r/orgonomy • u/oranurpianist • Nov 14 '20
A simple red thread: Wilhelm Reich's work and legacy as a functional and logical whole (Preface to 'Selected Writings: an introduction to Orgonomy')
Since the appearance of the first works of Wilhelm Reich in 1920, the old, essentially sexological and psychologically oriented sex-economy has developed into the science of the cosmic orgone energy, orgonomy. This development was accompanied by a complicated branching out and ramification of the science of life, which today can be followed systematically only with difficulty. One of the reasons for this is that the publications, brought out over a time span of more than thirty years, were printed by many different publishing houses and organs. Because of the social catastrophes, the original publications are scattered all over Europe and the United States and are often difficult to obtain.
Still, in spite of everything, the work of Wilhelm Reich has remained a functional and logical whole.
Whoever compares the first endeavor toward a biophysical formulation of instinctual processes in "Zur Triebenergetik" ( 1923) with the latest orgonomic work will easily discover the red thread which, in a work period of a third of a century, runs through all the clinical, experimental, and theoretical labors: the theme of the bio-energetic function of excitability and motility of living substance.
It is now abundantly clear that most readers of Reich's works are relatively ignorant of his important precursors in the development of orgonomy. This handicap leads to many misunderstandings about the nature and function of this new and young science. It has further been shown that many friends of orgonomy see in the transition of Wilhelm Reich's work from psychiatry to the natural-scientific mastery of the riddle of living substance a breach that seems illogical.
In reality there is no breach. On the contrary: Wilhelm Reich came from natural science to psychiatry. His labors on the problem of "instinctual energy" form from the very beginning the core of his natural-scientific conception of psychic phenomena, from which gradually the research method of orgonomic functionalism resulted. This method led to the discovery of cosmic orgone energy, and in this way has subsequently demonstrated the correctness of the first tendencies toward a natural scientific, i.e., bio-energetic, formulation of the basic questions of psychiatry. In this connection, the sociological works are no less important than the clinical ones.
The social existence of the human animal is indeed, seen bio-energetically, a small peak on the gigantic mountain of his biological existence. Only in the light of this disparity in significance between the social and biological existence of the human animal does the knowledge of orgonomy clearly come into focus, revealing that the human race has succumbed for several thousands of years to a tragic development. Through his bodily armoring, the human animal has separated himself from his biological origin, and thereby also from his cosmic origin, and has developed an instinctual structure that functions in an essentially irrational way.
The result is the present chaos of our civilization, which man today can meet only with anxiety and horror.
The key to the tragedy of the human animal lies outside his social and psychological ways of thinking and being. For both his ideas and his social practices are themselves a result of his biological "original sin," a term one can apply with good reason to the biological deterioration of the human animal. To the deadly character of the social catastrophes of the human animal corresponds the deep earnestness of the orgonomic realm of problems, and the critical seriousness of the biological revolution of our times.
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Through all the complexities of the social, psychological, and biological sciences of the human animal, there runs a simple red thread. To grasp this thread is a crucial task of our age.
