Orgone

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For the record label, see Orgone Recordings.

Orgone energy is a term coined by physician and psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich for the "universal life energy" that he described in published experiments in the late 1930s. Reich said that orgone energy filled all space, was blue in color, and that certain forms of illness were the consequence of depletion or blockages of the energy within the body. These claims are regarded as "nonsense" by some members of the scientific community,^[1] but certainly this is not uniformly the case. Reich was hotly attacked by his critics, and, following a court case, his books and scientific journals on the subject were collected and burned by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (in 1956 and 1960).^[2]

Concepts similar to orgone are life force, élan vital, Prana, ch'i or qi, subtle body, etheric body, odic force, and animal magnetism. Many adherents of New Age movements believe that these energies can be harnessed and used for healing and other beneficial effects.

1 Use and reception
2 Further reading
3 References
4 See also
5 External links
- 5.1 Advocates
- 5.2 Critical

[edit] Use and reception

Psychotherapists and Medical practitioners both within and outside the United States sometimes use Reich's emotion-release methods, and even his orgone accumulator as part of their therapy. Reich claimed that life was founded upon bioenergetic phenomenon, and characterized by the pulsation of bioenergy, as with heart-beat, respiration, and bladder functions. Emotions and sexuality, he argued, also followed a basic bioenergetic pulsation, and optimal health necessitated open emotional expression and periodic sexual release of accumulated bio-energy. He claimed to have measured emotional-sexual energy as a specific "bio-electric" life-energy, using sensitive millivoltmeters, which he interpreted to be an expression of something more fundamental than merely the millivolts of electricity. He later observed and developed objective measures to identify energetic fields around humans and other living forms, including microbes, and claimed the same bio-energy also charged non-living matter, and existed in a free form in the atmosphere. He argued the orgone bore a similarity to the older concept of cosmological ether. The orgone accumulator was developed as a means to objectivly capture this energy from the atmosphere, and later was found to have both anomalous biological and physical effects. He experimentally evaluated the clinical effects of the orgone accumulator, on people and lab animals, often observing powerful healing effects, and he developed new experiments to objectively document the anomalies. Reich also designed a device called the "cloudbuster", which he claimed could disperse clouds and produce rain. His scientific work spread across many disciplines. For most of his life, even while attracting groups of professional supporters and publishing a great number of experimental and clinical reports, he was attacked and hounded for his work.

Reich's orgone theory is frequently noted as a typical example of pseudoscience in discussions of that subject. Some of his advocates counter that it should be regarded as a protoscience rather than a pseudoscience, and assert that Reich's experiments followed the scientific method.^[3] Others are outright insistent that Reich made solid and important scientific discoveries, which have been unfairly maligned by non-scientific attackers in the popular press. Some of his critics, meanwhile, insist that Reich's many experiments were seriously flawed in design; that his results have proved unrepeatable when the experiments are properly designed; and that his conclusions were, therefore, untenable. What are the facts?

An unbiased review indicates that Reich's work was, in fact, repeatedly validated by scientists and clinicians working both in private institutes and universities, often holding the top academic degrees, and applying scientific methods in either clinical case-studies or controlled experiments. For example, the on-line "Bibliography on Orgonomy" lists well over 1000 of the original published books and journal articles of Wilhelm Reich and his associates, for both the European and American periods of his work. An equal number of additional citations are given as carried out in the years after Reich's death in 1957. While most of those citations focus upon Reich's psychotherapy methods, approximately half of them address experimentally the biophysical aspects of his claims, such as the microscopical bions, the orgone energy accumulator (studies on lab animals, plant and human clinical studies), various aspects of orgone physics (such as the controversial thermal anomaly in the orgone accumulator), and even documented field experiments with the cloudbuster. A separate listing is also provided of only Dissertations and Theses focused upon Reich's ideas, as undertaken at American and European universities. While the terms employed by Reich appear superficially strange to those who might hear them for the first time, orgone energy finds theoretical resonance in todays astrophysics which views space as filled with energetic substrata -- be it "dark matter", or a "sea of neutrinos", or "cosmic plasma". His larger findings on the microscopical bions (which resemble various protocells or micro-vesicular forms widely discussed by biogenesis researchers), on cancer research, and even on the possibility of a human energy field (considered "bio-electromagnetic" by some biologists and physicians) go to the core of unanswered questions still being thrashed out today by classical biology and medicine. In short, his work remains as relevant and controversial today as it was in the period 1930s-1950s.

