Chapter 21 Chapter 21 Life Can Talk

Wilhelm Reich, the discoverer of "life energy", was born in Austria in 1897. In 1922, he obtained a doctorate degree in medicine from the Medical University of Vienna and became a disciple of Freud. In the following 8 years, he quickly became famous in the field of psychoanalysis.He held several important teaching and administrative positions in Viennese organizations studying psychoanalysis and contributed to their journals.He is often mentioned by name in footnotes and bibliographic summaries of early Freudian writings.Reich's disagreements with Freud and his followers finally led to his formal expulsion from the International Psychoanalytic Association in 1934.

In 1933 Reich wrote a book attacking German fascism as the expression of the sadism of a sexually repressed psychopath, so of course the Nazis were not kind to him when they came to power.He fled first to Denmark, then to Sweden, and finally settled in Oslo, Norway, where he continued his research for several years.However, a violent campaign was waged in the publishing world against his work.So Reich came to the United States in 1939 to regain undisturbed quiet. Reich spent two years as an associate professor at the New School for Social Research in Manhattan.He founded a laboratory in Forest Hills, Long Island, the Life Energy Institute, and a publishing house in Greenwich Village, which began publishing English translations of his books.These works were well received by liberal, socialist, and anarchist publications, and contributed to Feniccher's Psychoanalytic Theory of the Psychotic (1945) and Lundberg and Farnham's Modern Often cited in works such as Women, Lost Women (1947).

At this time, Reich was living a semi-retired life on his estate near Wrangler, Maine.There he directed the Institute of Vitality and William.Various activities of the Reich Foundation.In addition to publishing Reich's work, the foundation also publishes the Vitality Bulletin (replacing the quarterly International Journal of Economics and Vitality Research), the Vitality Institute Annals and other literature. Reich's early writings (The Function of Hypersexuality in 1927, The Sexual Revolution in 1930, The Mass Psychology of Fascism in 1933, and Character Analysis were very much in the Freudian tradition. Close. The content of these books is very problematic, and there is a lot of repetition, long-winded, dry, but there is no lack of new and profound points of view, which have become an important part of psychoanalysis. "Character Analysis" may is his most important work, and is still cited by many analysts today, but his later thinking is much regretted.

Of particular value is Reich's early insight into the insane aspects of social and political power, and his emphasis on sexual health as a prerequisite for moral and political progress.According to Reich, both happiness and goodness are products of sexual health; without a culture of sexual health, all attempts to build a good society will fail.Christian socialists and Tolstoyan anarchists believed that "a change of heart" or "new life" was fundamental to political reform, a view that has now been superseded by the Reichian concept of "sensual hyperactivity" .

Conversely, people with hypersexuality are the result of proper cultivation by their parents and society, or they are neurotic patients who have been cured by life energy therapy.Since such people (except for all sorts of primitive education) are very few around, most political actions are useless.No matter how the organization changes, the same disease always controls the social machine, and good intentions are quickly corrupted by the same diseased impulses.Only when there is a society of healthy (hypersexual) citizens can people "get a decent social order. When this order is achieved, it is mainly by self-control, not by "coercion." Sexual" law and morality. Reich calls such societies "behavioral democracies." It is not difficult to see why these views were so easily combined with anarchist views in Britain and the United States.

It would be inappropriate to devote more space here to describing Reich's early contributions to psychiatric theory.Most of these theories are complex and technical. To understand these works, you need to master the tricky and awkward technical terms of the Reich school.These are mentioned in this book in order to give an overview of the importance of a problem that Reich had so courageously grasped during his stay in Germany. From this point, one can make three possible explanations for Reich's later development: (1) He has become the greatest biophysicist in the world. (2) His fall from a veritable psychiatrist to a self-deluded paranoid. (3) He simply moved into another field, so that his past shortcomings became more obvious.Critics in favor of the last view point out that psychoanalysis is still in such a chaotic infancy that it is easy for unqualified theorists to catch up with obscure technical terms and steal bits of correct insight from others. Write your own book in disguise.When Reich turned to biology, physics, and astronomy, fields where there was a well-established foundation of knowledge, his eccentricity became more apparent.

