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Fury On Earth: A Biography Of Wilhelm Reich
'Reading Myron Sharaf's passionate biography of his charismatic mentor and colleague is like being engulfed in an ancient drama about heroic intention. True to its literary analog and human source, Fury on Earth ends in catharsis. I felt like crying upon closing it.'--Webster Schott, Washington Post Book World
584 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1983
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August 31, 2024
Emotional Plague. These two words seem to dominate the world of a man who faced a great deal of criticism, degradation, social shunning, and overall worldly misunderstanding that led him to digging his own grave with his theory as Sharaf suggests. I decided to read this book as a result of reading an article on him on his birthday this past year. The biography seems to have led me down a rabbit hole - it is about a man who is arguably the most famous American that no one has ever heard of. He worked his whole life following small snippets of information to their end, exploring whatever he could about the universe and human psychology and behavior, and yet as a wholly misunderstood man in every endeavor he tried to undertake and was persecuted in all avenues because of often misinterpreted and terribly misconstrued connections between the avenues of his work. While I am not sure I understand or believe some of what I read of his work, I will say that the man was often not even given a chance and driven out of about every town/state/society that he lived and worked in because of the controversial nature of trying to study human sexuality in all of its various incantations in a human life. Regardless of his work and what he may or may not have discovered, there is certainly a heroic and staggering aspect of his personality that makes him such a brilliant and dedicated man. There is no reason that he should not serve as a role model for anyone - rather than snuggling into a cushy, lame, and socially friendly life, Reich and Sharaf suggest that one should approach their existence and mind as a gift where discovery, existence, and development should completely advance and not be restricted under any circumstances. Also, one should be open to the idea that, even in science and rational thought, there are many things that we have yet to discover and explore even on our own planet no matter how ridiculous they sound - The drive and passion for one person to explore them cannot be discounted by anyone. I was tempted to write Sharaf regarding his work, what I consider to be one of the most profound and comprehensive biographies that I have ever read (and if you read the introduction, it is clear that Sharaf had a lot of reasons to not be as objective as he was). It turns out he died in 97, but his obituary in the NYT was extremely flattering to himself as well as his and Reich's career (http://www.nytimes.com/1997/05/23/us/...). This book took a lot of work to get through (the technical things about his work, the social commentary on aspects of his life that are interesting but then may also at times were boring and tedious to get through) but it definitely picked up after the second chapter and the last couple sections. I urge anyone to read this book if for no other reason than to learn about themselves, social criticism of people who lay on the outskirts of what may be considered popular thought, and that any form of brilliance, if not stifled by the daily grind of mediocrity, is a certain death sentence - both figuratively, and at times throughout history, literally.
June 25, 2021
In the 1980s, Kate Bush released a song called “Cloudbusting”. Although the lyrics can be interpreted as an expression of love for her father, they are undoubtedly based on the surreal life of Wilhelm Reich. If Kate Bush’s fans don’t know what she means when she sings about her dreams of Organon, then Myron Sharaf’s book Fury on Earth: A Biography of Wilhelm Reich could be a good place to learn more, despite its imperfections.
Myron Sharaf was a Harvard-educated psychiatrist who studied under Wilhelm Reich while his experiments with so-called orgone energy were being conducted. As any proper biography should, he begins the story with Reich’s childhood in Bukovina, a region that was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and now is divided between Romania and Ukraine. Reich’s childhood was an oedipal nightmare. At a young age, the boy spied his mother having sex with his tutor through a keyhole. Both of his parents committed suicide. And young Willy, as they called him, lost his virginity at the age of 11 with a servant three times his age. These events powerfully impacted his orientation to the world and probably contributed to his preoccupation with sexuality and the delusions that became the guiding principles of his later life.
The strongest parts of this biography detail the early years of Wilhelm Reich’s adulthood. He became a favored disciple of Sigmund Freud and a prominent member of the Viennese Psychoanalytic Society. The older members took a disliking to the upstart psychoanalyst and turned a cold shoulder to him as he developed his theory of character armor, a system by which the ego builds up resistance to libidinal flow from the id. His theory of orgastic potency involved breaking down this character armor and an emphasis on healthy expressions of sexuality was a prominent part of his analysis.
Horrified by the rise of Adolf Hitler and fascism, Reich became a member of both the Social Democrats and the Communists. Both parties ended up expelling him because of his advocacy for sexual expression as a necessary part of mental health. He later moved to Berlin and got kicked out o the Psychoanalytic Association there; since most psychoanalysts, including Reich, were Jewish, they were coming under intense scrutiny from the Nazis and they feared Reich’s involvement with the Communist Party would further endanger them. So Reich moved on to Copenhagen and then Oslo where his theories of psychoanalysis led him to venture into research involving biology.
