Wilhelm reich

Wilhelm Reich (Dobrzanica, Galicia, Austro-Hungarian Empire, March 24, 1897-Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, USA, November 3, 1957) was an inventor, postulator of the orgone theory, Austrian physician, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, of Jewish origin, naturalized American. He is famous for his contributions to sexology, psychoanalytic therapy, his commitment to sexual liberation ("the orgasmic function"), and his research on "orgone energy."

He was a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society until 1933, initially a disciple of Freud. However, his theories later became independent of institutional psychoanalysis. His positions regarding the social factor as responsible for individual neurosis distanced him from Freud.

From his studies of Freud, the points that most interested him were the unconscious, neurosis and libido. Reich is one of the early thinkers in psychosociobiology and is close to Henri Laborit, Peter Levine and Antonio Damasio in terms of body and social awareness.

Wilhelm Reich is a doctor who thought that stress is the basic electrical energy of the autonomic nervous system. He thought that social violence is linked to emotional poverty. When the term "stress" in the 1930s in the medical and scientific field, Reich gives it the name of "orgone" to life energy.

Philosopher who tried to achieve a synthesis between Marxism and psychoanalysis, while some describe him as one of the most «lucid and revolutionary» thinkers of the century XX, whose books were burned; others assure that his ideas and theories could well be classified as delusions.

He was expelled from communist circles and the psychoanalytic school for his radical views, he moved to New York in part to escape Nazi rule in Germany. There he invented the term orgone (as a union of the terms & # 34; orgasm & # 34; and & # 34; organism & # 34;). In 1940 he began selling "orgone accumulators"; that were claimed to have beneficial effects on health. In 1947 the FDA obtained a judicial sentence against said sale for being a fraud "of the first magnitude". In 1956 he was sentenced to two years in prison for violating this sentence while the court ordered the burning of 6 tons of his manuscripts and laboratory material. A year later, Reich died in prison of a heart attack, several days before requesting his parole.

Biography

Reich Instant in 1900.

In his work Pasión de juventud, which compiles a series of autobiographical writings about his youth, he has offered us both a vital and personal explanation of his theories.

Born in rural areas into a non-believing Jewish family, he begins his first sexual relations with the maids in his house, witnessing the hostility between his parents. His mother becomes, with the collaboration of her grandmother, the lover of her tutor. The young Wilhelm, seeing the jealous outburst of his father, reveals to him the adultery of his mother, who ends up committing suicide. After the death of his father, the family is ruined.

He leaves the ruined family home, fights in the First World War and in Vienna, by dint of hunger and sleeplessness, manages to advance in his studies.

First stage

Wilhelm Reich was one of Sigmund Freud's first collaborators, around 1922. Showing great enthusiasm for Freud's theories, especially regarding sexuality.

However, many differences soon arose between Reich and Freud. Perhaps the most important was the conflict between the positions of authority that both liked to hold. But on a theoretical level they also gradually distanced themselves and had a definitive break when Reich had his own ideas on the subject. Contrary to Freud, who gradually set aside the sexual instinct and the pleasure/pain dichotomy to focus on other concepts such as the Death instinct, Reich took the issue of sexuality and the psyche to the extreme, going so far as to affirm the economic principle in Contradistinction with the topic and the dynamic, which remained as the pillars of the different psychoanalytic schools. For Reich, sex and work have a bioenergetic relationship, which is why he initially supported the following two main theses:

"A person's mental health can be measured by his orgasmic potential. »

This means that a mentally healthy individual enjoys sex freely, without trauma or inhibitions, and a neurotic person does not. Freud and his acolytes left, according to Reich, settling in next to their couches applying endless chattertherapy treatments ^{[citation needed ]} . Reich dispensed with these methods to pour himself into the physical body.

One of his discoveries consisted in the fact that non-neurotic people manifested what he called the orgasm reflex, consisting of the involuntary, uncontrollable and repeated movement of the hip at the time of orgasmic discharge. Reich began to pay attention to the attitudes and bodily movements of his patients and realized that the conventional psychoanalytic treatments of the time, in his opinion, were very ineffective because the patient had a terrible tendency to hide from himself, or because of To put it another way, the patient's psychological barriers tended to be unconsciously perpetuated. In a way, people were afraid to break their blocks because they were unable to feel the pleasure of letting go, of relaxing, of letting go.

