Did this wooden box trigger the sexual revolution?
by Tony Rennell, dailymail.co.uk
July 15th 2011
James Bond tried one. So, too, did writers Jack (On The Road) Kerouac and J.D.
(Catcher In The Rye) Salinger.
The artist who created Shrek swore by his, and spent half an hour inside it at
least once a day.
They were all devotees of the original love machine, invented in the Fifties by
psycho-analyst and therapist Dr Wilhelm Reich as a pathway to a better, if not
the best ever, sexual experience.
In some ways, you can't help feeling sorry for Austrian-born Reich — a disciple
of Sigmund Freud in Vienna — who escaped from Hitler to the U.S. just before
World War II.
There he was, a prophet for the health- giving power of the guilt-free sexual
climax. He coined the phrase 'sexual revolution' and devoted his life as a
psycho-analyst to freeing us all from our repressive Victorian selves.
Then, on the verge of the Swinging Sixties, with society about to hitch up its
skirts and go sex mad, he died, and missed out on the supposed pleasure of his
own Utopia.
But his invention — later spoofed in a Woody Allen film as an 'Orgasmatron' —
lived on, with its promise of delivering what he called 'orgastic potency',
despite being little more than a plain wooden cupboard lined with metal. No
wheels, no whistles, no ticklers or teasers, no bells. It was just a box.
Yet, according to author Christopher Turner in a new biography of Reich, Sean
Connery had one at the height of his James Bond fame.
But whether sitting in the box delivered what its designer promised is another
matter. If Connery was shaken or stirred, he never said. William Steig, author
of the original Shrek comic book, revealed his gave him 'an inner vibration, a
little bit like an orgasmic feeling' — which is a long way from blowing your
socks off.
American author Norman Mailer, who desperately searched for what he called the
'apocalyptic' sexual experience, admitted just before he died that he never
achieved it with his version.
Perhaps they were all just bonkers, you may think. But there was method — of a
sort — in Reich's madness. More importantly, his theories had a lasting impact
on our society, and not for the better.
There is a direct link from his sanctification of free love and instant sex to
the excesses of today's permissive society.
At the beginning, however, Reich was a star turn in developing the discipline
of psycho-analysis in the early years of the 20th century. As a shrink, he
believed people needed to be freed from their inhibitions. But then he went out
on a limb of his own with a radical theory.
The release that came with sexual climax, he declared, was the key to a healthy
mind and healthy body — and, indeed, as the scope of his vision expanded, to a
healthy world.
It would not only cure neurotics of their fears, but war-mongering fascists of
their odious beliefs. 'Make love not war' was his belief long before it became
a Sixties slogan.
But his ambition didn't stop there. Reich was convinced he had discovered the
very essence of life, a universal and eternal force that he named 'orgone' —
hence the official name of his wooden box: the 'Orgone Energy Accumulator'.
Orgone was not unlike the concept of the 'libido' his old teacher Freud had
identified — except Reich insisted his life force had a physical presence,
which manifested itself in glowing microscopic particles of matter he called
'bions'.
It was the physical harvesting and harnessing of 'orgone' from the atmosphere
that was the purpose of his sex machine — which was best used, he said, in
direct sunlight, in open country and well away from electricity power lines.
The wood in its construction absorbed the free-flying 'orgone' from the skies,
while layers of metal kept it insulated inside.
By concentrating the life force in this 'accumulator', he claimed, its users
were charged up, much like a car battery plugged into the mains, and then
experienced the sexual ecstasy that would free their minds and bodies.
That the box heated up, he claimed, was proof of its ability to attract natural
energy. Sceptics, however, suggested that confining someone inside an insulated
container on a hot day was bound to lead to raised temperatures, but not
necessarily anything else.
Reich was undaunted. The potential of his contraption was, he maintained,
limitless. It could heal the sick and even eliminate cancer tumours. It was the
panacea the world had been waiting for. 'I am the discoverer of life energy,'
he maintained confidently.
So convinced was he that he challenged Albert Einstein, the world's greatest
theoretical physicist, to experiment with an accumulator and endorse his
discovery.
The great man examined the evidence and dismissed Reich's theory as scientific
nonsense. 'Orgone', he declared, simply did not exist. Thereafter he refused to
take Reich's calls or discuss the matter.
Slighted, rejected as a quack by the international psycho-analysis community
and as a charlatan by the scientific one, Reich became increasingly paranoid.
Everyone became a suspected enemy, even his ex-wife and daughter. Having become
a virtual recluse at his home in Maine, he got on with building his
accumulators — 250 in all — for a small number of thrill-seekers.
Most were members of the emerging Beat generation of writers and artists,
attracted by his unconventionality and his endorsement of free love.
But then he fell foul of the law. The cures he claimed for his accumulator were
judged by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to be false and misleading, and
a court injunction ordered him to stop selling and distributing them.
When he ignored the ban, he was jailed for two years in 1956 and his remaining
machines destroyed. Piles of his books were burned by the authorities, an echo
of what the Nazis had done to his work.
His supporters suspected a conspiracy to silence him because of the subversive
nature of his ideas.
He died in prison, from a heart attack, in November 1957. His legacy, the love
machine, ended up in a Museum of Questionable Medical Devices, alongside a
foot-operated breast enlarger and a vacuum-powered hair restorer.
But it took on a new life in popular culture. It inspired Jane Fonda's ecstasy
as she was tucked up inside a so-called 'Excessive Machine' in the 1964 cult
sci-fi parody Barbarella, and put the smile on Woody Allen's face after he
stepped out of an 'Orgasmatron' in Sleeper (1973). It was Simon and Garfunkel's
'big, bright green pleasure machine'.
But Reich's cultural impact went far deeper than jokey slots in films and
songs. In many ways, it was his endorsement of sexual release that put the
swinging into the Sixties. Sex was good, restraint was bad. Our permissive,
sex-saturated century has its origins in Reich's so-called science.
It was not meant to work out like this, of course. According to his theories,
once the shackles were off, the world would be a better place. It hasn't proved
true. In an article analysing Reich, Time magazine concluded that America was
one giant 'orgone' box. 'From innumerable screens and stages, posters and
pages, it flashes larger-than-life-sized images of sex. The message is sex will
save you.'
Astonishingly, that description was of 1964, an era that now looks positively
quaint. In the 47 years since then, all semblance of restraint seems to have
been abandoned.
Two conflicting interpretations flowed from Reich's love contraption. 'To the
bohemians,' says his biographer, Christopher Turner, 'it was a liberation
machine, the wardrobe that would lead to Utopia. But to conservatives it was
Pandora's box, out of which escaped anarchism and promiscuous sex.'
There, if you'll forgive the expression, is the rub. And how has it turned out?
In a Radio 3 documentary on Reich earlier this year, Germaine Greer was asked
about the influence of his theories on The Female Eunuch, her ground-breaking
1970 book about women's liberation.
'We did think freeing sexuality would allow virtue to flower,' she said. 'We
were wrong, I think.' Her words could serve as Reich's requiem, carved on one
of his orgasmatrons and, along with the legacy of the Sixties he inspired, laid
to rest.
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