Wilhelm Reich 1

Wilhelm Reich
Wilhelm Reich

Born March 24, 1897Dobrzanica, Galicia

Died November 3, 1957 (aged 60)Lewisburg, PA

Cause of death Heart failure

Resting place Orgonon, Rangeley, Maine

Nationality Austrian-American

Alma mater University of Vienna

Occupation Psychoanalyst

Known for Freudo-Marxism, body psychotherapy, orgone

Influenced by Max Stirner, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx

Influenced Saul Bellow, William Burroughs, Paul Edwards, Arthur Janov, Paul Goodman, Alexander Lowen, Norman Mailer, A.S. Neill,
Fritz Perls

Spouse Annie Pink, Ilse Ollendorf

Partner Elsa Lindenburg

Children Eva (1924), Lore (1928), Peter (1944)

Parents Leon Reich and Cecilia Roniger

Relatives Robert (brother)

Website

[1]
Wilhelm Reich Museum

Wilhelm Reich (March 24, 1897 – November 3, 1957) was an Austrian-American psychiatrist and psychoanalyst,
known as one of the most radical figures in the history of psychiatry. He was the author of several notable books,
including The Mass Psychology of Fascism and Character Analysis, both published in 1933.[2]
Reich worked with Sigmund Freud in the 1920s and was a respected analyst for much of his life, focusing on
character structure rather than on individual neurotic symptoms.[3] He tried to reconcile Marxism and
psychoanalysis, arguing that neurosis is rooted in the physical, sexual, economic, and social conditions of the patient,
and promoted adolescent sexuality, the availability of contraceptives, abortion, and divorce, and the importance for
women of economic independence. His work influenced a generation of intellectuals, including Saul Bellow,
William S. Burroughs, Paul Edwards, Norman Mailer, and A. S. Neill, and shaped innovations such as Fritz Perls's
Gestalt therapy, Alexander Lowen's bioenergetic analysis, and Arthur Janov's primal therapy.[4]
Later in life he became a controversial figure who was both adored and condemned. He began to violate some of the
key taboos of psychoanalysis, using touch during sessions, and treating patients in their underwear to improve their
Wilhelm Reich 2

"orgastic potency." He said he had discovered a primordial cosmic energy, which he said others called God and that
he called "orgone". He built orgone energy accumulators that his patients sat inside to harness the reputed health
benefits, leading to newspaper stories about sex boxes that cured cancer.[5]
Reich was living in Germany when Adolf Hitler came to power in January 1933. On March 2 that year the Nazi
newspaper Völkischer Beobachter published an attack on one of Reich's pamphlets, The Sexual Struggle of Youth.[6]
He left immediately for Vienna, then Scandinavia, moving to the United States in 1939. In 1947, following a series
of articles about orgone in The New Republic and Harper's, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) obtained
an injunction against the interstate sale of orgone accumulators.[7] Charged with contempt for violating it, Reich
conducted his own defense, which involved sending the judge all his books to read and arguing that a court was no
place to decide matters of science. He was sentenced to two years in prison, and in August 1956 several tons of his
publications were burned by the FDA, arguably one of the worst examples of censorship in U.S. history.[3] He died
in jail of heart failure just over a year later, days before he was due to apply for parole.[8]

Early life

Childhood
Reich was born the first of two sons to Leon Reich, a prosperous farmer, and Cecilia Roniger, in Dobrzanica, a
village in Galicia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father was by all accounts strict, cold, and jealous.
He was Jewish, but Reich was later at pains to point out that his father had moved away from Judaism and had not
raised his children as Jews; Reich wasn't even allowed to play with Yiddish-speaking children.[9] As an adult, Reich
corrected anyone who referred to him as a Jew. His biographer, Myron Sharaf, writes that this was in part because of
his rejection of what he called "Jewish chauvinism," in part because he disliked being forced into any position he had
not chosen for himself, and in part because he never wanted to be an outsider.[10]
Shortly after his birth, the family moved south to a farm in Jujinetz, near Chernivtsi, Bukovina, where Reich's father
took control of a cattle farm owned by his mother's uncle, Josef Blum. Reich attributed his later interest in the study
of sex and the biological basis of the emotions to his upbringing on the farm where, as he later put it, the natural life
functions were never hidden from him.[11] He also spoke of having witnessed the family maid having intercourse
with her boyfriend, and asking her later if he could "play" the part of the lover. He said that, by the time he was four
years old, there were no secrets about sex for him;[9] in his early memoirs, Passion of Youth, he writes that he had
intercourse for the first time at the age of 11½, though elsewhere said that he was 13.[12]

“ ”
I had read somewhere that lovers get rid of any intruder, so with wild fantasies in my brain I slipped back to my bed, my joy of life shattered,
torn apart in my inmost being for my whole life! — Wilhelm Reich.
[13]

He was taught at home until he was 12, when his mother committed suicide after she was discovered having an affair
with Reich's tutor, who lived with the family. Her death was particularly brutal: she drank a common household
cleaner, which left her in great pain for days before she died.[14] [15]
Reich wrote in 1920 about how deeply his mother's affair had affected him. Night after night he followed her as she
crept to the tutor's bedroom. He stood outside listening, feeling ashamed, angry, and jealous. He wondered if they
would kill him if they found out, and briefly thought of forcing her to have sex with him too. Torn between wanting
to protect her, but also to tell his father, he later blamed himself for her death, waking in the night overwhelmed by
the thought that he had killed her. The tutor was sent away, leaving Reich without a mother or a teacher, and with a
powerful sense of guilt.[14]
Wilhelm Reich 3

Education
He was sent to the all-male Czernowitz gymnasium, excelling at Latin, Greek, and the natural sciences. It appears to
have been during this period that a skin condition developed that plagued him for the rest of his life. When it began
is unclear, but it was diagnosed as psoriasis; Sharaf speculates that it may have been triggered by his mother's
suicide. He was given medication that contained arsenic, now known to make psoriasis worse.
His father was devastated by his wife's suicide.[16] In or around 1914, he took out a life insurance policy, then stood
for hours in a cold pond, apparently fishing, but in fact intending to commit slow suicide, according to Reich and his
brother, Robert.[17] He contracted pneumonia and tuberculosis, and died in 1914. Despite the insurance policy, no
money was forthcoming.[17]
Reich managed the farm and continued with his studies, graduating in 1915 mit
Stimmeneinhelligkeit (unanimous approval). In the summer of that year, the
Russians invaded Bukovina and the Reich brothers fled to Vienna, losing
everything. In his Passion of Youth, Reich wrote: "I never saw either my
homeland or my possessions again. Of a well-to-do past, nothing was left."
Reich joined the Austrian Army after school, serving from 1915–18, for the last
two years as a lieutenant. When the war ended in 1918, he entered the medical
school at the University of Vienna. As an undergraduate, he was drawn to the
work of Sigmund Freud. The men first met in 1919 when Reich visited Freud to
obtain literature for a seminar on sexology, Freud making a strong impression on
him. He became one of Freud's favorite students.[18] Freud allowed him to start
seeing analytic patients in 1920, when Reich was accepted as a guest member of Sigmund Freud and Reich met in
the Vienna Psychoanalytic Association, becoming a regular member in October 1919.
[19]
that year at the age of 23. He was allowed to complete his six-year medical
degree in four years because he was a war veteran, and received his M.D. in July 1922.[20]

Early career and first marriage

Reich worked in internal medicine at University Hospital, Vienna, and studied neuropsychiatry from 1922-24 at the
Neurological and Psychiatric Clinic under Professor Julius Wagner-Jauregg. In 1922, he set up private practice as a
psychoanalyst, and became a clinical assistant, and later deputy director of Freud's Psychoanalytic Polyclinic. He
joined the faculty of the Psychoanalytic Institute in Vienna in 1924, conducted research into the social causes of
neurosis, and became Deputy Director of Training.[18]
It was in Vienna that he met Annie Pink, a medical student who came to
him for analysis, and who later became an analyst herself. They married on
March 17, 1922, when she was 20 and Reich one week short of 25, with
Otto Fenichel as a witness.[21] The marriage produced two daughters, Eva
in 1924 and Lore in 1928.[22] They moved to Berlin in 1930, where he set
up clinics in working-class areas, taught sex education, and published
pamphlets. He joined the Communist Party of Germany, and his book, The
Sexual Revolution, was published in Vienna, but he became too outspoken
for the communists, and was expelled from the German party in 1933 and a
year later from its Danish counterpart. He was also expelled from the
A plaque on the house Reich lived in with International Psychoanalytical Association in 1934 for political
his wife and children at Schlangenbader
militancy.[23]
Straße 87, Berlin-Wilmersdorf, from 1931
until February 1933.
Wilhelm Reich 4

Reich had several affairs during his marriage, including one with his wife's friend, Lia Lasky, in 1927. He and his
wife finally separated in 1933 after he began a serious relationship in May 1932 with Elsa Lindenburg, a
choreographer and dance therapist, trained in Laban movement analysis, and a pupil of Elsa Gindler. He and
Lindenburg were living in Germany when Hitler became Chancellor in January 1933. On March 2, the Nazi
newspaper Völkischer Beobachter published an attack on Reich's Der Sexuale Kampf der Jugend (The Sexual
Struggle of Youth).[6] He was derided as a womanizer, a communist, and a Jew who advocated free love. He and
Lindenburg left for Vienna the next day. They moved to Scandinavia, first to Denmark where Reich was accused of
corrupting Danish youth with German sexology, then to Sweden, and in the fall of 1934 to Norway.[24]

