Synchronicity time . . . last Thursday, we explored Robert Anton Wilson's play "Wilhelm Reich in Hell" in one of the classes I teach at the university. This is Wilson's dramatic exploration of a conceit of placing Wilhelm Reich on trial within a bardo between this life and next while playing with the nature of reality and meaning with a very large number of allusions to characters and ideas both real and fictional and quite a few in-between.
Honestly, the literary and philosophical allusions are a bit on the heavy side for undergraduates but the message is fairly clear . . . okay, the message is clear if you can get past the chaos . . . this is actually one of those dramas where seeing the performance may make understanding less clear as it's so incredibly chaotic while those who read the drama can backtrack to lines and let them digest when the play in performance is so kinetic and frenzied that one can miss some of the points of the message . . . a message that is really rather important.
Of course, when it comes to Wilson's work, I have a bit of a bias as he's been my favorite author for just over three decades . . . I do grant that having background in Wilson's other works and the material to which he often refers is very helpful in "getting" the chaotic frenzy of thoughts and ideas that is "Wilhelm Reich in Hell" . . . the "a boy has never wept nor dashed a thousand kim" line repeated throughout is just one example of such a reference (for those who are unfamiliar with it, that's a quote from the last word of Dutch Schultz which figure prominently in a couple of Wilson's works as well as others who've done some interesting literary homages and transformations).
In my mini-lecture on the nature of psychological theories and their tendancy to reflect the background and values of their originators – Freud, Jung, Reich, Crowley, Spiegel, Erickson, Elman, Adler, Foucault, Wilson – I use Reich as the pivot for my comedic discussion of the Freud-Jung split and to take things into areas that most of my students would not be familiar . . . that rabbit hole is rich with phantasmogorical goodness.
Naturally, Reich's orgone is less alien or silly here in Asia as it is in the United States of the McCarthy years . . . I tell my students here who have trouble getting a grasp on just what Reich thought he was talking about in the later years of his life to just for a moment stop thinking of orgone as orgone but to simply substitute the word "qi" . . . a concept that is less exotic and less foreign to us on this side of the planet. Of course, to my Star Wars fan friends I would likewise advice them to use "the force" for a moment with similar effect while those with a penchant for the history of hypnosis might get a bit of insight by thinking of it in terms of "mesmeric fluid" or "animal magnetism" . . . it's not really the same as any of these but neither is it not.
Of course, while he was persecuted . . . and hounded . . . not just by the US government who in the end violated his rights, the integrity of the US constitution, and the principles or free inquiry with the censorship, banning, and outright burning of his books let alone the gross miscarriage of justice in the terms of his imprisonment . . . but by pretty much every government where he lived and then fled. His final years are filled with contradiction and paranoia and more than a bit of overzealous conclusion-jumping. It is his final years and that allowed the establishment to sit back and chuckle at how right they were all along . . . but they weren't. As to the establishment assumption that Reich was mentally unstable . . . those accusations hounded him much of his career and psychologists tended to mark his work as either pre-mad and worthwhile or post-mad and worthless . . . the dates of his so-called illness tend to be based more on political bias than on actual diagnosis though. Of course, Myron Sharaf rightly makes the point that at the time of Reich's persecution there was a tendency among psychologists to label as disturbed those whose ideas they refused to accept. See Nobleman Nash Hollowhill's recent essay on how psychologists of the future may very well be considered insane by modern standards – I would suggest that sombunal of Reich's "odd" ideas may have seemed wild in his day but are rather more palatable today.
Despite the man himself being relegated to footnote status while his rivals still maintain their dusty pillars within the halls of academe, Reich has had a tremendous affect upon theory and practice . . . it's just that much of his influence is neither acknowledged nor even known by end practitioners. Then again, some of the folks who currently seemingly parrot some of Reich's concepts do so through a form of parallel development as they've rightly come to similar conclusions to Reich but have done so half to three-quarters of a century later. In some things, Reich was well ahead of his time and some of his controversial comments that landed him in hot water way back when would merely be brushed aside as obvious or at least less-than-controversial today. Certainly his supposition that divorce is not always a bad thing can be appreciated by folks today who may even be considered conservative (personally, I believe in marriage and strongly believe that if you're having problems in your marriage you should endeavor to work them out but I also accept that some marriages get broken beyond repair and some folks really would be better off dissolving that union . . . of course, I also believe that folks should not get married unless they've taken a real solid look at the relationship . . . being in love is a wonderful ingredient for a successful happy marriage but it is not the only reason one should marry). Reich's work on touch has been developed into some wonderful directions that are indeed very very worthwhile and he can be considered a precursor of modern intimacy coaching and sexuality therapy and so very much more. His legacy's not just about orgone boxes and cloudbusting.
