September 1, 2022 • 47 mins
Born in 1897, Wilhelm Reich was an Austrian doctor of medicine and a psychoanalyst, as well as -- for a time -- a follower of Sigmund Freud. Today, he's most often associated with his life's work: the study of a strange, pervasive energy he called "orgone." In part one of this two-part series, Ben, Noel and Max explore Reich's origin story, from his early days to the experiences that persuaded him sexual vibes could, literally, save the world.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. Quick note before we get
this train rolling. Uh, we are doing a two part episode.
You're hearing this on a Thursday. Part two is on
a Tuesday. So this is our shout out to the weekend,
(00:48):
not the singer. You know what, No, the singer looking
him out for the weekend? What do you spell his
name that way? He leaves out like and E and
and and and what the week n n D week
e k n d R. He isn't in there side
(01:10):
too much of our ury for the vowels, you know
what I mean? They saved the time. Spelly the name
and pass the savings onto you. Uh. Speaking of saving
the show, shout out to our super producer, Mr Max Williams.
They called me Ben No, we're working for the weekend.
We yeah, it's but it's but it's Tuesday, so we
got we gotta waits to go. Unfortunately, the weekend is okay.
(01:34):
By the way, he always he sounds so sad in
his songs, and yet he's he's he's a chieved such
success a meteoric rise. I hope he can just take
a step back and enjoy what he's created for himself
and and and you know, cheer up a little bit.
I'm waiting for his next album. We're talking about this
last time I was hanging out with him. It's called
t G I F Thank God it's Friday by the Week. All.
(01:57):
It's all re workings of of of of nine these
sitcom themes, the ones that described five. Yeah, I talked
about this previously on sitcoms. I love this, Oh no way.
I don't know if it was this show. But we're
not talking about sitcoms today, though I would watch a
sitcom about our protagonists. There is something you may have
(02:22):
heard of once upon a time. Some call it vibes
great films. Some call it a connection great film, Yes, agreed,
and one guy called it We're going today is part
one of our story. Odd the one and only villain
Reich Bill Halm Reich and the sexual revolution baby that
(02:46):
many thinkers, um philosophers, thought leaders credit this man with
starting UH in no small part. And I did not
quite realize that he was such an acolyte of Freud,
who also gets a lot of credit for are you know,
um starting the idea of thinking about where our sexual
urges lead us in terms of our mental progression or
(03:08):
lack there of stuntedness. I suppose arrested development all of that.
But yeah, folks from you know as far Afield in
terms of their work as James Baldwin two Susan Sun
talk to Kate Bush, one of my favorite artists of
all time. Um have read and written and kind of
digested Wilhelm Reich's work and kind of made it their own.
(03:31):
We're gonna get to all of these luminaries and how
Right kind of affected their work, you know, as we
go through this to part Also huge shout out to
research Associate extraordinariy Zach Williams. He really, um, you know,
went above and beyond for this one. This is a
subject that we've covered briefly in our early episode about
a scam, a rain making scam. We talk about right
(03:54):
just in terms of his contribution to the idea of
cloud seating cloud busting, uh in fact, and we also
talked about that extensive, extensively stuff they don't want you
to know back before, back before it was YouTube, when
it was just Apple video or whatever. They called it
back then. Also in our audio episodes for the show.
(04:16):
We started doing podcasts there. But you're right, we have
a we have a closeness with this man. Dare I
say a vibe um? And it is true. We have
to remember in his time he was born just on
the cusp of the twentie century, right, he's born in
March of We have to remember that during this time, uh,
(04:39):
and during the time it was active, there were many
uh let's call them pioneers of thought, right for good
or for ill? Would you agree with that? Absolutely? Yeah.
And again, like we mentioned Freud, we are going to
hear Einstein wang And at some point this is important
era in thought leadership beyond science. It really is the
birth of kind of ecology which many would have you know,
(05:02):
kind of maligned as being a pseudoscience at the time.
It was not always thought of kindly by the scientific community.
But we're gonna we're gonna explain, you know how, right
kind of he pushed the boundaries of that to a degree.
But you're right, then he was born March seven in
dobro Zenia, which was a part of Galicia, which sounds
like a made up place like from or something, but
(05:24):
it's sounds like, yeah, that's right. You may not have
heard of it though, because at the time that belonged
to the Austrian Empire. I don't know that it exists anymore.
But after his birth, his family, which was quite well
to do, they moved to what you could maybe compare
in an American equivalency to a ranch uh and this
(05:45):
was in the Ukrainian part of Austria. Uh and that
is where um Reich's father started to He became a
cattle rancher for specifically the government, the German government. And
this was a pretty relatively high post, even though the
idea of being a cattle rancher, you know, we know
that Hannibal Lector would have looked down his nose at that,
(06:05):
but it was kind of a big deal. This put
him in an upper echelon of German society. I think
he looked down on on Shepherd's right, it's the silence.
Was the labs not they were? They were We'll have
to ask him. We'll have to have Hannibal Lector on
the show. Anthony Hopkins, you were disinvited to Ridiculous History.
(06:26):
You can only show up as your character Hannibal lector.
And we also want to shout out, by the way,
David Elkins from the New York Times, who wrote an
excellent article back in ninety one, called Philim Reich the Psychoanalyst,
as revolutionary. This goes into his early life in depth,
(06:47):
and it's very well worth the read. Now, yes, you're right.
The family was well to do, relatively speaking, and they
had Jewish heritage, but if you asked them out there
on the official German government cattle ranch, they would identify
more with German culture. Wilhelm and his brother were not
(07:12):
allowed to play with the poor kids in the neighborhood.
They also, looking back, the brothers did not appear very
close to each other. They were sort of alone in
the crowd of their family. And since we're being a
little Freudian folks, and since we're talking a little bit
(07:33):
about psychoanalysis, we have to say that this is not
us saying that. Some people would say that Reich's familial
dynamic had an effect on him later in life. His
dad was sort of domineering and a bit of a tyrant,
and his mom was sort of cowed by him. And
(07:55):
when Reich was young, when it was an adolescent, his
mom had an affair with one of the tutors living
with the family, and it was pretty common for well
to do families back then to have tutors, right to
have kind of these all pairs or the instructors rather
than Cindy door kids to school. And there's an interesting
(08:18):
line in the New York Times article. It's interesting. That's
why I shout out Elkins here, the author of that article,
because he says, this is a quote. He says it
is likely that Right bores some responsibility for his father's
discovery of the affair and for his mother's subsequent suicide.
And Wright goes on to be married several times throughout
(08:39):
the course of his life, and one of his spouses
his third spouse, I'll say Ollendorff Reich will later write
that she believes Reich may have felt some responsibility for
his mother's death, and this may have been one of
(09:01):
the things that stopped him from completing what she called
his own analysis, like there were things he could never
fully process after that moment. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean,
it's it's a lot to contend with, and it's the
kind of these kind of things that carry follow us
from childhood into adulthood that we sometimes can never fully
(09:22):
deal with or process unless we meet them head on,
and sometimes it's very difficult to do. Uh. That is
where therapy is a very important thing. But it wasn't
necessarily something that he, as the analyst or as the
therapist maybe was willing to look inwardly upon. Um. But
you know, we'll get to more of that in a
bid as well. UM. So he actually joined the military
(09:44):
UM during World War One. He was an Austrian Army
Officer UM and he served in Italy and again Elkin
writes for The New York Times that he he liked it.
He seemed that the military life seems to suit him.
He was a man of many, Um, let's just say exuberances.
You know. He he had a lot of gusto and
(10:06):
get up and go. He was able to kind of
give that a home, you know with some of this, uh,
this kind of military life is regimented military life. Um.
He was very intuitive. Any skill that he sought he
could he could pick up pretty easily. I think we
all know people like that where it's like borderline obnoxious,
but like he could ride a horse. Uh, He's like,
(10:28):
you know, he picked it up instantly. Um, and you
think it's obnoxious when people are talented obnoxious. It's just
like when people when there's some people that are just
good at everything without very much effort. I say this,
you know, half jokingly, but yeah, I mean it's like,
must be nice, you know, to just be able to
be like naturally gifted at all the things. They leave
(10:50):
some for the rest of us. No, you're not gonna stay,
so I say, yeah, it's so annoying, like you have
that thing that you've been working on for a long time.
