The Orgasm Theory and Orgone

Dr. Wilhelm Reich, M.D., (1897-1957) was the founder of somatic psychology. (Somatic means relating to the body and not just the psyche.)

He recognised a powerful universal life energy and found ways to measure, capture and use this energy, which he called orgone.

Orgone was closely related to sexuality and grew out of Reich’s fascination with libido. He chose the name to form an association with the word orgasm. Reich believed libido is also a physical, biological energy and he believed orgasmic impotency (the inability to experience a full orgasmic release) because of blocked emotions and sexual repression leads to mental illness and neurosis. He also believed orgasmic potency (the experience of a full orgasmic release) alleviates these symptoms and represents optimum well being.

Reich became a prominent student of Sigmund Freud, the founder and father of psychoanalysis. (The study of human psychological patterns, functions and behaviours.) He was considered Freud’s “favourite son.”

But Reich later came to disagree with Freud. He felt psychoanalysis theory was well developed but often produced no cure. It could go on for years without result. And when there was a cure people didn’t always know why. Reich felt there was a basic mistake in the “I think…I am” approach, in that it was all about the mind. Reich believed what’s going on inside a person’s head is accurately reflected in their body.

He felt you can’t change your thoughts at a basic level without changing your body, your external world, what you do. He couldn’t understand why psychoanalysts refused to pay attention to a person’s observable behaviour. (Focusing instead on dreams and the sub-conscious.) Reich’s approach is called Character Analysis.

Reich wondered why people resisted, in life, in sex and in therapy.

In psychoanalysis he noted people gave the same information again and again. Going round in circles.

He wondered why they resisted awareness. Breaking this pattern of resistance was the first step in his therapy. Unless it was challenged, he believed the pattern of resistance would hold the neurotic behaviour in place, even after it’s meaning was understood.

Then once the patient was aware of how they resisted awareness they could choose to carry on like that, or go inside, at a pace that suited them.

Reich also noticed resistance was held in the body. He could see it in the way a person walked. Or moved. How they breathed. Laughed. Held themselves. He called this armouring.

Reich saw optimum health as a full-body emotional response to life. Armouring may deaden pain. But it also deadens joy.

He saw that a character structure built as a defence against the environment can imprison us. We carry out the same stereotypical reactions again and again. He called this Characterololgical Armouring. He believed this is due to a conflict between what we want to do, and what we think we ought to do.

But he believed armouring also exists on a physical level, body armouring. Muscular armouring.

The theory is a muscular armour is developed to keep potentially explosive emotions in. (Especially rage, anxiety and sexual excitation.) And to ward off the emotions of others. People who have developed armouring rarely see it that way. Reich noted men, in particular, have difficulty taking their armour off as they have become so used to suppressing feelings and emotions.

Character armouring and muscular armouring work the same way. Character armouring is the sum total of all the years a person has spent their life living this way, this attitude has become incorporated into their character.

Reich said the longer it goes on the more likely physical problems will set in, such as cancer, arthritis, rheumatism. And the more likely psychological problems will occur.

Armouring also affects libido. “Where instead of being soft and gentle the sexual experience sex becomes hard and brutal.”

Reich described full orgastic potency as the ability to surrender without any inhibition. He said this is almost always lacking in neurotic individuals. Men may boast about how many times a night they can perform. But without feeling the completeness of a full body orgasm the sexual release leaves people feeling empty, dissatisfied. Women may be left feeling guilty.

For Reich ejaculation alone was not enough to be called an orgasm.

An orgasm is complete and full release of emotional and sexual excitation.

Before orgasm both the man and the woman experience involuntary muscular movements. (Spontaneous orgasm.) A deep and delicious current runs up and down the body. (Total body orgasm.) This is a sign the lovers are free of armouring. Otherwise these sensations are cut off and climax is limited to the loins only. It is not felt as a full body experience.

Reich saw this ability to loose ourselves completely in sexual ecstasy as the ultimate measure of well being.

It requires the ability to give love fully and receive love fully. Love in all it’s forms. Reich saw this as being essential.

His goal was to restore this natural, vibrant, loving, sensuality. The ability to completely let go. Which he saw as a primal human instinct.

Freud’s theory was neurosis stems from natural sexual instincts and the social denial and frustration of those instincts.

To resolve this conflict Freud argued culture should take precedence and sexuality should be adapted to social tradition.

Reich took the opposite view.

He said “You have to revamp your whole way of thinking, so you don’t think from the standpoint of the state and the culture, but from the standpoint of what people need and what they suffer from. Then you arrange your social institutions accordingly.”

This difference of opinion eventually led to the breakdown of their relationship.

Reich also disagreed with Freud on the concept of libido.

In his earlier work Freud described libido as, “Something capable of increase, decrease, displacement and discharge, and which extends itself over the memory-traces an idea like an electricity charge over the surface of the body.”

But in later years he concluded libido is a psychological concept. Essentially an idea. Reich argued it was more than just an idea. To him libido wasn’t just psychic energy, it was a real physical energy which could possibly be measured.

“It is sexual energy which governs the structure of human thinking and feeling.” Reich said.

For Reich libido is a biological sexual energy, which builds up in the body quite naturally. When it builds up too much it stagnates and fuels neurotic disorders.

Reich saw the function of the total orgasm as the way the body discharges this energy and maintains a healthy  equilibrium.

When this energy is not adequately released it causes rage. Which the person then tries to suppress. Using armouring techniques. Which causes further inability to fully express and release the sexual energy. And instead of being meaningful, natural and loving, sex becomes brutal and mechanical. And the ejaculation does not fulfill the person. Or it’s natural purpose.