Of course, one of the things that really got Reich into trouble consistently was his tendancy to knock down walls by pushing them further. If he found resistance to an idea, he had trouble backing down, instead he would push an even more radical idea into the mix. Great contrarian that he was, the development of his ideas was a path of greatest resistance. So, he sees Freud's obsession with sex and says he is partially correct that sex is important but that Freud does not go far enough and then he starts in on the orgasm which not only embarrassed his guilt-ridden uptight contemporaries, the idea of a really good orgasm almost frightened them (okay, for some, it terrified them) and for others they misunderstood as they assumed that any climax is the same and that cumming in a rush of guilt and fear and shame was normal. Reich's ideas on orgasm then developed into other areas and eventually he enters the realm of the metaphysical, where his ideas start to sound like some of Jung's experiments in psychedelic active imagination but without the corpus of religious alchemy to ground them.
If only folks would learn how to have really good orgasms . . . then . . . there'd be a lot less stress in the world. Of course, most folks can't wrap their heads around that idea as they really don't know how to have let alone guide someone else into a really good orgasmic release. A quality orgasm is NOT the same as just cumming. Anyone can cum, just grab hold, move things around a bit, shakey shakey, and eventually the physical response occurs and one cums. Orgasm occompanies climax but that's not the same as quality . . . think back on all the times you've finished off during sex . . . surely there are some moments where you were in the zone and others where you were just going through the motions and just came. Certainly, while its not exactly the same but it can be likened to the difference between making love and having sex . . . there's a huge difference between orgasm as associated with lovemaking – and here I really mean really making love with the eye contact and the soul connection – and just having sex. Even couples who are very much in love typically have more sex than they make love . . . and I daresay Reich would suggest that most couples just go through the motions of sex in any case.
Certainly, one can not and should not summarize Reich's ideas as merely about the orgasm – no, here was about so very much more than that and his ideas on the emotional plague are very much worth looking at today as we see the sociopathological pit that has become contemporary urban landscape as well as the very nature of business ethical environments. Even someone who is normally considered very far removed from Reich's work such as Herbert Spiegel acknowledged the effect of contemporary culture upon a person's natural suggestibility and the like. However, it is Reich's thoughts on orgasm as they evolved into his thoughts on the emotional plague that carry the synchronicity moment I referred to above . . . the voice silenced, the ideas still work to be heard.
Trolling facebook, I found a reference to one of Sasha Cobra's youtube videos, a question and answer from a seminar she spoke at on 25 April 2010 (yes, just a few days ago, see how synchronicity works):
If you read this via a stream, be sure to go to https://briandavidphillips.net/2010/05/wilhelmreich.html so you can see the embedded video or at least get the link. Yes, that voice asking the question about bitchiness sounds familiar.
Now, of course, Sasha's not just talking about sexuality here nor is she just about the orgasms or more. She's spent a LOT of time with Nityama and so there's an obvious influence on her work, albeit it's good to see her moving into her own directions. I saw a comment by someone who dislikes here thoughts on men needing to learn to be comfortable with their manhood but wonder if he would likewise be offended by Nityama's talk on women needing to be comfortable in their own womanhood. Seriously, we're all fucked up and we all need to learn to be comfortable with who we are and part of that is to learn to be comfortable within our own sexuality, sexual response, and more.
There are many avenues to go toward this. Obviously, I have a bit of bias on the use of mind and body connections . . . Eroticatrance and eXperiential Ecstasy and Love Trance Formation and Eroticatrance and more . . . and, naturally, I will virtually see some of you on May 9 for the energy orgasm tutorial.
All the best,
Brian
(If you are reading this blog post via a stream, go to https://briandavidphillips.net/ to access the full post with any videos or photos included.)
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Brian David Phillips, PhD, CH [brian@briandavidphillips.com]
Hypnotist, Hypnotherapist, Intuitionist, Trance Wizard
President, Society of Experiential Trance
Associate Professor, NCCU, Taipei, Taiwan