This is a big turning point in this biography because it is the place where Reich’s story starts to become more interesting. Unfortunately, Sharaf’s writing skills do not do the subject matter justice. In the laboratory, Reich claimed to have discovered “bions” which are vesicles that he believed served as a transition point from inanimate matter to living organisms. He possibly made a discovery about the origins of life and he did so by inventing his own technology for time-lapse photography. The Oslo scientific establishment, who never looked at any of Reich’s evidence, labeled him a fraud and took their smear campaign against him to the media. Eventually Wilhelm Reich moved to America where he thought he would have more freedom to pursue his interests.
The whole problem with this part of the book is Myron Sharaf’s muddled writing. As stated, the author was a psychiatrist with minimal knowledge of hard sciences. His descriptions of Reich’s bion experiments do not do the subject matter justice. Sharaf appears to justify the charge that Reich’s laboratory work was sloppy, pseudo-scientific, and inadequate to prove anything. It appears this way because of Sharaf’s muddled and inept descriptions of the experiments. The science historian James Strick has more recently pointed out in his book Wilhelm Reich: Biologist that the results of the bion experiments have been successfully replicated by other scientists. But Sharaf’s account of them is vague and ends up making Reich look naive and goofy when his intention was to do the opposite.
Sharaf’s mediocre handling of scientific descriptions carries over into Riech’s life in America where he set up the Organon research foundation in Maine. Reich continued experimenting with bions and, through a massive leap of logic, intuitively discovered what he called “orgone”, a life-force energy that pervades everything in the universe. His science of orgonomics became the cornerstone of his theories. Blocked up orgone causes neuroses and sexual frustration in the psychiatric patient, repressed orgone manifests in the violence of fascism, and physically damaged orgone causs diseases, especially cancer. Reich claimed to see blue lights in bions and so concluded that orgone is the energy that creates life. But he also noticed that cancer cells resembled clusters of bions with insufficient amounts of orgone. His solution was to invent the orgone accumulator, a box that is metal on the inside and covered with organic material on the outside. By sitting inside this box, a cancer patient would be blasted with orgone which would return the cancer cells to health.
The orgone accumulator, as well as the hypothesis of orgone, look like bullshit. They probably are but then again, there are some flaws in the science that seeks to disprove Reich. One is that experiments on mice with tumors show that the ones who spent time in the orgone accumulator lived longer than mice who did not. This is flimsy evidence and does not sufficiently prove that orgone is real. But Reich did not finish his experiments and that was not his fault.
Enter the American Food and Drug Administration. The great guardians of health and science in America took Reich to trial for fraud. They decided before the investigation began that Reich was a crank and a con artists and you can’t entirely blame them for that. Any sane person should be skeptical of someone who tells you that your terminal illness can be diminished if you sit in a metal box everyday. The FDA’s experimental tests did not yield the types of results that would have saved Reich’s work from infamy but that does not prove much. First off, their tests were poorly conducted and did not replicate the same conditions Reich used in his laboratory. Secondly, Reich had never made any grandiose claims about what the orgone accumulators could do; he was experimenting with them to see what, if anything, the results were. Reich did not have enough time to finish his experiments and come to any final conclusions thanks to the government.
Again, this is where Sharaf’s writing goes wrong. His descriptions of Reich’s experimentation leave a lot to be desired and it almost seems as if his details of the FDA’s shabby procedures make more sense. He inadvertently does some damage to Reich’s cause with his poorly executed prose, some of which does not become more clear after more than one reading. Sharaf writes as if he not only is ignorant about laboratory procedures but also as though he really isn’t interested in it anyways. He writes like he can’t wait to finish and move on to something else.
Aside from the government, Reich had one other big problem: his own mind. As time went on he became more delusional, having fantasies that were both paranoid and grandiose in regards to himself. He believed the planet was in imminent danger and his use of orgone would save the world from DOR energy, a term he used to describe polluted orgone that causes physical and mental ilnnesses, as well as wars, economic problems, social conflicts, and, of course, sexual repression. He believed UFOs were shooting DOR energy out of the sky and if only he could contact the space men, he could convince them to use their DOR guns for the good of the planet. Reich believed President Eisenhower was secretly sending air force squadrons to watch over and protect him. He built cloudbuster machines that he thought could be used to control the weather. Organon started taking on the characteristics of a cult. He Became yet another Don Quixote with his researchers following by his side like a gang of Sancho Panzas. Reich also became socially isolated, a heavy drinker, a chronic womanizer, and sometimes beat his wife. He was probably a paranoid schizophrenic. Sharaf, the psychiatrist, does make a good case that Reich’s delusions stemmed from his childhood and he needed them to protect himself from the destructive realities around him. But just because Wilhelm Reich was going insane, that does not automatically invalidate his scientific investigations.