1934–1939: Oslo

Vegetotherapy and the orgasm

Reich stayed in Norway for five years, working under
the auspices of Professor Schjelderup of the
Psychological Institute at the University of Oslo. He
first presented the principles of his vegetotherapy in a
paper called "Psychic contact and vegetative current" in
August 1934 at the 13th International Congress of
Psychoanalysis at Lucerne, Switzerland, and went on to
develop the technique between 1935 and 1940.
Vegetotherapy involves the patient physically
simulating the effects of certain emotions in the hope of
triggering them. Reich argued that the ability to feel
sexual love depended on a physical ability to have
sexual intercourse with what he called "orgastic Reich's home in Drammensveien near Olaf Kyrres plass at Frogner,
Oslo. A blue plaque reads: "The physician and psychoanalyst
potency." He tried to measure the male orgasm, noting
WILHELM REICH (1897-1957) lived and worked here 1935–39.
that four distinct phases occurred physiologically: first, Developed character analysis and the body-oriented therapy."
the psycho-sexual buildup or tension; second, the
tumescence of the penis, with an accompanying electrical charge that Reich measured; third, an electrical discharge
at the moment of orgasm; and fourth, the relaxation of the penis. He believed the force that he measured was a
distinct type of energy present in all life forms.[25]

He was a prolific writer for psychoanalytic journals in Europe. Originally, psychoanalysis was focused on the
treatment of neurotic symptoms. Reich's Character Analysis was a major step in the development of what today is
called ego psychology. In Reich's view, a person's entire character, not only individual symptoms, could be looked at
and treated as a neurotic phenomenon. The book also introduced his theory of body armoring. Reich argued that
unreleased psycho-sexual energy could produce actual physical blocks within muscles and organs, and that these
blocks act as a body armor preventing the release of the energy. An orgasm was one way to break through the armor.
These ideas developed into a general theory of the importance of a healthy sex life to overall well-being, a theory
compatible with Freud's views. His idea was that the orgasm was not simply a device to aid procreation, but was the
body's emotional energy regulator. The better the orgasm, the more energy was released, meaning that less was
available to create neurotic states. Reich called the ability to release sufficient energy during orgasm "orgastic
potency," something that very few individuals could achieve, he argued, because of society's sexual oppression. A
man or woman without orgastic potency was in a constant state of tension, developing a body armor to keep it in.
The outer rigidity and inner anxiety is the state of neurosis, leading to hate, sadism, greed, fascism and
antisemitism.[24]
Wilhelm Reich 5

He agreed with Freud that sexual development was the origin of mental illness. They both believed that most
psychological states were dictated by unconscious processes, that infant sexuality develops early but is repressed,
and that this repression has important consequences for mental health. At that time a Marxist (see Freudo-Marxism),
Reich argued that the source of sexual repression was bourgeois morality and the socio-economic structures that
produced it. As sexual repression was the cause of the neuroses, the best cure was an active, guilt-free sex life. He
argued that such a liberation could come about only through a morality not imposed by a repressive economic
structure.[26] In 1928, he joined the Austrian Communist Party and founded the Socialist Association for Sexual
Counseling and Research, which organized counseling centers for workers.

Bion experiments
From 1934-39, Reich conducted experiments looking at vegetative energy in the body, especially the Galvanic skin
response, which became research into the origins of life. These he called the "Bion Experiments". He examined
protozoa, single-celled creatures with nuclei. He grew cultured vesicles using grass, sand, iron, and animal tissue,
boiling them, and adding potassium and gelatin. Having heated the materials to incandescence with a heat-torch, he
noted bright, glowing, blue vesicles, which, he said, could be cultured, and which gave off an observable radiant
energy. He named the vesicles "bions" and believed they were a rudimentary form of life, halfway between life and
non-life. When he poured the cooled mixture onto growth media, bacteria were born, he said, dismissing the idea
that the bacteria were already present in the air or on other materials.[27]

T-bacilli
In 1936, Reich wrote that "[s]ince everything is antithetically arranged, there must be two different types of
single-celled organisms: (a) life-destroying organisms or organisms that form through organic decay, (b)
life-promoting organisms that form from inorganic material that comes to life."[28] This idea of spontaneous
generation led him to believe he had found the cause of cancer. He called the life-destroying organisms "T-bacilli,"
with the T standing for Tod, German for death. He described in The Cancer Biopathy how he had found them in a
culture of rotting cancerous tissue obtained from a local hospital. He wrote that T-bacilli were formed from the
disintegration of protein; they were 0.2 to 0.5 micrometer in length, shaped like lancets, and when injected into mice,
they caused inflammation and cancer. He concluded that, when orgone energy diminishes in cells through aging or
injury, the cells undergo "bionous degeneration," or death. At some point, the deadly T-bacilli start to form in the
cells. Death from cancer, he believed, was caused by an overwhelming growth of the T-bacilli.

Nudity and touch during sessions

From 1930 onwards, Reich became more interested in his patients' physical responses during therapy sessions, and
toward the late 1930s, he began to treat patients outside the limits of psychoanalysis's restrictions, though well within
the scope of general medicine. He began to sit next to his patients, rather than behind them, in order to make stronger
'contact.' He started touching them, to both increase awareness of tension and contraction and to relieve it directly.
He would ask his male patients to undress down to their shorts, and sometimes to undress entirely, and his female
patients down to their underclothes. He began talking to them, answering their questions, rather than the stock, "Why
do you ask?" analyst's response.[29]
From a psychoanalytic point of view, this undermined the position of neutrality. The analyst is meant to be a blank
screen onto which the patient projects his old desires, loves, hates, and neurosis—a process known as transference.
Reich wrote that the psychoanalytic taboos reinforced the neurotic taboos of the patient. He slowly broke away from
them, writing that he wanted his patients to see him as human.[30] He would press hard on their "body armor," his
thumb or the palm of his hand pressing on their jaws, necks, chests, backs, or thighs, aiming to dissolve their
muscular, and thereby characterological, rigidity.[31] He wanted to see their movements soften, their breathing ease.
This dissolution of the "body armor" also brought back the repressed memory of the childhood situation that had
caused the repression, he wrote. If the session worked as intended, he wrote that he could see waves of pleasure
Wilhelm Reich 6

move through their bodies, a series of spontaneous, involuntary movements. Reich called these the "orgasm reflex."
The two goals of Reichian therapy became the attainment of this orgasm reflex during therapy, and orgastic potency
during intercourse. Reich called the flow of energy that he said he observed in his patients' bodies, "bio-electricity,"
and considered calling his therapy "orgasmotherapy," but thought better of it for political reasons.[32]

Opposition to his ideas

Scientists in Oslo reacted strongly to his work on bions, deriding it as nonsense. Tidens Tegn, a leading liberal
newspaper, launched a campaign against him in 1937, supported by scientists and other newspapers.[24] Between
September 1937 and the fall of 1938, over 100 articles denouncing him appeared in the main Oslo newspapers.[33]
In 1937, Leiv Kreyberg, the country's top cancer specialist, was allowed to examine one of Reich's bion preparations
under the microscope. Kreyberg wrote that the broth Reich had used as his culture medium was indeed sterile, but
that the bacteria were ordinary staphylococci. He concluded that Reich's control measures to prevent infection from
airborne bacteria were not as foolproof as Reich believed. Kreyberg accused Reich of being ignorant of basic
bacteriological and anatomical facts, while Reich accused Kreyberg of having failed to recognize living cancer cells
under magnification. Thus, Sharaf writes, an opportunity for scientific exchange degenerated into name-calling.[27]
Reich sent a sample of the bacteria to another Norwegian biologist, Professor Thjötta of the Oslo Bacteriological
Institute, who also said they resulted from air infection. Kreyberg and Thjötta had their views published in
Aftenposten on April 19 and 21, 1938, Krayberg referring to him as "Mr. Reich," alleging that Reich knew less about
bacteria and anatomy than a first-year medical student. When Reich requested a detailed control study, Kreyberg
responded that his work did not merit it.[27]
Reich's The Bion Experiments on the Origin of Life was published in 1938, leading to attacks by the scientific and
lay press that he was a "Jew pornographer," who was daring to meddle with the origins of life. Alan Cantwell writes
that Reich's detractors focused on one paragraph in which Reich wrote that his research had "proved particularly
fruitful for an understanding of cancer," which led to the claim that he was promoting a quack cancer cure.[25]
By February 1938, his visa had expired. Several Norwegian scientists argued against an extension, Kreyberg saying,
"If it is a question of handing Dr. Reich over to the Gestapo, then I will fight that, but if one could get rid of him in a
decent manner, that would be the best." The writer Sigurd Hoel wondered when it had become a crime to perform
amateurish biological experiments. "When did it become a reason for deportation that one looked in a microscope
when one was not a trained biologist?" Reich received influential support from overseas, first from Bronisław
Malinowski, who wrote to the Norwegian press in March 1938 that Reich's sociological work was a "distinct and
valuable contribution to science," and from A.S. Neill, founder of Summerhill in England, a progressive school
known throughout the world. Neill also wrote to the Norwegian press, arguing that "the campaign against Reich
seems largely ignorant and uncivilized, more like fascism than democracy ..." Norway was proud of its intellectual
tolerance, so the "Reich affair" put the government on the spot. A compromise was therefore found. Reich was given
his visa, but a royal decree was issued stipulating that anyone wanting to practice psychoanalysis needed a licence,
and it was widely understood that Reich would not be given one. Throughout the affair, Reich issued just one public
statement, when he asked for a commission to replicate his bion experiments. Sharaf writes that the scientific
opposition to his work affected his personality and relationships. He was angered and humiliated by the notoriety he
had inadvertently achieved. His self-confidence undermined, he felt like a marked man, hunted and tormented, no
longer comfortable in public, and seething with bitterness against the researchers who had denounced him.[33]
Wilhelm Reich 7

Personal life
Sharaf writes that, at a personal level, 1934–1937 was the happiest period of Reich's life. His relationship with Elsa
Lindenberg was good and he considered marrying her. When she became pregnant in 1935, they were initially
overjoyed, buying clothes and furniture for the child, but doubts developed for Reich, who felt the future was too
unsettled. Sharaf writes that, to Elsa's great distress, Reich insisted on an abortion, at that time illegal. They went to
Berlin, where Edith Jacobson, a psychoanalyst, helped to arrange it.[34]
In 1937, Reich began an affair with a female patient, an actress who was the ex-wife of a colleague. She had entered
therapy with the explicit intention of seducing him, which he told her was impossible, but she succeeded. The
analysis stopped because of the relationship, then the relationship ended and the analysis began again. She eventually
threatened to go to the press, but was persuaded that it would harm her at least as much as him. When a colleague
asked him why he had behaved this way, he replied, "A man must do foolish things sometimes."[35] He also had an
affair with Gerd Bergersen, a 25-year-old Norwegian textile designer.[36]
During the same period, as the newspaper campaign against him gained pace, he suddenly developed intense
jealousy toward Elsa, demanding that she share his work with him, and not have a separate life of any kind. He even
physically assaulted a composer she was working with on some choreography. Elsa briefly considered calling the
police but decided Reich couldn't afford another scandal. His behavior took its toll on their relationship, and when
Reich asked her to accompany him to the U.S., she said no, writing later that it was the hardest "no" she had ever had
to say.[37]

1939: Move to the U.S.

