PROJETORGONE,
in its heading and its presentation,
fact explicitly reference to the orgone and Wilhelm Reich.
What the orgone ?
The word " orgone " means : Vital energy,
manifestation of the energy of the life.
It is a creation of Wilhelm Reich.
Who is Wilhelm Reich, which is its works, which are its discoveries ?
Wilhelm Reich not having written an autobiography nor memories.
many people noted what they knew of him and of its life.
Some of these scattered documents are found on the Web.
This document is an assembly of my notes, with a compilation
information, ideas, sentences, elements, notes,
collected among the few 1500 sites of the Net which speak about it,
the whole decorated with sauce of my subjectivity
Doctor,
psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, sociologist, man having approached the policy for
then demolishing itself some, teacher, researcher, Wilhelm Reich offer a vast
and complex work to us, very whole round towards the man and the promptness
of the life.
Born
on March 24, 1897 in Dobrzanica/Galicie (Austria), in a Jewish family, it starts
in Vienna of the studies of right, then is directed towards medicine. It obtains
its diploma in 1922. It discovers the psychoanalysis in 1919 and decides to
be devoted to sexology. In March 1922, it marries Annie Pink who will become
itself a psychoanalyst of reputation. Together, they will have two girls, Eva
(1924) and Lore (1928).
Raise
very early appreciated then dissenting of Freud, this one being too often and
too acerbement in goal with its disciples. Nevertheless, it occupies of 1922
to 1930
the station of first assistant in the psychoanalytical polyclinic of Freud.
The test on the masochism marks the rupture of Reich with the orthodoxe
psychoanalytical doctrines. What Reich categorically rejects at Freud, it is the
assumption of the death instinct, formulated in 1920 in " Beyond the
pleasure principle ", when this one redesigns its theory of the
impulses to make it rest on the restoring torque Eros-Thanatos. In addition,
Reich gives an importance particular to the concept of pulsation of all the
organization like psychic factor of health.
Wilhelm
Reich was one of more shining and the most prolific psychoanalysts of the
generation of the years 20-30. Having known itself misery, following the war of
1914, where it engaged as officer in the Austrian army (on the Italian face),
and having confronted with various family dramas, it is interested very early in
the reasons of poverty, and the intellectual penury which accompanies it, and
actively engages in the political movements, Socialist initially, Communist then,
which were then those which were worried more problem of the impoverishment and
which enabled him to reach a greater number of people and in particular the
teenagers, in which it saw salt of the earth.
It
is registered with the Communist Party, and melts a company of research and
sexual information "SEXPOL" between 1920 and 1930. It tends to
politicize the sexual questions, seeks to develop therapeutic experiments in the
working class and, in parallel, tries
to justify the psychoanalysis with the eyes of the Marxists, at the price
of modifications incompatible with orthodoxy freudienne. Thus it allots the
neuroses to disorders of the genitality on which the orgasme has a healing and
preventive virtue (the Function of the orgasme, 1927). For him, sexual
repression plays a fundamental part in the maintenance with the capacity of the
capitalist system. The proletarian revolution must pass by the sexual release.
In 1929,
it publishes dialectic Materialism and Psychoanalysis. After a voyage in
the USSR, or it meets in particular Vera Schnidt which directs an experimental
kindergarten, it presents a report/ratio, "Psycho-analyzes und
Weltanschauung" (1930), in which it affirms that the psychoanalysis cannot
adopt an attitude of neutrality in the social fight. It encounters then openly
the irony of its fellow-members who show it "to want to trail a science in
the political arena" or "to receive orders of Moscow".
In
September 1930, it leaves to settle has Berlin, city less preserving than Vienna.
WR criticizes the organization of the family like incarnation of repressive
middle-class morals responsible for sexual and social misery (the sexual
fight of the young people, 1932; the Irruption of sexual morals, 1932).
During the rise of the hitlerism, it explains the success of the Nazis and the
failure of the German Communist Party in " Psychology of mass of
Fascism", ideology which it describes as "emotional plague" (August 1933) and
the characterial Analysis (1933), works in which it establishes the link
between orgastic impotence and Fascism.
In
1933 : January 29, catch of being able by Hitler. Wilhelm
Reich is 36 years old. Jew, Communist and psychoanalyst: 3 good reasons which force it to flee
Berlin. In Germany, the Nazis close the Centers of sexual consultation. A
warrant for arrest is lance against Reich. In Berlin one burns his books and all
the publications of Sexpol.
Reich takes refuge initially in Denmark. When it arrives to Copenhagen on May 1,
1933, the German Communist Party, of which he was member, does not have any more
a legal existence since the fire of Reichstag but the Danish bureaucrats will
make a success of nevertheless the exploit of to make it exclude the following
year. The same year 1934, it is excluded from the psychoanalytical international
assembly by E Jones, which judges it dangerously Bolshevik. The Nazis burn its
books. It will understand that there too it is considered undesirable. As one
refuses the prolongation of his residence permit to him, it moves for Sweden.
Even scenario in England, then in Sweden. Norway shows itself more lenient, it
goes to Oslo or it starts its experiments on the bioelectricity.