Joseph Heller, in his classic novel Catch 22, says “Just because you’re paranoid, that doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.” The FDA and the courts really were out to get Wilhelm Reich. By order of the court, his orgone accumulators and all the books and journals he had published were seized and destroyed while he looked on, his entire life’s work put to the torch. Reich was sent to prison. Along with slavery, the Native American genocide, and the verdict of “not guilty” in the O.J. Simpson murder trial, this was one of the greatest acts of injustice in American history.
Wilhelm Reich was like a living embodiment of postmodernism. He cut across disciplines in a tangled plurality of frames within frames within a network of infinite frames. His work touched on theories of psychology, biology, politics, sociology, evolution, physics, education, and healthcare. He pioneered in things like sex education, abortion rights, access to contraception, massage therapy, the origin of life, the connection between mind and body, and sometimes even pseudoscience. But “pseudoscience” might be a misnomer. He believed in his research and he never had any intention of fraud. Despite Sharaf’s shaky descriptions, his experiments and notes actually were conducted strictly and rigorously according to sound scientific principles and practices, according to other scientists who have studied his works. While some of his conclusions may have been wrong that does not undermine the fact that he may have made important discoveries that could be of benefit to humankind in the future, particularly in regards to cancer treatment and the origins of life. The main reason his ideas sound wrong now is is not so much because of his mental illness and a few bad theories, but because the government prevented him from finishing his research. Besides, nobody would say that Nikola Tesla or Thomas Edison were kooks because of all the failed experiments they did, and there were many; people judge them according to what they got right, not what they got wrong. There still might come a day when a monument could be erected in honor of Reich’s work. At the very least the guy should be given an apology, even if he is dead.
Fury in Earth, for now, remains the definitive biography of Wilhelm Reich. But Myron Sharaf’s narrative suffers from a lack of expertise in both writing and scientific methodology. He probably should have collaborated with an expert in biology when writing this. But at least he tried and we thank him for keeping this story alive. Otherwise Wilhelm Reich’s legacy would only be in the hands of flaky occultists, conspiracy theorists, snake oil salesmen, and dorks like Colin Wilson. Even though it has literary problems, it still does an adequate job of documenting the life of this complex and fascinating man. It is hard to imagine that anybody ever lived the kind of life he had. Reich never stopped being a victim of circumstance, even though that was partially his fault, but he also never gave up his defiance in the pursuit of truth. You don’t have to agree with all of Reich’s ideas, or even any of his ideas, to get a lot out of this book.
Myron Sharaf was a Harvard-educated psychiatrist who studied under Wilhelm Reich while his experiments with so-called orgone energy were being conducted. As any proper biography should, he begins the story with Reich’s childhood in Bukovina, a region that was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and now is divided between Romania and Ukraine. Reich’s childhood was an oedipal nightmare. At a young age, the boy spied his mother having sex with his tutor through a keyhole. Both of his parents committed suicide. And young Willy, as they called him, lost his virginity at the age of 11 with a servant three times his age. These events powerfully impacted his orientation to the world and probably contributed to his preoccupation with sexuality and the delusions that became the guiding principles of his later life.
The strongest parts of this biography detail the early years of Wilhelm Reich’s adulthood. He became a favored disciple of Sigmund Freud and a prominent member of the Viennese Psychoanalytic Society. The older members took a disliking to the upstart psychoanalyst and turned a cold shoulder to him as he developed his theory of character armor, a system by which the ego builds up resistance to libidinal flow from the id. His theory of orgastic potency involved breaking down this character armor and an emphasis on healthy expressions of sexuality was a prominent part of his analysis.
Horrified by the rise of Adolf Hitler and fascism, Reich became a member of both the Social Democrats and the Communists. Both parties ended up expelling him because of his advocacy for sexual expression as a necessary part of mental health. He later moved to Berlin and got kicked out o the Psychoanalytic Association there; since most psychoanalysts, including Reich, were Jewish, they were coming under intense scrutiny from the Nazis and they feared Reich’s involvement with the Communist Party would further endanger them. So Reich moved on to Copenhagen and then Oslo where his theories of psychoanalysis led him to venture into research involving biology.
This is a big turning point in this biography because it is the place where Reich’s story starts to become more interesting. Unfortunately, Sharaf’s writing skills do not do the subject matter justice. In the laboratory, Reich claimed to have discovered “bions” which are vesicles that he believed served as a transition point from inanimate matter to living organisms. He possibly made a discovery about the origins of life and he did so by inventing his own technology for time-lapse photography. The Oslo scientific establishment, who never looked at any of Reich’s evidence, labeled him a fraud and took their smear campaign against him to the media. Eventually Wilhelm Reich moved to America where he thought he would have more freedom to pursue his interests.