Then look a lot of years like, oh that's interestingly,
like three weeks later they're better out than you. And
it's like I've been working on this for four years
and you're already better than me. Maybe I need to
work on this with a therapist. Also, yeah, I think
we're probably gonna all find some things that are gonna
bubble up about ourselves in this one. But yes, skiing,
(11:11):
you know, horseback riding, piano, you know. Art um. He
was also obviously very very gifted in academics. So as
the person in ridiculous history who is not angry at
other people doing well, let me shout out Wilhelm. He
did some awesome stuff. He didn't find his true north
(11:32):
right away. And this is something we see with many
uh many people who are kind of like you guys said,
kind of always talented. It's stuff, right. Their question becomes,
am I a jack of all trades master of none?
What is my true calling? First? Reich tries law. He
tries the legal world, and he finds that it is boring,
(11:56):
so he switches to the medical world. And this is
you'll love this, Max. This is the moment where he
takes a six year program in med school and finishes
it in four years, and he uh he supports himself
during the last few years by tutoring his fellow students.
(12:17):
This is also where he meets his first spouse, Annie Pink.
They marry in nineteen one. Yes, that's pink like the color,
and Pink would go on to become an a well
known analyst in her own life. But we need to
backtrack a little before he meets Annie. Picture the meat
(12:38):
cute rom com moment they have and then just rewind
in the ridiculous history cinema of the mind to a
pivotal moment that occurs just a few years earlier. He's
still a student it's nineteen nineteen. But no, this is
the crossroads moment hashtag bone, Thugs and harmony where Right
(13:01):
attends a lecture that will change his life. He sits
in on a little ted talk of the time about
psycho analysis, and he is into it. He is ted
toes down on this. He is so intrigued that he
immediately decides he is going to be a psychiatrist. Yeah.
(13:21):
I mean, because again, this is kind of like the
early days of this, uh, this discipline. And I've always
kind of found psychiatry to be sort of an interesting
combination of like medicine and philosophy. You know, it's like
mind science of the mind or whatever like it is.
It does it It kind of combines a lot of disciplines.
And then him being this guy that was sort of
(13:42):
all over the place and the stuff that he was
interested in, you know, from art to philosophy to various
academic studies. This made sense that it would kind of
be this sort of fusion of a lot of things
into one relatively new field. Not to mention that he
was kind of a cutting edge guy, and it was like, Okay,
I want to get on the ground floor of this.
That makes a lot of sense. Um, So you're right. Um,
(14:02):
it was something that really grabbed him right away. I
was asking very profound questions that he himself had been asking. Uh.
He found the study to be challenging and less kind
of you know, paint by numbers than something like medicine
or the law. Um, this was a very good fit
for him, so he decided to pursue that with Gusto. Uh.
(14:27):
And because of that kind of you know, enthusiasm that
he put forth, it was noticed and he was very
quickly admitted to the Vienna psycho Analytic Society and started
seeing patients pretty quickly. And this will certainly be frowned
on today. But before he completed his medical training, Yeah,
(14:52):
let's talk a little more about Freud, because Freud influences
Reich well before he um gets associated with a psychoanalytics society,
Freud thought the world of Reich. He looked at him
and said, this guy has potential, at least in the beginning,
(15:14):
will get their folks in the nineteen twenties, and this
comes from the Guardian, wonderful article by our pal Olivia Lang.
We haven't met Olivia, but we love the way she writes.
Right kind of does something heretical, right to the Viennese
(15:35):
school of thoughts. At the time, he's listening to his
patients speak and he keeps looking at their body language. Basically,
they're laying on the couch or the chaise lounge, and
they are rigid, they're guarded, and he thinks, maybe there's
(15:57):
something else they're trying to commune. K. Perhaps it is
not something one can articulate in words. Maybe he thinks
Freud isn't going far enough. Maybe the past is not
just hiding in your memories, your verbal like the memories
you can vocalize, but maybe it's also hidden physically. Maybe
(16:21):
your your your distress, your past experiences are somehow stowed
away in your body, almost like a battery, you know,
can store electricity. Uh. He he felt that this these
emotions um manifested themselves as energy, as some sort of
(16:43):
almost electrical current. I'm sort of editorializing here, but definitely
a form of energy that could be in some ways
store in the body and possibly harnessed or re you know,
um directed, diverted UM. And this was sort of like this,
this aha moment really was kind of the the genesis
(17:04):
of his later Some would say more out there, you
know studies. Yeah. Yeah, it's strange because he senses a
tension in people, and he says, maybe this is a
defensive move. Maybe this is some sort of instinct towards
(17:28):
self preservation. Maybe someone is trying to restrain their anxiety,
their rage, their anger, their sorrow, their sexual excitement. Uh.
And he thinks, if you're in a place where these
emotions are repressed, or where they are traumatic or very upsetting,
(17:50):
then the only alternative in his mind is that the
patient must tense up and try to bottle it down
right deep inside. Why are you so tense? Why are
you so rigid? That's just how I stand man. Uh.
He believes that this shows evidence in the physicality of
(18:12):
the patient, so he starts working with the patient's bodies.
Now at this point, he's verging into territory, which is
completely forbidden in psychoanalysis. He starts talking with patients about
their bodies, their body language, and then he starts physically
touching them. And surprise, surprise, at least in Reich's opinion,
(18:36):
when he is physically touching folks, he starts putting his
hands on what he sees as the physical expression of
these emotions, right, expressions of fright, clinched fist, you know,
tensed shoulders, that sort of stuff. And he believes that
by touching them, he can bring these feelings to the
(18:59):
surface it's the physical and emotional surface and release them.
And it's a lot like um memory regression almost. You know.
He feels that patients are experiencing memories they had kind
of forgotten and they would release them upon this physical stimulation.
(19:21):
This is true. And when they released those feelings, when
they process that stuff and let it out, they would
have something that that right called streaming, which is not
a subscription service online. It's a pleasurable rippling feeling. Yeah.
I mean there's a lot of parallel thought here, um
(19:44):
that I think we we both see the idea of tension,
you know, carrying stress in the body. Um. You know,
that aligns with a lot of like kind of holistic
met medicine and massage therapy and things like raiky and
energy work and you know other things things that maybe
you're not fully embraced all the time by the scientific community,
even parts of scientology. The idea of storing these like
(20:07):
theatan's or whatever, these like weird dead ghosts, uh, sorry
spoiler alert for anyone that hasn't made it down the
bridge yet. Um, but that stuff been online for years,
um down the bridge of the bridge. But yeah, there
is some parallel you know kind of stuff going on here. Um,
the idea that these energies stored in your body or
in your muscles or you know, are in some way
(20:30):
a sign of repression of holding onto things, and that
they can you know, get worse, um even just like
you know tensions and your muscles that can be relieved
by you know, pressure points and things like that. I mean,
it's all kind of a similar ball of wax here.
I think it's really interesting. Freud, on the other hand,
he was not about the touchy touchy um. He was
(20:50):
much more into you know, the pure psychoanalysis and and
he believed that it all needed to be you know,
on a purely um talking kind of talk therapy, the
talking cure kind of modality. I guess he wrote that
he was a little bit on the fence about you know,
what Reich was doing. So Freud was he wasn't really
(21:11):
against Reich's methods, but he he wasn't necessarily coming out
in full support of them either. He clearly gave, you know,
some sort of test that like, okay, you should try
to explore this more. Uh, for the more kind of
base level methods that Reich was exploring. With some of
the more extreme methods he actually, you know fully kind
(21:32):
of withheld his his support for. And then, by the way,
we've got another great article to site here, the scientific
Assassination of a sexual Revolutionary, How America interrupted Wilhelm Reich's
Orgasmic Utopia by Jason Louve from Motherboard. M Yeah, out
of vice. Yeah, this is the thing right now, at
(21:55):
this period of time, in the nineteen winnings or so,
Freud is a big deal. And if Freud likes you,
that's great for your career. If Freud says you're middling,
that's middling for your career. And god forbid, Sigmund have
a problem with your work or you know what you
(22:19):
see as your work. He didn't really take this streaming.
So the psycho analytic community at this time, which we
have to remember, is pretty young. Uh, they say accidental
pun they're not j U n G there, y o
U n G. Thank you, Max, I appreciate your support.
(22:47):
So he So the thing is because Freud is objecting
to some of Reich's thoughts. Here the overall community, which
of which Freud is an integral part, the other psychoanalysts,
they start saying, okay, well, let's dismiss right here. He's
(23:10):
not on the same page, the same therapist couch as us.