In
1936, it approaches the végétothérapie. In 1937, is published its orgastic
study "Reflex ".
It extends its research to the bio-electric load of the protozoa.
Research related to its design of the vital pulsation: tension - load -
discharge - relieving.
It
is also interested in the cancer, which it puts in relation to an insufficiency
of oxygenation of fabrics, an emotional blocking, an energy damning up and a
disintegration of the cells. In September, a violent smear campaign breaks out
against him. It will last until November 1938.
In
1938, it melts in Oslo the Institute of biological research of sexual economy.
But that lasts only a time. After three years of research, publication of "bione"
(Bions), study on what it considers being of the blisters of vital energy,
visible with the high-power microscope (between 2000 and 4000 times),
representing the stages of transition between the not-alive matter and the
living matter. Study which interests some scientists, whose Roger French Of
Theil, but is worth to him to be milked by much, of charlatan, insane,
psychopathe, delirious...
In
1939, it moves more and more towards the biological one and the scientist, when
it must quickly emigrate in the USA. A few days before the war does not burst,
It unloads in New York, accomodated by Theodore P. Wolfe, specialist in
psychosomatic medicine, it obtains a post office in the "New York School
for Social Reseach", where it exempts a bearing teaching on the
biophysics of the orgone, and on "the biological aspects of the formation
of the character" and
continues its research in its private laboratory.
In
1942, it buys a vast property of 80 ha in Maine, which it baptizes " Orgonon ".
It is there that is established what will become the foundation Wilhelm
Reich, within which it diversifies its research actively. IL
made there build laboratories and gathers many researchers.
It continues its research on the orgone, or cosmic vital energy, for which the
stagnation in the organization would be responsible for psychic and somatic
affections like cancer. It publishes the function of the orgasme (version
in English language, different of Die Funktion of Orgasmus of 1927),
mainly biographical work which presents a synthesis of its research by taking
for substrate the orgone.
In
1945, he writes " the sexual
revolution ", and in 1948, " Listening, small man ". (two works which will mark a
certain current of thought of the years 1960-1970)
In
1948, it publishes the third edition of the characterial analysis, method
that however it does not use already any more, inherited the psychoanalysis, and
intervenes rather by "the orgonthérapie",
based on the bio-energy of the emotions. It is in this third edition that
is integrated, with other important texts (whose "emotional plague "),
"the expressive language of the life", major article which does
not appear in the original edition of January 1933 and in which Reich studies in
a
systematic way celebrates it segmentary
provision of the armour. C`est that Reich meanwhile developed the bond between
orgasmic energy and psychic energy.
In 1949, he writes " ether, God and the
devil " .
In
1950, it creates, in New York, "Orgone Energy Clinic", intended
for the tracking of the energy diseases (biopathies), and "Orgonomic
Infant Research Center", dedicated to the study of the child from the
antenatal stage to adolescence.
December 15, begins experiment "ORANUR" (Orgonotic
Anti-Nuclear Radiation). Reich locks up a radioactive radium needle in one
of its accumulators. The object is to check if the concentrated orgone can
counter the mortifères effects atomic radiations. The following year,
experiment ORANUR continues (December 1950 at May 1951).
Itself and its assistants, which his/her Eva girl, leave there sick. It continues
its work on bions, blisters in charge of electric power, the protoplasm, the
biopathy of cancer and the means of increasing the resistance of the patient
using the accumulators of orgone. It
writes " the cosmic superposition ".
In
1952, construction of first Cloudbuster (break-cloud) intended to act through
the atmospheric orgone on the concentration or the dissipation of clouds.
Experimentation of Monday July 6, 1953 in Hancock. The
local newspapers announce several unhoped-for rains. October the 18 and 19, a
representative of the Files Sigmund Freud, Kurk Eissler, comes to interview it.
During two long conversations taken with the tape recorder it discusses its work
and its relations with Freud. It will result a very alive book from it: " Reich
speaks about Freud " .
The
work of Reich ends up drawing the attention of the authorities. The same year,
with the collaboration ofMedical American Association
and the American psychiatric mediums, Food and Drug Administration
orders an investigation against Reich and its foundation, convinced
that the accumulators of orgone, the covers and the funnels undermine the health
of the credulous patients, while drawing aside them from the traditional medical
care for which they would have the greatest need. Thus they prohibit in Reich to
dispatch its inventions with the 4 corners of the United States. Reich refuses
to appear before the court, because according to him its work concerns a
fundamental Natural Research which is with itself its own
justification, and does not have consequently to be defended in front of an
unspecified jurisdiction.
March
19, 1954, a decision of court is made in its opposition by defect. Thereafter,
Wilhelm Reich is shown of contempt of court to have refused to conform to this
injunction. Continued by a court in May 1956, it is severely punished. In a
completely unusual judgement, the State of Maine orders the destruction by the
fire of its writings. Condemned to two years of
detention and a fine of 10000 $ for insult at the court, because one of its assistant was stopped
at the time of the displacement of a delitor of cloud to more than 1000 km from
there, Wilhelm Reich is imprisoned on March 12, 1957 with the federal
penitentiary of Danbury, Connecticut. The 22, one transfer it to that from
Lewisburg in Pennsylvania where it goes voluntary to follow a protocol of
medicamentous experimentation, in order to see reducing its sorrow. Any prison
destroyed, very as much as these blasted medicamentous experiments, this one
will still kill: Wilhelm Reich will die there in the night of November 3 1957 of
a pulmonary embolism.