The whole problem with this part of the book is Myron Sharaf’s muddled writing. As stated, the author was a psychiatrist with minimal knowledge of hard sciences. His descriptions of Reich’s bion experiments do not do the subject matter justice. Sharaf appears to justify the charge that Reich’s laboratory work was sloppy, pseudo-scientific, and inadequate to prove anything. It appears this way because of Sharaf’s muddled and inept descriptions of the experiments. The science historian James Strick has more recently pointed out in his book Wilhelm Reich: Biologist that the results of the bion experiments have been successfully replicated by other scientists. But Sharaf’s account of them is vague and ends up making Reich look naive and goofy when his intention was to do the opposite.
Sharaf’s mediocre handling of scientific descriptions carries over into Riech’s life in America where he set up the Organon research foundation in Maine. Reich continued experimenting with bions and, through a massive leap of logic, intuitively discovered what he called “orgone”, a life-force energy that pervades everything in the universe. His science of orgonomics became the cornerstone of his theories. Blocked up orgone causes neuroses and sexual frustration in the psychiatric patient, repressed orgone manifests in the violence of fascism, and physically damaged orgone causs diseases, especially cancer. Reich claimed to see blue lights in bions and so concluded that orgone is the energy that creates life. But he also noticed that cancer cells resembled clusters of bions with insufficient amounts of orgone. His solution was to invent the orgone accumulator, a box that is metal on the inside and covered with organic material on the outside. By sitting inside this box, a cancer patient would be blasted with orgone which would return the cancer cells to health.
The orgone accumulator, as well as the hypothesis of orgone, look like bullshit. They probably are but then again, there are some flaws in the science that seeks to disprove Reich. One is that experiments on mice with tumors show that the ones who spent time in the orgone accumulator lived longer than mice who did not. This is flimsy evidence and does not sufficiently prove that orgone is real. But Reich did not finish his experiments and that was not his fault.
Enter the American Food and Drug Administration. The great guardians of health and science in America took Reich to trial for fraud. They decided before the investigation began that Reich was a crank and a con artists and you can’t entirely blame them for that. Any sane person should be skeptical of someone who tells you that your terminal illness can be diminished if you sit in a metal box everyday. The FDA’s experimental tests did not yield the types of results that would have saved Reich’s work from infamy but that does not prove much. First off, their tests were poorly conducted and did not replicate the same conditions Reich used in his laboratory. Secondly, Reich had never made any grandiose claims about what the orgone accumulators could do; he was experimenting with them to see what, if anything, the results were. Reich did not have enough time to finish his experiments and come to any final conclusions thanks to the government.
Again, this is where Sharaf’s writing goes wrong. His descriptions of Reich’s experimentation leave a lot to be desired and it almost seems as if his details of the FDA’s shabby procedures make more sense. He inadvertently does some damage to Reich’s cause with his poorly executed prose, some of which does not become more clear after more than one reading. Sharaf writes as if he not only is ignorant about laboratory procedures but also as though he really isn’t interested in it anyways. He writes like he can’t wait to finish and move on to something else.
Aside from the government, Reich had one other big problem: his own mind. As time went on he became more delusional, having fantasies that were both paranoid and grandiose in regards to himself. He believed the planet was in imminent danger and his use of orgone would save the world from DOR energy, a term he used to describe polluted orgone that causes physical and mental ilnnesses, as well as wars, economic problems, social conflicts, and, of course, sexual repression. He believed UFOs were shooting DOR energy out of the sky and if only he could contact the space men, he could convince them to use their DOR guns for the good of the planet. Reich believed President Eisenhower was secretly sending air force squadrons to watch over and protect him. He built cloudbuster machines that he thought could be used to control the weather. Organon started taking on the characteristics of a cult. He Became yet another Don Quixote with his researchers following by his side like a gang of Sancho Panzas. Reich also became socially isolated, a heavy drinker, a chronic womanizer, and sometimes beat his wife. He was probably a paranoid schizophrenic. Sharaf, the psychiatrist, does make a good case that Reich’s delusions stemmed from his childhood and he needed them to protect himself from the destructive realities around him. But just because Wilhelm Reich was going insane, that does not automatically invalidate his scientific investigations.
Joseph Heller, in his classic novel Catch 22, says “Just because you’re paranoid, that doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.” The FDA and the courts really were out to get Wilhelm Reich. By order of the court, his orgone accumulators and all the books and journals he had published were seized and destroyed while he looked on, his entire life’s work put to the torch. Reich was sent to prison. Along with slavery, the Native American genocide, and the verdict of “not guilty” in the O.J. Simpson murder trial, this was one of the greatest acts of injustice in American history.
