fering a half-lethal dose of nuclear radiation but only one receiving post-injury orgone treat-
ment.
Before proceeding with these experiments, Reich made what was to prove a fateful
decision: he decided to run a preliminary experiment to explore the effects of orgone ener-
gy on radioactive material itself. So he ordered two one-milligram units of pure radium, one
to be exposed to concentrated orgone energy, the other to serve as a control.
Let me comment here on the background of Reich’s use of radium in this experi-
ment. First, it is an interesting historical footnote that this step took Reich back very close
to the beginning of the atomic age. In 1895, Wilhelm Rontgen discovered artificially induced
X-rays, a form of radioactivity. In 1896, Henri Becquerel set out to determine whether a
radiation like X-rays was emitted by “fluorescent” bodies through the action of light. To his
surprise, he found that uranium salts, without the presence of light, emitted a spontaneous
radiation that penetrated photographic plates.
In 1898, Marie and Pierre Curie discovered radium, which emitted a much more
powerful radioactivity than uranium. Only a few years later, Pierre Curie became the first vic-
tim of “radiation sickness” when he deliberately exposed his arm to radium and a burn
appeared along with more diffuse symptoms such as fatigue and body aches. The long-term
harmful effects ofradioactivity were still to be discovered. Indeed, both Marie Curie and her
daughter Irene, who later worked with radium, died of leukemia, the cause of their illness
being attributed to their lengthy exposure to radium. But if radium could harm, it could also
treat. It destroyed not only healthy but diseased tissue, thereby removing tumors. More
important than its immediate uses, the discovery of radioactivity—or more precisely, the fact
that matter could disintegrate into radiation—led eventually to atomic physics as we know
it today.
Reich’s first studies were built on a series of discoveries also made in the nineteenth
century. During the same years that Rontgen, Becquerel, and the Curies were launching the
atomic age, Freud was inaugurating the psychological revolution. There are striking parallels
between the two sets of discoveries. Psychoanalysis could look beneath the surface of the
mind just as X-rays could penetrate the surface ofthe body. The energy of libido could be
bound in symptoms and character traits analogous to the binding of energy in matter. The
release ofinstinctual energy from its defense mechanisms or armorings could take destruc-
tive forms, like radioactive decay from matter. Indeed, for Freud, though not for Reich, it
was impossible to conceive of a free flow of energy in civilized man without some anti-
instinctual structures (repressions, defense mechanisms). All of Reich’s differences with
Freud turned on the nature of free-flowing libido, the desirability or undesirability of its
blockages,and the proper way to dissolve rigid structures.
Now, in 1950-51, Reich was confronting modern atomic theory. Once again, the
issues turned on the relationship between energy and structure, or mass. In the atomic
model,mass could be transformed into energy, but the released radiation was destructive to
living tissue.Even the electron contained a small amount ofmass embodying its charge of
negative electricity. Yet orgone energy was life-furthering and mass-free. Whereas in his
26 : The Oranur Experiment: 1950-1953 345