Teaching; meeting his second wife

In March 1938, Hitler annexed Austria. Reich's ex-wife and daughters had already left Austria for the U.S. Later that
year, an American psychiatrist at Columbia Medical School, Theodore P. Wolfe, traveled to Norway to study under
Reich. Wolfe offered to help Reich settle in the U.S., and managed to arrange an official invitation from The New
School in New York. Wolfe and Walter Briehl, an old student of Reich's, put up several thousand dollars to
guarantee Reich's salary. Wolfe also pulled strings with Adolph Berle, an official in the U.S. State Department. He
finally received his visa in August 1939, and sailed out of Norway on August 19 on the Stavenger Fjord, the last
boat to leave for the States before the war began on September 3.[38]
He began teaching at The New School, where he remained for two years, living first at 75-02 Kessel Street, Forest
Hills, Queens, then settling into a two-story brick house at 9906 69th Avenue in the same area. It had a basement that
he used for animal experiments, a large room on the first floor that served as an office, dining room, living room, and
a place for his seminar students every other week. The dining room became his laboratory. Two bedrooms on the top
floor were shared by his maid and his secretary, Gertrud Gaasland, and three rooms on the second floor became
Reich's bedroom and therapy rooms.[39]
It was Gertrud Gaasland who introduced him to Ilse Ollendorf, 29 years old at the time. Reich was still in love with
Elsa, but Ilse threw herself into organizing Reich's life for him, taking over the secretarial and bookkeeping tasks,
learning laboratory techniques, and showing herself willing to mold herself completely to his lifestyle, something
Elsa had been unwilling to do. They began living together on Christmas Day 1939, and she began to work for him on
January 2, 1940. They had a son, Peter, in 1944, and were married in 1946.[40] [41]
Reich's personality changed after the onslaught of the press in Oslo. He became socially isolated, and decided to
keep his distance even from old friends and his ex-wife. He told a friend he was going to follow the "remarkable
law": be distant, even a little haughty, withhold love, and then people will respect you. His students in the U.S. came
to know him as a man that no colleague, no matter how close, called by his first name. He wrote to Elsa in January
1940 breaking off their relationship once and for all, telling her that he was in despair, and that he believed he would
end up dying like a dog.[42]
Wilhelm Reich 8

Allegations of mental illness

Rumors had been rife since the late 1920s that he was mentally ill in some way, and had even been hospitalized,
though Sharaf writes that he had not. He was seen as paranoid, remote, belligerent, and fanatical. Sharaf writes that
psychoanalysts have had a tendency to dismiss as ill anyone from within the fold who has digressed, and that never
was this done so relentlessly or destructively as with Reich. His work was split into the pre-psychotic "good" Reich,
and the post-psychotic "bad," the date of the illness's onset depending on which parts of his work a speaker disliked.
Psychoanalysts wanted to see him as sane in the 1920s because of his solid work on character; political radicals
regarded him as sane during the 1930s because of his Marxist-oriented psychology research.[43]

Orgonomy
Freud had argued for the existence of a sexual energy which he called "libido", which he initially described as
"something which is capable of increase, decrease, displacement and discharge, and which extends itself over the
memory traces of an idea like an electric charge over the surface of the body". But by 1925 Freud had rejected the
idea that the libido represented a physical energy.[20] Reich took the idea further, arguing that he had discovered a
primordial cosmic energy. He called it "orgone", and the study of it "orgonomy".
Orgone is blue in color, he wrote, omnipresent, visible to the naked eye, and responsible for such things as weather,
the color of the sky, gravity, the formation of galaxies, and the biological expressions of emotion and sexuality.
Reich argued that St. Elmo's Fire is a manifestation of it, as is the blue color of sexually excited frogs. Red
corpuscles, plant chlorophyll, gonadal cells, protozoa, and cancer cells are all charged with orgone, he said.[24]
He argued that humankind had previously split its knowledge of orgone in two: "ether" for its mechanistic, physical
aspects, and "God" for the spiritual, the subjective.[44] He wrote that "God-Father is the basic cosmic energy from
which all being stems, and which streams through (the) body as through anything else in existence."[45]

Orgone accumulators
In 1940, he built boxes called "orgone accumulators" to concentrate atmospheric orgone. Some of the boxes were for
lab animals, and some were large enough for a human being to sit inside. Composed of alternating layers of ferrous
metals and organic insulators with a high dielectric constant, the accumulators had the appearance of a large, hollow
capacitor. Based on experiments with them, he argued that orgone energy was a negatively-entropic force in nature
responsible for concentrating and organizing matter. The construction of the boxes caught the attention of the press,
leading to wild rumors that they were "sex boxes" that caused uncontrollable erections.[25]
According to Reich's theory, illness was primarily caused by depletion or blockages of the orgone energy within the
body. He conducted clinical tests of the orgone accumulator on people suffering from a variety of illnesses. The
patient would sit within the accumulator and absorb the "concentrated orgone energy." He built smaller, more
portable accumulator-blankets of the same layered construction for application to parts of the body. The effects
observed were said to boost the immune system, even to the point of destroying certain types of tumors, though
Reich was hesitant to claim this constituted a cure. The orgone accumulator was also tested on mice with cancer, and
on plant-growth, the results convincing Reich that the benefits of orgone therapy could not be attributed to a placebo
effect. He had, he believed, developed a grand unified theory of physical and mental health, a claim regarded by the
psychoanalytic community as quackery.[46]
Wilhelm Reich 9

Experiment XX
In December 1944, Reich began the 20th (Roman numeral XX) in his series of bion experiments.[47] He filtered all
the earth out of an earth bion preparation so that all that remained was clear yellow water, then buried the test tube
outdoors in the frozen ground. When he retrieved it three weeks later and examined it under a microscope, he saw
pulsating plasmatic flakes. Since the yellow water had not contained visible particulates before it had been frozen,
Reich concluded that free orgone energy had condensed out to form the lifelike flakes. This experiment formed the
basis for Reich's later theory that all matter in the universe had derived from orgone energy via cosmic
superimposition.[48]

Cloudbusters
Reich posited a conjugate, life-annulling energy in opposition to orgone,
which he dubbed Deadly Orgone or DOR. He wrote that accumulations
of DOR played a role in desertification, and he designed a "cloudbuster"
with which he said he could manipulate streams of orgone energy in the
atmosphere to induce rain by forcing clouds to form and disperse. It was
a set of hollow metal pipes and cables inserted into water, which Reich
argued created a stronger orgone energy field than was in the
atmosphere, the water drawing the atmospheric orgone through the
pipes.[20]

Reich conducted dozens of experiments with the cloudbuster, calling the

research "Cosmic Orgone Engineering." In 1953, a drought threatened
Maine's blueberry crop, and several farmers offered to pay Reich if he
could make it rain. The weather bureau had reportedly forecast no rain
for several days when Reich began the experiment at 10 a.m. on July 6,
1953. The Bangor Daily News reported on July 24: Reich with one of his cloudbusters, which he
Dr. Reich and three assistants set up their "rain-making" device off said could manipulate streams of orgone to
produce rain.
the shore of Grand Lake, near the Bangor hydro-electric dam ...
The device, a set of hollow tubes, suspended over a small cylinder,
connected by a cable, conducted a "drawing" operation for about an hour and ten minutes ...
According to a reliable source in Ellsworth the following climactic changes took place in that city on the night
of July 6 and the early morning of July 7: "Rain began to fall shortly after ten o'clock Monday evening, first as
a drizzle and then by midnight as a gentle, steady rain. Rain continued throughout the night, and a rainfall of
0.24 inches was recorded in Ellsworth the following morning."
A puzzled witness to the "rain-making" process said: "The queerest looking clouds you ever saw began to
form soon after they got the thing rolling." And later the same witness said the scientists were able to change
the course of the wind by manipulation of the device.[49] The blueberry crop survived, the farmers declared
themselves satisfied, and Reich received his fee.[20]
Wilhelm Reich 10

Orgone experiment with Einstein

On December 30, 1940, Reich wrote to Albert Einstein saying he had a scientific
discovery he wanted to discuss, and on January 13, 1941 went to visit Einstein in
Princeton. They talked for five hours, and Einstein agreed to test an orgone
accumulator, which Reich had constructed out of a Faraday cage made of
galvanized steel and insulated by wood and paper on the outside.[50] Einstein
agreed that if, as Reich suggested, an object's temperature could be raised without
an apparent heating source, it would be a "bombshell" in physics.[51]