Things start to get worse and worse for Wilhelm. It's
he's trying to deal with a backlash of his community saying, hey,
you're a bit heretical, you're a bit crazy. And he
(23:31):
asked Sigmund Freud to psychoanalyze him. It's like, Sigmund, big bro,
maybe you can help me, Maybe you can help me
figure out where I have misstepped. And this guy, who
very much is like a father figure to Villam he says,
uh no, can't do it. We don't know whether it's
(23:53):
scheduling or a flat out refusal, but this really cut
right to the war. And then right after that, his
brother dies of tuberculosis. Right gets tuberculosis. He has to
go to a sanitarium in Davos, Switzerland. This just like,
(24:14):
it feels like this is a um a cavalcade of catastrophes.
We promised he gets a little better, but right now
he's in a sanitarium, he gets radicalized. I found this
interesting knoll. He joins the Communist Party, and then he
becomes an activist. That's right. And he you know, he
(24:34):
was never really that guy per se. He was more
into his studies than he was into politics. You know,
he never really seemed to take a particular stance politically
up until this point. But after witnessing some horrific violence
at the hands of police during the July Revolt of
nineteen seven in Vienna, where he saw police kill, shoot
(24:56):
and kill eighty four workers and injure and another sick hundred,
he decided that there was something very, very very off
about this or this organization of of you know, power
dynamic in the world, and he decided that he needed
to speak out against it. He believed that the police
were inherently a an occupying force, you know, very similar
(25:19):
to a lot of the you know, defund the police
kind of movement that we see today, you know, around
a lot of police brutality. So he was very much
ahead of ahead of the curve there, as he was
with a lot of things. He Vice. This Vice article
described him as thinking that the police weren't only brutal,
he observed. But they were robotic as if in a trance. Uh,
and also armored. So nothing worse than robots in a
(25:43):
trance that have guns. Well, think about it, because it
goes back to his original finding, right where he strayed
from the path of established psychoanalysis. They're moving like robots.
Their physicality is affected, perhaps by some emotional trauma or repression.
(26:05):
That's where Reich's thoughts are headed. And he is he
is now pulling demonstrations in the streets. He is thinking
about all of these factors and he's doing a Charlie Day,
always sunny in Philadelphia conspiracy board. You know, so picture
picture young Billy. I'll call him and he's he's saying,
(26:29):
you know what, economic repression, sexual repression. It's all related, man,
It's all connected. This goes all the way to the
top and the bottom. And I, he says, I am
opening a series of clinics throughout Vienna, and I you know,
I recently went to Austria for a thing. And it's nuts.
(26:52):
How um, it's nuts how Freud is treated or regarded
versus Philam Reich. And we're about to why his clinics
that open up scandalizing established psycho analysis. They say, look,
we'll give you the psychoanalysis you've come to love and expect.
We will also give you some sex head and we
(27:16):
will also supply contraceptives to young and working class people. Interesting.
I didn't know this at the time. Back then, the
folks who consider themselves more liberal would say, yes, you
can have contraception, but only if you're already married, if
(27:37):
you're in wedlock, that's kind of nuts, right, No, it's
interesting that you mentioned to Ben that like this, he
was getting pushed back from the psycho and now an
analytical community, which was already kind of a controversial field.
So he was sort of like the next level in
(27:58):
in controversy surrounding this field, and he was sort of
pushing the envelope even farther than than those folks. The
more you know established psychoanalysts for wood and obviously it
was very popular and it was very like in vogue
of the time, but it was also, uh, you know,
seen by some as dangerous. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, they're playing
with live fire, and this community is exploring things that
(28:22):
were considered maybe off limits or forbidden in polite conversation.
And Reich moves from Austria to Germany. He moves to
Berlin in n and uh, fellow history enthusiasts, you know
that there was something evil brewing in Berlin at this time.
(28:45):
It's the rise of the Nazi Party and rich um
Reich is continuing to write and explore his theories and
he showed them to his colleagues in the Communist Party
and various Communist organizations, but they're not super into it.
(29:06):
And he keeps making um, I don't want to say,
making enemies, but he keeps sort of burning professional bridges
because he's just too controversial. He has this contract with
a publishing outfit, the International Psychoanalytic Publishers. They cancel the
deal because he goes a little further with sex head
(29:30):
than they are used to or comfortable with. He says, look,
we're not going to do abstinence only education for teens
for teenagers. Instead, we're gonna talk to them bluntly about
sex and sexual interactions and contraceptives. Yeah, it reminds me
of Kinsey. I think this is roughly around the same time.
(29:51):
He might have even been a little later, but um,
you know the American um, you know, sex psychologist. I
guess he proposed was a lot of these same things,
but I think a little bit later and even then
he was persona on grata and a lot of circles.
So this was absolutely above and beyond what society was
willing to uh to to bear. And of course it's
(30:13):
easy to spend some of this stuff out of context.
The idea that he was advocating for, you know, young
people having sex, it wasn't exactly what he was doing.
He was advocating for young people to understand their bodies
and to you know, have access to things that would
allow them to have sex if they so choose, without consequences,
(30:34):
without getting getting pregnant or I don't know that even
std s were part of it as much at this
time or the conversation, but it was more about just
you know, having access to information than it was about
encouraging some sort of like sexual free for all. Yeah,
and he points out that there's a bit of hypocrisy,
(30:56):
or at the very least there's a bit of u
contradictory messaging that young people are receiving at this time
in Europe. In N two, he makes this pamphlet called
the Sexual Struggle of Youth, and it's his sort of
condemnation of current society and the ways in which it
makes it difficult for adolescence to navigate these huge changes
(31:24):
in their lives. And I think that's a valid point.
He's saying, Hey, these kids need help, right, And we
have a quote from him. I'm not going to do
a voice for it, but just you get a sense
of the flavor of this. He says, young people are
contaminated on the one hand by moralizers and advocates of abstinence,
(31:46):
and on the other hand by pornographic literature. Both influences
are extremely dangerous, the former no less than the latter.
And at this point he's twenty seven. Yeah, my mind
(32:07):
blowing to me whenever I read that. Just Wow, those
guys really ahead of the curve. Um. But that that
that one part of the quote that you'd read Ben,
the idea of pornographic literature, that's really important because you know,
as pro sex and sex positive as Reich was, he
was vehemently anti pornography. He thought that was like a
(32:29):
toxic influence um and and not something that was beneficial
in any way, shape or form. That it was a
repressive force rather than a liberating force. And he was
also against the concept of bonogamy. He he argued against yeah,
(32:50):
he said, uh. He said, you should have lasting, loving
relationships that are held together by affection rather than legal
can straints. And he said, you know, if you tried
to do anything else, you're going to get tired of
each other. Basically the phrase he uses is secual dulling. Yes,
(33:12):
I feel like I have to say seck sex. Yeah,
I know, you absolutely do and did beautifully. Um. He
also was very uh, it was very It was a feminist.
I mean, he he felt that women were kept down
by economic dependence, you know, on men, and that it
caused them to be kind of essentially like you know,
(33:34):
in a in a carrying forward of the old ways,
put into these kind of forced marriages or arranged marriages,
even if they weren't politically arranged, they oftentimes were. I mean,
if if wealthy families would would very oftentimes kind of
force you know, their families to be united and there
wasn't much choice. It wasn't the same as like you know,
in the House of the Dragon or whatever, but it
(33:56):
definitely had a an air of that kind of like
you know, I will wed my first born first of
his name to Marjorie of House you know whatever you
know down the street, and you know it. Moneyed people
wanted to marry their kids off too moneyed people so
that they could carry on the legacy of money. Um
(34:16):
and and the idea of a bloodline or whatever that
is not something that has even gone to this day. Yeah, yeah,
and he is uh, he is one of those guys
who is proposing the idea that it takes a village, right, Like,
if you have more parent figures, if you have more
caretaker figures in a child's life, maybe you can help
(34:40):
save them from some of the crazy stuff. You know.
It reminds me of this wonderful Philip Larkin poem. It's
a wonderful poem with a terrible name. It's called this
be the Verse. Because we are family show, We're gonna
have some beeps here. Courtesy of Mr Max Williams. Here's
the poem, and this is something rich would agree with.