Wilhelm Reich circa 1922 in a cafe in Vienna.

He therefore invented the Characteristic Analysis. In this way, before trying to get to the center of the patient's psychic problem through talks and circumlocutions that lasted for years and years, Reich's mission was to break down the barriers that blocked the free flow of psychic energy in the patient. This he achieved by applying another principle discovered by him, which he stated:

"A person's psyche and his voluntary musculature are functionally equivalent. »

With this, Reich proposes that psychic blocks correspond to chronic muscular contractions. An example: a person with fears has perpetually tense thighs and shoulders, as this is the body's way of preparing to protect its head and start running, a logical reaction to danger. Thus, Reich set out to combat mental illness through the release of chronic muscular tension, which gave remarkable results^{[citation needed]}. This was in contrast to the techniques of Freudian psychoanalysts, who completely abstained from physical contact with their patients, even having emotional contact (called transference) whereby the psychoanalyst could, for example, symbolically take the place of the patient's father.

Reich, by contrast, hugged, twisted, and stretched the bodies of his patients until they burst into tears or vomited, breaking free. Reich had discovered that the vomiting reflex was profoundly relaxing and that stretching exercises of the anterior trunk ended up causing the person to cry profusely, although apparently for no reason. Later he even went so far as to ensure that the human body was not very different from that of a worm; and he developed a healing system that consists of the progressive unblocking of the various segments that make up our body: skull, neck, diaphragm, belly and hip. He even took the comparison further by drawing the analogy with a protozoan, which extends its protoplasm for pleasure and contracts for pain. Reich understood that the personality worked in cycles of tension/release, in which a correct sexual life was essential for the latter.

Finally, Reich realized that muscle patterns could be explained from the point of view of a vital energy (which he would later call orgone energy) that runs through the body. Here Reich rediscovered for the West the concept of chi (also called baraka, vril) widely spread in the East and hermetic societies.

One of Reich's many disciples, the now renowned Alexander Lowen, later invented Bioenergetics, a set of healing techniques based on these discoveries.

Second stage: approach to Marxism

Remembrance plaque in the house of W. Reich in Berlin, where it resided from 1931 to 1934.

Reich adhered to Marxist ideas and in 1927 joined the Austrian Communist Party. From then on, his work was oriented towards the search for a synthesis between dialectical materialism and psychoanalysis. His works The Sexual Revolution and Mass Psychology of Fascism stand out in this period. Reich postulated that the turn towards metapsychology initiated by Freud from his text Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920) was due to the fact that its bourgeois character prevented him from accepting the revolutionary conclusions that were obtained. from his own discoveries: the primacy of the unconscious, the central role of sexual repression in psychopathology, etc.

For Reich, most of the population suffers from mental illnesses and lives in conditions of strong sexual repression. Reich believes that the dominance of one social class over another requires that the majority of the population suffer atrophy in their sexual life, since this guarantees the existence of passive individuals to the ruling classes who abide by authority without question. In this way, Reich concludes that capitalism is incompatible with the mental health of the population, which can only be achieved hand in hand with the abolition of class society, that is, through the socialist revolution. This led Reich to criticize Freud, considering that he had placed the reality principle on an altar, elevating it to the category of unquestionable. While Freudian psychoanalytic therapy sought to overcome neurosis by adapting the patient to the reality principle, Reich's postulates necessarily implied that overcoming neurosis (at least considering the neurotic population as a whole) would be closely linked to transformation. of reality. This conclusion is clearly linked to Marxist thought (Thesis XI, in Marx's Theses on Feuerbach).

Freudian psychoanalysts rejected Reich's elaborations as 'politicized'. In Marxism, the reception was not unanimous. Some Marxists welcomed his work, though others saw it as slightly tinged with idealism, and objected that Reich's knowledge of dialectical materialism was too superficial.