Aside from the many published studies by scientists and physicians in journals friendly to, or at least tolerant of Reich, there have also been a growing number of articles appearing in more mainstream venues. The early "blackout" on such research was not an unexpected consequence of the original media smear campaign and FDA attack directed against Reich in the 1940s and 50s. Open research on Reich's bioenergetic research became a taboo subject within the academic world, while medical societies and the powerful FDA did their best to suppress application of his methods by health practitioners. By the 1960s, however, even the more "outlandish" of Reich's claims came under scientific study within mainstream universities. The 1970s work of James DeMeo at the University of Kansas, "Preliminary Analysis of Changes in Kansas Weather Coincidental to Experimental Operations of the Reich Cloudbuster" ^[4] made a thorough-going field testing of one of Reich's most controversial claims, regarding the cloudbuster. His results demonstrated systematic changes in Kansas weather when it was used according to the original protocols of Reich. DeMeo later made a systematic global cross-cultural study of social-behavioral responses to climate and severe desert conditions, which also validated Reich's theories.^[5] In addition to the many controlled studies evaluating the effects of the orgone energy accumulator on cancer mice and plant growth, as found in the above-noted "Bibliography", two double-blind controlled studies of the orgone energy accumulator have also been undertaken on human subjects. One of these, a 1986 study at the University of Marburg by Dr. Stefan Muschenich and Rainer Gebauer, "The Psycho-Physiological Effects of the Reich Orgone Accumulator"^[6] confirmed the basic biological stimulus of the orgone accumulator on test subjects in keeping with Reich's original descriptions -- slight increase in body core temperature, lowering of blood pressure, increased pulse, greater peripheral blood flow, etc. -- while a control "dummy box" showed no such effects. A follow-up 1995 confirmation study, also double-blinded and controlled of similar design was undertaken at the University of Vienna, by Guenter Hebenstreit,^[7] with similar positive results in favor of Reich's claims. While many published clinical reports exist of tumor disintegration, wound-healing and other biophysiological effects upon test animals and human subjects, no systematically-undertaken controlled studies have yet been undertaken regarding the claimed healing effects.

Reich's findings on orgone energy have two major sets of detractors today. First and foremost are the organized "skeptics", as with CSICOP and "Skeptical Inquirer" magazine which has chronically spread malicious disinformation about Reich over decades,^[8] being fully unrepentant as regarding the role of several of its central founding members in the "ban and burn" order of Reich's books and journals by the US Food and Drug Administration, and his subsequent death in prison. The second set of detractors are the unprofessional mystics, who make very large and unsupportable claims about Reich's findings, adopting his terms as sales gimicks for their devices which are widely sold on internet. This makes it doubly-difficult for the honest and authentically skeptical scientific person to get the facts. Reich's claims on the orgone energy clearly stand at odds with much of modern scientific theory, and certainly there is a need for more and better scientific studies on the questions. But Reich's orgonomy has always been empirically- and experimentally-based, and therefore continues to attract interest from both scientist and layperson.

