Silence The Cloud buster

Silence The Cloud buster

The Cloud Buster at work

Few scientists ever had as much controversy as Wilhelm Reich.  Once a promising disciple of Freud, Reich branched into his theories about the unconscious, sexuality, and new sciences, he eventually got in trouble with FDA, who promptly ordered his machines and written works to be burned in bonfires.  To some, his death was not 'natural causes' since he was due to be released within weeks of his imprisionment, but rather a coordinated efforted to keep 'the Cloud buster' quiet.

Reich's main work before Orgone was the seminal book, 'The Mass psychology of Facism', which explored the effect Hitler had on the german population.  He was well respected by academia, and had a promising career in analysis like Freud, and Jung.  At this juncture, Reich established his own theory of the unconscious called Orgone, which in a nutshell said the libido wasn't a state of mind but a cosmic energy of blue that came from all people. Just how this quasi proto star wars 'force' idea came from the analysis is an interesting progression.

It started off with his theory of orgone, which essentially is the life force of all creatures (which started off a lot like the 'id' of Freud, but with Reich was the reason of all diseases and neurotic problems, orgone needed complete sexual release from people or they would armor themselves with neurotic to eventual physical problems).  To that end, Reich started experimenting with strange devices to harvest and collect orgone.  Driven from most countries, he eventually did work in America.  Reich, was his own worst enemy, with his paranoid theories about 'communists in America's elite' bent on discrediting him and his work.  He started more elaborate an exotic machines to harvest the 'good' Orgone and the evil 'T-bacilli'...his theories took on possible engines with orgone.

He could claim he could create rain with his futuristic looking orgone transmitters, and allegedly provided dought relief to farmers.  Other devices could be space weapons with orgone, and he also believed collectors that could allegedly slow down the progress of cancer in some patients.  A reporter for The New Republic, Mildred Bradley. did  a piece on him, saying that machines could cure cancer (Reich didn't claim that), and played up the idea of a scientist who was measuring couples having sex for some kind of perverted science.  Some believe this was a smear piece to exaggerate the findings of Orgone and cast Reich as a pervert scientist who claimed he could cure cancer with Orgone. 

the article that brought down the cloud buster

It was that claim, that Reich finally got afoul of the U.S. government, and with a quick show trial, the cloud buster was jailed.  His work and machines mostly destroyed, and despite the claims his mail was opened and he feared for his life, most ignored Reich.  Was the cloud buster silenced for his work?

Oddly enough the story of Wilhelm Reich was told loosely in a Kate Bush music video 'Cloudbusting' with actor Donald Sutherland as 'Reich'.

Recently, there has been a rediscovering of his work.  Reich was years before the idea of wholistic healing and the idea of the mind, life force, or orgone is only now being considered by science.  It is a tragedy that most of his work on an alleged new science that had lofty goals for the advancement of humanity was consumed by government book burnings.