1936-1939: Wilhelm Reich excerpts
Submitted by esaruoho on August 28, 2009 - 11:32
20 november 1936
Saw a film on cancer yesterday, shown by the English delegation. No doubt about it. I'm right.
"Migratory cancer cells" are amoebic formations. They are produced from disintegrating tissue and thus demonstrate the law of tension and charge in its purest form -- as does the orgastic convulsion.
Now money is a must -- cancer the main issue -- in every respect, even political.
It was a staggering experience. My intuition is good. I depend on it.
Was absolutely driven to buy a microscope. The sight of the cancer cells was exactly as I had previously imagined it, had almost physically felt it would be. Cancer is an autoinfection of the body, of an organ. And researchers have no idea of what, how, or where!!!
12 December 1936
The grandchildren of my bions have come to life; so that's the third generation!!
I actually have every reason to be very happy. If only this epidemic of neuroses didn't bother me!!
The cancer plague is becoming more understandable all the time.
1. The disturbed sex economy of the human being
2. The production of motile forms from disintegrating tissue
3. Mechanistic and religious thinking in the sciences.
1 January 1937
What was known before me?
The idea that life = sexuality (Freud, Hartmann)
The concept of orgasm
The concept of tradition--subjective factor
The reactionary role of the family
The relationship of religion--Oedipus complex, father
The concept of the stasis of sexual excitation
The idea of spontaneous generation
The idea of sexual reform, indeed world sexual reform: sexual politics
Pregenitality
Character as fact
Methodology of dialectical materialism
The idea that the "savage" has another kind of life
The concept of social freedom--external conditions of same
Strategy and tactics of revolutionary politics
Social democracy
What did I bring?
The experimental proof of "sex = life"
The unknown formula of sexuality
The definition of the orgasm concept
The knowledge of the meansof the traditional effects of the family
Religion = sex with a negative sign
Church = sexual-political organization of the patriarchy
The experimental proof of spontaneous generation
The fundamentals of socialistic sexual politics
Unconscious = vegetative
Stasis = electrical tension
Character as dynamic-economic principle--armor
Functional identity of psychic and vegetative
Origin of the inner contradiction--dialectic law of development
Proof of the changeover from sex positive to sex negative in ethnology
Concretizing "freedom" as the capacity for sexual happiness, inner condition of this freedom
Restoring and making specific the concept of the masses--revolutionary politics = politics of need
Psychic fundamentals of social democracy, conditions of its failure
My faults and illusions
Little self-confidence despite absolute inner certainty, despite confirmation of hunches
Too short-term in my outlook
Requiring the other person to see things and act as I do
Demanding performance and recognition instead of conviction
Overlooking the effects of organizing = rigidification of movements (psychoanalysis and communism)
Not understanding why people flee from me--as fear of being disturbed
Too strongly bound to authorities
22 April 1937
The assumption is inescapable that the disease of cancer is:
1. Self-vivification -- protozoal disintegration of the organism
2. Autoinfection -- bacteria from the decay of tissue
3. Bodies as incubators for bacteria
The formula: "cancer = not keeping sterile" = stupid. Cancer is infection (cf. autoinoculation of the nutrient medium)
25 May 1937
The breakdown of matter into vesicles when heated to incandescence undoubtedly releases large amounts of electrical energy. The glowing heat must correspond to the emission of radiation by this energy.
Combustion = release of energy
Organization = binding of energy
Radiation tests are needed!
1 September 1937
Preliminary work on cancer. It is clear that the transformation of grass into protozoa is the model for the formation of cancer. Therefore prepare grass for a film.
30 September 1937
I have found the bacillus that causes cancer!!!
T-bacillus as a degeneration.
10 October 1937
Everything is changing. I find S in the blood of healthy young people! Either the entire S business is wrong or ---- or ----
Unavoidable conclusion: It is possible everybody has S in them.
This would be the "cancer disposition" -- that S can form spontaneously in blood, but from what??
14 October 1937
I am on the track of the matter.
