1 : IntroductionWhen Wilhelm Reich died in his sleep at the Federal Penitentiary in Lewisburg,
Pennsylvania, on November 3, 1957, few people paid attention. His fellow inmates were tem-
porarily kept waiting while a check was made to find the missing prisoner^1. The world as a
whole scarcely noticed. True, Reich’s earlier prominence as a psychoanalyst merited a brief
milestone in Time:
Died. Wilhelm Reich, 60, once-famed psychoanalyst, associate, and follower of
Sigmund Freud, founder of the Wilhelm Reich Foundation, lately better known for
unorthodox sex and energy theories; of a heart attack in Lewisburg Federal
Penitentiary, Pa.; where he was serving a two-year term for distributing his invention,
the “orgone energy accumulator” (in violation of the Food and Drug Act), a tele-
phone-booth-size device which supposedly gathered energy from the atmosphere,
and could cure, while the patient sat inside, common colds, cancer and impotence^2.No matter that Reich never claimed the accumulator could cure colds, cancer, or
impotence. What little comment his death aroused was mostly of the brief, inaccurate kind
typified by Time’s obituary. Only a few newspapers, such as the anarchist publication Freedom,
in London^3 , and The Village Voice^4 , carried more extensive, serious obituaries. Established sci-
entific journals maintained a total silence.Not a single psychiatric journal carried any mention
ofhis death, though “In Memoriam” statements are thp rule in such publications when a
major contributor to psychiatry dies. Yet the received opinion about Reich was that he had
indeed made very substantial contributions to psychoanalysis in the 1920s before he became
“psychotic.” However, it is understandable why the profession was so silent. Representatives
ofits organizations had been active in urging the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to
launch the investigation that ultimately jailed Reich, and they had congratulated the FDA on
its successful prosecution ofthe case^5.
If the world at large showed indifference or said “good riddance/’ about fifty per-
sons who had studied with Reich or admired him from a distance attended his funeral, which
was conducted on the grounds of Orgonon, Reich’s zoo-acre estate near the small town of
Rangeley, Maine. The atmosphere was emotionally charged. Charles Haydon, Reich’s chief
legal adviser during his difficulties with the FDA, said some fifteen years later that it remind-
ed him of the funeral of a Viking chieftain^6. Reich’s presence dominated in death, as it had in
life, when the bereft community gathered to mourn him amid the falling November snow.
14 Myron SharafFury On Earth