As a scientific theory, "
orgone energy" is as absurd as phlogiston, but borrowed as the core idea for a piece of fiction, it possesses a kind of metaphoric believability.
Blavatsky Astral light 1888 AD Rudolf Steiner Etheric formative forces 1900 AD Henri Bergson Elan vital 1920 AD Radioesthesists Etheric force 1930 AD Wilhelm Reich
Orgone energy 1940 AD V.S.
Reich's hope was to enlist the life-affirming powers of orgone energy against radiation sickness; in the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he had written, "We shall have to learn to counteract the murderous form of the atomic energy with the life-furthering function of the orgone energy and thus render it harm.
Drawn by the attention, the Food and Drug Administration began its investigation of Reich's "orgone accumulators"--plywood, steel wool, and fiberglass cabinets said to bathe users in concentrated orgone energy. Centered around accusations that Reich was making unwarranted health claims for these devices as treatment against cancer, the FDA's investigation would end in his indictment, conviction, and death in federal prison.
Believing that many phenomena in nature depended upon the "orgonomic potential" between energetic systems, Reich theorized that, just as a lightning rod attracts atmospheric electrical energy, his cloudbuster would function by "drawing" the flow of orgone energy through the sky.
In other words, in pleasure something, which he later discovered to be
orgone energy, moves out to the skin surface, toward the world and in anxiety this something moves away from the skin, away from the world, toward the core of the body.
Or the universe and
orgone energy. Or the universe and your higher self.
As for Kimball's assertion that Reich's discovery of a cosmic energy, orgone energy, was "nonsense" and fraudulent, not only has serious scientific investigation replicated Reich's work, but mainstream science is also knocking at the door.
Included for incineration were such titles as The Mass Psychology of Fascism; Ether, God and Devil; The Cancer Biopathy; The Orgone Energy Bulletin; and other orgonomic medical and scientific journals.
I was an agnostic about
orgone energy, but Reich's writings about the authoritarian character structure, and the interconnection between politics and psychology, have given me a solid foundation for evaluating all politics and psychology since then.