1. Local oxygen deficiency due to poor respiration makes tissue decay.
2. S bacteria form.
3. The tissue regenerates itself as a tumor.
4. The S form the metastases.
5. Sarcoma S is more dangerous than carcinoma S.
1 September 1938
My spinning-wave hypothesis (*) seems to solve a multitude of contradictions in physics.
How to elaborate this?
(* Reich's spinning-wave theory represented his evolving thought on the relation of mass and energy.
16 February 1939
SAPA bions!(*) Radiation! A completely new world! I'm so lonely!
(* SAnd PAcket bions derived from a culture of ocean sand.)
27 February 1939
To W.F. Bon
Dear Dr. Bon,
I am very grateful that you have agreed to help me determine the radiation. I would like to give you as a preliminary guide some of the main observations that have been made since my first letter to you.
1. The cultures fill the room in which they are located with a strange something that, after approximately ten to forty minutes, depending on the individual, is experienced as a curious heaviness.
2. They penetrate the packaging of X-ray films, cardboard covers, thin wooden boards.
3. The most remarkable thing is that the unknown factor X travels around corners -- that is, passes through cracks to reach the films wrapped in lead. Probably it does not pass through the lead itself. Animals such as mice and guinea pigs react with obvious restlessness after a few minutes in the presence of whatever it is.
4. In an extremely mysterious way, my oscillograph ceased to function, and some batteries standing in the same room lost more of their charge than is usual under normal circumstances. The negative pole lost more charge than the positive. Some phenomena observed at the oscillograph led me to assume that a positively charged emanation is involved (I know that this is not the correct terminology). Inside a Faraday cage, X-ray films did not react as well or did not react at all compared with the same films in a nonscreened laboratory.
5. Persons with strong body electricity, particularly at the palms of their hands, unmistakably detect something like an electric aura when the hand is held approximately 1-2 cm away from the copper wire wall of the Faraday cage.
6. The damage caused to the eyes when using the microscope has been confirmed. A few days ago, I worked for two hours using a single-tube microscope, attempting to photograph the visible radiations. Only the right eye, with which I was looking into the microscope, hurt afterward and flt strained.
7. There is no doubt that the radiation can be seen under the microscope. I distinguished it from light reflexes by removing the reflex mirror as well as the iris diaphragm. The radiation maintained its directionality and moved with the rhythm of the bion movement. I observed this at a magnification of 2,000x to 3,000x with dark-field illumination.
8. There has been repeated confirmation of the prickling on the skin and erythema.
There is now no doubt about the fact that radiation does exist. I myself cannot determine or measure the type of radiation. This is a matter for physical radiation institutes to deal with, but I am extremely worried that, since conventional scientific theory makes a sharp distinction between life and nonlife, the fact that living organisms were obtained from lifeless minerals and that these living organisms are radioactive will be thought shocking. I do not know how to get around this problem. I do not wish for a second time to become the target of another highly upsetting campaign against my work of the kind that raged from a whole year in Norway after the publication of my bion book. If you could help me solve these questions, I would be extremely grateful to you.
17 March 1939
Dear Dr. Bon,
Today I am writing just briefly to let you know that the strange and contradictory phenomena at the static (leaf) electroscope are gradually starting to become understandable. Our mysterioues "something" does not appear to be ordinary electricity or ordinary magnetism. But it influences matter in such a way that phenomena resembling magnetism and electricity manifest themselves at the electroscope. Let me give you some verified observations.
1. Metals have been influenced by the "something" (let us provisionally call it "orgonicity") attract the north pole of very sensitive magnetic needles.
2. Materials that are otherwise used to provide electrical insulation, such as rubber (gloves), hard rubber, glass, etc., are influenced in such a way that the leaves of the electroscope move even when the objects are held far away from them, and in certain positions this material attracts the leaves.
3. Using orgonized rubber, it is possible to charge the electroscope by slowly moving the rubber close to and then away from the instruments (repeating this procedure frequently).
