The Quest for Wilhelm Reich

by Colin Wilson

Wilhelm Reich is variously known as a brilliant psychoanalyst, the founder of orgone energy, the author of several controversial books - including The Function of the Orgasm - and a man who died in jail, the subject of government harassment. In this fascinating critical biography, Colin Wilson examines Reich's life an ideas against the background of the shifting cultural and political currents of he twentieth century. Drawing from years of extensive research - including interviews with those who knew Reich - Wilson provides a revealing portrait of the genius and flaws of a man now regarded by many as a martyred mystic. The story follows the enigmatic Reich from his youthful days in Vienna, as Sigmund Freud's student during the 1920s, to his early experimentation with orgone energy - a mysterious substance that Reich regarded as the vital life force - to his exile in America an experiments with the cloudbuster and the orgone box - a device that led to his imprisonment in 1957, where he died a year later. Skillfully blending a careful analysis with a wealth of historical information, Wilson sheds new light on the mysteries and myths that surround Reich, and raises the startling Could Reich have been right about the mystical qualities of orgone energy? Both a challenging reassessment of Reich's ideas and a compelling recounting of his life, The Quest for Wilhelh Reich is a landmark study of a man whose life has been enshrouded in controversy.

Genres: Nonfiction, Biography, Psychology, History

272 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Colin Henry Wilson was born and raised in Leicester, England, U.K. He left school at 16, worked in factories and various occupations, and read in his spare time. When Wilson was 24, Gollancz published The Outsider (1956) which examines the role of the social 'outsider' in seminal works of various key literary and cultural figures. These include Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ernest Hemingway, Hermann Hesse, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, William James, T. E. Lawrence, Vaslav Nijinsky and Vincent Van Gogh and Wilson discusses his perception of Social alienation in their work. The book was a best seller and helped popularize existentialism in Britain. Critical praise though, was short-lived and Wilson was soon widely criticized.

Wilson's works after The Outsider focused on positive aspects of human psychology, such as peak experiences and the narrowness of consciousness. He admired the humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow and corresponded with him. Wilson wrote The War Against Sleep: The Philosophy of Gurdjieff on the life, work and philosophy of G. I. Gurdjieff and an accessible introduction to the Greek-Armenian mystic in 1980. He argues throughout his work that the existentialist focus on defeat or nausea is only a partial representation of reality and that there is no particular reason for accepting it. Wilson views normal, everyday consciousness buffeted by the moment, as "blinkered" and argues that it should not be accepted as showing us the truth about reality. This blinkering has some evolutionary advantages in that it stops us from being completely immersed in wonder, or in the huge stream of events, and hence unable to act. However, to live properly we need to access more than this everyday consciousness. Wilson believes that our peak experiences of joy and meaningfulness are as real as our experiences of angst and, since we are more fully alive at these moments, they are more real. These experiences can be cultivated through concentration, paying attention, relaxation and certain types of work.

Reviews

[Ard · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before reading this I didn't know too much about Reich, just that he had been one of Freud's disciples, that bio-energetics was based on his work and that at some point he was working with orgone energy. Oh yeah, and that Kate Bush's song Cloud Busting was based on him. Recently I had read a book on Reichian bodywork and was interested to read more about where that was coming from, so I picked up the biography by Colin Wilson.

I know Wilson well enough to know that he wouldn't primarily write about Reich the man but spend a great deal of time exploring his ideas and how they developped. With a little less than 300 pages it's a rather concise but fine introduction into the subject. And as a fan of Wilson I enjoyed his view on both the man and his work and legacy.

[Avery · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is precisely the biography of Wilhelm Reich you would expect the author of "The Occult" to write. Wilson is in agreement with Philip Rieff that Reich's general worldview and personality remained the same after he left Freud's circle, and he had no moment of breakdown or insanity. But Wilson is a much more charitable and sympathetic biographer than Rieff. Wilson sees Reich as an experimental scientist who got a little too much humanity into his science and became an accidental shaman. His editorial asides are pleasant and thought-provoking. If you like Wilson or want to read about Reich I recommend this book.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

A bit dated now but an interesting bio more interested in Reich's ideas than his life. Therefore, as a biography, it is of little value but as an explanation of his ideas, The Quest for Wilhelm Reich is still worth a read.

And Wilson? Wilson is the same old fascinating crank he's always been. You either enjoy his eccentricities or you don't.

Rating: 3 out of 5 Stars

[Ronald · Rating 5 out of 5]

I got this book via library loan. Colin Wilson's aims in this book are twofold: 1) to provide a correct account of Wilhelm Reich's life and work, and 2) a critical evaluation of it.

In a review of another of Colin Wilson's books, I wrote that Wilson generally doesn't provide new information. I am incorrect on that. In researching this book, Colin Wilson interviewed people who interacted with Reich.

Wilhelm Reich was born in the Austro-Hungarian empire. The major events in his childhood was catching his mother cheating with his tutor; Wilhelm told his father about it. His father got furious , and she committed suicide not long after. Then Wilhelm's father caught illness and died. Colin Wilson thinks that Wilhelm's father purposely brought the illness upon himself, as a way of committing suicide too.

Wilhelm Reich was an excellent student in medical school, and here he showed interest in sex from a medical perspective. Reich eventually met Freud, studied psycho-analysis, even was one of Freud's prominent disciples. Reich practiced psycho-analysis and got married.

From this point on, Wilhelm Reich's life reads like something from a wacky science fiction novel. Reich had a falling out with Freud and other psycho-analysts. Reich believed that he had made the discovery of a new type of energy.. This notion of Reich's is similar to the Chinese notion of chi, or of the Indian notion of prana, or Henri Bergson's elan vital. Because Reich identified the fundamental energy of life with the energy of---get this--the sexual orgasm--he called it "orgone energy."