Whatever the correct explanation, there is no doubt that there were great turning points in Reich's career.This turning point occurred in the late thirties.This is how he discovered the existence of "life energy" while in Norway.Freud had long expressed the hope that his theory of libido (sexual desire) would one day find biological support.Reich was convinced that his discovery of vital energy fulfilled this wish. He considers the discovery comparable in importance to the Copernican revolution. Since coming to the United States, he has considered himself less a psychiatrist than a biophysicist. He is more Delve into the mysteries of prana and apply this novel knowledge to the healing of physical and spiritual ailments.

What exactly is life energy?According to Reich, it is a non-electromagnetic force that permeates the whole of nature.It is what Bergson called the vital impulse or life force, which can be obtained and applied.It is blue in color.Reich said in a pamphlet, "Blue is the characteristic color of life energy both inside and outside the body. Ancient physics tried to explain why the sky is blue in terms of the scattered blue and the blue of the spectral system in the Great Book. Yes. Blue is the color that can be seen in all functions, and it is related to the universe, the atmosphere, or the life energy of organisms." Reich said that the protoplasm is blue because it has life energy. When the cell dies , the blue color disappears.Vitality also makes oceans and deep lakes blue, as do certain frogs when they are sexually aroused. "Rotten and glowing wood is blue; so are the glowing tails of fireflies, St. Elmo's fire, and the northern lights. So are the lights in vacuum tubes charged with vital energy" (the latter has been photographed color photo, as the cover photo of that brochure).

Reich declared that the "heat waves" we so often see gleaming over roads and mountaintops were not heat at all, but vital energy.These heat waves are not rising.They move from west to east at a speed faster than the earth's rotation.They make the stars shine.All phenomena that orthodox physicists ascribe to "static electricity" arise from life energy, such as electrical disturbances from sunspot activity, lightning, radio interference, and all other forms of static emission.He writes, "Phenomena such as cloud formation and thunderstorms, which remain unexplained, are due to changes in the condensation of vital energy in the atmosphere." This is why clouds and hurricanes that produce thunder and lightning are dark blue. "The color of a hurricane personally experienced by the author (Reich) in 1944 was a very dark blue-black." In an article in the July 1951 issue of "Life Energy Bulletin", Reich reported his own Some experiments, these experiments prove that the prospecting "magic wand" is due to the function of life energy!

In the human body, vital energy is the basis of sexual energy.It is the specific manifestation of Freud's "Ed" in biological vitality.It concentrates on the sex organ part.It flows back into the body again when the passion is high.The human body fills its red blood cells with vital energy through breathing.Under a microscope, Reich discovered that red blood cells emit a "blue shimmer" as they absorb vital energy. In 1947 he measured vital energy with a Geiger counter.A film made by his colleagues shows that one day cars may also be powered by vital energy. Reich told us that the living unit is not a cell, but something much smaller than a cell, which he called "biological entity" or "energy capsule".It consists of a mucous membrane encased in fluid, which is constantly turning due to the action of life energy.This rotation is the dance of life—the basic rhythm of erotic vibrations, and its highest expression is the "hypererotic" rotation. The "energy sac" reproduces like bacteria.Reich's critics suspect that what he calls "energy sacs" are actually bacteria.