4. In the presence of the orgone effect, an electrically charged electroscope slowly loses its charge. The arrangement is as follows: electroscope plate I - SAPA culture dish - electroscope plate II, which has first been rubbed. Once the electrical charge has become discharged, the charge deflection caused by the orgone is apparent when plate II is removed.
5. The electroscope can be alternately charged with electricity and orgonicity. O. weakens the electrical charge and vice versa.
17 March 1939
A Measuring Apparatus, an Orgonometer, Is Needed
Principle: Materials with high dielectric strength used for measuring purposes. Glass and hard rubber.
Suitable for charging alternately with electricity and orgone.
For testing of cultures and orgone charge in bodies.
ReasoningInsulators take up orgone.
Metals radiate it, probably amplified.
19 March 1939
The radiating bions have revealed unheard-of perspectives: bioelectricity; energy production from material heated to incandescence; the discovery ofe life as a certain fact; cancer therapy; the charging of the organism (the problem of death); the answer to the dielectric question -- opposites.
6 May 1939
Important thoughts on the orgone:
The slow undulating movement of the orgone corresponds completely to vegetative movement, which in turn is nothing but energy displacement.
23 May 1939
I am sitting in a completely empty apartment waiting for my American visa. I have misgivings as to how it will go. I have lost faith in pushing things through rapidly.
I am utterly and horribly alone!
It will be quite an undertaking to carry on all the work in America. Essentially I am a great man, a rarity, as it were. I can't quite believe it myself, however, and that is why I struggle against playing the role of a great man. What have I discovered?
1. The function of the orgasm
2. Character armoring
3. The life formula
4. The bions
5. The electrical function of sexuality
6. Orgone radiation
7. The processes involved in cancer formation
8. The processes involved in rheumatism
9. The processes involved in schizophrenia, including the organic causes of neuroses
10. The sociology of sexual repression 11. The dynamics of fascism
12. The spinning-wave theory
A lot of fine work, and still I can't really enjoy it. I fear for my future!
support the Wilhelm Reich Museum by purchasing the books "American Odyssey" and "Beyond Psychology" from them! :)
Saw a film on cancer yesterday, shown by the English delegation. No doubt about it. I'm right.
"Migratory cancer cells" are amoebic formations. They are produced from disintegrating tissue and thus demonstrate the law of tension and charge in its purest form -- as does the orgastic convulsion.
Now money is a must -- cancer the main issue -- in every respect, even political.
It was a staggering experience. My intuition is good. I depend on it.
Was absolutely driven to buy a microscope. The sight of the cancer cells was exactly as I had previously imagined it, had almost physically felt it would be. Cancer is an autoinfection of the body, of an organ. And researchers have no idea of what, how, or where!!!
12 December 1936
The grandchildren of my bions have come to life; so that's the third generation!!
I actually have every reason to be very happy. If only this epidemic of neuroses didn't bother me!!
The cancer plague is becoming more understandable all the time.
1. The disturbed sex economy of the human being
2. The production of motile forms from disintegrating tissue
3. Mechanistic and religious thinking in the sciences.
1 January 1937
What was known before me?
The idea that life = sexuality (Freud, Hartmann)
The concept of orgasm
The concept of tradition--subjective factor
The reactionary role of the family
The relationship of religion--Oedipus complex, father
The concept of the stasis of sexual excitation
The idea of spontaneous generation
The idea of sexual reform, indeed world sexual reform: sexual politics
Pregenitality
Character as fact
Methodology of dialectical materialism
The idea that the "savage" has another kind of life
The concept of social freedom--external conditions of same
Strategy and tactics of revolutionary politics
Social democracy
What did I bring?
