It is sad and ironic to hear Dunham dismiss Reich as some kind of crank. Reich had
diligently sent copies of his publications to the AEC. While he maintained orgone energy
did not lie within the jurisdiction of the FDA, if it belonged under the jurisdiction of any
agency, it was the AEC. Little did he 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 pre-
serve his own sanity, he had to believe something that appeared insane—he had to hope that
somewhere, somehow, somebody was out there who would comprehend the truth.
The reader may ask: What about professional people who were not part of the
establishment, and what about the general public? Did they not react strongly to the ordered
destruction and censorship of literature, to what amounted to book burning? And if not,
why not?
With a few exceptions they did not, for a variety of reasons. There was relatively lit-
tle publicity about the injunction. Nor did Reich’s refusal to appear in court win him sym-
pathizers, as would have been the case had he put up a spirited, well-publicized defense.
Moreover, only a few thousand people at most had any idea of the rich scientific, medical,
educational, and sociological material contained in the journals and pamphlets the FDA
ordered destroyed. The professional world and the public took the FDA’s word for it: these
contained instructions for the construction and use of,or advertisements for, worthless
accumulators. True, many found it inconvenient to have Character Analysistemporarily
unavailable while, presumably, Reich deleted references to orgone energy. But well before
the injunction, psychiatric teachers had strongly advised young psychiatrists not to read the
last, added chapters in the third edition of this book—sections which, as in the case of
schizophrenia, made many references to orgone energy. The “silent generation” of the
fifties followed this advice. There was no widespread dissatisfaction with the medical and
psychiatric establishments, no “holistic medicine,” no—or little—questioning of received
opinion. And with Joseph McCarthy riding high, civil libertarians had more comprehensible
problems on their hands than the eccentric Reich and his ludicrous “box.”
However, the atmosphere of the 1950s and Reich’s quixotic defense are insufficient
explanations for the lack ofoutrage over the burning of his publications. In the subsequent
thirty years, long after the departure of McCarthy and of Reich, few expressions of indig-
nation have been heard.Jerome Greenfield’s detailed study of the FDA investigation was
greeted in 1972 with few reviews and a small sale. In a study sponsored by Ralph Nader in
1970, James S. Turner gave some details on the FDA’s “vicious campaign” to discredit Reich
and his ideas^38 , but that is the only substantial reference to the injunction and its aftermath
beyond the circle of Reichian adherents.
In short,the Reich case has not entered public consciousness as a civil liberties
scandal of the first magnitude. Yet there have been few other instances of the American fed-
eral government’s instigating, ordering, and, as we shall see, executing the conflagration of
serious scientific literature. It can be argued that only a scientist can pass judgment on the
efficacy ofthe accumulator. But one does not need to be a scientist to be outraged by the
burning of books. Why the strange apathy? I must conclude once again with Reich’s expla-
28 : The FDA Injunction and Reich’s Responses: 1951-1955 397