According to Reich, the "energy sac" is formed by the simultaneous splitting of organic and inorganic matter in nature.First they clump together, and then they form protozoa!Reich's Biotherapy of Cancer (1948) contains a series of photomicrographs showing the formation of protozoa from clumps of "energy sacs" in various single-celled animals such as amoebas and paramecia. Needless to say, these revolutionary experiments could not be repeated by any "orthodox" biologist.Some bacteriologists who have carefully examined Reich's photographs believe that his protozoa entered the culture medium from the air, or existed already in the form of dormant cysts in the dividing material.Reich was, of course, aware of these objections, and strenuously denied that protozoa could enter the culture medium in any other way than he stated. In 1940, Reich invented a treatment box.Its technical term is "Life Energy Storage Device". It is very similar to a low public telephone booth, with iron sheets inside and organic materials (wood and the like) outside.Later, steel wool and asbestos were alternately used to form 3 to 20 layers of storage.The theory of this treatment is that life energy is attracted by external organic matter, conducted to the metal, and then radiated inward by the metal.Due to the reflection of the metal, the box soon concentrated a wonderful amount of vital energy.In Dunsh's laboratory in Maine, there is a large "vital energy chamber" covered with a layer of iron.He claimed that when all the lights were out, there was a faint blue-gray glow in the interior. According to Dr. Theodore Wolf, Reich's past interpreter, "The Vital Energy Store is a unique and significant invention in the history of medicine, and nothing can compare with it." In 1951, Reich published a pamphlet (There is no author's name on the title page), the title of the book is "Life Energy Storage Device".This is an important reference on reservoir construction and medical applications.Much of the following material is drawn from this work. Vitality storage can be purchased, but the foundation retains the right to use it medically, and rents it out to patients on a monthly basis, the fee varies depending on the patient's ability to pay.When the patient sits in the reservoir in light clothes, the body will be filled with life energy.At the beginning, there is a feeling of acupuncture and heat, and at the same time, the complexion is red, the body temperature rises, and then there is a feeling of "refreshing".After the patient's body absorbs the vital energy needed, he begins to feel slightly dizzy and nauseous.When this occurs, the patient should come out of the reservoir and breathe fresh air, the symptoms of this overdose disappear quickly.Reich's pamphlet goes on to say, "Under no circumstances should one sit in a container for hours on end, or sleep in it, as some do. This can cause serious injury (severe vomiting, etc.). Can be used several times a day if needed with short breaks in between, this is better than sitting in the reservoir for long periods of time. During the research phase, no more than 3 layers of the reservoir should be used without medical supervision." For bedridden patients, Dunxi also invented a "life energy storage bed sheet".It can be placed on a bed to cover a reclining patient while having a flat storage layer underneath the mattress.There is also a miniature life energy box, called a "launch gun", which is used to treat localized affected areas.This is a bendable cable, the wires in the cable have been removed, and the cable tube leads the vital energy from the storage box to the part of the body that is irradiated.If this area is larger than the end of the cable, install a funnel on the cable.The brochure warns, "Only use metal (iron) funnels, not plastic funnels" Reich believes that using a life energy gun can greatly speed up the natural wound healing process.In addition to accelerating healing, life energy also disinfects wounds. "Microscopic observations have shown that if a glass tube filled with steel wool is inserted into the vagina and irradiated for one minute, the bacteria in it will cease to be active. . . . Vitality irradiation should not be combined with other chemical methods. Vitality is a Strong energy. We still don't know what the result of this combination will be." Reich's pamphlet lists diseases for which life is effective: fatigue, anemia, early cancers (except tumors of the brain and liver), acute and chronic colds, hay fever, arthritis, chronic ulcers, certain types of cycles migraines, sinusitis, various injuries, abrasions or traumas.Reich believes that germs are often formed because the energy capsule in the body is in a state of decline due to the patient's neurosis.This "autoinfection" can be eliminated using the vital energy storage, but many chronic diseases require several years of treatment.A slow progression of the body to a higher energy level can be observed with Wilhelm Reich's blood test. According to Reich, cancer cells are protozoans that develop from energy sacs produced when tissues divide.He observed that "many cancer cells have tails and swim like fish".He wrote, "If the cancer cells are not killed early enough to prevent the formation of these protozoa, the cancerous mouse or patient will become completely protozoa." A question is explained in detail. Pranic therapy includes a treatment called "Character Analysis". In order to avoid misunderstanding and misuse, details