The experimental proof of "sex = life"
The unknown formula of sexuality
The definition of the orgasm concept
The knowledge of the meansof the traditional effects of the family
Religion = sex with a negative sign
Church = sexual-political organization of the patriarchy
The experimental proof of spontaneous generation
The fundamentals of socialistic sexual politics
Unconscious = vegetative
Stasis = electrical tension
Character as dynamic-economic principle--armor
Functional identity of psychic and vegetative
Origin of the inner contradiction--dialectic law of development
Proof of the changeover from sex positive to sex negative in ethnology
Concretizing "freedom" as the capacity for sexual happiness, inner condition of this freedom
Restoring and making specific the concept of the masses--revolutionary politics = politics of need
Psychic fundamentals of social democracy, conditions of its failure
My faults and illusions
Little self-confidence despite absolute inner certainty, despite confirmation of hunches
Too short-term in my outlook
Requiring the other person to see things and act as I do
Demanding performance and recognition instead of conviction
Overlooking the effects of organizing = rigidification of movements (psychoanalysis and communism)
Not understanding why people flee from me--as fear of being disturbed
Too strongly bound to authorities
22 April 1937
The assumption is inescapable that the disease of cancer is:
1. Self-vivification -- protozoal disintegration of the organism
2. Autoinfection -- bacteria from the decay of tissue
3. Bodies as incubators for bacteria
The formula: "cancer = not keeping sterile" = stupid. Cancer is infection (cf. autoinoculation of the nutrient medium)
25 May 1937
The breakdown of matter into vesicles when heated to incandescence undoubtedly releases large amounts of electrical energy. The glowing heat must correspond to the emission of radiation by this energy.
Combustion = release of energy
Organization = binding of energy
Radiation tests are needed!
1 September 1937
Preliminary work on cancer. It is clear that the transformation of grass into protozoa is the model for the formation of cancer. Therefore prepare grass for a film.
30 September 1937
I have found the bacillus that causes cancer!!!
T-bacillus as a degeneration.
10 October 1937
Everything is changing. I find S in the blood of healthy young people! Either the entire S business is wrong or ---- or ----
Unavoidable conclusion: It is possible everybody has S in them.
This would be the "cancer disposition" -- that S can form spontaneously in blood, but from what??
14 October 1937
I am on the track of the matter.
1. Local oxygen deficiency due to poor respiration makes tissue decay.
2. S bacteria form.
3. The tissue regenerates itself as a tumor.
4. The S form the metastases.
5. Sarcoma S is more dangerous than carcinoma S.
1 September 1938
My spinning-wave hypothesis (*) seems to solve a multitude of contradictions in physics.
How to elaborate this?
(* Reich's spinning-wave theory represented his evolving thought on the relation of mass and energy.
16 February 1939
SAPA bions!(*) Radiation! A completely new world! I'm so lonely!
(* SAnd PAcket bions derived from a culture of ocean sand.)
27 February 1939
To W.F. Bon
Dear Dr. Bon,
I am very grateful that you have agreed to help me determine the radiation. I would like to give you as a preliminary guide some of the main observations that have been made since my first letter to you.
1. The cultures fill the room in which they are located with a strange something that, after approximately ten to forty minutes, depending on the individual, is experienced as a curious heaviness.
2. They penetrate the packaging of X-ray films, cardboard covers, thin wooden boards.
3. The most remarkable thing is that the unknown factor X travels around corners -- that is, passes through cracks to reach the films wrapped in lead. Probably it does not pass through the lead itself. Animals such as mice and guinea pigs react with obvious restlessness after a few minutes in the presence of whatever it is.
4. In an extremely mysterious way, my oscillograph ceased to function, and some batteries standing in the same room lost more of their charge than is usual under normal circumstances. The negative pole lost more charge than the positive. Some phenomena observed at the oscillograph led me to assume that a positively charged emanation is involved (I know that this is not the correct terminology). Inside a Faraday cage, X-ray films did not react as well or did not react at all compared with the same films in a nonscreened laboratory.
5. Persons with strong body electricity, particularly at the palms of their hands, unmistakably detect something like an electric aura when the hand is held approximately 1-2 cm away from the copper wire wall of the Faraday cage.
6. The damage caused to the eyes when using the microscope has been confirmed. A few days ago, I worked for two hours using a single-tube microscope, attempting to photograph the visible radiations. Only the right eye, with which I was looking into the microscope, hurt afterward and flt strained.
