Talk:Wilhelm Reich

Reliable sources, Turner

Several months ago I committed myself to improving the quality of the Wilhelm Reich page but I've been appalled to see how the quality of this page has significantly deterioated since then. It has reached such a low point now that I feel no longer any joy in a challenge to fix this page. One of the main contributing problems is the way in which Cristopher Turner's Adventures in the Orgasmatron has been used as one of the main sources giving this page its framework, content and taste. If Integrity is the absolutely most important attribute of a scholar, then Turner cannot be considered a scholarPlease let me give a few examples.

The following is a quote regarding one of many errors in Turner's book, as identified by Philip Bennett, who published, among others, The persecution of Dr. Wilhelm Reich by the government of the United State and Wilhelm Reich's Early Writings on Work Democracy:

As some of you know, the Wikipedia entry on Reich has been “updated” and what was previously pretty decent is now a travesty, thanks in part to Turner’s book, which is sited as a legitimate source. From the entry on Reich:

“The book [1927 Funktion] won him professional recognition, including from Freud, who in 1927 arranged for his appointment to the executive committee of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. The appointment was made over the objection of Paul Federn (1871–1950), who had been Reich's second analyst in 1922, and who declared him schizophrenic and a psychopath who slept with all his female patients. Reich found the society dull and wrote that he behaved "like a shark in a pond of carps."[35]”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Reich

When you look at footnote 35, you find: “Sharaf 1994, pp. 67–71; for the quote, p. 73; for his appointment to the executive, p. 84. For Federn's view of Reich, see Turner 2011, p. 167.”

The footnote would lead one to believe that in Turner’s book we will find the source of the claims about schizophrenia, psychopathology, sleeping with all patients, etc.

Turner, p. 167: The only reference to Federn on this page is the remark that “Federn also later maintained he had detected “incipient schizophrenia” during his analysis of Reich.” Nothing about Reich being a psychopath who slept with all his patients, etc.

And now the kicker: Turner’s source for this claim? Sharaf, p. 194. There is nothing on page 194 about schizophrenia; the phrase “incipient schizophrenia” does not occur. Sharaf does note Rado’s attacks on Reich’s reputation and Rado’s diagnosis of Reich as having gone into psychosis–nothing new here. But as for Federn, all Sharaf says is that “Prior to the 1930s, some analysts, especially Federn, had called Reich a ‘psychopath’.” Sharaf gives no source for this.

So from an unsourced comment of Sharaf’s comes a fabricated distortion by Turner which turns into the source for an even more fabricated charge against Reich on what for many is their main source of information about just about anything, Wikipedia!

Another example from Bennett:

I’m fresh back from the Archives where, among other things, I was trying to determine how many books by Reich were sold in the States while he was still alive: i.e., the books published by the Orgone Institute Press and its other iterations like, Core Pilot Press, etc. I think I now have the raw data and will write up my summary before long.

When I mentioned this to a colleague in Berlin he said that Turner discussed book sales on p. 248 of his book. Turner:

By 1947 the Orgone Institute Press was selling four to five hundred books a week, allowing Reich to boast that “‘everyone’ in New York is talking about my work” and that his writings were selling “like warm bread.”12

The citation for this passage, endnote 12, reads:

Beverley A. Placzek...[full citation], Reich to Neill, 178. Four of Reich’s books had been translated and updated to include his latest discoveries, and four issues of the International Journal of Orgonomy had been published (p. 473).

Every time I look carefully at Turner’s text I find further examples of his incredible sloppiness or willful misrepresentations.

Of course, the journal’s name was not the International Journal of Orgonomy but rather the International Journal of Sex-Economy and Orgone Research. (Elsewhere in his book Turner correctly cites the journal.) But what about Reich’s claim that the Press was selling four to five hundred books a week? From Reich’s letter to Neill: “Our literature here still sells like warm bread. About 4-500 copies a month.”

First: literature, not books–i.e., journals and books.

Second: a month, not a week.