From his work in the Communist Party, Reich created organizations (sexual orientation and counseling centers) of working youth for a sexual policy (SEXPOL), which had significant growth. Starting in 1932, the party stopped publishing Reich's book spread by that movement, The Sexual Struggle of the Young, and a year later the Nazis in power banned it. While in Mass Psychology of Fascism and Class Consciousness he analyzed the psychological and cultural causes of the defeat that the rise of Hitlerism meant for the German working class, Reich faced with his work The struggle for the new way of life in the Soviet Union, the end of sexual freedom in the Soviet Union since 1934, a regression that meant, among other things, the prohibition and criminalization of homosexuality, in the first country in the world where it was decriminalized 34 years earlier and where Magnus Hirschfeld's research on the matter was disseminated. Soon Stalinism expelled him from the ranks of the party. Reich exchanged a couple of letters with Leon Trotsky, but they quickly broke off contact. As expressed in Class Consciousness, Reich considered that in order to found a "new international" it was necessary first to work to root in the working masses a new culture and a program that "permeates everything", instead of immediately creating a Fourth International and launching an organizing campaign in its favor using its program, as Trotsky proposed it.

Third stage

Orgon accumulator.

The third stage of Wilhelm Reich's thought is, by far, the most controversial and the one that his detractors have used to describe the whole of his work as "delusional".

His studies focused on orgone, a word that combines “organism” and “orgasm”. For Reich, orgone is the vital energy of every organism, it is the motor force of the orgasm reflex. Furthermore, it is blue in color, measurable and omnipresent.

All living matter is created and produces this energy. In order to make it visible, he built the first Orgone Energy Accumulator in 1940, a box made of wood or other organic material with an internal metal lining, since the former would absorb orgone energy while the latter would attract it. Reich's goal was to flow the energy in the body of his patients. Illnesses such as cancer, for him, were nothing more than accumulations of negative orgones, which is why he experimented with terminal cancer patients, believing that he could help them. He created the Orgone Institute, Publishing House, and Orgonon from it, home of the orgone accumulator and research center. It should be noted that the results of his research have only been replicated by his followers, in no case by skeptics.

He developed the therapy called «Characteroanalytic Vegetotherapy», conceived to release the tensions of the characterological armor, product of sexual impulses and repressed emotions. Each individual creates a shell for himself through bodily habits and attitudes, in order to protect himself from both the external world and his own desires and instincts.

Reich stated that the body armor is divided into seven areas or sectors. These sectors form bands around the body in their area, and in that band the energy stagnates. In cephalo-caudal order, the areas are as follows: Eyes, Mouth, Neck, Chest, Solar Plexus, Waist or Pelvis, and Genitals. Reich had to analyze these areas in each individual and help him unblock them so that the energy or Orgone could flow again. Unblocking was done through massage, movement, sounds, and exercises.

Around 1947, the US FDA began a series of investigations into the orgone theory. Its inspectors seized 300 orgone energy accumulators and determined that there was not the slightest trace of energy in the device. Orgone simply did not exist and its discoverer could only be a con man.

Work

House in Drammensveien near Olaf Kyrres plass in Frogner, Norway. Wilhelm Reich lived here. Visible between the windows is a blue commemorative plaque that prays: The physician and psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957) resided and worked here between 1935-39. It developed the analysis of the character and therapy of body orientation.

In the book Reich talks about Freud, there are five letters sent to each other by the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski and the psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich. The approximate dates are between 1938 and 1942, the year in which the author of "Sex and repression in primitive society" (Malinowski). Three aspects can be taken from this correspondence: the situation that both researchers were going through in their different fields, functionalism as a central theory for their work, and the consequences and repercussions.