7. There is no doubt that the radiation can be seen under the microscope. I distinguished it from light reflexes by removing the reflex mirror as well as the iris diaphragm. The radiation maintained its directionality and moved with the rhythm of the bion movement. I observed this at a magnification of 2,000x to 3,000x with dark-field illumination.
8. There has been repeated confirmation of the prickling on the skin and erythema.
There is now no doubt about the fact that radiation does exist. I myself cannot determine or measure the type of radiation. This is a matter for physical radiation institutes to deal with, but I am extremely worried that, since conventional scientific theory makes a sharp distinction between life and nonlife, the fact that living organisms were obtained from lifeless minerals and that these living organisms are radioactive will be thought shocking. I do not know how to get around this problem. I do not wish for a second time to become the target of another highly upsetting campaign against my work of the kind that raged from a whole year in Norway after the publication of my bion book. If you could help me solve these questions, I would be extremely grateful to you.
17 March 1939
Dear Dr. Bon,
Today I am writing just briefly to let you know that the strange and contradictory phenomena at the static (leaf) electroscope are gradually starting to become understandable. Our mysterioues "something" does not appear to be ordinary electricity or ordinary magnetism. But it influences matter in such a way that phenomena resembling magnetism and electricity manifest themselves at the electroscope. Let me give you some verified observations.
1. Metals have been influenced by the "something" (let us provisionally call it "orgonicity") attract the north pole of very sensitive magnetic needles.
2. Materials that are otherwise used to provide electrical insulation, such as rubber (gloves), hard rubber, glass, etc., are influenced in such a way that the leaves of the electroscope move even when the objects are held far away from them, and in certain positions this material attracts the leaves.
3. Using orgonized rubber, it is possible to charge the electroscope by slowly moving the rubber close to and then away from the instruments (repeating this procedure frequently).
4. In the presence of the orgone effect, an electrically charged electroscope slowly loses its charge. The arrangement is as follows: electroscope plate I - SAPA culture dish - electroscope plate II, which has first been rubbed. Once the electrical charge has become discharged, the charge deflection caused by the orgone is apparent when plate II is removed.
5. The electroscope can be alternately charged with electricity and orgonicity. O. weakens the electrical charge and vice versa.
17 March 1939
A Measuring Apparatus, an Orgonometer, Is Needed
Principle: Materials with high dielectric strength used for measuring purposes. Glass and hard rubber.
Suitable for charging alternately with electricity and orgone.
For testing of cultures and orgone charge in bodies.
ReasoningInsulators take up orgone.
Metals radiate it, probably amplified.
19 March 1939
The radiating bions have revealed unheard-of perspectives: bioelectricity; energy production from material heated to incandescence; the discovery ofe life as a certain fact; cancer therapy; the charging of the organism (the problem of death); the answer to the dielectric question -- opposites.
6 May 1939
Important thoughts on the orgone:
The slow undulating movement of the orgone corresponds completely to vegetative movement, which in turn is nothing but energy displacement.
23 May 1939
I am sitting in a completely empty apartment waiting for my American visa. I have misgivings as to how it will go. I have lost faith in pushing things through rapidly.
I am utterly and horribly alone!
It will be quite an undertaking to carry on all the work in America. Essentially I am a great man, a rarity, as it were. I can't quite believe it myself, however, and that is why I struggle against playing the role of a great man. What have I discovered?
1. The function of the orgasm
2. Character armoring
3. The life formula
4. The bions
5. The electrical function of sexuality
6. Orgone radiation
7. The processes involved in cancer formation
8. The processes involved in rheumatism
9. The processes involved in schizophrenia, including the organic causes of neuroses
10. The sociology of sexual repression 11. The dynamics of fascism
12. The spinning-wave theory
A lot of fine work, and still I can't really enjoy it. I fear for my future!
support the Wilhelm Reich Museum by purchasing the books "American Odyssey" and "Beyond Psychology" from them! :)
