Wilhelm Reich and the Orgone Energy Accumulator

Wilhelm Reich and the Orgone Energy Accumulator

This article relates to Time's Mouth

In Edan Lepucki's novel Time's Mouth, one of the time travelers enhances their power using an obscure invention by a Viennese psychologist, Wilhelm Reich.

Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957) was born in what is now Ukraine to Jewish parents, both of whom died when Reich was a child. After enlisting in the Austrian army during World War I, he entered medical school in Vienna. While there, he became a student and close friend of Sigmund Freud and worked in Freud's clinical practice as an assistant. He joined the Vienna Psychoanalytic Association in 1920 and earned his medical degree in 1922. He opened his own clinical practice at that point, specializing in sexual counseling. In 1930, he moved his work to Berlin.

At the start of his career, Reich's theories largely aligned with Freud's. Both felt that the suppression of sexual desire was the source of many neuroses. Reich took this theory one step farther, however, speculating that if sexual suppression caused mental instability, then it followed that sexual release would be a healing force. He believed that orgasms could prevent illness and promote the mental and physical well-being of a person, and by extension, could heal society. In several highly influential papers he espoused sexual freedoms that are still hotly debated today, such as open marriages and access to abortion and birth control. To put it (very) simply, sex was a good thing and nothing should prevent people from having a lot of it, guilt-free.

An avowed communist of Jewish descent, Reich left Germany in 1933 shortly after Hitler was elected chancellor. He lived in Denmark and Sweden briefly before settling in Norway. There, he developed a theory that all life is bound by a force he named "orgonic energy," which can be distributed through "bions," microscopic structures within living organisms that produce this energy. He speculated that "orgones" – as he named units of orgonic energy – could energize the human nervous system, and that an orgone insufficiency was responsible for mental illness.

His ideas about sexuality and the efficacy of orgasms had been controversial but were accepted by many of his peers. However, as his publications about orgonic energy became more and more outlandish, he lost support. In 1934 he was expelled from the International Psychoanalytic Association, and a few years later he was accused of scientific charlatanism by Norwegian authorities. As a result, in 1939 he moved to the United States to continue his work. In 1940, he built his first Orgone Energy Accumulator, a specially designed box he claimed could capture orgonic energy from the atmosphere and channel it into a person sitting inside the device. Various models were constructed, some with alternating layers of wood and wool, others using metal. He marketed the devices commercially, claiming they could cure all manner of ills, including cancer. The Food and Drug Administration launched an investigation into his assertions in 1947, and issued an injunction for him to cease distribution of his equipment and publications in 1954. He ignored this, and was jailed in 1956. He died of heart failure while in prison.

His theories made their way into popular culture after his death, however. Jack Kerouac wrote about the orgone box in his 1957 counterculture classic, On the Road, and author William Burroughs, a firm believer in the orgone box's benefits, built several. It's thought that the orgone accumulator inspired the Excessive Machine in the film Barbarella (1968), as well as the Orgasmatron in Sleeper (1973). Even today, you can find YouTube videos on building your own device and buy instructions and kits for them online.

Orgonon, Wilhelm Reich's 175-acre estate (and the site of his burial) has been preserved as a museum, which houses his library, papers, and several of his inventions. It's open to the public in July, August, and September.

A woman sits inside an Orgone Energy Accumulator, while a man holds the breathing apparatus. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration

Filed under People, Eras & Events

This "beyond the book article" relates to Time's Mouth. It originally ran in August 2023 and has been updated for the August 2024 paperback edition. Go to magazine.