(35:02):
Theyque up your mom and dad. They may not mean to,
but they do. They fill you with the faults they
had and add some extra just for you. But they
were faked up in their turn by fools and old
style hats and coats who half the time where soppy,
stern and half at one another's throat. Man hands on
misery to man, it deepens like a coastal shelf. Get
(35:24):
out as early as you can, and don't have any
kids yourself. Philip Larket, I feel like I feel like
Rich would agree with him, because he's worried, like you're saying, all,
he's worried about this intergenerational trauma, right, that's what we
would call it today. Yeah, exactly. And then and we've
talked about the idea of intergenerational trauma or even what
(35:44):
is it epigenetics, the idea of trauma that can be
carried you know, in the genes generationally, um, not just
things that you witnessed while you're alive. Um, it actually
can have you know. Again, this is also a kind
of of a of a modern day burgeoning, sort of
of just the plan. But it's the idea that you know,
the formation of our very the very core of who
(36:05):
we are, you know, in terms of like you know,
chemically speaking, can be impacted by trauma of of of
our forbears, you know. So yeah, again I keep saying this,
but it's true. I mean, Reich really was very much
had his figure on the pulse of a lot of
really fascinating concepts that would later be given a lot
more you know, kind of credence, and then taking a
(36:26):
little more seriously mm hmmm. And he does have another
run in with his former mentors Sigmund Freud in nine
he meets uh, he meets Sigmund again, and he says,
old Doc Freud is kind of looking like a caged
animal to me, and he felt that he had sold out. Right,
(36:52):
He's looking at his old authority figure, not with the
eyes of a young, up and coming psychoanaly us, but
now with the eyes of a revolutionary. Right. Uh, some
would say a sexuan revolutionary. That's the last time I'm
gonna say every time. That is the only way to
(37:15):
pronounce it at this point. Um, I fully support you.
But yeah, I mean he'd like, like we said at
the top of the show, I mean, he more or
less did kind of come up with this concept, the
idea of the sexual revolution. He actually did coin that phrase, um,
very very early on, to kind of be this catch
all for all of those forms of repression, societal repression
(37:39):
that that that targeted sexuality and the idea of sexual
identity and the revolution would be a way of of
not necessarily it's not like some orgiastic, you know thing exactly.
It's not like free love or whatever like it would
maybe be more associated with in the in the sixties,
But it was about freeing yourself from those kind of
(38:00):
tackles because he really felt that a lot of these
sexual as did Freud. I mean, we know that Freud's
whole deal was, you know, right, right, was the idea
of of of of being repressed by by these sexual
desires and it causing problems and you know, falling in
love with your mother and all of this stuff. Um.
But Rick took it a step further, and I would
(38:21):
argue he kind of got it a little bit more.
I think, so, yeah, I I agree with you. I
think so an old because Rych said something that a
lot of people weren't willing to admit. But it's something that,
at least from my perspective, is absolutely true. He said, hey,
sexiest part of life, and it's kind of dumb to
(38:44):
ignore that. And I believe, says villehelm Reich, that having
a good orgasm can make you feel better. He goes
a little bit further then I just did with that statement.
He says it can make the difference between sickness and health,
(39:05):
and he starts saying it is a panacea for not
just any psychological issues people are having, but physical issues
as well, and he basically thinks if more people are
having more pleasurable physical experiences, then it will help fight fascism.
(39:26):
So again, like you were just saying no, when he
says sexual revolutionary or sexual revolution, he is talking about
revolution in geopolitical terms that like that's it's you free
the body and then you know, you free the body politic. Basically, hey,
that's good, that's very true. And the stakes couldn't have
(39:50):
been higher, right, you know, in Germany at this time,
I mean, the youth were being completely indoctrinated into this
Nazi um you know ideology, which was one based on
repression and hate. Even though it sort of preached the
idea of like, oh, liberation through a purity of blood
and like let's let get rid of anyone that opposes us,
(40:12):
and like, you know, this idea of like we are
so powerful as as these Aryan brothers and all of
this stuff, but it really was just an aggressive form
of of repression and indoctrination. That's Right, tensions are building
in Right comes out with paper called The Function of
(40:32):
the Orgasm, and he says that a lack of full
and repeated sexual satisfaction leads to neurosis. And he's trying
to reconcile the school of thought that we would call
psychoanalysis and the school of thought that we would call Marxism.
And he says that this repression is a curable condition.
(40:57):
You can get rid of a lot of problems that
you would not think are sexual nature. You can get
rid of them through better sexual activity. People don't like this,
they call it. You can see how this red meat
for the press. Right. They they call it a genital utopia.
(41:19):
And this is back when people were using the word
utopia correctly and unattainable, inherently unattainable paradise. They also call
him the profit of bigger, betteral orgasms. Uh. He gets
kicked out of the Communist Party, He gets kicked out
a psychoanalysis. He still is an important figurehead in both
Berlin and Vienna, which means the Nazi party on the
(41:44):
rise will have their eye on him. And given that
Right has Jewish heritage, and given that the Nazis are monsters,
They see him as a figurehead of a con spiracy
cabal that for some reason wants to up end or
(42:06):
undermine European society. His books start getting burned, along with
the works of his one time mentor Sigmund Freud. Things
are about to get harry, folks. This is where we
end part one of this series, and uh, you know, no,
I think we tease a little bit about part two,
(42:28):
like we're we're stopping in media arrests here in the
middle of the story. We're definitely it had a bit
of a cliffhanger where things get real in terms of
the Nazis, you know, coming for a Reich. This is
really only the beginning. We're going to see Reich develop
his philosophies and his sort of more out there, uh
psychoanalytical you know, modalities into a full blown I don't
(42:52):
know how you describe it, Ben School society. It really
is something along the lines of the movements, Yeah, but
it really is something along the lines of what you know, UM,
a much hackier figure in UM in al Ron Hubbard
did with scientology. But we're gonna see the full formation
of this um, all the culmination of all of these
(43:13):
ideas coming together with the idea of orgone energy, which
we already kind of teat up a little bit at
the very beginning of the show, and you may see
a connection there with the word or gone and the
idea of the function of the orgasm uh, and this
notion that that Reich was really focused on this energy
that was contained within the body and where does it go?
(43:35):
What can you do with it? Those are questions we're
gonna answer, at least in terms of you know, Reich's
uh and many other great thinkers opinions on on those
um in the next episode. Yeah. Well, also, just for fundsies,
get into the etymology of the word orgasm. Pretty fascinating stuff, folks.
(43:56):
We can't wait for you to be a part of
the show. Thanks as always to our super producer, Mr
Max Williams. Thanks to our composer Alex Williams. Thanks to
Dylan Fagan, who inspired Max to make such a cool
sound cue. Honestly, dude that I really enjoyed that one.
(44:17):
It's good to do. Yeah, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Yeah, it's Dylan.
Oh yeah, you guess so who's here? Oh he's my friend,
good god, massive funk. Oh yeah, Dylan I sent a
(44:42):
message to Andrew Howard, producer of Savor on Friday. I
was like, Yeah, this is what happens when you let
Max produce Ridiculous History on Friday. He gets weird and
starts singing, Yeah, I love that Friday punchy Max energy.
I live for it. So, you know, obviously, Hugh, thanks
suproducer Max Williams and brother Alex Williams who composed this theme.
(45:04):
Christopher Actiods, who we got to hang out with in
the in the Flesh, Ben and I we were just
in where were we have been? Dallas at a podcast
movement um, and I think we may have armed twisted
old Christopher into getting himself a microphone so we can
have him on the show. More off him. Yeah, no, no, no,
I I threatened him. I'm not about saying it. So
(45:25):
also thanks to uh, the ongoing threat to Ridiculous History,
Jonathan Strickland, a k a. The Quister Uh, and thanks
to you know what, We're not gonna say thanks to
Villiam Reich yet because his story is not over at
this point. And of course we want to give a
(45:47):
big shout out to all the psychologists and psychiatrists and
therapist listening along today, some of this story may be familiar.
We can't wait to hear your take on the story
of Wilhelm Reich. Let us get to part two and
let us know what you think. Over on Facebook, where
(46:09):
we're ridiculous historians. That's right, you can find us there.
You can find uh. We're working on getting some some
show level social media happening on the Graham. But in
the meantime, you can follow me exclusively on Instagram where
I'm at. How now, Noel brown Man, I believe you've
got a couple of presidencies on the worldwide webs It's true. Yeah,
(46:30):
I classed up Instagram. You can find me in a
burst of creativity being called at Ben Bulling bow L
I n on Instagram. I recently discovered cheese flavored ice cream.
I'm gonna be trying that out, So go to my Instagram.
Uh you'll get the results as I do. Folks, wish
me luck, but uh fortune flavors the bold hashtag no
(46:52):
pun left behind. You can also find me on Twitter,
where I'm app in bulling hs W. What's the big
deal about Twitter? Ben? You might be saying, Well, the
big deal about Twitter? Folks? If you're in the know.
Is that that is one of the few places on
the Internet where you can find Mr Max Williams. Yes,
you can only find me in very specific parts of Twitter,
(47:14):
such as, uh, you know, trolling Ben on his tweets,
so you can find me there, or you can find
me at at ahl Underscore Max Williams. All right, we're
gonna psychoanalyze ourselves. Uh and and have a quick check
in before we get to part two. Right, no anybody else?