Wilhelm Reich was like a living embodiment of postmodernism. He cut across disciplines in a tangled plurality of frames within frames within a network of infinite frames. His work touched on theories of psychology, biology, politics, sociology, evolution, physics, education, and healthcare. He pioneered in things like sex education, abortion rights, access to contraception, massage therapy, the origin of life, the connection between mind and body, and sometimes even pseudoscience. But “pseudoscience” might be a misnomer. He believed in his research and he never had any intention of fraud. Despite Sharaf’s shaky descriptions, his experiments and notes actually were conducted strictly and rigorously according to sound scientific principles and practices, according to other scientists who have studied his works. While some of his conclusions may have been wrong that does not undermine the fact that he may have made important discoveries that could be of benefit to humankind in the future, particularly in regards to cancer treatment and the origins of life. The main reason his ideas sound wrong now is is not so much because of his mental illness and a few bad theories, but because the government prevented him from finishing his research. Besides, nobody would say that Nikola Tesla or Thomas Edison were kooks because of all the failed experiments they did, and there were many; people judge them according to what they got right, not what they got wrong. There still might come a day when a monument could be erected in honor of Reich’s work. At the very least the guy should be given an apology, even if he is dead.
Fury in Earth, for now, remains the definitive biography of Wilhelm Reich. But Myron Sharaf’s narrative suffers from a lack of expertise in both writing and scientific methodology. He probably should have collaborated with an expert in biology when writing this. But at least he tried and we thank him for keeping this story alive. Otherwise Wilhelm Reich’s legacy would only be in the hands of flaky occultists, conspiracy theorists, snake oil salesmen, and dorks like Colin Wilson. Even though it has literary problems, it still does an adequate job of documenting the life of this complex and fascinating man. It is hard to imagine that anybody ever lived the kind of life he had. Reich never stopped being a victim of circumstance, even though that was partially his fault, but he also never gave up his defiance in the pursuit of truth. You don’t have to agree with all of Reich’s ideas, or even any of his ideas, to get a lot out of this book.
December 18, 2019
Years ago this book was recommended by a friend, a doctoral student of Mathematics at Northwestern University. It's taken a long while to find it but in the meantime I read a much shorter biography and the memoir of his son, Peter.
Author Sharaf worked for Reich during his years in the States and knew him personally. His account is sympathetic, but critical. While the discussion of Reich's psychoanalytic years in Europe is clear and satisfying, the treatment of his turn to the physical sciences is, admittedly, weak, Sharaf lacking the expertise. Consequently, the controversial theories about bions, the orgone and cloud busting are represented in such a way that I could understand why Reich was investigated for medical fraud. What I didn't know, however, is that the conviction putting him in jail, where he died, was for failure to comply with court orders.
Reich was not an easy person to get along with, whether as a friend, colleague, employee or lover. Nathless, he has had an enduring influence on the practice of psychotherapy.
Author Sharaf worked for Reich during his years in the States and knew him personally. His account is sympathetic, but critical. While the discussion of Reich's psychoanalytic years in Europe is clear and satisfying, the treatment of his turn to the physical sciences is, admittedly, weak, Sharaf lacking the expertise. Consequently, the controversial theories about bions, the orgone and cloud busting are represented in such a way that I could understand why Reich was investigated for medical fraud. What I didn't know, however, is that the conviction putting him in jail, where he died, was for failure to comply with court orders.
Reich was not an easy person to get along with, whether as a friend, colleague, employee or lover. Nathless, he has had an enduring influence on the practice of psychotherapy.
August 7, 2009
very, very, very good. if you've already read "passion of youth", "beyond psychology" and "american odyssey" (and are eagerly waiting for the followup fourth book of journals between 1947-1957), then this will definitely fill in the blanks.
while light on details about the orgone accumulator (construction details, etc), the orgone shooter, orgone blanket and the cloudbusting devices - whilst making no mention of wilhelm reich's experiments with magnets and the orgone accumulator - this DOES give a very good overall view on his life. let this, however, not be your only book on wilhelm reich - for following this up with "children of the future" or "journals of orgonomic functionalism", etc, is much advised. its best to always read the original author's work.
while light on details about the orgone accumulator (construction details, etc), the orgone shooter, orgone blanket and the cloudbusting devices - whilst making no mention of wilhelm reich's experiments with magnets and the orgone accumulator - this DOES give a very good overall view on his life. let this, however, not be your only book on wilhelm reich - for following this up with "children of the future" or "journals of orgonomic functionalism", etc, is much advised. its best to always read the original author's work.
November 11, 2008
What an amazing and tragic life of science. The book is written in a complex manner by one who knew Reich and his work, but tries well to keep very even on his presentation. Reich was both heaven and hell for the author, who gave his time and efforts to Reich while Reich was stealing away with his wife.
Even so, it is fair, and a part of our historical journey that is incredible. I so very much enjoyed this book.
Even so, it is fair, and a part of our historical journey that is incredible. I so very much enjoyed this book.
