Me and the Orgone

by Orson Bean

After spending 10 years and thousands of dollars for psychoanalysis, actor Orson Bean was divorced, depressed and dissatisfied with life. Then he discovered medical orgone therapy. Wilhelm Reich, M.D. developed this unique method of treatment based on the science of orgonomy which centers on the idea that one must free one's emotional and physical blocks to experience genuine feelings. Here is the candid, deeply personal story of Orson's experience with medical orgone therapy and how it triggered his own sexual revolution.

Genres: Biography Memoir

119 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1978

About the author

Orson Bean (born Dallas Frederick Burrows) was an American film, television, and stage actor, and a comedian, writer, and producer. He appeared frequently on televised game shows from the 1960s through the 1980s.

Reviews

[Brice Fuqua · Rating 3 out of 5]

Me and the Orgone is actor, Orson Bean's. account of his experiences with Wilhelm Reich's orgone therapy in the late 1960s. Reich started out as a respected psychoanalyst, but his ideas became increasingly bizarre as he grew older. By the end of his life, Reich was building orgone boxes which trapped mysterious orgone energy waves and trying to make rainfall by constructing long aluminum tubes inserted into water.
Nowadays, such people would be dismissed as screwballs. But Reich was actively persecuted by the US government. He was arrested and jailed, his orgone boxes destroyed and his books burned. Reich died in prison in 1957.
Reich's martyrdom made him into something of a cult figure. While orgone therapy never caught on beyond a small cult following, Reich's ideas of invisible, undetectable energy fields and open sexuality became standard components of many new age philosophies in the 1970s and 80s.
Bean's book shows how powerful suggestion and the placebo effect can be. Bean so strongly believed in Reich's crackpot ideas that they achieved, for him, the effects that they were supposed to, in spite of having so scientific valaidy.
Me and the Orgone remains an entertaining look into both the good and bad points of 1960s liberalism. Namely, liberal's idealism and passion combined with naivety and gullibility.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

A short personal account of undergoing Reichian therapy.

It was worth the read for his descriptions of the therapy alone but his take on living in New York City in the 70s was kind of interesting as well. The last chapter was a surprising opinion piece on his new sympathy with radical leftists (including the Weathermen) but why they were ultimately on the wrong track.

[Jonathan Karmel · Rating 2 out of 5]

I listened to this audiobook during a long car ride, and it was interesting enough to keep my attention.

Wilhelm Reich was an Austrian MD who followed in the footsteps of Sigmund Freud. He attempted to explain libido and wrote a book called "The Function of the Orgasm." Orgone is supposed to be some kind of energy or life-force; the word is a combination of "org" as in orgasm, plus "one" as in ozone. Thus, the author of this book was a patient of this Reich-inspired therapy that taught him about The Orgone. It changed his life.

The gist of this book is a guy went to conventional therapy for many years, but it never "worked." Then finally he discovered Orgone therapy. The orgone therapy confirmed is suspicion that the key to everything was orgasms. I think Orgone is completely bunk. But I imagine the author of this book was able to get some kind of somatic therapy that was helpful to him.

There is something called the Orgone box. It is not clear what happened to people who spent time in an Orgone box, and it should not be confused with the "Orgasmatron" in Woody Allen's movie Sleeper.

[S Cearley · Rating 2 out of 5]

I expected more insight into the workings, but it is mostly a narrowly focused view on how he was a success after getting the treatment and attributes it solely to the treatment (as opposed, for instance, to going and doing the work of opening a school or having honest communication in his marriage etc).

There simply isn't much here except for self aggrandizement and hero worshipping Anything that went wrong was blamed on someone else.

There were some really ugly notions carried over from the 50s which he vaguely but not specifically apologizes for in the 1978 addendum, but besides the use of sexist and homophobic slurs (as opposed to attitudes), he doesn't say what concepts he said were wrong. Still an unexpected update from over 40 years ago.

[Dan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a random find a little lending library. Enjoyably weird. I had to stop about 30 pages in and look this book up to make sure this was actually a true book and not some weird piece of fiction or satire.

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Orson 🅱️ean