Orgone

Orgone

Orgone energy accumulator

(with door closed) (with door open) Alternating layers of organic and non-organic materials inside the walls supposedly increase the orgone concentration inside the enclosure relative to the surrounding environment.

Orgone energy was a hypothetical universal life force originally proposed in the 1930s by Wilhelm Reich. In its final conception, developed by Reich's student Charles Kelly after Reich's death, Orgone was conceived as the anti-entropic principle of the universe, a creative substratum in all of nature comparable to Mesmer's animal magnetism, the Odic force of Carl Reichenbach and Henri Bergson's élan vital. Orgone was seen as a massless, omnipresent substance, similar to luminiferous aether, but more closely associated with living energy than inert matter. It could coalesce to create organization on all scales, from the smallest microscopic units—called bions in orgone theory—to macroscopic structures like organisms, clouds, or even galaxies.

Reich's theories held that deficits or constrictions in bodily orgone were at the root of many diseases—including cancer—much as deficits or constrictions in the libido could produce neuroses in Freudian theory. He created the Orgone Institute to pursue research into orgone energy after he emigrated to the US, and used it to publish literature and distribute material relating to the topic for more than a decade. Reich designed special "orgone accumulators"—devices ostensibly collecting and storing orgone energy from the environment—for improvement of general health or even for weather control. Ultimately, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) obtained a federal injunction barring the interstate distribution of orgone-related materials, on the grounds that Reich and his associates were making false and misleading claims, and later jailed Reich and destroyed all orgone-related materials at the institute after Reich violated the injunction. Contrary to common misconception, Reich always rejected the idea that the accumulator could provide orgastic potency.

Orgone is regarded by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine as a type of "putative energy", a model which some therapists use for clinical procedures, for which specific measurement machines can be built. There is no empirical support for the concept of orgone in medicine or the physical sciences, and research into the concept ceased with the end of the Institute.