October 12, 2025
Epic bio of an unbelievably interesting titan of edge science and psychoanalytic theory and practice. Alternately, the “most beloved disciple of Freud” and the sex-crazed proto new agey mad scientist/creator of the orgone accumulator. The author tells an amazing birth to death tale, where he himself makes several appearances as both a follower, client, employee of Reich. Some parts of this biography read like historical fiction, but it is truly wonderfully researched and masterfully executed. Highly recommended but not for everybody.
December 31, 2022
Incredible biography about one of the most important scientists in human history. I use the term scientist loosely, as Reich's critics often decried his lack of scientific training after his awesome discoveries. The author, Sharaf knew Reich and studied under him after Reich had moved to America, since Reich had been "kicked out" of Oslo, Malmo, Copenhagen, Berlin and Vienna respectively. Sharaf begins the biography by laying out his personal prejudices with Reich, including the great doctor stealing his girl!
Even so Sharaf still manages to paint Reich in a fair manner, highlighting his brilliance and admitting the man's deeply disturbed persona, which the reader will understand when learning about his childhood experience. The book then describes Reich's training under Freud and his breakthroughs within the fledgling Viennese psychoanalytical community. Reich then moves on to the more physiological aspects and causes of human behavior and from there on to environmental and cosmic causes.
The FDA ruined Reich and and succeeded in imprisoning him, though not without some cause.
One of my few 5 star reviews only because the book resonates greatly with today's world and the authors use of quotes from the great thinkers in history to underscore some of the more bizarre paradoxes in Reich's life (and there are many.)
Even so Sharaf still manages to paint Reich in a fair manner, highlighting his brilliance and admitting the man's deeply disturbed persona, which the reader will understand when learning about his childhood experience. The book then describes Reich's training under Freud and his breakthroughs within the fledgling Viennese psychoanalytical community. Reich then moves on to the more physiological aspects and causes of human behavior and from there on to environmental and cosmic causes.
The FDA ruined Reich and and succeeded in imprisoning him, though not without some cause.
One of my few 5 star reviews only because the book resonates greatly with today's world and the authors use of quotes from the great thinkers in history to underscore some of the more bizarre paradoxes in Reich's life (and there are many.)
July 12, 2016
An amazingly well written and organized biography. Myron Sharaf could have just written a memoir since he knew Reich personally after Reich came to the United States, but Sharaf thoroughly researched Reich's childhood and early career in Europe. He divides Reich's life into time periods and then subdivides each period into professional and social life. You would think there would be more overlap; yet Sharaf rarely repeats himself. It helps that Sharaf is a psychologist who studied the psychology of stages of life as well as psychotherapy. His understanding of Reich's ideas on their own terms as well as how they are perceived by mainstream science allows him to explain Reich's theories lucidly.
A tour de force in the field of biography. Particularly interesting is the introduction in which Sharaf discusses his personal relationship with Reich and why his feelings toward Reich are both positive and negative. He believed that by getting his biases out of the way up front he could do a more even-handed job of presenting Reich's life. I think he succeeded. (My own bias is that I met the author in the 1970s and liked him very much.)
A tour de force in the field of biography. Particularly interesting is the introduction in which Sharaf discusses his personal relationship with Reich and why his feelings toward Reich are both positive and negative. He believed that by getting his biases out of the way up front he could do a more even-handed job of presenting Reich's life. I think he succeeded. (My own bias is that I met the author in the 1970s and liked him very much.)
October 22, 2016
A comprehensive biography, that is mainly structured in chapters alternating between professional and private life. I got a good idea of his character, and how his early experiences shaped his theories and development of psychotherapy treatments. The controversies surrounding his orgone discoveries become more understandable as his questionable mental state taints the picture as he starts to make grandiose claims and becomes deluded.
The author, on the whole, remains impartial and objective and the writing flows as a good pace, and even though it comes in at 500 pages the book never became an arduous ordeal.
The author, on the whole, remains impartial and objective and the writing flows as a good pace, and even though it comes in at 500 pages the book never became an arduous ordeal.
September 11, 2024
THE DEFINITIVE BIOGRAPHY OF THE CONTROVERSIAL FIGURE
Myron Ruscoll Sharaf (1927-1997) was a lecturer in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and assistant clinical professor of psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine. He was also a student, patient, and colleague of Wilhelm Reich's from 1948 to 1954.
