Wilhelm Reich

by Ola Raknes

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140214720
• ISBN13: 9780140214727
• Release Date: December 1971
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Hedonists holler out their unctuous breezes across our foreheads.

Norwegian born psychologist Ola Raknes, Ph.D. (1887-1975), was also a journalist and philologist, who became a psychoanalyst, and later, an orgone therapist. He penned the 183 page "Wilhelm Reich and Orgonomy" in 1970. It documents the development and impact of Reich's approach in and on many fields--from psychoanalysis, the sciences and medicine, to religion and education. The author says that, "Orgonomy is the science of the Orgone...primordial energy...also called the Life Energy, by...psychiatrist, psychologist and physicist Wilhelm Reich...." Apparently, this energy is universal, ubiquitous and connected to sexuality and behaves quite differently from the known electromagnetic kind. The subtitle of this volume is, "The controversial theory of life energy," as the existence of this energy was never totally accepted by the scientific establishment. For instance, Raknes alludes to German born, American physicist Albert Einstein, Dr.Sc., and his rendezvous/tests with Reich in 1941. He refuses to delve Einstein's motives for not following up with more tests on Reich's "orgone energy accumulator" box, or why he didn't correspond further with him, but merely directs us to Reich's writings for an explanation. Concerning Einstein's opinion of orgone energy, British biographer Ronald William Clark, in his book, "Einstein, The Life and Times" (1971), quotes him as saying it "'has not my confidence.'" Also, Clark says that Reich told Einstein he was a psychiatrist, not a physicist. Orgone energy, then, may be termed "putative energy" because it is not known to current science, but may have therapeutic use for those who believe in it. I always believed this specific type of energy furnishes mankind with a drive or impulse known as libido, which means "desire or passion" interacting with three other drives, they being hunger, flight and aggression. Therefore the sex act is never the result of a single drive. Sexual behaviour may be diminished when a person is hungry; and the escape or flight drive may subjugate all other drives in times of panic. The aggressive drive can be motivated by sex and is therefore implemented in unjust acts. It can also be useful socially in overcoming shyness and subsequent flight. The sex drive has an aim, influenced by the internal and external environment of an individual. The libido may desist when one reaches his goal, obtains his sexual reward, usually an orgasmic release accruing in a reducing or satiating effect. The sex drive or libido, operationally speaking, may also be thought of as the memory of past sensual involvement. It never acts as a stimulus and is not indicative of any state of strength. One's drive may be increased when sexual excitement becomes learned; thus pleasure might be regarded as somehow the nature of it. The concept of a sex-instinct is fallacious, for the causes that account for sexual behaviour are the very materials man was made of and the way he was molded from nature.