Reich supplied Einstein with a small accumulator during their second meeting,
and Einstein performed the experiment in his basement, which involved taking the
temperature atop, inside, and near the device. He also stripped the device down to
Reich discussed orgone
its Faraday cage to compare temperatures. In his attempt to replicate Reich's
accumulators with Albert Einstein findings, Einstein observed a rise in temperature,[52] which Reich argued was
in 1941. caused by the orgone energy that had accumulated inside the Faraday cage.[53]
However, one of Einstein's assistants pointed out that the temperature was lower
[54]
on the floor than on the ceiling. Following that remark, Einstein modified the experiment and, as a result,
concluded that the effect was simply due to the temperature gradient inside the room.[55] He wrote back to Reich,
describing his experiments and expressing the hope that Reich would develop a more skeptical approach.[56]

Reich responded with a 25-page letter to Einstein, expressing concern that "convection from the ceiling" would join
"air germs" and "Brownian movement" to explain away new findings.[53] The correspondence between Reich and
Einstein was published by Reich's press as The Einstein Affair in 1953, possibly without Einstein's permission.[57]

Arrested by the FBI

On December 12, 1941, five days after Pearl Harbor, Reich was arrested at his home at 2 a.m. by the FBI, and taken
to Ellis Island, where he was held for over three weeks, because he was an immigrant with a communist background.
He was furious, and blamed his first wife, with whom he had a very poor relationship, for having reported him in
some way, though there is no evidence that she was involved. His psoriasis erupted, and his doctor persuaded the
authorities to transfer him to the hospital ward, where Ilse was allowed to visit him twice a week. Wolfe and a
lawyer did their best to find out what the charge was, Wolfe traveling several times to Washington to protest, but it
was not until December 26 that a hearing was held, and still it remained unclear why he had been picked up. He was
questioned about several books the FBI had found in his home, including Hitler's Mein Kampf, Trotsky's My Life,
and a Russian alphabet book for children. Eventually Reich threatened to go on hunger strike, and he was released on
January 5, 1942. The FBI released 789 pages of its files on Reich in 2000, which said:
This German immigrant described himself as the Associate Professor of Medical Psychology, Director
of the Orgone Institute, President and research physician of the Wilhelm Reich Foundation and
discoverer of biological or life energy. A 1940 security investigation was begun to determine the extent
of Reich's communist commitments. A board of Alien Enemy Hearing judged that Dr. Reich was not a
threat to the security of the U.S.[58]
Wilhelm Reich 11

Purchase of Orgonon
Using money from his income as a therapist, and contributions from students, Reich purchased an old farm near
Dodge Pond, Maine in November 1942. He called the 160 acres (0.65 km2) of fields, forests, and hills "Orgonon".
He built a laboratory there in 1945, and in 1948 began construction of the Orgone Energy Observatory, which
included another laboratory, a library, and observation decks to study atmospheric orgone.[20]

Controversy

1947: The Brady article and the FDA

Until 1947, Reich enjoyed a largely uncritical press in the U.S. His psychotherapy practice was flourishing, his
psychoanalytic theories were taught in universities and discussed in the Journal of the American Medical Association
and the American Journal of Psychiatry. He was listed in American Men of Science, and The Nation gave his writing
positive reviews. Only one science journal, Psychosomatic Medicine, had criticized him, calling his ideas about
orgone a "surrealist creation."[24]
His reputation took a sudden downturn in May 1947. On
May 26, an article by freelance writer Mildred Edie Brady
appeared in The New Republic, entitled "The Strange Case
of Wilhelm Reich", with the subhead, "The man who
blames both neuroses and cancer on unsatisfactory sexual
activities has been repudiated by only one scientific
journal."[24] Brady wrote: "Orgone, named after the sexual
orgasm, is, according to Reich, a cosmic energy. It is, in
fact, the cosmic energy. Reich has not only discovered it; he
has seen it, demonstrated it and named a town—Orgonon,
Maine—after it. Here he builds accumulators of it, which Mildred Brady's The Strange Case of Wilhelm Reich, The New
Republic, May 26, 1947.
are rented out to patients, who presumably derive 'orgastic
potency' from it."[24] Sharaf writes that the implication was
clear: the accumulators gave orgastic potency, the lack of which causes cancer. Therefore, the claim for the
accumulators was that they cured cancer. Brady argued that the "growing Reich cult" had to be dealt with.[59]

The regulation and advertising of medical devices is shared

and coordinated by the Federal Trade Commission and the
Food and Drug Administration. On July 23, Dr. J.J. Durrett,
director of the Medical Advisory Division of the Federal
Trade Commission, wrote to the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) asking them to look into Reich's
claims about the health benefits of orgone.[60] The FDA
assigned an investigator to the case, who learned that Reich
had built 250 accumulators; the FDA concluded that they
were dealing with a "fraud of the first magnitude."[61]
August 1947 letter from the FDA about Reich, referencing the Sharaf writes that the FDA suspected a sexual racket of
Brady article
some kind; questions were asked about the women
associated with orgonomy and "what was done with
them."[62]
Wilhelm Reich 12

“ I would like to plead for my right to investigate natural phenomena without having guns pointed at me. I also ask for the right to be wrong
without being hanged for it. — Wilhelm Reich, November 1947
[63]
”
In November, Reich wrote in Conspiracy. An Emotional Chain Reaction: "I would like to plead for my right to
investigate natural phenomena without having guns pointed at me. I also ask for the right to be wrong without being
hanged for it ... I am angry because smearing can do anything and truth can do so little to prevail, as it seems at the
moment."[64] Sharaf writes that Reich came to believe that Brady was a Stalinist acting under orders from the
Communist Party, a "communist sniper," as Reich called her.[65]

1954 injunction
Over the years, the FDA interviewed physicians, Reich's students, and his patients, asking about Reich's use of
orgone accumulators. On July 29, 1952, an unannounced inspection was conducted at Orgonon. One inspector was a
regular FDA inspector, another an FDA medical expert, and a third an FDA device expert. Reich was known to
abhor unannounced visitors; he had once chased some people away with a gun just for looking at an adjacent
property. He shouted at the FDA men, told them they had to read his writings before he would interact with them,
and ordered them to leave.[66]
The visit began a period of investigation by the FDA, triggering belligerent responses from Reich, who called them
"higs," hoodlums in government, and the tools of red fascists. He developed a delusion that he had powerful friends
in government, including President Eisenhower, who he believed would protect him, and that the U.S. Air Force was
flying over Orgonon to make sure that he was all right.[66]
On February 10, 1954, the U.S. Attorney for Maine filed a complaint seeking a permanent injunction under Sections
301 and 302 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, to prevent interstate shipment of orgone accumulators
and to ban some of Reich's writing promoting and advertising the devices.[67] Reich refused to appear in court,
arguing that no court was in a position to evaluate his work. In a long letter to Judge Clifford, he wrote:
My factual position in the case as well as in the world of science of today does not permit me to enter
the case against the Food and Drug Administration, since such action would, in my mind, imply
admission of the authority of this special branch of the government to pass judgment on primordial,
pre-atomic cosmic orgone energy. I, therefore, rest the case in full confidence in your hands.[68]
Maine was granted the injunction by default on March 19, 1954.[69] His ruling was more extensive than the original
complaint. He ordered that all accumulators and their parts were to be destroyed. All written material of promotional
information and instructions for use (labeling) on the accumulators was also to be destroyed. This included ten of
Reich's books that mentioned orgone energy, until such time as references to orgone were deleted; the list included
Character Analysis and The Mass Psychology of Fascism.[70]

May 1956: Trial

In May 1956, Reich traveled to Arizona to experiment with the cloudbuster. In his absence, and without his
knowledge, one of his students, Dr. Michael Silvert,[71] moved some accumulators and books from Rangeley, Maine
to New York, in violation of the injunction.[20] Reich and Silvert were both charged with contempt of court. Once
again, he refused to arrange a legal defense. He was brought in chains to the courthouse in Portland, Maine.
Representing himself, he admitted to the violation and, in his defense, arranged for the judge to be sent copies of his
books. He was found guilty of contempt of court on May 7, 1956, and sentenced to two years' imprisonment. Silvert
was sentenced to a year and a day. The Wilhelm Reich Foundation, which Reich's students and friends had set up in
1949, was fined $10,000.[20]
Dr. Morton Herskowitz, a fellow psychiatrist and friend of Reich's, wrote of the trial: "Because he viewed himself as
a historical figure, he was making a historical point, and to make that point he had conducted the trial that way. If I
Wilhelm Reich 13

had been in his shoes, I would have wanted to escape jail, I would have wanted to be free, etc. I would have
conducted the trial on a strictly legal basis because the lawyers had said, 'We can win this case for you. Their case is
so weak, so when you let us do our thing we can get you off.' But he wouldn't do it."[72] Reich appealed in October
1956, but the Court of Appeals upheld the lower court's decision on December 11. He appealed to the Supreme
Court, which decided on February 25, 1957 not to review the lower courts' decisions. Reich and Silvert then asked
for a suspension or reduction of their sentences; a hearing was set for March 11, to be followed by jail if the request
did not succeed. The judge later wrote to the U.S. Board of Parole that he had been inclined to suspend or reduce the
sentence, but the government established that Reich would not discontinue promoting the orgone accumulator. Reich
then appealed to the President, to no avail.[73]