about Character Analysis are not published.It is common practice to have the patient lie on a couch in a bathing suit so that the Pranic Practitioner can observe the response of the patient's muscles.Reich believed that all neuroses were due to a "muscular armor"—a state of rigidity, such as a furrowed brow, tensed neck muscles, and hunched shoulders.Tighten the anus, etc.Reich wrote, "There is no neurotic . . . who does not have a taut abdomen." Those who practice vital energy therapy should try to let the patient understand the cause of muscle tension, and at the same time use some technical methods to make him get rid of muscle tension.For example, the muscles around his upper and lower jaws are tense because he has an unconscious desire to bite. At this time, you can give him a towel and ask him to bite the towel. "Life Energy Therapy" can be implemented in parallel with "Character Analysis".Character analysis is the free-talking and other conventional means of trying to disarm the patient's "character armor." An important part of Pranic therapy is breathing, which is another view of Reich.He believed that "no neurotic . . . can exhale evenly and deeply".This is due to tension in the abdominal muscles.The patient must overcome the impediment to exhaling smoothly, which is often assisted by the therapist by compressing the abdomen.As the respiratory therapy progressed, a curious phenomenon arose in which the patient had an involuntary urge to move his pelvis.According to Reich, the "numb pelvis" was rigidified by "pleasurable concerns."This kind of gratification concern is caused by being punished in childhood for wetting the bed or playing with the genitals. The ultimate aim of pranic therapy is to achieve full and complete hypererotic capacity in the patient, which is possible only for "fertile" or non-neurotic individuals.Normal sexual behavior is carried out according to Reich's 4-beat "hypersexual formula": mechanical tension, bioelectric charge, bioelectric discharge, and mechanical relaxation.When sexual desire is hyperactive, life can increase the bioelectrical potential of the skin, especially the bioelectrical potential of the skin in the erogenous zone. In recent years, Reich's sense of personal egomania and resentment towards his colleagues has grown considerably.These colleagues dismissed his vital energy research as evidence of a brilliant thinker's tragic downfall.Reich used the term "emotional plague" when describing venereal disease as a social phenomenon.Predictably, he must have treated all opposition to his research as a sign of the plague. In 1947, when this plague was at its height, the Food and Drug Administration began investigating his vital energy reservoirs, and Mildred Brady wrote two magazine articles about him ("The New Superstition and the Immortality of Sexuality"). Governmentism," Harper's Magazine, April 1947; "William Reich's Strange Disease," The New Republic, May 26, 1947).The following year, Dr. Wolff wrote a refutation of his pamphlet entitled The Plague of Emotions and the Biophysics of Vital Energy, which quotes Reich: It's an old story.Older than the Greeks we think had a splendid culture. … two thousand years later the situation is no different.Bruno fought for the defense of scientific knowledge and against the superstition of astrology, and was sentenced to death by the Inquisition.It was the same psychological plague that sent Galileo to the Inquisition that killed Copernicus, made Leeuwenhoek a recluse, drove Nietzsche into insanity, and drove Pasteur and Fröau into insanity. Ide was exiled and exiled... It is necessary to make it clear that people cannot bow down to this plague phenomenon. In Reich's "Beware of the Little People!" , an outrageous book, published in 1948, which Wilhelm Steiger (Steger was an associated member of the Wilhelm Reich Foundation) kindly illustrated.This book aims to attack the "little people" who suffer from neurosis and sexual disease.This villain cannot see his own disease and is responsible for the rise of fascism of all shades.In effect, the book is an outburst of outrage against a world that does not recognize Reich's legacy. Reich claims that his book, like all other "respectable contemporary writing," is "for a culture 1,000 or 5,000 years in the future, as the first wheel thousands of years ago is for the internal-combustion locomotive today. Admittedly, a new "atomic age has arrived. . . . but not in the way you think. And not in your hell, but in some far-flung corner of America," he wrote. , arrived in my quiet, diligent laboratory." Reich compares himself to a lonely hawk hoping in vain to be able to hatch from an egg. Finally, Reich wrote: "No matter what you have done to me, or will do to me in the future, whether you praise me as a great talent, or put me in a madhouse, whether you put me Worship as your savior, or hang me as a spy, sooner or later, need will force you to understand that I have discovered the law of life, ... I have revealed to you the life within you, your universe The infinite expanse of nature. That is my greatest reward." The last book Reich wrote was The Superposition of the Universe, published in 1951, 30 years after he dabbled in the natural sciences.This book introduces the energy of life into the realm of astrophysics.He wrote: "We are entering the vast space, to see, if possible, what the newborn will bring to this stage." As he said this, he left the microscope that explored the microscopic