Third: nowhere in this letter does Reich say that “‘everyone’ in New York is talking about my work.” This phrase does not occur in any letter to A. S. Neill. Rather, it is from a journal entry dated 19 November 1946: “I have been told that ‘everyone’ in New York is talking about my work” (American Odyssey, p. 355). He is not boasting to Neill but recording privately, to himself, in his journal, what someone has told him.

Finally, the letter to Neill cited by Turner was written in 1946, not 1947.

I have read through about two dozen such factual inaccuracies - rather, distortions observed by Bennett in Turner's book, some of which are really sad and unworthy of even a High School essay. If one is interested in seeing this list I advice him/her to contact Bennett directly. Apart from this I received lists from two other scholars. Moreover, I myself also encountered developed serious objections to Turner's book.

I have noted elsewhere my believe that even though Turner supposedly studied Reich's work for some seven years, he did not grasp one iota of the basics of Reich's theories. This is apparent from the way that Turner includes two major factual inaccuracies regarding the basics of Reich's work: orgastic potency and cancer biopathy. The first concerns, I quote Turner, "Reich considered his orgone energy accumulator an almost magical device that could improve its users' 'orgastic potency'" and, secondly, "He clamed that it [orgone energy accumulator] could charge up the body with the life force . . . that in concentrated form could not only help dissolve repressions but also treat cancer . . ." (Turner [2011] Adventures in the Orgasmatron, from Introduction).

Both these allegations are factually false. Reich did not claim the orgone energy accumulator could provide orgastic potency, and Reich did not claim the orgone energy accumulator could cure cancer. The invalidity and motivation of these inaccurate portrayals of Reich's work have been readily addressed by other scholars (See: Wolf [1948] Emotional Plague Versus Orgone Biophysics: The 1947 Campaign; Baker [1972-3] An Analysis of the United States Food and Drug Administration’s Scientific Evidence Against Wilhelm Reich; Blasband [1972] An Analysis of the United States Food and Drug Administration’s Scientific Evidence Against Wilhelm Reich; Boadella [1985] WR: The Evolution of His Work; Greenfield [1974] Wilhelm Reich Vs. The USA; Sharaf [1983] Fury on Earth; Corrington [2003] WR: Psychoanalyst and Radical Naturalist, p. 237-8;). Did Turner never read any of these sources?

But perhaps more importantly, did Turner never read Reich's work himself? Because apart from that it is impossible to support this portrayal of Reich's work with direct quotes, it is even possible to find passages where Reich directly opposes this interpretation. As I included on the Orgastic potency page:

"Reich maintained the opposite: "The orgone accumulator, as has been clearly stated in the relevant publications (The Cancer Biopathy, etc.), cannot provide orgastic potency."(Reich, W. [1950, April] Orgone Energy Bulletin 2(2), quoted in November 2011 Update From The Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust and The Wilhelm Reich Museum) Likewise, in The Orgone Energy Accumulator, its Scientific and Medical Use, Reich wrote: ”Neuroses cannot be cured with physical orgone energy." (quoted in Gardner, Martin [1957] Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science, Courier Dover Publications: 256.)"

And regarding cancer, if Turner would have bothered to read even the preface to The Cancer Biopathy he would have encountered the following:

"I do not publish this book without serious concern, mainly that many readers of our literature will now assume that a cure for cancer has been found. This it not at all the case." (Reich, W. The Cancer Biopathy, xxv [from the original preface].)

Why is this so important? Well the vast majority of Reich's life work is summarised in (the scientific autobiography) The Discovery of the Orgone, and the titles of the two volumes of this work accurately reflect the significance of these two topics in the totality of Reich's life work. Vol. 1 is called The Function of the Orgasm and Vol. 2 The Cancer Biopathy. If you do not understand the concept orgastic potency, you basically missed the whole point of the first volume and, thus, out of necessity misunderstand all Reich's related developments that have the concept orgastic potency at their core (i.e. Character Analysis, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, Sexual Revolution, Invasion of Compulsary Sex-Morality, Work Democracy and the Emotional Plague). If you do not understand the concept of cancer biopathy, you out of necessity misunderstand Reich's theory of orgone energy and his work after 1940. With such fundamental errors about the basics of Reich's work Turner is unlikely to have been able to judge the validity of anything anyone (including himself) ever claimed about Reich's work.