Bronislaw Malinowski was born in Krakow, the capital of Austrian Galicia in 1884 (now Poland). His father was a Slavist specializing in the Polish dialect in the Silesian region. The young Bronislaw begins to study philosophy in 1903, obtaining a doctorate in philosophy in 1908. He continues his studies in Leipzig (Germany). His passion for anthropology was born when he read & # 39; The golden branch & # 39; from Frazer. In 1910 he moved to England to study anthropology at the London School of Economics. He publishes in 1913: The family among the Australian aborigines . World War I finds him in New Guinea, Melanesia, living among the natives of Mailu. He then he will move to the Trobriand Islands archipelago. He begins a field work living together and learning the language of the natives. He investigates all aspects of their culture. In 1916 he returned to London and received a doctorate in anthropology. The following year he returns to Trobriand. He begins to write The Argonauts of the Western Pacific to be published in 1922. He visits the US for the first time in 1926, appears: The myth in primitive psychology and Crime and custom in savage society. In 1927 he was appointed full professor of anthropology at the University of London. He writes: The father of primitive psychology and Sex and repression in savage society . During this last period, Malinowski began to debate psychoanalysis. The article Psychoanalysis and Anthropology (Psyche, London 1924) appears. To which Ernest Jones (psychoanalyst, biographer of Freud) responds with Mother and sexual ignorance of savage (International Journal of psychoanalysis, 1925).

Official portrait of staff of the psychoanalytic outpatient clinic in Vienna, 1922. Wilhelm Reich is sitting fifth from the left.

He was born in Dobrzcynica, in the part of Galicia that belonged to the Austrian Empire. In 1922 he graduated as a doctor from the University of Vienna. He continues his training in psychiatry for two more years with Wagner-Jauregg (Nobel Prize in Medicine) and Paul Schilder. Since 1920, before graduating, he belongs to the Viennese psychoanalytic circle. He had met Sigmund Freud in 1919, inviting him to a Sexology Seminar at the Faculty of Medicine. Since 1923 he has worked at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Polyclinic, later he will coordinate the Technical Seminar, and begins to write articles for psychoanalytic journals. In 1925 the first book of his The compulsive character appeared and in 1927 the first version of The orgasm function , dedicated to Freud. Malinowski's investigations provided, on the basis of field work, so vital today for anthropologists, data to think that the "primitives or the savages" as they were called, they did not live in promiscuity and debauchery. In his books, he states that the lives of these men are framed in a delicate web of rights and obligations. 'The Argonauts of the Western Pacific' It presents not only a methodical character but also raises: 1) the valuation of primitive cultures. The Eurocentric and positivist vision of the time dragged ideas about the superiority of Western man. 2) It showed that in a primitive economy like the Trobian economy, magical and prestige factors intervene, not directly linked to the useful value of the merchandise. It allowed one to understand the complexity of the Melanesian cultures that participated in the Kula trade. He refuted the idea that the existence of primitive peoples is characterized only by the effort to survive. 3) For the first time in anthropological research, a culture was systematically studied. He demonstrates that culture is a functional whole. Malinowki's functionalism had antecedents in Franz Boas (who pointed out the need to interpret social facts in their connection). He also influenced the French school of sociology through Marcel Mauss, Émile Durkheim, and the English one through Herbert Spencer.

Culture is an organic whole. For this reason, for Malinowski, it is not possible to study the kinship system of a culture, if at the same time it is not interrelated with the economic bases of that culture, with its political organization, with its social institutions, with the legal framework that sustains it, with the religion that unites it. All these new conceptions were to influence Wilhelm Reich in his psychoanalytic period. But since the events in Schattendorf (Austria) where there was a violent repression against demonstrators causing many deaths, Reich would begin to militate in the Austrian Communist Party against the advance of fascism. In 1930 he went to work in Germany until 1933 where he had to leave because of the seizure of power by the Nazis. The irruption of sexual morality (first version in 1932) will be based on the works of Malinowski. It raises the origin of sexual repression, the sexual economy in the matriarchal society, economic and sexual contradictions in the Trobian people, primitive communism-matriarchy, private property-patriarchy, a study on the theories of Morgan and Engels. In turn, in the appendix, he responded to Géza Róheim (psychoanalyst and ethnologist) who had traveled to study Australian totem poles and New Guinea. Malinowski and Reich met in 1933 in London. The anthropologist had recognized that Der Einbrusch der sexualmoral ( The irruption of sexual morality ) was a work that understood and correctly used his theories on the Trobian people.

Wilhelm Reich.