He wrote in the first chapter of this 1983 book, "My aim is to overcome this separation of the extraordinary individual from the rest of us. I find it ironic that psychobiographers so intent on relating a great man's life to his work rarely give specifics about the relation of their lives to their biographies... They leave aside the details of their own involvement with the person they are portraying... This will not do. Just as the therapist sees the patient through the prism of his own personality and experiences, just as Reich brought all of his being to his work in a way that the reader needs to know, so I shall bring all of myself to writing about him." (Pg. 11-12)
Of Reich's early life, he recounts, "Given Reich's later interests, it is not surprising that he paid a good deal of attention to his own sexual history. In this area he seems to have had a good deal of freedom... He remembered as a boy of four sleeping in the servants' room when his parents were away. On several occasions, he overheard or witnessed intercourse between a maid and her boyfriend. In the course of these experiences, he asked the maid if he could 'play' the lover... Reich clearly attributed great importance to his relationship with this peasant girl. He once said that by the time he was four there were no secrets to him about sex, and he related this clarity in part to his sexual play with his nursemaid." (Pg. 39)
Later, Reich was led "especially drawn to Freud's concept of infantile sexuality, which made sex a much larger force than simply adult genitality... This viewpoint was syntonic with Reich's own experience of the powerful childhood drama that Freud so emphasized: the boy's sexual love for his mother..." (Pg. 56) Still later, Reich "was also arguing in a series of articles that the capacity for full expression of genitality, or what he termed 'orgastic potency,' was THE goal of psychoanalytic treatment." (Pg. 84)
He notes, "when the [media] storm did erupt in 1937, the bio-electric experiments were one of the targets. Various rumors circulated in the press, the most pernicious of which was that Reich wanted to use mental patients as subjects in studies of sexual intercourse... The conception of Reich's experiments involving 'crazy' sex orgies would pursue him to the end of his days, as would the dual criticism that he entered fields where he lacked knowledge and that he failed to design his experiments properly or in replicable form." (Pg. 216)
He admits, "Touching the patient and seeing the patient either in the nude or semi-nude remain two of the most controversial aspects of Reichian technique... The focus on touching and nudity has tended to obscure Reich's central therapeutic endeavor: the dissolution of characterological and muscular rigidities ... and the establishment of orgastic potency." (Pg. 235-236)
He concedes, "Reich often wrote---and acted---like a person with supreme self-confidence, even arrogance. In this instance he was struggling with a continual problem: how to trust himself in the face of great discoveries, and not yield to self-doubts accentuated by the external criticism of his method and his findings. Over and over again he was haunted by the question: If what I see exists, why wasn't it discovered before? And the corollary: Am I badly off track?" (Pg. 278)
He records Reich's attempts to speak to Albert Einstein about his "discovery" of Orgone; Einstein did speak with Reich for five hours once, but later wrote Reich a letter suggesting a more prosaic explanation; Einstein never answered Reich's final letter to him." (Pg. 283-287)
He states, "Reich was to go on making discoveries ... that were perhaps even more important than those he demonstrated at the 1948 conference. However, his rage was also to grow as the harassment intensified... one cannot help but wish that his environment had provided more of the support and peace that was in evidence during the First International Orgonomic Conference. Although he often said he could work alone, it was equally true that people were important in his lifetime and that their responses buoyed his spirit." (Pg. 353)
Later, he says, "It is sad and ironic to hear [Charles] Dunham [of the Atomic Energy Commission] dismiss Reich as some kind of crank... Little did [Reich] know that he was simply a 'thorn in the side' to them. Reich should have known. Yet typically he had to go on believing. In order to preserve his own sanity... he had to hope that somewhere, somehow, somebody was out there who would comprehend the truth." (Pg. 427)
Of Reich's book 'Contact with Space,' he comments, "Written under great pressure and disorganized in structure, it blended wild speculation about space ships and blasts at the FDA as well as other enemies with remarkably sensitive observations and acute conceptualizations of the relationship between orgone energy and [Deadly Orgone]." (Pg. 432)
This biography is absolutely MUST READING for anyone who wants to know about Reich the man, as well as his ideas.
Myron Ruscoll Sharaf (1927-1997) was a lecturer in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and assistant clinical professor of psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine. He was also a student, patient, and colleague of Wilhelm Reich's from 1948 to 1954.