Oh yeah, yeah, I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm a chaise
(47:35):
standing by. We'll see you next time. Folks. For more
podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. Quick note before we get
this train rolling. Uh, we are doing a two part episode.
You're hearing this on a Thursday. Part two is on
a Tuesday. So this is our shout out to the weekend,
(00:48):
not the singer. You know what, No, the singer looking
him out for the weekend? What do you spell his
name that way? He leaves out like and E and
and and and what the week n n D week
e k n d R. He isn't in there side
(01:10):
too much of our ury for the vowels, you know
what I mean? They saved the time. Spelly the name
and pass the savings onto you. Uh. Speaking of saving
the show, shout out to our super producer, Mr Max Williams.
They called me Ben No, we're working for the weekend.
We yeah, it's but it's but it's Tuesday, so we
got we gotta waits to go. Unfortunately, the weekend is okay.
(01:34):
By the way, he always he sounds so sad in
his songs, and yet he's he's he's a chieved such
success a meteoric rise. I hope he can just take
a step back and enjoy what he's created for himself
and and and you know, cheer up a little bit.
I'm waiting for his next album. We're talking about this
last time I was hanging out with him. It's called
t G I F Thank God it's Friday by the Week. All.
(01:57):
It's all re workings of of of of nine these
sitcom themes, the ones that described five. Yeah, I talked
about this previously on sitcoms. I love this, Oh no way.
I don't know if it was this show. But we're
not talking about sitcoms today, though I would watch a
sitcom about our protagonists. There is something you may have
(02:22):
heard of once upon a time. Some call it vibes
great films. Some call it a connection great film, Yes, agreed,
and one guy called it We're going today is part
one of our story. Odd the one and only villain
Reich Bill Halm Reich and the sexual revolution baby that
(02:46):
many thinkers, um philosophers, thought leaders credit this man with
starting UH in no small part. And I did not
quite realize that he was such an acolyte of Freud,
who also gets a lot of credit for are you know,
um starting the idea of thinking about where our sexual
urges lead us in terms of our mental progression or
(03:08):
lack there of stuntedness. I suppose arrested development all of that.
But yeah, folks from you know as far Afield in
terms of their work as James Baldwin two Susan Sun
talk to Kate Bush, one of my favorite artists of
all time. Um have read and written and kind of
digested Wilhelm Reich's work and kind of made it their own.
(03:31):
We're gonna get to all of these luminaries and how
Right kind of affected their work, you know, as we
go through this to part Also huge shout out to
research Associate extraordinariy Zach Williams. He really, um, you know,
went above and beyond for this one. This is a
subject that we've covered briefly in our early episode about
a scam, a rain making scam. We talk about right
(03:54):
just in terms of his contribution to the idea of
cloud seating cloud busting, uh in fact, and we also
talked about that extensive, extensively stuff they don't want you
to know back before, back before it was YouTube, when
it was just Apple video or whatever. They called it
back then. Also in our audio episodes for the show.
(04:16):
We started doing podcasts there. But you're right, we have
a we have a closeness with this man. Dare I
say a vibe um? And it is true. We have
to remember in his time he was born just on
the cusp of the twentie century, right, he's born in
March of We have to remember that during this time, uh,
(04:39):
and during the time it was active, there were many
uh let's call them pioneers of thought, right for good
or for ill? Would you agree with that? Absolutely? Yeah.
And again, like we mentioned Freud, we are going to
hear Einstein wang And at some point this is important
era in thought leadership beyond science. It really is the
birth of kind of ecology which many would have you know,
(05:02):
kind of maligned as being a pseudoscience at the time.
It was not always thought of kindly by the scientific community.
But we're gonna we're gonna explain, you know how, right
kind of he pushed the boundaries of that to a degree.
But you're right, then he was born March seven in
dobro Zenia, which was a part of Galicia, which sounds
like a made up place like from or something, but
(05:24):
it's sounds like, yeah, that's right. You may not have
heard of it though, because at the time that belonged
to the Austrian Empire. I don't know that it exists anymore.
But after his birth, his family, which was quite well
to do, they moved to what you could maybe compare
in an American equivalency to a ranch uh and this
(05:45):
was in the Ukrainian part of Austria. Uh and that
is where um Reich's father started to He became a
cattle rancher for specifically the government, the German government. And
this was a pretty relatively high post, even though the
idea of being a cattle rancher, you know, we know
that Hannibal Lector would have looked down his nose at that,
(06:05):
but it was kind of a big deal. This put
him in an upper echelon of German society. I think
he looked down on on Shepherd's right, it's the silence.
Was the labs not they were? They were We'll have
to ask him. We'll have to have Hannibal Lector on
the show. Anthony Hopkins, you were disinvited to Ridiculous History.
(06:26):
You can only show up as your character Hannibal lector.
And we also want to shout out, by the way,
David Elkins from the New York Times, who wrote an
excellent article back in ninety one, called Philim Reich the Psychoanalyst,
as revolutionary. This goes into his early life in depth,
(06:47):
and it's very well worth the read. Now, yes, you're right.
The family was well to do, relatively speaking, and they
had Jewish heritage, but if you asked them out there
on the official German government cattle ranch, they would identify
more with German culture. Wilhelm and his brother were not
(07:12):
allowed to play with the poor kids in the neighborhood.
They also, looking back, the brothers did not appear very
close to each other. They were sort of alone in
the crowd of their family. And since we're being a
little Freudian folks, and since we're talking a little bit
(07:33):
about psychoanalysis, we have to say that this is not
us saying that. Some people would say that Reich's familial
dynamic had an effect on him later in life. His
dad was sort of domineering and a bit of a tyrant,
and his mom was sort of cowed by him. And
(07:55):
when Reich was young, when it was an adolescent, his
mom had an affair with one of the tutors living
with the family, and it was pretty common for well
to do families back then to have tutors, right to
have kind of these all pairs or the instructors rather
than Cindy door kids to school. And there's an interesting
(08:18):
line in the New York Times article. It's interesting. That's
why I shout out Elkins here, the author of that article,
because he says, this is a quote. He says it
is likely that Right bores some responsibility for his father's
discovery of the affair and for his mother's subsequent suicide.
And Wright goes on to be married several times throughout
(08:39):
the course of his life, and one of his spouses
his third spouse, I'll say Ollendorff Reich will later write
that she believes Reich may have felt some responsibility for
his mother's death, and this may have been one of
(09:01):
the things that stopped him from completing what she called
his own analysis, like there were things he could never
fully process after that moment. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean,
it's it's a lot to contend with, and it's the
kind of these kind of things that carry follow us
from childhood into adulthood that we sometimes can never fully
(09:22):
deal with or process unless we meet them head on,
and sometimes it's very difficult to do. Uh. That is
where therapy is a very important thing. But it wasn't
necessarily something that he, as the analyst or as the
therapist maybe was willing to look inwardly upon. Um. But
you know, we'll get to more of that in a
bid as well. UM. So he actually joined the military
(09:44):
UM during World War One. He was an Austrian Army
Officer UM and he served in Italy and again Elkin
writes for The New York Times that he he liked it.
He seemed that the military life seems to suit him.
He was a man of many, Um, let's just say exuberances.
You know. He he had a lot of gusto and
(10:06):
get up and go. He was able to kind of
give that a home, you know with some of this, uh,
this kind of military life is regimented military life. Um.
He was very intuitive. Any skill that he sought he
could he could pick up pretty easily. I think we
all know people like that where it's like borderline obnoxious,
but like he could ride a horse. Uh, He's like,
(10:28):
you know, he picked it up instantly. Um, and you
think it's obnoxious when people are talented obnoxious. It's just
like when people when there's some people that are just
good at everything without very much effort. I say this,
you know, half jokingly, but yeah, I mean it's like,
must be nice, you know, to just be able to
be like naturally gifted at all the things. They leave
(10:50):
some for the rest of us. No, you're not gonna stay,
so I say, yeah, it's so annoying, like you have
that thing that you've been working on for a long time.
Then look a lot of years like, oh that's interestingly,
like three weeks later they're better out than you. And
it's like I've been working on this for four years
and you're already better than me. Maybe I need to
work on this with a therapist. Also, yeah, I think
we're probably gonna all find some things that are gonna
bubble up about ourselves in this one. But yes, skiing,
(11:11):
you know, horseback riding, piano, you know. Art um. He
was also obviously very very gifted in academics. So as
the person in ridiculous history who is not angry at
other people doing well, let me shout out Wilhelm. He
did some awesome stuff. He didn't find his true north
(11:32):
right away. And this is something we see with many
uh many people who are kind of like you guys said,
kind of always talented. It's stuff, right. Their question becomes,
am I a jack of all trades master of none?