1956: Book burning

On June 5, 1956, as Reich was arranging his first appeal, two FDA officials traveled to Orgonon to supervise the
destruction of Reich's accumulators. Most of them had been sold at that point, and another 50 were with Silvert in
New York. Only three were at Orgonon. The FDA agents were not allowed to destroy them, only to supervise the
destruction, so Reich's friends, and his son Peter, chopped them up with axes as the agents watched. On June 26, the
agents returned to supervise the destruction of the promotional material, including some of his books. On July 9, the
American Civil Liberties Union issued a press release criticizing the book burning, although coverage of the release
was poor, and Reich ended up asking them not to help him because he was annoyed that they failed to criticize the
destruction of the accumulators. In England, a letter of protest signed by A.S. Neill and Herbert Read also failed to
find a publisher. On July 23, the remaining accumulators in New York were destroyed by S.A. Collins and Sons,
who had built them.[74]
On August 23, six tons of his books, journals, and papers were burned in the 25th Street public incinerator in New
York's lower east side, the Gansevoort incinerator. Among the material destroyed were titles that were supposed only
to be banned, including 12,189 copies of the Orgone Energy Bulletin, 6,261 copies of the International Journal of
Sex Economy and Orgone Research, 2,900 copies of Emotional Plague Versus Orgone Biophysics, 2,976 copies of
Annals of the Orgone Institute, and hardcover copies of several of his books, including The Sexual Revolution,
Character Analysis, and The Mass Psychology of Fascism.[20] This action has been cited as one of the worst
examples of censorship in U.S. history.[3]
As with the accumulators, the FDA was supposed only to observe the destruction, while his colleagues carried it out.
One of them, Victor Sobey, wrote: "All the expenses and labor had to be provided by the [Orgone Institute] Press. A
huge truck with three to help was hired. I felt like people who, when they are to be executed, are made to dig their
own graves first and are then shot and thrown in. We carried box after box of the literature."[75]

1957: Imprisonment and death

On February 10, 1957, Reich signed his last will, naming his daughter, Eva, as his executrix.[76] On March 12, he
was sent to Danbury Federal Prison, where Richard C. Hubbard, a psychiatrist who admired Reich, examined him,
recording paranoia manifested by delusions of grandiosity, persecution, and ideas of reference:
The patient feels that he has made outstanding discoveries. Gradually over a period of many years he
has explained the failure of his ideas in becoming universally accepted by the elaboration of psychotic
thinking. "The Rockerfellows (sic) are against me." (Delusion of grandiosity.) "The airplanes flying over
prison are sent by the Air Force to encourage me." (Ideas of reference and grandiosity.)[77]
On March 22, he was transferred to the federal penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, where there were better
psychiatric facilities, and was examined again. This time, it was decided that he was mentally competent, and that his
personality appeared intact, though he might become psychotic under stress.[77] Two days later, on his 60th birthday,
he wrote to his son, Peter, then 13:
Wilhelm Reich 14

I am in Lewisburg. I am calm, certain in my thoughts, and doing mathematics most of the time. I am
kind of "above things," fully aware of what is up. Do not worry too much about me, though anything
might happen. I know, Pete, that you are strong and decent. At first I thought that you should not visit
me here. I do not know. With the world in turmoil I now feel that a boy your age should experience what
is coming his way—fully digest it without getting a "belly ache," so to speak, nor getting off the right
track of truth, fact, honesty, fair play, and being above board—never a sneak. ...[78]
Peter did visit him at Lewisburg several times. Reich told him that he cried a lot, and wanted Peter to let himself cry
too, believing that tears are the "great softener." His last letter to his son was on October 22, when he said he was in
good spirits, and looking forward to being released on November 10, when he would have served one third of his
sentence; a parole hearing had been scheduled for just a few days before. He wrote that he and Peter had a date for a
meal at the Howard Johnson restaurant near Peter's school.[8]
Reich failed to appear for morning roll call on November 3, and was found dead in his bed at 7 a.m., fully clothed
but for his shoes. The prison physician said he had died during the night of "myocardial insufficiency with sudden
heart failure."[8] He was buried in a plot of land he had chosen in the woods at Orgonon, in a coffin he had bought a
year earlier from a Maine craftsman. He had left instructions that there was to be no religious ceremony, but that a
record should be played of Schubert's "Ave Maria" sung by Marian Anderson, and that his granite headstone should
read simply: "Wilhelm Reich, Born March 24, 1897, Died ..." Dr. Elsworth F. Baker, a physician friend, said at his
funeral, "Once in a thousand years, nay once in two thousand years, such a man comes upon this earth to change the
destiny of the human race. As with all great men, distortion, falsehood, and persecution followed him. He met them
all, until organized conspiracy sent him to prison and then killed him."[79] A replica of a cloudbuster stands next to
his grave, and the building that housed his laboratory is now the Wilhelm Reich Museum.
None of the psychiatric and established scientific journals carried an obituary. Time magazine wrote on November
18, 1957:
Died. Wilhelm Reich, 60, once-famed psychoanalyst, associate and follower of Sigmund Freud, founder of the
Wilhelm Reich Foundation, lately better known for unorthodox sex and energy theories; of a heart attack; in
Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary, Pa; where he was serving a two-year term for distributing his invention, the
"orgone energy accumulator" (in violation of the Food and Drug Act), a telephone-booth-size device that
supposedly gathered energy from the atmosphere, and could cure, while the patient sat inside, common colds,
cancer, and impotence.[80]

Legacy

Status of his work

The study of Reich's work has been hampered by the instruction he left that his unpublished papers were to be stored
for 50 years after his death, "to secure their safety from destruction and falsification ...," which has meant that
researchers, even scholars, were not able to access them until 2007.[81]
New research journals devoted to his work began to appear in the 1960s. Physicians and natural scientists with an
interest in Reich organized small study groups and institutes, and new research efforts were undertaken, though the
mainstream scientific community remains largely uninterested in his ideas. William Steig, Robert Anton Wilson,
Norman Mailer, William S. Burroughs, Jerome D. Salinger and Orson Bean have all undergone Reich's orgone
therapy and there is some use of orgone accumulators by psychotherapists in Europe, particularly in Germany.[82] A
double-blind, controlled study of the effects of the orgone accumulator was carried out by Stefan Müschenich and
Rainer Gebauer at the University of Marburg and appeared to validate some of Reich's claims.[83] The study was
later reproduced by Günter Hebenstreit at the University of Vienna.[84]
Reich's influence is felt in modern psychotherapy. He was a pioneer of body psychotherapy and several
emotions-based psychotherapies, influencing Fritz Perls's Gestalt therapy and Arthur Janov's primal therapy. His
Wilhelm Reich 15

pupil Alexander Lowen, the founder of bioenergetic analysis, and Charles Kelley, the founder of Radix therapy,
ensure that his research receives widespread attention. Many practising psychoanalysts give credence to his theory of
character, as outlined in Character Analysis (1933, enlarged 1949). The American College of Orgonomy,[85]
founded by Dr. Elsworth Baker, and the Institute for Orgonomic Science,[86] led by Dr. Morton Herskowitz, still use
Reich's original therapeutic methods.
Nearly all his publications have been reprinted, apart from his research journals, which are available as photocopies
from the Wilhelm Reich Museum. The first editions are not available: Reich continuously amended his books
throughout his life, and the owners of Reich's copyright only allow the latest revised versions to be reprinted. In the
late 1960s, Farrar, Straus & Giroux republished all his major works.[87] Later in the 20th century, Michel Foucault
wrote that the impact of Reich's critique of sexual repression was substantial.[88]

In popular culture
Reich continues to influence popular culture, with references to
orgone and cloudbusting found in songs by Clutch, Hawkwind,
Pop Will Eat Itself, Turbonegro, Bob Dylan, and Patti Smith
("Birdland" on Horses).
• He is a character in the opera Marilyn (1979) by Italian
composer Lorenzo Ferrero.
• Kate Bush's song "Cloudbusting" describes Reich's arrest and
incarceration through the eyes of Reich's son, Peter, who wrote
his father's story in A Book of Dreams, published in 1973. The
video for the song was directed by Julian Doyle, conceived by
Terry Gilliam and Bush, and has Donald Sutherland as Reich,
and Bush as Peter.[89]
• An article about the female orgasm by Reich provided the The cover of "Cloudbusting" by Kate Bush, released in
October 1985. In the video accompanying the single,
inspiration for "Little Man Within" by Welsh singer/songwriter
Donald Sutherland plays Reich.
Karl Wallinger of World Party.
• Author Robert Anton Wilson wrote a play, Wilhelm Reich in Hell, partly based on Reich's life; it was also
published as a book in 1987. Wilson frequently referred to Reich and Reich's works in both his fiction and
non-fiction. Notably, one character in Wilson's Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy is a witness to the 1957 book-burning.
Reich's work is described in Italian writer Valerio Evangelisti's novel Il mistero dell'inquisitore Eymerich ("The
mystery of Inquisitor Eymerich"), in which Reich is described as a visionary whose ideas were ahead of his time.
• A film about his teachings called W.R.: Mysteries of the Organism was made in 1971 by Yugoslavian director
Dušan Makavejev, and was listed by film critic Roger Ebert in his "Great Movie" series in 2007.
• A short drama film about Reich by Jon East, called "It can be done," was nominated for a Silver Lion at the 1999
Venice Film Festival.
• The superhero "Orgone Lad", a member of the League of Infinity is Wilhelm Reich, Supreme by Alan
Moore(2000).
• "He did ten years in Attica, reading Nietzsche and Wilhelm Reich"—from the song "Joey" on the album Desire
by Bob Dylan.
• In Jack Kerouac's autobiographical novel On the Road, written in 1951, Old Bull Lee (modelled on William
Burroughs) extols the benefits of the orgone accumulator he owns and considers how it may be improved by
building it from "more organic" wood. Burroughs makes several references to Orgone energy in his own novels
and essays.
• The final episode of series 5 of British TV series Peep Show featured two main characters becoming enamoured
of a religious cult that expounded Reich's orgone theory.
Wilhelm Reich 16

• Reich is the subject, along with real estate developer Del Webb, of the 2008 documentary Wasteland Utopias by
filmmaker David Sherman.
• The Australian product designer Marc Newson has produced several 'Orgone' items of furniture, most famously
his 'Orgone Chair.'
• The post punk band Devo credited Mayan technology and Reich as the sources of inspiration for their 'energy
dome' hats in an interview with Stephen Colbert on June 16, 2010.

