Sin, Sex & Subversion by David Rosen

Author:David Rosen
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Carrel Books
Published: 2016-01-11T05:00:00+00:00

Over time, Reich fashioned a variety of orgone accumulators, ranging from the famous “box” to a blanket. The resulting orgone therapy would help treat a patient’s “body armor,” freeing him or her to better experiences the deeper bodily processes, most especially sexual orgasm. The patient would, therefore, be in touch with the body’s processing of the life force, orgone energy.

The originality of Reich’s research during this period cannot be denied. He was, put simply, asking a very different set of questions than other researchers. As Sharaf notes, “It is easy to overlook the fact that no one in his time was seeing and doing what he was seeing and doing.” No one sought to link the mind to the body, to the body politic, to social being, and to the natural, organic, world.408 More than a half century later, scientific researchers—let alone ordinary people—are still trying to answer this question.

In December 1941, Reich’s political past caught up with his new life in Queens. About a week after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and a few days after Germany declared war against the United States, FBI agents knocked on Reich’s door at two in the morning. He was seized—along with thousands of other men—as an “enemy alien.” Much like the roundup of “Muslims” following 9/11, Reich spent about a month at a detention center on Ellis Island; he was released on January 5, 1942. Following his release, FBI agents paid him a visit, inspecting his library and seizing three “un-American” works: Hitler’s Mein Kampf, Trotsky’s My Life, and a Russian alphabet for children. When questioned as to why they were in his library, stupefied, Reich reminded them that as a scholar, a scientist, he had to understand his subjects of study. Later that year, Briehl, who was a student of Reich’s in Germany and then a New York psychiatrist, urged him to take the New York State medical licensing examination to preserve his status as a doctor; Reich refused.

One group that did not overlook his research was the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In 1947, disturbed by rumors that the accumulator was being sold as a “sex box” to enhance sexual potency, the FDA began investigating Reich. Over the next decade, the FDA would conduct an extensive campaign against him, culminating in Reich’s arrest, conviction, imprisonment, and death.

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