What is my true calling? First? Reich tries law. He
tries the legal world, and he finds that it is boring,
(11:56):
so he switches to the medical world. And this is
you'll love this, Max. This is the moment where he
takes a six year program in med school and finishes
it in four years, and he uh he supports himself
during the last few years by tutoring his fellow students.
(12:17):
This is also where he meets his first spouse, Annie Pink.
They marry in nineteen one. Yes, that's pink like the color,
and Pink would go on to become an a well
known analyst in her own life. But we need to
backtrack a little before he meets Annie. Picture the meat
(12:38):
cute rom com moment they have and then just rewind
in the ridiculous history cinema of the mind to a
pivotal moment that occurs just a few years earlier. He's
still a student it's nineteen nineteen. But no, this is
the crossroads moment hashtag bone, Thugs and harmony where Right
(13:01):
attends a lecture that will change his life. He sits
in on a little ted talk of the time about
psycho analysis, and he is into it. He is ted
toes down on this. He is so intrigued that he
immediately decides he is going to be a psychiatrist. Yeah.
(13:21):
I mean, because again, this is kind of like the
early days of this, uh, this discipline. And I've always
kind of found psychiatry to be sort of an interesting
combination of like medicine and philosophy. You know, it's like
mind science of the mind or whatever like it is.
It does it It kind of combines a lot of disciplines.
And then him being this guy that was sort of
(13:42):
all over the place and the stuff that he was
interested in, you know, from art to philosophy to various
academic studies. This made sense that it would kind of
be this sort of fusion of a lot of things
into one relatively new field. Not to mention that he
was kind of a cutting edge guy, and it was like, Okay,
I want to get on the ground floor of this.
That makes a lot of sense. Um, So you're right. Um,
(14:02):
it was something that really grabbed him right away. I
was asking very profound questions that he himself had been asking. Uh.
He found the study to be challenging and less kind
of you know, paint by numbers than something like medicine
or the law. Um, this was a very good fit
for him, so he decided to pursue that with Gusto. Uh.
(14:27):
And because of that kind of you know, enthusiasm that
he put forth, it was noticed and he was very
quickly admitted to the Vienna psycho Analytic Society and started
seeing patients pretty quickly. And this will certainly be frowned
on today. But before he completed his medical training, Yeah,
(14:52):
let's talk a little more about Freud, because Freud influences
Reich well before he um gets associated with a psychoanalytics society,
Freud thought the world of Reich. He looked at him
and said, this guy has potential, at least in the beginning,
(15:14):
will get their folks in the nineteen twenties, and this
comes from the Guardian, wonderful article by our pal Olivia Lang.
We haven't met Olivia, but we love the way she writes.
Right kind of does something heretical, right to the Viennese
(15:35):
school of thoughts. At the time, he's listening to his
patients speak and he keeps looking at their body language. Basically,
they're laying on the couch or the chaise lounge, and
they are rigid, they're guarded, and he thinks, maybe there's
(15:57):
something else they're trying to commune. K. Perhaps it is
not something one can articulate in words. Maybe he thinks
Freud isn't going far enough. Maybe the past is not
just hiding in your memories, your verbal like the memories
you can vocalize, but maybe it's also hidden physically. Maybe
(16:21):
your your your distress, your past experiences are somehow stowed
away in your body, almost like a battery, you know,
can store electricity. Uh. He he felt that this these
emotions um manifested themselves as energy, as some sort of
(16:43):
almost electrical current. I'm sort of editorializing here, but definitely
a form of energy that could be in some ways
store in the body and possibly harnessed or re you know,
um directed, diverted UM. And this was sort of like this,
this aha moment really was kind of the the genesis
(17:04):
of his later Some would say more out there, you
know studies. Yeah. Yeah, it's strange because he senses a
tension in people, and he says, maybe this is a
defensive move. Maybe this is some sort of instinct towards
(17:28):
self preservation. Maybe someone is trying to restrain their anxiety,
their rage, their anger, their sorrow, their sexual excitement. Uh.
And he thinks, if you're in a place where these
emotions are repressed, or where they are traumatic or very upsetting,
(17:50):
then the only alternative in his mind is that the
patient must tense up and try to bottle it down
right deep inside. Why are you so tense? Why are
you so rigid? That's just how I stand man. Uh.
He believes that this shows evidence in the physicality of
(18:12):
the patient, so he starts working with the patient's bodies.
Now at this point, he's verging into territory, which is
completely forbidden in psychoanalysis. He starts talking with patients about
their bodies, their body language, and then he starts physically
touching them. And surprise, surprise, at least in Reich's opinion,
(18:36):
when he is physically touching folks, he starts putting his
hands on what he sees as the physical expression of
these emotions, right, expressions of fright, clinched fist, you know,
tensed shoulders, that sort of stuff. And he believes that
by touching them, he can bring these feelings to the
(18:59):
surface it's the physical and emotional surface and release them.
And it's a lot like um memory regression almost. You know.
He feels that patients are experiencing memories they had kind
of forgotten and they would release them upon this physical stimulation.
(19:21):
This is true. And when they released those feelings, when
they process that stuff and let it out, they would
have something that that right called streaming, which is not
a subscription service online. It's a pleasurable rippling feeling. Yeah.
I mean there's a lot of parallel thought here, um
(19:44):
that I think we we both see the idea of tension,
you know, carrying stress in the body. Um. You know,
that aligns with a lot of like kind of holistic
met medicine and massage therapy and things like raiky and
energy work and you know other things things that maybe
you're not fully embraced all the time by the scientific community,
even parts of scientology. The idea of storing these like
(20:07):
theatan's or whatever, these like weird dead ghosts, uh, sorry
spoiler alert for anyone that hasn't made it down the
bridge yet. Um, but that stuff been online for years,
um down the bridge of the bridge. But yeah, there
is some parallel you know kind of stuff going on here. Um,
the idea that these energies stored in your body or
in your muscles or you know, are in some way
(20:30):
a sign of repression of holding onto things, and that
they can you know, get worse, um even just like
you know tensions and your muscles that can be relieved
by you know, pressure points and things like that. I mean,
it's all kind of a similar ball of wax here.
I think it's really interesting. Freud, on the other hand,
he was not about the touchy touchy um. He was
(20:50):
much more into you know, the pure psychoanalysis and and
he believed that it all needed to be you know,
on a purely um talking kind of talk therapy, the
talking cure kind of modality. I guess he wrote that
he was a little bit on the fence about you know,
what Reich was doing. So Freud was he wasn't really
(21:11):
against Reich's methods, but he he wasn't necessarily coming out
in full support of them either. He clearly gave, you know,
some sort of test that like, okay, you should try
to explore this more. Uh, for the more kind of
base level methods that Reich was exploring. With some of
the more extreme methods he actually, you know fully kind
(21:32):
of withheld his his support for. And then, by the way,
we've got another great article to site here, the scientific
Assassination of a sexual Revolutionary, How America interrupted Wilhelm Reich's
Orgasmic Utopia by Jason Louve from Motherboard. M Yeah, out
of vice. Yeah, this is the thing right now, at
(21:55):
this period of time, in the nineteen winnings or so,
Freud is a big deal. And if Freud likes you,
that's great for your career. If Freud says you're middling,
that's middling for your career. And god forbid, Sigmund have
a problem with your work or you know what you
(22:19):
see as your work. He didn't really take this streaming.
So the psycho analytic community at this time, which we
have to remember, is pretty young. Uh, they say accidental
pun they're not j U n G there, y o
U n G. Thank you, Max, I appreciate your support.
(22:47):
So he So the thing is because Freud is objecting
to some of Reich's thoughts. Here the overall community, which
of which Freud is an integral part, the other psychoanalysts,
they start saying, okay, well, let's dismiss right here. He's
(23:10):
not on the same page, the same therapist couch as us.
Things start to get worse and worse for Wilhelm. It's
he's trying to deal with a backlash of his community saying, hey,
you're a bit heretical, you're a bit crazy. And he
(23:31):
asked Sigmund Freud to psychoanalyze him. It's like, Sigmund, big bro,
maybe you can help me, Maybe you can help me
figure out where I have misstepped. And this guy, who
very much is like a father figure to Villam he says,
uh no, can't do it. We don't know whether it's
(23:53):
scheduling or a flat out refusal, but this really cut
right to the war. And then right after that, his
brother dies of tuberculosis. Right gets tuberculosis. He has to
go to a sanitarium in Davos, Switzerland. This just like,
(24:14):
it feels like this is a um a cavalcade of catastrophes.