Reich believed deep sexual satisfaction alleviated neurotic symptoms. (Sexual healing.) He believed a full orgasm maintains balance and a sense of inner peace.

Seeing widespread misery among humanity Reich concluded prevention was better than cure. So he worked to promote awareness of the importance of getting in touch with, and expressing, a deeper, more loving sense of sexuality. (Sensuality.)

Reich went on to educate working class people about sexuality and about the importance of sexuality in their lives. He had six clinics in Vienna. To reach more people he worked with the Socialist and Communist parties promoting sex education. (Along with birth control, divorce rights and better housing.)

During this time Reich also developed therapeutic techniques. He wanted to discover what interfered with, or prevented the flow and discharge of this energy. How to eliminate those blockages. Restore the natural flow and equilibrium, restoring peace and harmony. And optimum well being.

He researched the concept of a physical, biological energy expressed in emotions.

He discovered  a charge on the skin’s surface, which related directly to feelings of pleasure and anxiety.

This charge increased when his patients felt pleasure.

And decreased when they felt anxiety.

He also noticed pleasure is a flow of energy moving from the centre towards the outside. And anxiety is the movement of this energy from the outside towards the centre.

Reich’s model, or way of thinking of the personality, is like a circle.

At the centre is a natural sexuality, capacity for Love, spontaneous enjoyment of life and a natural sociability.

The next level (the next layer of the onion, if you like) relates to Freud’s unconscious.

All perversions live in this level, including sadism, greed, envy etc.

The outer ring, or circle, relates to control. Including compulsiveness, insincerity and false sociability (cocktail party conversation). This relates to Jung’s concept of persona.

So, according to Reich, our basic nature, at the core, is loving and spontaneous, relating to pleasurable feelings, which naturally flow outwards, flowing through the body. And these feelings, this energy can be measured on the skin’s surface, scientifically.

If we don’t trust our basic nature, or the basic nature of others, we will try to exert strong measures of control.

Reich believed this mind body split (where the person is disconnected from the core energy) causes us to destroy ourselves, each other and our planet. He believes this is what allows us to go to war.

In his study of Nazi Germany Reich asked why did people support the Nazi’s?

The Nazi agenda was not economically beneficial to lower middle class Germany, so what was it about the fascist ideology that people found so compelling?

He found it was the combination of a desire to comply and rebel. (The Ego Delusion.) People admired strongly authoritarian people above them who were also rebellious. (Like Hitler and Stalin). In this way they could both rebel (identify with a sense of rebellion) and submit at the same time.

Freud postulated man’s basic nature is aggressive and destructive. That at our core level we want to rape and murder. That you can’t trust people.

Reich said Freud thought he had found the core nature of humanity, but he hadn’t gone far enough, he had only taken the first step. That there’s a deeper level to humanity and life. While Freud thought he had discovered a Universal pattern, Reich disagreed.

Reich continued to explore and expand his vision of libido. In his subsequent work he argued this energy exists not only in the body, but outside it as well. He defined it as, ”A subtle biophysical energy which permeates all living things.” It Permeates all space in different concentrations, taken into the body through breathing.

He coined the phrase “Orgone” probably from org- “impulse, excitement,” the same root as  org-asm, plus -one, the same root as ozone.

He now started to see this energy as a Universal (cosmic) life giving (sexual) energy.

Reich’s concept of orgone is similar to the Hindu concept of prana and the chakra system. Or the Chinese concept of chi. Or the ancient ideas of  ”vital force” and “aether” combined.

Having identified this energy in his patients as an emotional-sexual energy he found, under a microscope,  grass, blood, sand, charcoal and foodstuffs displayed small vesicles (bubbles of liquid within the cells). They were often blueish in colour. They pulsated, showing the effect of energy.

He called these vesicles bions, after the Greek word for life.

He then went on to discover these bions could kill bacteria and cancer cells.

He later observed this energy as a blueish aura around trees, mountain ranges and spoke of orgone existing as a free from in the atmosphere. He talked about an “envelope” of blueish energy around the earth. Which satellite photographs later confirmed.

Reich developed boxes which attracted orgone from the atmosphere, so there was a higher concentration of orgone within the box, which he called the orgone  energy accumulator . When plants were placed in an accumulator they grew more quickly.

Cuts and burns were healed more quickly.

He built accumulators large enough to hold humans, and because his results with cancer mice were so promising, he treated terminally ill caner patients. He offered no cure and took no money for this. The pain his patients were suffering from was eased. Their blood condition healthier. They gained weight and tumours were shrunk and eliminated. Despite this they still died.

The next stage of his work involved another way to harness orgone energy from the atmosphere, with the creation of his cloudbuster. This experimental instrument gathered orgone, and by sending it into the atmosphere he could both create and dissipate clouds.

His most notable experiment was in 1953 when a drought hit the Maine region of the USA and local farmers offered to pay him if he could bring rain. No rain was forecast. Ten hours after Reich began his cloudbusting experiments a light rain began to fall. Over the next few days nearly two inches of rain came down. The crops were saved and the local farmers credited Reich for this.

Reich said, “I am well aware of the fact that the human race has known about the existence of a universal energy related to life for many ages. However, the basic task of natural science consisted in making this energy usable. This is the sole difference between my work and all preceding knowledge.”

References:

• Orgone Biophysical Research Lab/a brief history of Wilhelm Reich’s Discoveries and the Developing Science of Orgonomy
• Wikipedia/Orgone
• Wikipedia/Wilhelm Reich
• Google Videos/Man’s Right To Know
• “The Language of the Body” by Alexander Lowen, M.D.