On March 12, 1938, from the Department of Anthropology at The London School of Economics and Political Science (University of London) writes: "I have known Dr. Wilhelm Reich for five years, during which period I have read his works, also having many opportunities to talk and discuss with him in London and Oslo". At that time, Reich was living in Norway, and a strong campaign against his work and research was beginning to break out. & # 34; I consider his sociological work as a clear and valuable contribution to science. In my opinion, it would be an unfortunate loss if Dr. Reich were in any way hampered in enjoying the greatest facilities for putting into practice his ideas and scientific discoveries. Malinowski provided clear support for the situation that Reich was going through at that time. He continued in that letter: "I would like to add that my testimony may have some additional force, coming as it does from someone who does not share Dr. Reich's advanced ideas, nor his sympathies for Marxist philosophy. I like to define myself as an old-fashioned man, almost a liberal conservative."

Reich dated April 29 thanks him for his solidarity, commenting on the effect his discoveries were producing, and adds something he had seen on the streets of Berlin, and throughout Germany: "I am not a hopeless optimist, but thank you Through my work I have been able to fully realize not only the satanic impulses of man, but also his human side. So, if Hitler pulls the strings and uncovers the subhuman side, why shouldn't we focus on the human core of him, who we know always exists together, but has simply been buried?& # 34;.

His book Mass Psychology of Fascism (published in 1933) had been translated into several languages. Hitler, by then, already had concentration camps in Germany and Freud was about to leave Austria – after his daughter Anna was arrested by the Gestapo – thanks to the requests of ambassadors, scientists and even Mussolini.

He had been expelled from the International Psychoanalytic Association and the Communist Party in 1934. For the former, for being too Marxist; and for the latter, for "the publication of a counterrevolutionary book." In that book Reich used psychoanalytic categories, and his new theories of Character Structure (Character Analysis) to explain how individuals raised from infancy in families dominated by the father, generate submission, are prepared to be herd, and why the need of a Führer or a Duce. In the chapter: "The automatic submission to customs and the real problem" (Crime and custom in savage society) there is also a clear influence of anthropological ideas on Reich.

With his 1936 work on "Sexuality in the Cultural Struggle," published in several languages as The Sexual Revolution, Reich was one of the forerunners of the contemporary sexual revolution., contributing with concrete ideas such as the improvement of contraceptive methods, the promotion of the use of contraceptives and their distribution to prevent abortions, providing shelters for young people to have sexual relations and the cessation of the repression of masturbation by children and adolescents.

In 1939 Malinowski was in the US. He was doing paperwork to get Reich admitted to a New York University. He writes to her: & # 34; Another drawback is the fact that many psychoanalysts do not want to know anything about you. You know who my sympathies lie with, so I don't need to tell you how outraged I feel when I notice this attitude. Things wouldn't be so bad if American psychoanalysts weren't so dominated by people from Vienna or Berlin. But in any psychoanalytic society you go to, you find Rank, H. Sachs, or Alexander in the key positions. Together with Dr. Theodore Wolfe (who had gone to study with Reich in Norway) they managed to connect him with Alvin Johnson from the New School of Social Research, where Reich went as a professor, traveling to the US in September 1939. In that month, the Nazis had invaded Poland (Where today are the birth territories of Reich and Malinowski).

In 1940, after World War II had broken out, Bronislaw Malinowski was a professor of Anthropology at Yale University. He marries the painter Valetta Swann. In 1941, together with his wife, he moved to Mexico to focus on the study of Indian-Mexican cultures and social change. On January 31, 1942, from New Haven, Connecticut, he writes to her: "This whole affair was, of course, ridiculous since no one at your trial could suspect that you harbored pro-Nazi tendencies or sympathies. Despite which, these things are always extraordinarily painful. In the introduction of The function of the orgon (second version 1942 The discovery of the Orgone) Theodore Wolfe clarified: "at two in the morning of December 12 In 1941, Reich was taken out of bed by FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) agents and taken to Ellis Island. From Reich's file, as well as from the investigations carried out before and after his arrest, it was completely evident that nothing allowed Reich to be placed under the precepts of the Enemy Alien Act . Until January 5, 1942, his parole was not issued. Although the police complaints procedure had been used against Reich's work before in Europe, he had never before been arrested & # 34;.