We promised he gets a little better, but right now
he's in a sanitarium, he gets radicalized. I found this
interesting knoll. He joins the Communist Party, and then he
becomes an activist. That's right. And he you know, he
(24:34):
was never really that guy per se. He was more
into his studies than he was into politics. You know,
he never really seemed to take a particular stance politically
up until this point. But after witnessing some horrific violence
at the hands of police during the July Revolt of
nineteen seven in Vienna, where he saw police kill, shoot
(24:56):
and kill eighty four workers and injure and another sick hundred,
he decided that there was something very, very very off
about this or this organization of of you know, power
dynamic in the world, and he decided that he needed
to speak out against it. He believed that the police
were inherently a an occupying force, you know, very similar
(25:19):
to a lot of the you know, defund the police
kind of movement that we see today, you know, around
a lot of police brutality. So he was very much
ahead of ahead of the curve there, as he was
with a lot of things. He Vice. This Vice article
described him as thinking that the police weren't only brutal,
he observed. But they were robotic as if in a trance. Uh,
and also armored. So nothing worse than robots in a
(25:43):
trance that have guns. Well, think about it, because it
goes back to his original finding, right where he strayed
from the path of established psychoanalysis. They're moving like robots.
Their physicality is affected, perhaps by some emotional trauma or repression.
(26:05):
That's where Reich's thoughts are headed. And he is he
is now pulling demonstrations in the streets. He is thinking
about all of these factors and he's doing a Charlie Day,
always sunny in Philadelphia conspiracy board. You know, so picture
picture young Billy. I'll call him and he's he's saying,
(26:29):
you know what, economic repression, sexual repression. It's all related, man,
It's all connected. This goes all the way to the
top and the bottom. And I, he says, I am
opening a series of clinics throughout Vienna, and I you know,
I recently went to Austria for a thing. And it's nuts.
(26:52):
How um, it's nuts how Freud is treated or regarded
versus Philam Reich. And we're about to why his clinics
that open up scandalizing established psycho analysis. They say, look,
we'll give you the psychoanalysis you've come to love and expect.
We will also give you some sex head and we
(27:16):
will also supply contraceptives to young and working class people. Interesting.
I didn't know this at the time. Back then, the
folks who consider themselves more liberal would say, yes, you
can have contraception, but only if you're already married, if
(27:37):
you're in wedlock, that's kind of nuts, right, No, it's
interesting that you mentioned to Ben that like this, he
was getting pushed back from the psycho and now an
analytical community, which was already kind of a controversial field.
So he was sort of like the next level in
(27:58):
in controversy surrounding this field, and he was sort of
pushing the envelope even farther than than those folks. The
more you know established psychoanalysts for wood and obviously it
was very popular and it was very like in vogue
of the time, but it was also, uh, you know,
seen by some as dangerous. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, they're playing
with live fire, and this community is exploring things that
(28:22):
were considered maybe off limits or forbidden in polite conversation.
And Reich moves from Austria to Germany. He moves to
Berlin in n and uh, fellow history enthusiasts, you know
that there was something evil brewing in Berlin at this time.
(28:45):
It's the rise of the Nazi Party and rich um
Reich is continuing to write and explore his theories and
he showed them to his colleagues in the Communist Party
and various Communist organizations, but they're not super into it.
(29:06):
And he keeps making um, I don't want to say,
making enemies, but he keeps sort of burning professional bridges
because he's just too controversial. He has this contract with
a publishing outfit, the International Psychoanalytic Publishers. They cancel the
deal because he goes a little further with sex head
(29:30):
than they are used to or comfortable with. He says, look,
we're not going to do abstinence only education for teens
for teenagers. Instead, we're gonna talk to them bluntly about
sex and sexual interactions and contraceptives. Yeah, it reminds me
of Kinsey. I think this is roughly around the same time.
(29:51):
He might have even been a little later, but um,
you know the American um, you know, sex psychologist. I
guess he proposed was a lot of these same things,
but I think a little bit later and even then
he was persona on grata and a lot of circles.
So this was absolutely above and beyond what society was
willing to uh to to bear. And of course it's
(30:13):
easy to spend some of this stuff out of context.
The idea that he was advocating for, you know, young
people having sex, it wasn't exactly what he was doing.
He was advocating for young people to understand their bodies
and to you know, have access to things that would
allow them to have sex if they so choose, without consequences,
(30:34):
without getting getting pregnant or I don't know that even
std s were part of it as much at this
time or the conversation, but it was more about just
you know, having access to information than it was about
encouraging some sort of like sexual free for all. Yeah,
and he points out that there's a bit of hypocrisy,
(30:56):
or at the very least there's a bit of u
contradictory messaging that young people are receiving at this time
in Europe. In N two, he makes this pamphlet called
the Sexual Struggle of Youth, and it's his sort of
condemnation of current society and the ways in which it
makes it difficult for adolescence to navigate these huge changes
(31:24):
in their lives. And I think that's a valid point.
He's saying, Hey, these kids need help, right, And we
have a quote from him. I'm not going to do
a voice for it, but just you get a sense
of the flavor of this. He says, young people are
contaminated on the one hand by moralizers and advocates of abstinence,
(31:46):
and on the other hand by pornographic literature. Both influences
are extremely dangerous, the former no less than the latter.
And at this point he's twenty seven. Yeah, my mind
(32:07):
blowing to me whenever I read that. Just Wow, those
guys really ahead of the curve. Um. But that that
that one part of the quote that you'd read Ben,
the idea of pornographic literature, that's really important because you know,
as pro sex and sex positive as Reich was, he
was vehemently anti pornography. He thought that was like a
(32:29):
toxic influence um and and not something that was beneficial
in any way, shape or form. That it was a
repressive force rather than a liberating force. And he was
also against the concept of bonogamy. He he argued against yeah,
(32:50):
he said, uh. He said, you should have lasting, loving
relationships that are held together by affection rather than legal
can straints. And he said, you know, if you tried
to do anything else, you're going to get tired of
each other. Basically the phrase he uses is secual dulling. Yes,
(33:12):
I feel like I have to say seck sex. Yeah,
I know, you absolutely do and did beautifully. Um. He
also was very uh, it was very It was a feminist.
I mean, he he felt that women were kept down
by economic dependence, you know, on men, and that it
caused them to be kind of essentially like you know,
(33:34):
in a in a carrying forward of the old ways,
put into these kind of forced marriages or arranged marriages,
even if they weren't politically arranged, they oftentimes were. I mean,
if if wealthy families would would very oftentimes kind of
force you know, their families to be united and there
wasn't much choice. It wasn't the same as like you know,
in the House of the Dragon or whatever, but it
(33:56):
definitely had a an air of that kind of like
you know, I will wed my first born first of
his name to Marjorie of House you know whatever you
know down the street, and you know it. Moneyed people
wanted to marry their kids off too moneyed people so
that they could carry on the legacy of money. Um
(34:16):
and and the idea of a bloodline or whatever that
is not something that has even gone to this day. Yeah, yeah,
and he is uh, he is one of those guys
who is proposing the idea that it takes a village, right, Like,
if you have more parent figures, if you have more
caretaker figures in a child's life, maybe you can help
(34:40):
save them from some of the crazy stuff. You know.
It reminds me of this wonderful Philip Larkin poem. It's
a wonderful poem with a terrible name. It's called this
be the Verse. Because we are family show, We're gonna
have some beeps here. Courtesy of Mr Max Williams. Here's
the poem, and this is something rich would agree with.
(35:02):
Theyque up your mom and dad. They may not mean to,
but they do. They fill you with the faults they
had and add some extra just for you. But they
were faked up in their turn by fools and old
style hats and coats who half the time where soppy,
stern and half at one another's throat. Man hands on
misery to man, it deepens like a coastal shelf. Get
(35:24):
out as early as you can, and don't have any
kids yourself. Philip Larket, I feel like I feel like
Rich would agree with him, because he's worried, like you're saying, all,
he's worried about this intergenerational trauma, right, that's what we
would call it today. Yeah, exactly. And then and we've
talked about the idea of intergenerational trauma or even what
(35:44):
is it epigenetics, the idea of trauma that can be
carried you know, in the genes generationally, um, not just
things that you witnessed while you're alive. Um, it actually
can have you know. Again, this is also a kind
of of a of a modern day burgeoning, sort of
of just the plan. But it's the idea that you know,
the formation of our very the very core of who
(36:05):
we are, you know, in terms of like you know,
chemically speaking, can be impacted by trauma of of of
our forbears, you know. So yeah, again I keep saying this,
but it's true. I mean, Reich really was very much
had his figure on the pulse of a lot of
really fascinating concepts that would later be given a lot
more you know, kind of credence, and then taking a
(36:26):
little more seriously mm hmmm. And he does have another
run in with his former mentors Sigmund Freud in nine
he meets uh, he meets Sigmund again, and he says,
old Doc Freud is kind of looking like a caged
animal to me, and he felt that he had sold out. Right,
(36:52):
He's looking at his old authority figure, not with the
eyes of a young, up and coming psychoanaly us, but
now with the eyes of a revolutionary. Right. Uh, some
would say a sexuan revolutionary. That's the last time I'm
gonna say every time. That is the only way to
(37:15):
pronounce it at this point. Um, I fully support you.
