Adventures in the Orgasmatron: Wilhelm Reich and the Invention of Sex

Adventures in the Orgasmatron: Wilhelm Reich and the Invention of Sex
Christopher Turner

The story of the sexual revolution that brought Freud’s couch to the explosion of the 60s, and the left-field pioneer Wilhelm Reich who made it all happen.Adventures in the Orgasmatron is the untold story of the dawn of the sexual revolution in America – an illuminating, startling, at times bizarre story of sex and science, ecstasy and repression.In the middle of the 20th century, the United States became an adoptive home for dozens of expatriated European thinkers, who saw this rich, young country ripe for sexual liberation. One of the most left-field of them was the Viennese psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, a disciple of Freud’s who had broken with the master. Reich’s own approach was based on his theories of the orgasm and sexual energy, which he dubbed ‘orgone energy’. Instead of the couch, he made use of a tall, slender construction of wood, metal, and steel wool, which he called the orgone box. A highly sexed man himself, Reich thought that a person who sat in the box could elevate their ‘orgastic potential’ ridding the body of repressive forces, improving sexual potency, and enhancing overall health.After World War Two, Reich’s theories caught on among writers and artists, the early adopters of the counter-culture. Norman Mailer and Saul Bellow were amongst those for whom the orgone box represented a yearned-for synthesis of sexual and political liberation, and of physical science and psychology.Meanwhile, Reich himself faced one debacle after another. Albert Einstein heard him out before rebuffing him. The FBI investigated him as a Communist sympathizer: it turned out that they were hunting the wrong man. The federal government banned the orgone box and tagged Reich as a fraud. There were claims of sexual misdeeds, and bouts of Reich’s own mental instability.This is the story of the blossoming of the 20th century’s sexual revolution, and the unshackling of a repressed society, and sex before science.

Adventures in the Orgasmatron

Wilhelm Reich and the Invention of Sex

Christopher Turner

Copyright (#uaa0dd6e6-00c8-54f5-bbfb-d473b7c298fb)

Fourth Estate

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Copyright © Christopher Turner

The right of Christopher Turner to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

The following excerpts are reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC: Excerpts from Beyond Psychology by Wilhelm Reich. Copyright © 1994 by The Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust. Excerpts from The Function of the Orgasm by Wilhelm Reich, translated by Vincent R. Carfagno. Copyright © 1973 The Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust. Excerpts from Passion of Youth: An Autobiography, 1897–1922 by Wilhelm Reich. Translation copyright © 1988 by Mary Boyd Higgins as Trustee of the Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust Fund. Excerpts from People in Trouble by Wilhelm Reich. Translation copyright © 1976 by Mary Boyd Higgins, as Trustee of the Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust Fund. Excerpts from Reich Speaks of Freud by Wilhelm Reich. Copyright © 1967 by Mary Boyd Higgins, as Trustee of the Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust Fund.

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Source ISBN: 9780007181575

Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2011 ISBN: 9780007450350

Version: 2017-05-03

Dedication (#uaa0dd6e6-00c8-54f5-bbfb-d473b7c298fb)

FOR GABY

Epigraph (#uaa0dd6e6-00c8-54f5-bbfb-d473b7c298fb)

My life is revolution— from within and from without— or it’s comedy! If I could only find someone who has the correct diagnosis!

— WILHELM REICH, July 9 , 1919

Perhaps the history of the errors of mankind, all things considered, is more valuable and interesting than that of their discoveries. Truth is uniform and narrow; it constantly exists, and does not seem to require so much an active energy, as a passive aptitude of soul in order to encounter it. But error is endlessly diversified; it has no reality, but is the pure and simple creation of the mind that invents it. In this field the soul has room enough to expand herself, to display all her boundless faculties, and all her beautiful and interesting extravagancies and absurdities.

— BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, Report of Dr. Benjamin Franklin, and other commissioners, charged by the King of France, with the examination of the animal magnetism, as now practiced in Paris (1784)

CONTENTS

Cover (#ud8301de0-fefa-51b3-af10-cecdb41286a7)

Title Page (#u54b150a1-4b0e-51db-a79d-99e891ec9a0b)

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Introduction

Europe

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

America

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Notes

Bibliography

Index