The Exile Who Saw Too Much

Wilhelm Reich began as a respected psychoanalyst in Vienna, a protege of Sigmund Freud himself. He ended his life in an American federal prison, his books burned by court order, his research declared fraudulent. The journey between these points remains one of the strangest in twentieth century science.

In the 1930s, Reich became convinced that psychological health depended on the free flow of biological energy through the body. He called this energy orgone. The name derived from organism and orgasm, reflecting his belief that sexual release was essential for health.

Reich fled Nazi Germany in 1934, eventually settling in the United States in 1939. In his new laboratory in Maine, he developed instruments he claimed could detect and measure orgone energy.

The orgone accumulator was his signature invention. A box lined with alternating layers of organic material and metal. Patients would sit inside, supposedly absorbing beneficial orgone energy from the atmosphere.

> Reich believed he had discovered a fundamental life force that science had overlooked. His critics believed he had discovered nothing at all.

Reich reported that orgone accumulators raised body temperature, accelerated healing, and improved vitality. He tested them on cancer patients, claiming regression of tumors. He photographed what he called bions, microscopic vesicles he believed were transitional forms between living and non living matter.

The scientific establishment ignored or ridiculed these claims. No independent laboratory replicated his measurements. His theoretical framework had no connection to established physics or biology.

But it was not scientific rejection that destroyed Reich. It was the federal government.

In 1954, the FDA obtained an injunction against Reich, declaring orgone energy did not exist and orgone accumulators were fraudulent medical devices. Reich refused to appear in court, arguing that scientific questions could not be decided by legal proceedings.

He continued his work. In 1956, he was arrested for contempt of court. Federal agents supervised the destruction of orgone accumulators and the burning of his publications. Reich was sentenced to two years in prison.

He died in Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary in 1957, eight months into his sentence. Heart failure. He was sixty years old.