Because Bringing Crazy To Kids Is So Important

"Wilhelm Reich was an Austrian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who trained under Sigmund Freud in Vienna. He was known for forging ahead with work for which the world wasn’t quite ready. He was labeled as a 'quack' by the FDA and deemed mentally ill. However, Wilhelm Reich was once connected to the Old Pueblo and this connection is an interesting one. It might be a bit bizarre.

Reich experimented with a biological energy he called 'orgone energy.' Reich claimed to have found a way to harness this energy. The energy was to be used for a variety of purposes from cancer treatment to weather experimentation. The weather experimentation brought him to Tucson all the way from Portland, Maine.

This concept of Orgone was derived from Freud’s concept of libido, while Carl Jung identified the libido as psychic energy. Wilhelm Reich expanded on these concepts with his theories about orgasmic energy. We will return to this idea of Orgone and delve deeper into it later. However, you get the idea. This was biological energy that Reich claimed to have harnessed for the greater good of mankind.

At about the same time in 1954, the world was fascinated with UFOs, and so was William Reich. In fact, much of what was wrong with the world, according to Wilhelm Reich, was due to repressed sexuality and UFO invaders.

Wilhelm Reich lives on in music and literature. Bob Dylan, Kate Bush, Patti Smith, and other songwriters have written and recorded songs about Wilhelm Reich. Jack Kerouac referenced Reich’s work in his book On the Road, as did William Burroughs through his own works."

-- Cherlyn Gardner Strong, detailing a madman's influence - and the influence of the occult - in contemporary society, as a Tucson Citizen.

Read the whole thing.