Reich moved to the US, and pursued further research into this. Reich created boxes, made of wood and wool, which supposedly contained orgone energy; sitting in these boxes supposedly led to improved health. Reich also created a device which he called a "cloud-buster"--which was basically a long metallic tube, one end connected to water, the other end pointed to the sky, the purpose of which was to bring about rain. Reich claimed that he saw UFO's and made a report to the authorities. Reich pointed his cloudbuster at the UFOs and it seemed, to him, to chase the UFO's away. Reich claimed he had a motor run by orgone energy. Colin Wilson thinks that all these claims by Reich is preposterous.

Reich got in trouble with the authorities in selling his orgone accumulator boxes across state lines. Reich made terrible decisions--he didn't get a lawyer, he didn't show up to court. Reich was sentenced to the Federal Penitentiary. Wilson thinks, and I agree, that had Reich gotton a competent lawyer, Reich would not only have avoided jail, but would be able to continue his research and even sell his orgone boxes--within the boundaries of the state he lived in. One aspect of Reich's punishment was probably unconstitutional though: the court ordered his writings to be destroyed. Reich died in jail.

Concerning research in general, my views have been shaped by philosophers of science such as Karl Popper and Paul K. Feyerabend. It is ok to pursue research so long as no one is harmed.

Aspects of Reich's character I didn't like. Reich accused one of his wives of infidelity, yet Reich himself cheated. Reich also had what I call an unscientific attitude, for Reich was an intellectual bully, impugned nefarious motives to those who disagreed with him, and had a martyr complex, even comparing himself to Giodorno Bruno and Jesus Christ. Wilson, in his book, says he sought permission to quote Reich, but Reich's executor refused. Wilson says "I am sure Miss Higgins [Reich's executor] is behaving exactly as Reich would have wanted her to."

[Y · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wilson writes this biography of Wilhelm Reich based on writings and interviews with those close to him. He paints an unflattering picture for a man that appeared to be supremely arrogant, however he doesn’t let that affect the credibility of his work.

Reich was essentially a Freudian who was so Freudian that even Freud thought he went off track. Freud’s outlook was always materialistic reductionism, centered initially around sexual libido. While Freud later revised his thoughts on this, Reich stuck close to it that he was led to believe that most neuroses were caused by sexual frustrations, which he might personally try to resolve with some of his patients, if you know what I mean. Freud didn’t like the idea that people only needed satisfying sexual activity to fix their problems, thinking it cheapened his field and would damage its credibility and disavowed Reich (also due to Reich’s sexual contact with his patients and his efforts to tie psychotherapy with communism).

Reich’s ego also got in the way of playing well with others and he found himself ostracized from the psychotherapeutic community. He eventually ended up in the US. There his work really evolved, with some believing he lost his mind. He “discovered” an energy force that pervades the universe and creates life that he called orgone. He created chambers (boxes made layers of wood and metal) a person could sit in and accumulate orgone energy. He is experimented heavily with orgone in treating disease, interactions with radiation (which led to some severe poisonings), weather control and zapping UFOs with it.

His experiments included sterilizing solutions and then observing what appeared as microscopic life. He felt this was created by the orgone energy. Some were good and other bad, and he felt some of these microscopic organisms were the cause of cancer (which he extrapolated into theories of good and evil as universal forces). Orgone helped the good and killed the bad. He then began treating cancer patients with orgone accumulators, which the FDA did not like. The FDA eventually investigated, got an injunction against his selling/renting accumulators, which he refused to respond to in court and wrote a letter to the judge basically saying he’s a genius and he’s going to do what he wants. The court upheld the injunction, which he didn’t follow, and he then went to prison. He died of a heart attack before finishing his two year sentence.

He also used orgone by directing it via open tubes that when he pointed at clouds, would cause them to grow and eventually starting raining. He supposedly ended a drought in Arizona through this method. Something like this is very hard to prove and his predictions didn’t always pan out (he unsuccessfully tried to flood New York as revenge against government persecution he endured). Many also witnessed UFOs near his property in Maine, which he believed were an extraterrestrial threat. When he pointed his orgone tubes at these blue lights they seemed to respond, which freaked him and he stopped doing.

Reich was either a genius or insane. There really is no middle ground. He theories and work were so novel that it’s hard to even evaluate them. Wilson tries to be balanced and keep an open mind, even tying the theory of orgone to other theories. I’m highly skeptical, but I’ve been wrong before. He seemed to unhinged and detached from reality near the end that he could not see other points of view. Any idea he thought of was instantly the one true gospel. Having no sense of self-criticism or awareness is a good way to get off track.

[Bryce Galloway · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wilson tells the story of Reich’s excommunication from Freud’s Vienna circle. Others frozen out by psychology’s high priest killed themselves, but not Reich, who updated Freud’s theories of sexual repression to focus on the redemptive powers of a good orgasm, encouraging his patients to wank themselves to wellbeing.
The story is nuts! Reich in with the Berlin Communists until his promotion of polyamorous free lovin’ youth irked their stoicism.
Reich in the US busting clouds and spooking UFOs with his orgasm cannon.
Wilson encourages us to see Reich’s dedication to empirical research and consider that he was less than nuts, until the very end anyway.
Well researched with some accessible descriptions of the theories being debated and astute psychoanalysis of Reich. But also some inexcusably sexist turns of phrase (were things really that backward in 1981, when this book was written?)
On meeting Reich’ former wife Ilse: (p15) ‘I could see why Reich lost no time in grabbing her […] Such women seem to be made to be carried off by dominant males’ [!?!?]
And on page 233, ‘Lady journalists are usually susceptible to charm and enthusiasm.’