of organic material. One panel of the apparatus had an opening with a lens through which
possible manifestations of the presumed energy could be observed by the researcher from
the outside^2.
In effect, Reich had designed the essential features of what he would later call an
orgone energy accumulator. Few people realize that initially this apparatus was not devised
to treat illness but to study visually the SAPA-bion radiation. Reich often began, as his crit-
ics alleged, with very strongly held hypotheses, indeed so strongly held that they sounded
like proven convictions. In the present instance, his conviction concerned the existence of
a radiation from SAPA-bions and a determination to study it. But his belief that he had
devised an apparatus that would isolate the radiation soon proved wrong.
When Reich began to observe through the lens the enclosed dark space containing
the SAPA-bions, at first he noted what he expected: the same kind of visual phenomena but
in an even more intense form than he had previously seen. Now it was possible to distin-
guish two kinds of light phenomena: bluish, moving vapors, and sharper, yellowish points
and lines that flickered. Reich expected that when he removed the SAPA-bions and ventilat-
ed the apparatus, the light phenomena would disappear. However, he found exactly the same
light phenomena, though not as strong, in the empty box,in the absence of SAPA cultures.He
first assumed that the organic part of the enclosure had absorbed energy radiating from the
cultures, and this was what showed. Then he took the box apart, dipped the metal plates into
water, put in new cotton, and ventilated everything for several days. But when he tried once
more, he still found some visual phenomena. He also had another box built, with a glass
front wall but without organic material outside. This box he kept carefully away from rooms
in which SAPA cultures were stored. However, no matter what he did, he could not elimi-
nate the radiation from the empty box. The light phenomena were not as intense as when
the box contained cultures, but they were undoubtedly present.
Confronted with the ever present visual phenomena, Reich groped to the conclu-
sion that the energy he was studying was “everywhere.” In his account, he did not arrive at
this beliefeasily:
During the first two years ... I doubted every one of my observations. Such
impressions as “the energy is present everywhere” ... carried little conviction; on the
contrary they were apt to raise serious doubts. In addition, the continuous doubts,
objections and negative findings on the part of physicists and bacteriologists tend-
ed to make me take my observations less seriously than they deserved to be taken.
My self-confidence at that time was not particularly strong. Not strong enough to
withstand the impact ofall the new insights which followed from the discovery of
the orgone^3.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 crit-
260 Myron SharafFury On Earth