Works
German-language books • Children of the Future: On the Prevention of Sexual Pathology
• Contact With Space: Oranur Second Report (1957)
• Cosmic Superimposition: Man's Orgonotic Roots in Nature (1951)
• "Concerning Specific Forms of Masturbation" (essay)
• Ether, God and Devil (1949)
• Genitality in the Theory and Therapy of Neuroses (translation of the original,
unrevised version of Die Funktion des Orgasmus from 1927)
• The Invasion of Compulsory Sex-Morality (translation of the revised and
enlarged version of Der Eindruch der Sexualmoral from 1932)
• Listen, Little Man! (1948, translated by Theodore P. Wolfe)
• The Mass Psychology of Fascism (translation of the revised and enlarged
version of Massenpsychologie des Faschismus from 1933, translated by
Theodore P. Wolfe)
• The Murder of Christ (1953)
• The Oranur Experiment
• The Orgone Energy Accumulator, Its Scientific and Medical Use (1948)
• Passion of Youth: An Autobiography, 1897-1922 (posthumous)
• People in Trouble (1953)
• Record of a Friendship: The Correspondence of Wilhelm Reich and A.S. Neill
(1936–1957)
• Reich Speaks of Freud (Interview by Kurt R. Eissler, letters, documents)
• Selected Writings: An Introduction to Orgonomy
• Sexpol. Essays 1929-1934 (ed. Lee Baxandall)
• The Sexual Revolution (translation of Die Sexualität im Kulturkampf from
1936, translated by Theodore P. Wolfe)
• The Einstein Affair (1953)
Wilhelm Reich 17

• Der triebhafte Charakter : Eine psychoanalytische Studie

zur Pathologie des Ich, 1925
• Die Funktion des Orgasmus : Zur Psychopathologie und
zur Soziologie des Geschlechtslebens, 1927
• Dialektischer Materialismus und Psychoanalyse, 1929
• Geschlechtsreife, Enthaltsamkeit, Ehemoral : Eine Kritik
der bürgerlichen Sexualreform, 1930
• Der Einbruch der Sexualmoral : Zur Geschichte der
sexuellen Ökonomie, 1932
• Charakteranalyse : Technik und Grundlagen für
studierende und praktizierende Analytiker, 1933
• Massenpsychologie des Faschismus, 1933 (original Marxist
edition, banned by the Nazis and the Communists)
• Was ist Klassenbewußtsein? : Über die Neuformierung der
Arbeiterbewegung, 1934
• Psychischer Kontakt und vegetative Strömung, 1935
• Die Sexualität im Kulturkampf : Zur sozialistischen
Umstrukturierung des Menschen, 1936
• Die Bione : Zur Entstehung des vegetativen Lebens, 1938
• Rede an den kleinen Mann, 1945
English-language books
• American Odyssey: Letters and Journals 1940-1947
(posthumous)
• Beyond Psychology: Letters and Journals 1934-1939
(posthumous)
• The Bioelectrical Investigation of Sexuality and Anxiety
• The Bion Experiments: On the Origins of Life
• The Function of the Orgasm, 1942, translated by Theodore
P. Wolfe
• The Cancer Biopathy (1948)
• Character Analysis (translation of the enlarged version of
Charakteranalyse from 1933, translated by Theodore P.
Wolfe)

Notes
[1] http:/ / www. wilhelmreichmuseum. org/ index. html
[2] For the view that he was one of the most radical figures in psychiatry, see Sheppard, R.Z. "A family affair" (http:/ / www. time. com/ time/
magazine/ article/ 0,9171,907256-1,00. html), Time, May 14, 1973.
[3] "Wilhelm Reich," Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved July 26, 2009.
[4] Sharaf, Myron (1994). Fury on Earth: A Biography of Wilhelm Reich. Da Capo Press, pp. 4–5.
[5] Sharaf 1994, pp. 4, 8.
• Also see Obituary notice for Wilhelm Reich (http:/ / www. time. com/ time/ magazine/ article/ 0,9171,868066,00. html), Time Magazine,
November 18, 1957.
[6] Sharaf 1994, p. 170.
[7] For the articles, see
• Wertham, Fredric. Calling all Couriers, The New Republic, Dec 2, 1946.
• Brady, Mildred Edie. The Strange Case of Wilhelm Reich (http:/ / www. joanbrady. co. uk/ assets_cm/ files/ PDF/
strange_case_of_wilhelm_reich. pdf), The New Republic, May 26, 1947.
• Brady, Mildred Edie. The New Cult of Sex and Anarchy (http:/ / www. joanbrady. co. uk/ assets_cm/ files/ PDF/
the_new_cult_of_sex_and_anarchy. pdf), Harper's, April 1947.
• "The New Coast of Bohemia" (editorial), Saturday Review of Literature, August 16, 1947, and
• Henderson, Harry and Shaw, Sam. "Greenwich Village: Tourist Trap," Collier's, December 6, 1947.
[8] Sharaf 1994, p. 477.
[9] Sharaf 1994, p. 39.
[10] Sharaf 1994, p. 463.
Wilhelm Reich 18

[11] Reich, Wilhelm. "Background and scientific development of Wilhelm Reich," Orgone Energy Bulletin V, 1953, p. 6, cited in Sharaf 1994, p.
40 and p. 488, footnote 10.
[12] Reich , Wilhelm. Passion of Youth, Paragon House, New York, 1990, p. 25; also see Sharaf, p. 49.
[13] Reich, Wilhelm. "Über einen Fall von Durchbruch der Inzestschranke in der Pubertät," Zeitschrift für Sexualwissenschaft, VII, 1920,
222-223, cited in and translated by Sharaf 1994, p. 43 and p. 448, footnote 12.
[14] Sharaf 1994, pp. 42–46.
[15] In his book Passion of Youth (p. 36-37) Reich says that his mother died by the end of September 1910. She took an unknown poison on a
Monday, which corresponds to September 26. Based on his further comments one easily concludes that she died three days later, on
September 29, 1910, at 2.00 AM Her first suicide attempt, with ingestion of Lysol (the afore mentioned household cleaner) had occurred in
January 1910, the same evening Leon Reich came to know about the adultery (Reich, idem, p. 31).
[16] Reich, Wilhelm. Über einen Fall von Durchbruch der Inzestschranke in der Pubertät, op cit, cited in Sharaf 1994, p. 47 and p. 489, footnote
21.
[17] Sharaf 1994, p. 48.
[18] Blumenfeld, Robert. Tools and techniques for character interpretation. Hal Leonard Corporation, 2006, p. 135.
[19] Sharaf 1994, p. 58.
[20] Biography (http:/ / www. wilhelmreichmuseum. org/ biography. html), The Wilhelm Reich Museum. Retrieved August 14, 2006.
[21] Sharaf 1994, pp. 108–109.
[22] Biographical notes on his family: Annie Pink, born April 2, 1902, Vienna, died January 5, 1971, New York. Eva Reich became a doctor and
applied orgonomical techniques to the care of newborns. Lore Reich Rubin became a doctor and psychoanalyst.
[23] According to his daughter Lore Reich (http:/ / www. pep-web. org/ document. php?id=IFP. 012. 0109A), Anna Freud and Ernest Jones were
behind the expulsion.
[24] Brady, Mildred. The Strange case of Wilhelm Reich" (http:/ / www. joanbrady. co. uk/ assets_cm/ files/ PDF/
strange_case_of_wilhelm_reich. pdf), The New Republic, May 26, 1947, cited in Sharaf 1994, p. 360. "In this state of outer rigidity (expressed
in muscular tensions) and inner anxiety he becomes “sadistic, “ “masochistic,” “anti-Semitic, “ “fascistic, “ “reactionary,” “hateful,”
“submissive,” “authoritarian,” “greedy,” “power-motivated” and “perverse.”"
[25] Cantwell, Alan. Dr. Wilhelm Reich" (http:/ / www. newdawnmagazine. com/ articles/ Wilhelm Reich Scientific Genius or Medical
Madman. html), New Dawn Magazine, 2004. Retrieved December 3, 2007.
[26] D'Aloia, Alessandro. "Marxism and Psychoanalysis: Notes on Wilhelm Reich’s Life and Works" (http:/ / www. marxist. com/
marxism-psychoanalysis-wilhelm-reich. htm), Marxist.com. Retrieved August 14, 2006.
[27] Sharaf 1994, p. 228.
[28] Reich, Wilhelm. Beyond Psychology: Letters and Journals 1934-1939. Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1994, p. 66
[29] Sharaf 1994, pp. 234–235, 242.
[30] Sharaf 1994, p. 242.
[31] Sharaf 1994, pp. 234–235.
[32] Sharaf 1994, pp. 238–241, 243.
[33] Sharaf 1994, pp. 230–233.
[34] Sharaf 1994, pp. 245–246.
[35] Sharaf 1994, p. 253.
[36] Sharaf 1994, p. 255.
[37] Sharaf 1994, p. 254.
[38] Sharaf 1994, pp. 257–259.
[39] Sharaf 1994, p. 263.
[40] Sharaf 1944, pp. 264–265.
[41] Elkind, David. "Wilhelm Reich -- The Psychoanalyst as Revolutionary; Wilhelm Reich" (http:/ / select. nytimes. com/ gst/ abstract.
html?res=F20D15FE355F127A93CAA8178FD85F458785F9), The New York Times, April 18, 1971. Retrieved June 17, 2009.
[42] Sharaf 1994, p. 274.
[43] Sharaf 1994, p. 8.
[44] Sharaf 1994, p. 352.
[45] Reich, Wilhelm. Murder of Christ. Orgone Institute Press 1953, p. 41.
[46] Klee, Gerald D. "What ever happened to orgone therapy?" (http:/ / www. mdpsych. org/ node/ 553), The Maryland Psychiatric Society,
Summer 2001; Vol. 28, No. 1; Pg 13-15, retrieved January 7, 2011; Grossinger, Richard. Planet Medicine: From Stone Age Shamanism to
Post-industrial Healing, Taylor & Francis, 1982, p. 293.
[47] Reich, Wilhelm. The Cancer Biopathy, chapter II, section 6. Farrar, Straus and Giroux (January 1, 1974).
[48] Reich, Wilhelm. Ether, God & Devil & Cosmic Superimposition, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (January 1, 1972)
[49] Sharaf 1994, pp. 379–380.
[50] Sharaf 1994, p. 285.
[51] Brian, Denis (1996). Einstein: A Life. John Wiley & Sons, p. 326.
[52] "I have now investigated your apparatus ... In the beginning I made enough readings without any changes in your arrangements. The
box-thermometer showed regularly a temperature of about 0.3-0.4 higher than the one suspended freely," Einstein's letter to Reich, February 7,
Wilhelm Reich 19