[edit] Further reading

Bean, Orson: Me and the Orgone – The True Story of One Man's Sexual Awakening, Fawcett Crest Greenwich, CT, 1972
Boadella, David: Wilhelm Reich, The Evolution Of His Work, Henry Regnery, Chicago, 1973.
DeMeo, James: The Orgone Accumulator Handbook: Construction Plans, Experimental Use and Protection Against Toxic Energy, Natural Energy Works, Ashland, Oregon 1989.
DeMeo, James (Ed.): On Wilhelm Reich And Orgonomy (Pulse of the Planet #4), Natural Energy Works, Ashland, Oregon 1993.
DeMeo, James (Ed.): Heretic's Notebook: Emotions, Protocells, Ether-Drift and Cosmic Life Energy, With New Research Supporting Wilhelm Reich", Natural Energy Works, Ashland, Oregon 2002.
Eden, Jerome: Orgone Energy, The Answer To Atomic Suicide, Exposition, NY, 1972.
Eden, Jerome: Animal Magnetism And The Life Energy, Exposition, NY, 1974.
Gardner, Martin: Fads and Fallacies in the name of Science, Dover, 1952
Mann, Edward: Orgone, Reich And Eros: Wilhelm Reich's Theory Of The Life Energy, Simon & Schuster, NY, 1973.
Moise, William S.: A Taste Of Color, A Touch Of Love, Hancock, Maine, 1970.
Overly, Richard: Gentle Bio-Energetics: Tools for Everyone, Gentle Bioenergetics Press, Asheville, NC, 1998.
Raknes, Ola: Wilhelm Reich And Orgonomy, St. Martin's Press, NY, 1970; Penguin, Baltimore, 1970.
Sharaf, Myron: "Fury on Earth: A Biography of Wilhelm Reich", St.Martin's/Marek, NY 1979.
Wilhelm, Reich: The Bioelectrical Investigation of Sexuality and Anxiety
Wilhelm, Reich: The Bion Experiments: On the Origins of Life
Wilhelm, Reich: Function of the Orgasm|Function of the Orgasm (Discovery of the Orgone, Vol.1)
Wilhelm, Reich: Contact With Space: Oranur Second Report
Wilhelm, Reich: Cosmic Superimposition: Man's Orgonotic Roots in Nature
Wilhelm, Reich: Ether, God and Devil
Wilhelm, Reich: The Orgone Energy Accumulator, Its Scientific and Medical Use
Wilhelm, Reich: The Sexual Revolution
Wyckoff, James: Wilhelm Reich: Life Force Explorer, Fawcett, Greenwich, CT, 1973.

[edit] References

^ Steven Lower, PhD (21st March 2007). H20 dot con.
^ DECREE OF INJUNCTION ORDER (MARCH 19, 1954)
^ http://members.dslextreme.com/users/rogermw/Reich/orgone_energy.html
^ DeMeo, James: "Preliminary Analysis of Changes in Kansas Weather Coincidental to Experimental Operations with a Reich Cloudbuster", University of Kansas, Geography-Meteorology Dept., Thesis, 1979, Master's Abstracts, 18(1), 1980 (University Microfilms No.1313336)
^ DeMeo, James: "On the Origins and Diffusion of Patrism: The Saharasian Connection", University of Kansas, Geography Dept., Dissertation, 1986, Dissertation Abstracts International, #48, August 1987, pp.457-458A. Also see: "Saharasia: The 4000 BCE Origins of Child-Abuse, Sex-Repression, Warfare and Social Violence, In the Deserts of the Old World", Natural Energy, 1989.
^ Müschenich, S. & Gebauer, R.: "Die (Psycho-) Physiologischen Wirkungen des Reich'schen Orgonakkumulators auf den Menschlichen Organismus [The (Psycho) Physiological Effects of the Reich Orgone Accumulator]", University of Marburg (W. Germany), Department of Psychology, Dissertation, 1986. Also see: Müschenich, Stefan: Der Gesundheitsbegriff im Werk des Arztes Wilhelm Reich (The Concept of Health in the Works of Dr. Wilhelm Reich), Doktorarbeit am Fachbereich Humanmedizin der Philipps-Universitat Marburg (published by Verlag Gorich & Weiershauser, Marburg) 1995.
^ Hebenstreit, Günter: "Der Orgonakkumulator Nach Wilhelm Reich. Eine Experimentelle Untersuchung zur Spannungs-Ladungs-Formel", Diplomarbeit zur Erlangung des Magistergrades der Philosophie an der Grung- und Integrativ-wissenschaftlichen Fakultat der Universitat Wien, 1995.
^ See J. DeMeo: "Response to Martin Gardner's Attack on Reich and Orgone Research"