of anguish, yet at the same time there's something happy about it. I very much wanted to capture the combination of happiness and sadness in the song.'

Now that Kate explains it, it's possible to see some light in the song's mysterious phrases: "I still dream of Organon...Every time it rains, you're here in my head...your son's coming out..."

But does Kate seriously think any of her listeners will understand it without the explanation?

'Well, I think it's incredible, the feedback that I've got,' she replies. 'So many people do understand it. I've had letters from so many people who know about Wilhelm Reich and his theories. Loads of people have gone out and got the book - even though it's out of print. I actually contacted the man who wrote the book. I sent him a copy of the record and he was very kind about it. It was a very strange experience.'"

[From an interview with Phil McNeill, published in The No.1 Book 1987]

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Entry in 'Twentieth Century Authors - A Biographical Dictionary - First Supplement 1955':

*REICH, WILHELM (March 24,1897- ), the father of "Orgonomy. . . the science of cosmic Orgone Energy," for years a storm center in the combined fields of psychotherapy and biophysics, was born in Austria, the son of a well-to-do farmer. A childhood spent on his father's farm, close to the natural rhythms of plant and animal breeding, reinforced his later, adult insistence upon the unitary nature of all being and the strictly biological and sexual bases of man's emotional life.

After obtaining his M.D. from the University of Vienna in 1922, Dr.Reich undertook postgraduate work in neuropsychiatry. Vienna was in the early 1920's experiencing the tumultuous birth pangs of the new science of psychoanalysis. Dr.Reich early identified himself with this movement; in 1920 he attained membership in the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, under Sigmund Freud. He was Freud's first clinical assistant at the Psychoanalytic Polyclinic from its foundation in 1922 until 1928; and was subsequently closely identified with other psychoanalytic centers. From 1927 through 1930, Wilhelm Reich wrote and lectured extensively on the social orgin of the neuroses at mental hygiene centers in Vienna, and continued this work in Berlin until the rise of Hitler forced him to flee Germany in 1933. One product of his early thinking along the lines of sex reform was his book The Sexual Revolution (English Edition). In 1946 the first English translation of his Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933) appeared.

After 1934 it was apparent that Reich was no longer moving with the mainstream of psychoanalysis; and he was excluded from the International Psychoanalytic Association. He was later invited by the Norwegian association to re-enter, but refused to do so. However, much of his early work has by now been at least partly absorbed, like the ideas developed in his book Character Analysis, in which the rigidity and blockings of the neurotic character were shown to be reflected in the body in various types of spasms and muscular armoring.

In Denmark, where he first settled in his flight from Germany, and later in Norway, Dr.Reich lectured on the need for greater sexual freedom and continued his experimental work on the bio-electrical nature of sexual impulses; and he has elaborated and extended the scope of these studies since coming to the United States in 1939. For the first two years after arriving in this country he lectured at the New School and established an Orgone Energy Laboratory at Forest Hills, N.Y. This laboratory now has a permanent home in "Orgonon," in the Rangeley Lakes district of Maine.

The Function of the Orgasm contains the heart of Dr.Reich's theories of "orgastic potency." In this book, he pursues the idea that the ability to experience a complete sexual orgasm, and the resulting release from nervous tension, is always lacking in neurotic individuals (i.e., nearly everybody brought up in contemporary "repressive" cultures). The healing of neurotics is to be accomplished by substituting for the "character armoring" that constricts them an un-neurotic set of traits known as the "genital character." The necessity of not repressing childhood sexuality is stressed as a means of preventing neuroses in future generations.

The Cancer Biopathy (1948) carries on the experimental work on "orgone energy," the basic form of "primordial cosmic energy," which permeates the universe and governs all living matter. Re-charged in the individual at the moment of orgasm, the stasis of orgone energy results in a host of diseases which afflict modern man, including, notably, cancer. On the social level, the failure to achieve the genital character results in "emotional plague," a wide range of destructive tendencies culminating in totalitarianism and nuclear warfare (cf. his Listen, Little Man!, 1948).

Any further attempts to present the impact of Dr.Reich's writings must refer to the special, highly private vocabulary he has evolved with his "new science of Orgonomy." Whether, as adverse critics have maintained, this consists in an attempt to pour old wine into new scientific test-tubes, or whether a fresh modulation of contemporary vocabulary is really necessary in order for new scientific concepts to assert themselves (as the word "libido," "id," "repression," accompanied Freud's explorations into man's nature) is only one example of the type of problems that Dr.Reich's controversial work awakens.

Dr.Reich is powerful-looking with a thatch of white hair and the massive shoulders of a man who has done physical labor in his youth.

PRINCIPAL WORKS IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION: The Sexual Revolution, 1945; The Function of the Orgasm (revised ed.), 1948; The Cancer Biopathy, 1948; Listen, Little Man! 1948; Character Analysis (revised ed.), 1949; Ether, God and Devil, 1951; The Oranur Experiment, 1951; Cosmic Superimposition, 1951.

ABOUT: Fenichel, O. The Psychoanalytic Theory of Neurosis; Fliess, R. The Psychoanalytic Reader, 1948; Bibliography on Orgonomy 1920-52 (Orgone Institute Press) 1953; New Republic May 26, 1947; New York Post Magazine September 5, 1954.

Note: For comprehensive information, the reader is referred to the Orgone Institute Press, Rangeley, Me., publishing house of the Wilhelm Reich Foundation, which is preparing extensive biographical material on Wilhelm Reich's life and work.

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