1941, English translation, in The Einstein Affair, Orgone Institute Press, 1953
[53] Sharaf 1994, p. 286.
[54] "One of my assistants now drew my attention to the fact that in the room ... the temperature on the floor is always lower than the one on the
ceiling," Einstein to Reich, February 7, 1941, op.cit.
[55] "Through these experiments I regard the matter as completely solved," Einstein to Reich, February 7, 1941, op.cit.
[56] "Ich hoffe, dass dies ihre Skepsis entwickeln wird, dass Sie sich nicht durch eine an sich verständliche Illusion trügen lassen," ("I hope that
this will sharpen your skepticism so that you're not taken in by one of these understandable illusions"), Einstein to Reich, February 7, 1941,
op.cit.
[57] Sharaf 1994, p. 288.
[58] "FBI adds new subjects to electronic reading room" (http:/ / cryptome. org/ fbi-spies. htm), U.S. State Department, March 2, 2000.
[59] Sharaf 1994, p. 361.
[60] FDA file on Reich, cited in Sharaf 1994, p. 363 and footnote 6, p. 513.
[61] FDA file on Reich, cited in Sharaf 1994, p. 364 and footnote 11, p. 513.
[62] Greenfield, Jerome. Wilhelm Reich Vs. the U.S.A.. W.W. Norton, 1974, p. 69, cited in Sharaf 1994, p. 364 and footnote 13, p. 513.
[63] Reich, Wilhelm. Conspiracy. An Emotional Chain Reaction, item 386A, cited in Sharaf 1994, p. 367 and footnote 14, p. 513.
[64] Reich, Wilhelm. Conspiracy. An Emotional Chain Reaction, item 386A, cited in Sharaf 1994, p. 367 and footnote 14, p. 513.
[65] Sharaf 1994, p. 367.
[66] Sharaf 1994, pp. 410–413.
[67] Complaint for injunction by FDA (http:/ / www. orgone. org/ wr-vs-usa/ wr40210a. htm), Feb 10, 1954, part1, USA vs WILHELM REICH
1954-1957.
[68] "Wilhelm Reich's Response to FDA's Complaint for Injunction" (http:/ / www. orgone. org/ wr-vs-usa/ wr40225a. htm), February 25, 1954,
posted on orgone.org.
[69] DECREE OF INJUNCTION ORDER (USA vs Wilhelm Reich) by JUDGE CLIFFORD MARCH 19, 1954 - USA vs WILHELM REICH
1954-1957 (http:/ / www. orgone. org/ wr-vs-usa/ wr40319d. htm)
[70] Wilhelm Reich: Man's Right to Know (http:/ / www. wilhelmreichmuseum. org/ mrtk. html), Wilhelm Reich Museum. Retrieved October
13, 2010
[71] Michael Silvert (1906-1958), born Meyer Silverzweig in Poland. He was arrested with Reich and committed suicide in 1958 when he was
released from prison. (http:/ / family. silvert. org/ mike/ )
[72] Herskowitz, Morton. The Trial (http:/ / www. orgonomicscience. org/ memories/ trial. html), The Institute for Orgonomic Science. Retrieved
July 26, 2009.
[73] Sharaf 1994, pp. 458, 465, 466, 473.
[74] Sharaf 1994, pp. 458–461.
[75] Sharaf 1994, p. 461.
[76] There is some discrepancy between the sources on this. Myron Sharaf writes that Reich signed his last will on February 10, 1957, naming
his daughter Eva as executrix, which meant she controlled the publication and republication of his work. The Wilhelm Reich Museum writes
that his last will was on March 8, 1957, naming the Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust Fund as the entity charged with running Orgonon as the
Wilhelm Reich Museum, transmitting his legacy, and housing his archives. See Sharaf 1994, p. 465 and Biography (http:/ / www.
wilhelmreichmuseum. org/ biography. html), The Wilhelm Reich Museum. Retrieved August 14, 2006.
[77] Sharaf 1994, pp. 469–470.
[78] Sharaf 1994, p. 476.
[79] Sharaf 1994. p. 5.
[80] Obituary notice for Wilhelm Reich (http:/ / www. time. com/ time/ magazine/ article/ 0,9171,868066,00. html), Time Magazine, November
18, 1957.
[81] Sharaf 1994, p. 6.
[82] For example: Kavouras, Jorgos: Heilen mit Orgonenergie: Die Medizinische Orgonomie, Turm Verlag, Bietigheim, Germany, 2005; Lassek,
Heiko. Orgon-Therapie: Heilen mit der reinen Lebensenergie, Scherz Verlag, 1997, München, Germany; Müschenich, Stefan: Der
Gesundheitsbegriff im Werk des Arztes Wilhelm Reich (The Concept of Health in the Works of Wilhelm Reich, MD), med. Diss., Marburg,
Görich & Weiershauser, 1995.
[83] Müschenich, Stefan & Gebauer, Rainer: Der Reich'sche Orgonakkumulator. Naturwissenschaftliche Diskussion, praktische Anwendung,
experimentelle Untersuchung. Frankfurt/Main: Nexus-Verlag 1987
[84] Hebenstreit, Günter: Der Orgonakkumulator nach Wilhelm Reich. Eine experimentelle Untersuchung zur Spannungs-Ladungs-Formel.
Univ. Wien, Dipl.-Arbeit, 1995
[85] The American College of Orgonomy (http:/ / www. orgonomy. org/ )
[86] Institute for Orgonomic Science (http:/ / www. orgonomicscience. org/ )
[87] A good overview of Reich's work is Wilhelm Reich: The evolution of his work by David Boadella. A bibliography on orgonomy (http:/ /
www. orgonelab. org/ bibliog. htm) gives full citations to university dissertations, and to controlled experiments replicating Reich's work on
bions, the orgone accumulator, and the cloudbuster.
[88] Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction. Vintage Books, 1978, p. 131.
[89] "Cloudbusting" (http:/ / www. youtube. com/ watch?v=IRHA9W-zExQ), YouTube. Retrieved July 26, 2009.
Wilhelm Reich 20

Further reading
• (http://tucsoncitizen.com/paranormal/2009/11/03/ufos-orgasms-and-the-occult-the-tucson-connection/)
• Wilhelm Reich Museum home page (http://www.wilhelmreichmuseum.org/index.html)
• Man's Right to Know: The Story of Wilhelm Reich (http://www.guba.com/watch/2000909744), Wilhelm Reich
Infant Trust (video), includes footage of Reich.
• Reich's FBI file (http://www.orgone.org/wr-vs-usa/fbi-files/reich1.pdf) Also see here (http://web.archive.
org/web/20071012221641/http://foia.fbi.gov/foiaindex/reich.htm).
• Baker, Elsworth F., Man In The Trap, Macmillan, NY, 1967.
• Bean, Orson, Me And The Orgone, St. Martin's Press, NY, 1971.
• Boadella, David. Wilhelm Reich, The Evolution Of His Work, Henry Regnery, Chicago, 1973.
• Boadella, David (ed.). In The Wake Of Reich, Coventure, London, 1976.
• Corrington, Robert S. (2003). Wilhelm Reich: Psychoanalyst and Radical Naturalist, Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
NY, 2003
• D'Aloia, Alessandro (2004). Marxism and Psychoanalysis: Notes on Wilhelm Reich's life and work (http://www.
marxist.com/marxism-psychoanalysis-wilhelm-reich.htm), first published in FalceMartello, International
Marxist Tendency, October 15, 2004.
• DeMeo, James (1989). The Orgone Accumulator Handbook: Construction Plans, Experimental Use and
Protection Against Toxic Energy (http://www.orgonelab.org/cart/xdemeo.htm), Natural Energy Works.
• DeMeo, James (1989). Response to Martin Gardner's Attack on Reich and Orgone Research in the Skeptical
Inquirer (http://www.orgonelab.org/gardner.htm).
• DeMeo, James (ed.) (1993). "On Wilhelm Reich And Orgonomy" (http://www.orgonelab.org/cart/xpulse.
htm), Pulse of the Planet, No. 4, Natural Energy Works.
• DeMeo, James & Senf, Bernd (eds.) (1998). Nach Reich: Neue Forschungen zur Orgonomie: Sexualokonomie,
Die Entdeckung Der Orgonenergie (After Reich: New Research in Orgonomy: Sex-Economy, Discovery of the
Orgone Energy), Zweitausendeins Verlag, Frankfurt.
• Greenfield, Jerome (1974). Wilhelm Reich Vs. The USA, W.W. Norton, NY, 1974.
• Guillon, Claude (1978). Pour en finir avec Reich, Alternative diffusion, 1978.
• Herskowitz, Morton (1998). Emotional Armoring: An Introduction to Psychiatric Orgone Therapy, Transactions
Press.
• Kendrick, William (1983). “The Analyst as Outsider” (http://www.nytimes.com/1983/04/03/books/
the-analyst-as-outsider.html?sec=&pagewanted=1), a review of Myron Sharaf's Fury on Earth: A Biography of
Wilhelm Reich, The New York Times, April 3, 1983.
• Laska, Bernd A. (1981). "Sigmund Freud contra Wilhelm Reich" (http://www.lsr-projekt.de/wrfreud.
html#inhalt), Wilhelm Reich. Bildmonographie. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1981, 1999.
• Mann, Edward (1973). Orgone. Reich And Eros: Wilhelm Reich's Theory Of The Life Energy, Simon & Schuster.
• Mann, Edward & Hoffman (ed.) (1980). The Man Who Dreamed Of Tomorrow: A Conceptual Biography Of
Wilhelm Reich, J.P. Tarcher, 1980.
• Martin, Jim (2000). Wilhelm Reich and the Cold War, Flatland Books.
• Meyerowitz, Jacob (1994). Before the Beginning of Time, rRp Publishers.
• Ollendorff, Ilse. (1969). Wilhelm Reich: A Personal Biography, St. Martin's Press.
• Raknes, Ola (1970). Wilhelm Reich And Orgonomy, St. Martin's Press.
• Reich, Peter (1973). A Book Of Dreams, Harper & Row.
• Ritter, Paul (ed.) (1958). Wilhelm Reich Memorial Volume, Ritter Press.
• Senf, Bernd (1996). Die Wiederentdeckung des Lebendigen (The Rediscovery of the Living), Zweitausendeins
Verlag.
• Wilson, Robert Anton (1998). Wilhelm Reich in Hell, Aires Press.
• Wyckoff, James (1973). Wilhelm Reich: Life Force Explorer, Fawcett.
Wilhelm Reich 21