The persecution against the work and the works of the Reich in Denmark (Copenhagen), Sweden (Malmö), Norway (Oslo) between 1934 and 1938, were not to diminish in the USA. In an undated letter he replies: & #34;They had investigated my case for more than a year, without finding anything, without any complaint, and yet I have spent three and a half weeks behind bars. The whole thing was something completely illogical, due to the denunciation of some coward who does not dare to face me in a public discussion". And with his incredible optimism in the face of adversity, Reich continues: "Do you remember my problems in Denmark and Sweden back in 1934, when psychiatrists went to the police? Well, the same thing happened here. The inconveniences our work faces are enormous, but so are our triumphs. A book of mine The discovery of the orgone, which summarizes twenty years of biophysical research and character analysis, will soon appear in English, as well as a journal published by our institute and the American branch. I wish to thank you for your affidavit that you sent on the occasion of my arrest. I hope to see you soon sometime. I wish you are well and not excessively distressed by the international disaster. I think that psychiatrists who understand the distorted biological development of human beings will have difficult tasks to do when this is over.

Wilhelm Reich laboratories, Wilhelm Reich museum, Rangeley, Maine. In the lower image, main building of the museum.

Malinowski died on May 16, 1942 of a heart attack. His widow edits: A scientific theory of culture . Here he distinguishes seven biological needs, whose satisfaction is essential to survive: metabolism, reproduction, bodily well-being, security, movement, growth and health. Culture is a functional whole that is at the service of human needs. He defined 'need' as the system of conditions that are manifested in the human organism, in the cultural framework and in the relationship of both with the physical environment, and that is sufficient and necessary for the survival of the group and the organism. Due to the latest research carried out by Wilhelm Reich, he will not spend the next few years calm either. He will edit The Sexual Revolution and a new version (with chapters that he added) of Psicología de masas del fascismo. He will continue his research and continue to publish books: The biopathy of Cancer, Ether, God and the Devil, Cosmic Superposition, Contacts with Space. He will range from biogenesis, oncology, the formation of deserts, hurricanes, the force of gravity, whose common point will be energy. In 1941 he will meet Albert Einstein.

Reich also develops a functionalist theory, an overcoming synthesis that he will call orgonomy. In the book The bion experiments, on the origin of life (English version of Die bione published in 1938) he shows the passage from dialectical materialism to energetic functionalism. Since the publication of Beyond psychology / letters and journals 1934-1939 and American odyssey / letters and journals 1940-1947, today we have new documents to understand what happened to the work and research methodology, as well as new epistemological fields. In an entry dated November 26, 1946, he writes: "Malinowski affirmed the sexuality of Trobian children, but not that of European children"; (American Odyssey). An interesting review for his friend.

Reich continued to be persecuted. His works were described as advertising for orgone accumulators and were burned under the supervision of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), an institution that demanded that all devices be destroyed, as well as each of Reich's books, articles and writings. in which the word "orgón" appeared, that is, practically all the work published by the author.

Reich Registration Card of the Federal Penitentiary of Lewisburg.

Wilhelm Reich died in the Lewisburg prison, in Pennsylvania, USA, on November 3, 1957. Ten years after his death, Reich Speaks of Freud was published, which is a series of interviews conducted October 18-19, 1952 in Maine for the Sigmud Freud Archives; It contained a documentary annex of letters and articles, which made it possible to clarify many aspects of that moment that prevented the scientific assessment of Reich's work from being seen, and to understand why there was a conspiracy of silence for so long.

In his will, Reich established that his archives, documents and all his written legacy would be made available to the public fifty years after his death, a deadline that expired in November 2007. In the library of the school of medicine from Harvard University, those interested in scientific studies may request access to this documentation. The Wilhelm Reich Museum publishes an index, as well as the conditions for access to these documents.

Orgone experiment with Einstein

Reich discussed its orgon builders with Albert Einstein in 1941.

On December 30, 1940, Reich wrote to Albert Einstein saying there was a scientific discovery he wanted to discuss, and on January 13, 1941, he went to visit Einstein in Princeton, New Jersey. They talked for five hours, and Einstein agreed to test an orgone accumulator, which Reich had constructed from a galvanized steel Faraday Cage and insulated by wood and paper on the outside. Einstein agreed that yes, as Reich suggested, the temperature of an object can be raised without an apparent heat source, it would be a very important event for physics.