Those doing sincere research into Reich's work have been disgusted with the many basic errors present in Turner's book. This is not to deny that Turner also did some good and new research for which he may be congratulated. Only we are now at a stage that overall Turner's work must be considered as lacking "a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy" (WP:SOURCES).

As a kind of closing statement, I hope therefore to encourage whoever will work on this page in the future to remove all references to Turner's book where it concerns Reich's life or work, with the only exception being where Turner writes about the social and cultural impact after Reich's death, thus drawing a clear line between the facts of Reich's life and work, and what has become part of popular culture, what Turner's work deals with.

It is on the measure of integrity that sources such as Boadella's or Corrington's are superior to Turner's work.

Reichians

Moreover, several times on these talk pages related to Reich's work, the word "Reichian" has been used to imply that a source is not reliable, such as in the case of Boadella. However, languange is power, and I increasingly get the impression that this word is used in an inappropriate fashion.

What does being a 'reichian' mean? If someone studies Reich's work for 20 years, does that make him/her a Reichian and, therefore, an unreliable source regarding Reich's life and work (orgonomy)? If so, it would inversely mean that Richard Dawkins, having studied biology for, say, 50 years, is not a reliable source regarding biology? Please, wikipedians, use this word with great care. Rather, don't use it at all, for it is meaningless (Following this logic, one could go as far as argue that non-Reichians cannot be considered reliable sources.)--Gulpen (talk) 19:52, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Bibliography/Work

Though I have spent months preparing a renewed bibliography of Reich's work (See: Talk:Bibliography and User:Gulpen/Bib) and humbly submitted a somewhat final version last November, it has been reverted without any reason just a month later.

SlimVirgin reverted back to this old version before, giving as reasons that formatting was inconsistent and that it was unclear how major works was defined. Even if the formatting was inconsistent and it was unclear how major works was defined, SlimVirgin reverts back to a version where matters are worse in both apects. The old selection of works is completely random. Why do twelve early articles make up a quarter of the total works section? Why is Die Entdeckung des Orgons Erster Teil: Die Funktion des Orgasmus listed as a 1942 publication in German while, though the manuscript was finished in 1940 in German, it was first published in English in 1942? Etc. etc.

I fixed all of this with my new submission and adopted a uniform and format I.e.:

(Original publication year) Original title [translation]

• English title (First English publication year)

Moreover, I provided full information regarding original publication years, publishers, revised titles, later publication years on User:Gulpen/Bib, and have noted this in the Talk:Bibliography discussion page. Yet, instead of using all this information to make further improvements, SlimVirgin again reverts the whole section back to the old version (By the way, this reminds me of similar behaviour displayed regarding Daniels).

Let me clarify the selection criteria. Of all secondary literature that I have read about Reich, there is one book only that deals with the totality of Reich's work and does so in a more than satisfactory manner: David Boadella's (1985) Wilhelm Reich: The Evolution of His Work. At the end of his book (p. 384-387, Boadella includes a selection of about 30 works that are most important to the evolution of Reich's thinking and experimental research and this list has been used by me in return. By now I'm completely fed up with working on this bibliography and I hope someone else has the decency of putting all my efforts to use. I have shortly pasted all my work on the bibliography here, so that it doesn't get lost.--Gulpen (talk) 20:40, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

Affair with Gerda Ring

I've added information about his affair with Norwegian actress Gerda Ring. Now, what I added looks suspiciously similar to what was already mentioned about him having an affair with an actress who was also his student. The reason I didn't simply conclude that that actress must have been Ring is the additional information that this actress had been married to a colleague of his. Ring was married to a colleague of hers (i.e. an actor–Halfdan Christensen), and that marriage lasted from 1922 to at least 1943 (and likely to his death in 1950). Sharaf may have had his facts mixed up (or he has been inaccurately cited). For the time being I suggest we treat these two actresses as separate people. Also, in my source there was mention of Sigurd Hoel having assisted Reich and Ring in keeping their affair hidden from the public which I didn't include here. I suppose that would be too much detail here. __meco (talk) 15:13, 6 February 2013 (UTC)