• Los Orgones (http://www.losorgones.com.ar/), Argentinian site of Orgonomy

• Bibliography on Orgonomy (http://www.orgonelab.org/bibliog.htm), a full listing of scholarly works on
Wilhelm Reich
• Orgone Biophysical Research Laboratory (http://www.orgonelab.org/)
• PORE, Public Orgonomic Research Exchange (http://www.orgone.org/) (Includes a Biography (Timeline) of
Wilhelm Reich and his Orgonomic Research (http://www.orgone.org/wrbiog/biog00.htm))
• The American College of Orgonomy (http://orgonomy.org/)
• Wilhelm Reich Gesellschaft (http://www.wilhelm-reich-gesellschaft.de/)
• Wilhelm Reich Orgon Institut Deutschland (http://www.orgoninstitut.de/)
• Wilhelm Reich Akademie (http://www.wilhelm-reich-akademie.de/)
• Reichian therapy (http://reichiantherapy.net/).
• Works by Wilhelm Reich
• Wilhelm Reich (http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=11418) at Find a Grave

The Einstein experiments

• The Einstein Affair (http://www.wilhelmreichmuseum.org/einstein.html), Orgone Institute Press, 1953.
• Aspden, H. (2001). "Gravity and its thermal anomaly: was the Reich-Einstein experiment evidence of energy
inflow from the aether?," Infinite Energy, 41:61.
• Bearden, T. (2002). "Energy from the vacuum," Cheniere Press, pp. 333–337.
• Brian, Denis (1996). Einstein: A Life, John Wiley & Sons. Reich is discussed on pp. 325–327, 382, 399.
• Clark, Ronald W. (1971). Einstein: The Life and Times, Avon. Reich is on pp. 689–690 of the paperback edition.
• Correa, P and Correa, A. (1998, 2001). "The thermal anomaly in ORACs and the Reich-Einstein experiment:
implications for blackbody theory," Akronos Publishing.
• Correa P and Correa A. (2001). "The reproducible thermal anomaly of the Reich-Einstein experiment under limit
conditions," Infinite Energy, 37:12.
• Mallove, E. (2001). "Breaking Through: A Bombshell in Science," Infinite Energy, 37:6.
• Mallove, E. (2001). "Breaking Through: Aether Science and Technology," Infinite Energy, 39:6.
Article Sources and Contributors 22

Article Sources and Contributors

Wilhelm Reich  Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=418693378  Contributors: 84user, @pple, AI, Acham, Adamwodeham, Aderksen, Afterwriting, Ahpook, Aild1996, Alansohn,
Alesino2002, Altenmann, Ana Bruta, Anacharsis, Andfinally, Andres, Android Mouse, Angela, AnnaAniston, Anvish, ArielGold, Arthur Warrington Thomas, Aschmair, Axeman89, Baobab1,
Beckerb, Bender235, Bhadani, BigFoot48, BjornVDM, Bloodshedder, Bobblewik, Boboroshi, Booyabazooka, Brian G. Wilson, Brown Ben, Buckshot06, Buzzaz, CDN99,
CambridgeBayWeather, Camembert, Carl247, Cgingold, Chris Roy, Clngre, Cmdrjameson, Commander Keane, CommonsDelinker, Cote d'Azur, Courtenay Young, Craigy144, Crculver, Cxl9,
D.h, D6, Da Joe, Darked, Darrik2, David Eppstein, David Gerard, David Moerike, Debresser, Delirium, Delldot, Demeo@mind.net, Der Eberswalder, DerBorg, Diogenesis, Diverting Internet
Gossip Dress Up Game, Doctor O, Dogru144, Dorrellc, Drjon, Dynaflow, Eduen, Eep², Ejsteig, El C, Enric Naval, Enslig Svale, Euphrosyne, Everyking, Fangs073, FiachraByrne, Filll, Fl1942,
Flapdragon, Flapeyre, Flowdawg, Fpmfpm, GTBacchus, Gabbe, Gachjohn, GangofOne, Gene Nygaard, General Idea, George100, Geschichte, Giocov, Goldie2223, Good Olfactory, Graham87,
GrahamHardy, GregorB, Grenavitar, Greynostalgia, Ground Zero, Gsgeorge, H, Herostratus, Hertz1888, Hillman, Hraefen, Huangdi, I am a muslim, IMSoP, IZAK, Icarus of old,
Iconoclast.horizon, Isidore, IstvanWolf, Jack O'Lantern, Jacqui M, Jahsonic, Jared81, Jayjg, JimmyGuano, Jjamison, Jjshapiro, Jobsworth, John of Reading, Johnor, Johnwhite79, Jon East,
Jontveit, Josh Cherry, Josh Parris, Joshua BishopRoby, Josiah Rowe, Jwillbur, JzG, KF, Kaobear, Karada, Karol Langner, Karuna8, Kbdank71, Kbh3rd, Kiritz, Kiyosaki, KlausBartels, Kool
gall1991, Kricxjo, Lancemurdoch, Larrykoen, Law Lord, LeContexte, Leslie Mateus, Liftarn, Light Warrior, Lightmouse, LilHelpa, Linas, LizardWizard, Lumos3, MBisanz, Malcolm Farmer,
Mandarax, Mandolinface, MarSch, Markus451, Master shepherd, Masterpiece2000, Matevzk, Mav, Meco, Meggar, Meidosemme, Mercurywoodrose, Mgreenbe, Mickey gfss2007, Midgley,
Mikem1234, Mirv, MisfitToys, Mms, Moloch981, Monegasque, Moptop127, Mr. Lefty, Naddan70707, Namiba, Nancypo, Nasussnikpoh, Nehrams2020, NeilN, Nescio*, Newport, Nickjackal,
Nico29, Nihiltres, Nixdorf, NotJackhorkheimer, Ntennis, Nv8200p, Oceanh, Old Moonraker, Omegatron, Onelover, Optim, Orgoneaccumulator, Orlando F, Oscar-Naval, Pazouzou, Pbh444,
Pejman47, Penbat, Pgio, Pharos, Pjmpjm, Popefauvexxiii, Potatoscone, Protean7, Pumpernickel pickle, Quercusrobur, Railways99, Randy Kryn, Rangergordon, Redheylin, Remember,
RepublicanJacobite, Rich Farmbrough, Rjolly, Rjwilmsi, Rkmlai, Rogermw, Ryanjones, Salimfadhley, Salix alba, SallyForth123, Salsb, Sam Spade, SamuelR, Schmullis, Scott Johnson,
Scrawlspacer, Scrizer, Scythia, SeNeKa, ShelfSkewed, Sheridan, Shii, Silverwood, Simonides, Skoojal, Sky-surfer, Skysmith, SlimVirgin, SmithBlue, SofieElisBexter, Spablab, Stammer,
Starbliss, Stemonitis, Stevepareidolia, Str1977, Stwalkerster, SubwayEater, Swahrhaftig, TenPoundHammer, Terryeo, The Anome, The Land, The Watusi, The wub, Thegline,
Themanwithoutapast, Therefore, Thomas Körtvélyessy, Tiamut, TimVickers, Titanium Dragon, Tom harrison, Transity, Treybien, Trick, Twang, User2004, Uthbrian, VanishedUser314159,
Vathek, Viriditas, Vitriden, W Hukriede, WatchAndObserve, Wbrameld, We El, Whaleto, Whitestarlion, Wikix, William Bolop, William M. Connolley, Wiwaxia, Work permit, Wyvern, Xgkkp,
Xhienne, Xtian59, Yalla, Yann, Zeno Gantner, Zosodada, ‫דוד‬55, 382 anonymous edits

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