Reich supplied Einstein with a small accumulator during their second meeting, and Einstein carried out the experiment in his basement, which consisted of taking the temperature on top of, inside, and near the device. He also stripped the Faraday cage of the device for comparing temperatures. In his attempt to replicate Reich's findings, Einstein observed an increase in temperature, which Reich claimed was due to orgone energy that had accumulated inside the Faraday cage. However, one of Einstein's assistants pointed out that the The temperature was lower on the floor than on the ceiling. Following this observation, Einstein modified the experiment and accordingly concluded that the effect was simply due to the temperature gradient inside the room. The physicist wrote back to Reich, describing his experiments and expressing the hope that Reich would develop a more skeptical approach to them.

Reich responded with a 25-page letter to Einstein, expressing concern that "convection from the ceiling" it would be joined by the "germs of the air" and the "Brownian motion" to discredit the new discoveries. The correspondence between Einstein and Reich was published by the Reich press as The Affair with Einstein in 1953, possibly without Einstein's permission.

Books

• The instinctive character: a psychoanalytic study on the pathology of the egoVienna: Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, 1925.
• The function of orgasm: about psychopathology and the sociology of sexual lifeVienna: Internationaler Psychoanalytischer Verlag, 1927.
• Sexual excition and sexual satisfactionMünster Verlag, 1929.
• Sexual maturity, abstinence, marital morality: a critique of bourgeois sexual reform 1930.
• The Eruption of Sexual Morality: The History of the Sexual EconomyCopenhagen: Verlag für Sexualpolitik, 1932.
• The Sexual Struggle of Young PeopleCopenhagen: Verlag für Sexualpolitik, 1932.
• Analysis of character techniques and psychotherapy foundations for students and practitionersBerlin, 1933.
• Mass psychology of fascism1933.
• What is Class Consciousness?: About the Reform of the Workers' Movement1934.
• The struggle for the new way of life in the Soviet Union1934.
• Dialectic Materialism and PsychoanalysisCopenague: Verlag für Sexualpolitik, 1934.
• Psychological contact and vegetative flow1935.
• The Sexual Revolution (Sexuality in the cultural struggle: On the socialist restructuring of man), 1936.
• Experimental results on the electrical function of sexuality and anxiety1937.
• People in the state, 1937.
• The Bione: about the origin of plant life, Sexpol Verlag, 1938.
• The function of orgasm: The discovery of Orgon and sexual economic problems of biological energy1942.
• Listen, little man!1945
• The Murder of Christ1953. It explains the healing capacity of Christ with a powerful energy field that stimulates the energy fields of others.
• Selected Readings: An Introduction to Orgonomy
• Youth Passion: Autobiography, 1897-1922
• American Odyssey: Letters and Journals 1940-1947
• Beyond Psychology: Letters and Journals 1934-1939
• The Bioelectric Research of Sexuality and Anxiety
• Children of the Future: Prevention of Sexual Pathologies
• The Oranur Experiment
• Contact with Space: Second Report of Oranur
• Cosmic Superimposition: The Orgonal Roots of Man in Nature
• Ether, God and Devil
• The Orgonic Energy Accumulator, His Scientific and Medical Use
• People in Problems: The Emotional Plague of Humanity, Vol.1)
• Reich Speaks About Freud1957.

Spanish edition

• Mass psychology of fascism. Translation by Alfredo Bein, Book Enclave. 2020. ISBN 978-84-949834-9-8.
• Listen, little man! Address on mediocrity. Madrid: La la flashlight Editions. 2015. ISBN 978-84-942466-8-5.
• The function of orgasm. Barcelona: Paidós. 2010. ISBN 978-84-493-2247-1.
• Analysis of character. Barcelona: Paidós. 2005. ISBN 978-84-493-1773-6.
• Youth passion: an autobiography (1897-1922). Barcelona: Paidós. 1990. ISBN 978-84-7509-591-2.