world and turned to the telescope To explore the macroscopic world, to explore the common elements that can combine human love with the whole nature. Apparently, the 4-beat hypersexual formula isn't the answer.This commotion is confined to living creatures.Reich cautions against the dangers of finding parallels in the inanimate world.For example, he points out that earthquakes are disturbances, but not of the hypererotic type.The real answer lies in something simpler.That is the "embracing of the sexes," which precedes the hypersexuality, which Reich calls "superposition."He asked, "Where does the enormous force that pushes the masculine and feminine vital energy systems into 'superposition' come from?" Very low level, right down to the power of Star Trek.It is the basic pattern of love and natural law. Reich explained that the units of vital energy follow a spiral path.When two or more such units are close to each other, they superimpose in a sort of sexual embrace.The result is an "offspring", which in the above case is a particle of matter! For the level of astrophysics, this phenomenon is the generation of galaxies.The amorphous life energy flow (Reich cites the Magellanic cloud as an example) attracts each other, interacts and superimposes, forming a huge cosmic embrace.The result is a star!The book is filled with fine photographs of the nebula, showing the nebula's spiral arms.These spiral arms glow as they hug, and thus the galaxy's sun emerges. And that's not all.Space is not empty.It is actually a huge ocean of life energy.The movement of life energy causes the movement of celestial bodies.He wrote, "Gravity is real. But it is not the result of the attraction of masses, but the result of the converging motion of two primordial life-energy streams...".He also said: "The sun and the various planets can move on the same plane and rotate in the same direction because of the movement and direction of movement of the universe's life energy flow in the galaxy. Therefore, the sun does not 'attract' other things at all. It Just the big brother of the whole constellation." That's how Reich explored the skies from his Maine "observatory," discovering the mysteries of gravity, the origin of matter, and the cause of spiral galaxies.He argues that "as more and more is illuminated by the process of practical reasoning, the observer (i.e. Reich himself) ... is amazed at his own reasoning power, because his reasoning is so consistent with the natural facts thus revealed ". At that time, Reich was working hard on another, more important problem.This is the dissolving agent for nuclear disintegration of life.As early as 1945, shortly after the first atomic bomb was dropped, he wrote in his journal, "Life energy is really nothing but the primitive and natural form of 'atomic' energy." However, it And unlike atomic energy, it creates matter and enhances life.It works slowly and constructively.Atomic energy destroys in the form of an explosion.In fact, these two faculties are the underlying principles of love and hate, good and evil, God and Satan.Reich writes that "the horror evoked by the 'discovery' of the atomic bomb had its opposite, the equanimity and intense enthusiasm felt by all who put their lives at work or experienced its healing effects." Since atomic energy and life energy have such contradictory properties, it is natural for Reich to imagine that life energy could be used as a disintegrator for nuclear radiation.He wrote in 1945, "If, at all by accident, I should discover that vital energy has any killing potential, I must keep this discovery a secret. We should learn to counteract the destructive forms of atomic energy by the life-promoting effects of vital energy, thereby eliminating its harm.” In January 1951, Reich developed his ORANUR (Life Energy Against Nuclear Radiation) project in order to study the details of this astonishing work.Reports on the progress of his work are often published in the Life Energy Bulletin and other publications.The early experimental work read like a comic opera.Reich purchased a little radium and took it into his vital energy chamber.So, no one knew what was going on, and life energy started a fight with nuclear energy, and the generals began to fight.It unexpectedly became "deadly vital energy".All the staff in the laboratory fell down from the disease of "life energy anti-radiation". The last word on all this was a short circular titled "Emergency at Life Energy Research Headquarters," dated May 12, 1952, in full: Since March 21, 1952, the "Life Energy Research Headquarters" (the name of Reich's headquarters in Rangeli) has been in a state of serious emergency due to the anti-radiation effects of life energy. The daily work of the life energy research headquarters has come to a standstill.Several staff members had to quit their jobs.Most of the buildings at Headquarters are uninhabitable.It is still uncertain when normalcy will return to normal; as for the exact cause of this state of emergency, it is also impossible to determine. Work had to be reduced to the necessary minimum, prioritizing activities sufficient to explain and contain the situation. Of course, the way to find out what happened to the accident would be to call in a nuclear physicist, but Reich would not necessarily think that was necessary.It is estimated that the situation will finally be brought under control, and the whole story will be fully explained.Hopefully, this work will be done more carefully.