He wrote in the first chapter of this 1983 book, "My aim is to overcome this separation of the extraordinary individual from the rest of us. I find it ironic that psychobiographers so intent on relating a great man's life to his work rarely give specifics about the relation of their lives to their biographies... They leave aside the details of their own involvement with the person they are portraying... This will not do. Just as the therapist sees the patient through the prism of his own personality and experiences, just as Reich brought all of his being to his work in a way that the reader needs to know, so I shall bring all of myself to writing about him." (Pg. 11-12)
Of Reich's early life, he recounts, "Given Reich's later interests, it is not surprising that he paid a good deal of attention to his own sexual history. In this area he seems to have had a good deal of freedom... He remembered as a boy of four sleeping in the servants' room when his parents were away. On several occasions, he overheard or witnessed intercourse between a maid and her boyfriend. In the course of these experiences, he asked the maid if he could 'play' the lover... Reich clearly attributed great importance to his relationship with this peasant girl. He once said that by the time he was four there were no secrets to him about sex, and he related this clarity in part to his sexual play with his nursemaid." (Pg. 39)
Later, Reich was led "especially drawn to Freud's concept of infantile sexuality, which made sex a much larger force than simply adult genitality... This viewpoint was syntonic with Reich's own experience of the powerful childhood drama that Freud so emphasized: the boy's sexual love for his mother..." (Pg. 56) Still later, Reich "was also arguing in a series of articles that the capacity for full expression of genitality, or what he termed 'orgastic potency,' was THE goal of psychoanalytic treatment." (Pg. 84)
He notes, "when the [media] storm did erupt in 1937, the bio-electric experiments were one of the targets. Various rumors circulated in the press, the most pernicious of which was that Reich wanted to use mental patients as subjects in studies of sexual intercourse... The conception of Reich's experiments involving 'crazy' sex orgies would pursue him to the end of his days, as would the dual criticism that he entered fields where he lacked knowledge and that he failed to design his experiments properly or in replicable form." (Pg. 216)
He admits, "Touching the patient and seeing the patient either in the nude or semi-nude remain two of the most controversial aspects of Reichian technique... The focus on touching and nudity has tended to obscure Reich's central therapeutic endeavor: the dissolution of characterological and muscular rigidities ... and the establishment of orgastic potency." (Pg. 235-236)
He concedes, "Reich often wrote---and acted---like a person with supreme self-confidence, even arrogance. In this instance he was struggling with a continual problem: how to trust himself in the face of great discoveries, and not yield to self-doubts accentuated by the external criticism of his method and his findings. Over and over again he was haunted by the question: If what I see exists, why wasn't it discovered before? And the corollary: Am I badly off track?" (Pg. 278)
He records Reich's attempts to speak to Albert Einstein about his "discovery" of Orgone; Einstein did speak with Reich for five hours once, but later wrote Reich a letter suggesting a more prosaic explanation; Einstein never answered Reich's final letter to him." (Pg. 283-287)
He states, "Reich was to go on making discoveries ... that were perhaps even more important than those he demonstrated at the 1948 conference. However, his rage was also to grow as the harassment intensified... one cannot help but wish that his environment had provided more of the support and peace that was in evidence during the First International Orgonomic Conference. Although he often said he could work alone, it was equally true that people were important in his lifetime and that their responses buoyed his spirit." (Pg. 353)
Later, he says, "It is sad and ironic to hear [Charles] Dunham [of the Atomic Energy Commission] dismiss Reich as some kind of crank... Little did [Reich] know that he was simply a 'thorn in the side' to them. Reich should have known. Yet typically he had to go on believing. In order to preserve his own sanity... he had to hope that somewhere, somehow, somebody was out there who would comprehend the truth." (Pg. 427)
Of Reich's book 'Contact with Space,' he comments, "Written under great pressure and disorganized in structure, it blended wild speculation about space ships and blasts at the FDA as well as other enemies with remarkably sensitive observations and acute conceptualizations of the relationship between orgone energy and [Deadly Orgone]." (Pg. 432)
This biography is absolutely MUST READING for anyone who wants to know about Reich the man, as well as his ideas.
June 6, 2022
This is one of the most biased books I have ever read and is all the better for it. The combination of the author's reverence, criticism and devoted research creates an encompassing experience. The book gives colour to every aspect of Reich's life and gives insight into not just the man but the effect he had on those closest to him.
April 8, 2022
Finally got around to reading this biography years after I bought it, on one of the most intense intellectuals in the world of psychology, long personally involved with Freud until Reich's Marxism sparked irremediable tensions.
January 19, 2013
Reich was one of Freud’s circle but was expelled not least because of his ‘sex-pol’ work - - counselling which put working class sexual problems in their social context - - which also got him thrown out of the communist party. Nowadays he may be more famous for his later theories of energy and the resulting devices which he claimed could treat cancer or make rain in the desert. Supposedly his orgone accumulator was the inspiration for the orgasmatron in Woody Allen’s Sleeper. Whatever you make of this later work, it’s unsettling that, having escaped Nazi Europe, his books were burned by court order in the USA, and that he was then imprisoned for his work and died in jail. When evaluating one of his devices, the FDA didn’t try to reproduce the experiments on which his claims were based: to be ‘completely objective’ - - read, avoid threatening their groupthink - - they decided not to read the publications.
March 19, 2009
AMAZINGLY interesting portrait of Wilhelm Reich as seen by an incredibly thoughtful psychoanalyst and co-worker at Orgonon for years. Riveting. Interweaves personal anecdotes with socio-political context and author's commentary in a fluid, readable, very enjoyable way. I can't believe someone hasn't made a feature on this guy yet.
November 19, 2017
so far: GRIPPING
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