As far as Reich’s formulation of orgone energy was concerned, in one sense he had
been working with it throughout his long focus on bodily energy. He was certainly working
on it more concretely in the bio-electrical experiments, the spontaneous motility of the
bions, and the radiation from the SAP A cultures. But he himself dated the discovery to his
visual observations over a lake in Maine.
The observations at Mooselookmeguntic Lake represent a moment of epiphany for
Reich. For the first time he allowed himself fully to believe that he was observing a radia-
tion apart from the SAPA cultures, and, although he could not prove it, distinct from sub-
jective light phenomena. It was not until he felt he was dealing with an energy outside the
body, outside matter itself, that he could break away from more conventional terminology—
libido, bioelectricity—for the energy within the body, and refer to his discovery as “orgone
energy.”
Over and beyond that, the Mooselookmeguntic experience represented the
sharpest possible contrast with the science of Reich’s day. Just ten months earlier, on
October 11, 1939, President Roosevelt had received Einstein’s letter urging the development
of an atomic bomb in the face of Hitler’s likely push toward the same goal. That letter was
to inaugurate the Los Alamos project. Meantime, Reich was making his lonely foray with the
most primitive equipment and “foolish”observations in dark basements and over a lake. He
was often to contrast the technical magnificence devoted to the “death rays” with the sim-
ple unsupported efforts that led to the discovery of the “life rays.”
The contrast should not obscure the similarities between Reich’s approach and that
of traditional science, however. Reich yielded to no scientist in his concern for objective
measurement. Although his visual observations had not led to any “crucial experiment,” he
was soon to turn to verifiable hypotheses and replicable experiments.
Thermal Measurements of Orgone EnergyThe device Reich had constructed to observe visual phenomena from SAPAbions
became the orgone energy accumulator. In other words, the apparatus for enclosing the radi-
ation from the bions also attracted (and accumulated) the energy he saw “everywhere.” His
reasons for this were several. For one thing, the visual phenomena of orgone energy were
stronger within this kind of enclosure, in the absence of SAPA cultures, than they were in
the free air or in a simple Faraday cage (an enclosure with walls of copper wire mesh to
block electromagnetic radiation). For another, Reich noted a sensation of heat or a fine
prickling, if the hand or skin surface was held at a short distance (about four inches) from
the walls ofthe accumulator.These subjective sensations were the same as he had experi-
enced when working with the SAPA-bions.
Reich’s scientific explanation for the capacity of his apparatus to concentrate
orgone energy from the atmosphere was as follows:
Organic material attracts and absorbs orgone energy. When our hair or a nylon slip
or a rug crackles with “static electricity,” this is a similar phenomenon. Such crackling is like-
21 : The Discovery of Orgone Energy: 1940 263