Reich
will be the object during all its life, of criticisms most virulent. They will
cause to make forget the large pioneer who it will have been in the field of
research on the libido, with the profit of a sulfurous image, which had
mainly with his m?urs extremely free and the fact that it cultivated
indiscipline.
In
2004, sexual repression always prevails, ordered by more or less rigid morals,
repression whose women are the first victims. In the rich countries, the
liberalization of the m?urs is expressed especially by a flood of images of
naked women and impressed speeches of an hedonism compatible with the social
order. But the persistence of violence, as well in the practices as in the
phantasms, shows as if the modernistic companies have, at them, sometimes made
move back social misery a little, sexual misery remains the thing best divided.
The?uvre
of Wilhelm Reich is dense and multiple, also it is
usually divided into three successive periods :
1)
of 1919 to 1927, the psychoanalytical period, during which it works
closely at the sides of Freud. (Die Function of Orgasmus 1927)
2) of 1928 to 1938, one period freudo-Marxist where, very socially committed,
it makes a success of a synthesis of the contributions of Freud and Marx within
what it calls the Democracy of work.
3) of 1938 to 1957, one period orgonale (the energy of the life) in which
the essence of its work is devoted to a research deepened on the phenomenon of
living and on vital energy emanate from what it named orgone: incredibly cosmic
life (the cosmic superposition.)
This
division, for diagrammatic and arbitrary that it is, has the merit to show us,
of a blow of?il, the evolution of the activity of Wilhelm Reich of which,
unquestionable thing, it with itself unceasingly, throughout its research,
revalued the results obtained.
Today,
the therapeutic heritage reichien is divided into three principal currents:
·
the current orgonomic to which the analysis reichienne is attached, with
a colour more analytical than that of other schools;
·
the current bioenergetic
·
a third, more difficult to encircle considering than it gathers the
personal capital contributions of various continuators who often gave new names
to their practices, without same always recognizing what they must with W Reich
OooooOOOooooo
The
starting point of the search for
Wilhelm Reich is the Freudienne psychoanalysis. It makes the junction between
the psychoanalysis of Freud and the economic criticism of Karl Marx, after
having seized the coherence and the sagacity of each of the two thoughts. Free
man it was disappointed by the evolution of the Russian Communism, of which it
denounced the shapes of "red Fascism" and the authoritative company,
large provider of emotional and material sufferings, of which it denounces also "black
Fascism".
WR
exposes a vision of the company which, to be able to have the seizure on the
individual, tends to repress sexuality (First theories on the orgasme in 1922).
Its theory of the impulses is more physiological than psychic. One admits work
of Reich as being at the origin of all the analytical steps integrating body
dimension.
In
1927 W Reich advances daring
assumptions in " Génitalité in the theory and the therapy of the
neuroses ". This work, as well as other writings, cause a
rupture with the school freudienne. It
has the idea to associate the touch the word and thus shows the importance of
the body in the psychic cure. Its research leads it to question the taboo of
sexuality and to highlight "the function of the orgasme"
like psychic and social regulator. Its vision of the energy body is then a
revolutionist. It creates a body geography organized in zones of tensions,
muscular and postural memory of emotional blockings. These seven rings of tension are, from
top to bottom the segments : eyepiece, oral examination, cervical, thoracic,
abdominal and pelvic. This "muscular and characterial armour"
testifies to the history of the individual and melts "the
reading of the body".
In
the core of any neurosis it discovers a repression of the sexual needs (emotional)
which begins dice childhood. According to the moment and the intensity of the
repression of the instinctual needs by the entourage for the child, the various
characterial structures are constituted which it will call: "characterial
armours". The restoration of the orgastic power is
the condition necessary to make disappear the symptoms nevrotic or the
psychosomatic diseases. It draws up the relationship between the characterial
and body armours, and the psychic disorders. It develops the "végétothérapie",
therapy body which is at the base of the current body therapies (like the primal
scream or bio-energy).
W
Reich made of research in biology, isolates an alive energy, "the
energy of orgone", present in any cell and existing at all the
levels of the universe (in the cellular beings most primitive, at the man, in
cosmos...). The life would be for him, with the orgone and bions them, like a
unit of material substance and energy present in each cell.
W
Reich rejects the death instinct (Thanatos, opposed to Eros, life instinct),
which, according to him, means the abandonment of the concept founder and
exchange in psychoanalysis: sexuality. It also denies the universality of the
complex of Oedipus because in its eyes sexual repression is not essential with
the development of the social life, repression and sublimation being used only
to maintain the system capitalist (dialectic Materialism and psychoanalysis,
1929). "In the sexual fight of the young people" 1932, it tackles
marital morals and the family, persons in charge for sexual misery and the
unjust and authoritative company. He is the first psychoanalyst to pose the
problem of socio-economic in the genesis of the psychic disorders.