But yeah, I mean he'd like, like we said at
the top of the show, I mean, he more or
less did kind of come up with this concept, the
idea of the sexual revolution. He actually did coin that phrase, um,
very very early on, to kind of be this catch
all for all of those forms of repression, societal repression
(37:39):
that that that targeted sexuality and the idea of sexual
identity and the revolution would be a way of of
not necessarily it's not like some orgiastic, you know thing exactly.
It's not like free love or whatever like it would
maybe be more associated with in the in the sixties,
But it was about freeing yourself from those kind of
(38:00):
tackles because he really felt that a lot of these
sexual as did Freud. I mean, we know that Freud's
whole deal was, you know, right, right, was the idea
of of of of being repressed by by these sexual
desires and it causing problems and you know, falling in
love with your mother and all of this stuff. Um.
But Rick took it a step further, and I would
(38:21):
argue he kind of got it a little bit more.
I think, so, yeah, I I agree with you. I
think so an old because Rych said something that a
lot of people weren't willing to admit. But it's something that,
at least from my perspective, is absolutely true. He said, hey,
sexiest part of life, and it's kind of dumb to
(38:44):
ignore that. And I believe, says villehelm Reich, that having
a good orgasm can make you feel better. He goes
a little bit further then I just did with that statement.
He says it can make the difference between sickness and health,
(39:05):
and he starts saying it is a panacea for not
just any psychological issues people are having, but physical issues
as well, and he basically thinks if more people are
having more pleasurable physical experiences, then it will help fight fascism.
(39:26):
So again, like you were just saying no, when he
says sexual revolutionary or sexual revolution, he is talking about
revolution in geopolitical terms that like that's it's you free
the body and then you know, you free the body politic. Basically, hey,
that's good, that's very true. And the stakes couldn't have
(39:50):
been higher, right, you know, in Germany at this time,
I mean, the youth were being completely indoctrinated into this
Nazi um you know ideology, which was one based on
repression and hate. Even though it sort of preached the
idea of like, oh, liberation through a purity of blood
and like let's let get rid of anyone that opposes us,
(40:12):
and like, you know, this idea of like we are
so powerful as as these Aryan brothers and all of
this stuff, but it really was just an aggressive form
of of repression and indoctrination. That's Right, tensions are building
in Right comes out with paper called The Function of
(40:32):
the Orgasm, and he says that a lack of full
and repeated sexual satisfaction leads to neurosis. And he's trying
to reconcile the school of thought that we would call
psychoanalysis and the school of thought that we would call Marxism.
And he says that this repression is a curable condition.
(40:57):
You can get rid of a lot of problems that
you would not think are sexual nature. You can get
rid of them through better sexual activity. People don't like this,
they call it. You can see how this red meat
for the press. Right. They they call it a genital utopia.
(41:19):
And this is back when people were using the word
utopia correctly and unattainable, inherently unattainable paradise. They also call
him the profit of bigger, betteral orgasms. Uh. He gets
kicked out of the Communist Party, He gets kicked out
a psychoanalysis. He still is an important figurehead in both
Berlin and Vienna, which means the Nazi party on the
(41:44):
rise will have their eye on him. And given that
Right has Jewish heritage, and given that the Nazis are monsters,
They see him as a figurehead of a con spiracy
cabal that for some reason wants to up end or
(42:06):
undermine European society. His books start getting burned, along with
the works of his one time mentor Sigmund Freud. Things
are about to get harry, folks. This is where we
end part one of this series, and uh, you know, no,
I think we tease a little bit about part two,
(42:28):
like we're we're stopping in media arrests here in the
middle of the story. We're definitely it had a bit
of a cliffhanger where things get real in terms of
the Nazis, you know, coming for a Reich. This is
really only the beginning. We're going to see Reich develop
his philosophies and his sort of more out there, uh
psychoanalytical you know, modalities into a full blown I don't
(42:52):
know how you describe it, Ben School society. It really
is something along the lines of the movements, Yeah, but
it really is something along the lines of what you know, UM,
a much hackier figure in UM in al Ron Hubbard
did with scientology. But we're gonna see the full formation
of this um, all the culmination of all of these
(43:13):
ideas coming together with the idea of orgone energy, which
we already kind of teat up a little bit at
the very beginning of the show, and you may see
a connection there with the word or gone and the
idea of the function of the orgasm uh, and this
notion that that Reich was really focused on this energy
that was contained within the body and where does it go?
(43:35):
What can you do with it? Those are questions we're
gonna answer, at least in terms of you know, Reich's
uh and many other great thinkers opinions on on those
um in the next episode. Yeah. Well, also, just for fundsies,
get into the etymology of the word orgasm. Pretty fascinating stuff, folks.
(43:56):
We can't wait for you to be a part of
the show. Thanks as always to our super producer, Mr
Max Williams. Thanks to our composer Alex Williams. Thanks to
Dylan Fagan, who inspired Max to make such a cool
sound cue. Honestly, dude that I really enjoyed that one.
(44:17):
It's good to do. Yeah, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Yeah, it's Dylan.
Oh yeah, you guess so who's here? Oh he's my friend,
good god, massive funk. Oh yeah, Dylan I sent a
(44:42):
message to Andrew Howard, producer of Savor on Friday. I
was like, Yeah, this is what happens when you let
Max produce Ridiculous History on Friday. He gets weird and
starts singing, Yeah, I love that Friday punchy Max energy.
I live for it. So, you know, obviously, Hugh, thanks
suproducer Max Williams and brother Alex Williams who composed this theme.
(45:04):
Christopher Actiods, who we got to hang out with in
the in the Flesh, Ben and I we were just
in where were we have been? Dallas at a podcast
movement um, and I think we may have armed twisted
old Christopher into getting himself a microphone so we can
have him on the show. More off him. Yeah, no, no, no,
I I threatened him. I'm not about saying it. So
(45:25):
also thanks to uh, the ongoing threat to Ridiculous History,
Jonathan Strickland, a k a. The Quister Uh, and thanks
to you know what, We're not gonna say thanks to
Villiam Reich yet because his story is not over at
this point. And of course we want to give a
(45:47):
big shout out to all the psychologists and psychiatrists and
therapist listening along today, some of this story may be familiar.
We can't wait to hear your take on the story
of Wilhelm Reich. Let us get to part two and
let us know what you think. Over on Facebook, where
(46:09):
we're ridiculous historians. That's right, you can find us there.
You can find uh. We're working on getting some some
show level social media happening on the Graham. But in
the meantime, you can follow me exclusively on Instagram where
I'm at. How now, Noel brown Man, I believe you've
got a couple of presidencies on the worldwide webs It's true. Yeah,
(46:30):
I classed up Instagram. You can find me in a
burst of creativity being called at Ben Bulling bow L
I n on Instagram. I recently discovered cheese flavored ice cream.
I'm gonna be trying that out, So go to my Instagram.
Uh you'll get the results as I do. Folks, wish
me luck, but uh fortune flavors the bold hashtag no
(46:52):
pun left behind. You can also find me on Twitter,
where I'm app in bulling hs W. What's the big
deal about Twitter? Ben? You might be saying, Well, the
big deal about Twitter? Folks? If you're in the know.
Is that that is one of the few places on
the Internet where you can find Mr Max Williams. Yes,
you can only find me in very specific parts of Twitter,
(47:14):
such as, uh, you know, trolling Ben on his tweets,
so you can find me there, or you can find
me at at ahl Underscore Max Williams. All right, we're
gonna psychoanalyze ourselves. Uh and and have a quick check
in before we get to part two. Right, no anybody else?
Oh yeah, yeah, I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm a chaise
(47:35):
standing by. We'll see you next time. Folks. For more
podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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