Wilhelm Reich Trial: 1956

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Wilhelm Reich Trial: 1956

Defendants: Wilhelm Reich, Michael Silvert, the Wilhelm Reich Foundation
Crime Charged: Criminal contempt of court
Chief Defense Lawyers: Wilhelm Reich and Michael Silvert, representing themselves; William Moise, representing the Wilhelm Reich Foundation; on appeal, Charles Haydon
Chief Prosecutors: Joseph L. Maguire, Peter Mills
Judge: George C. Sweeney
Place: Portland, Maine
Date of Trial: May 3-7, 1956
Verdict: Guilty
Sentences: Reich: two years imprisonment; Silvert: one year and one day imprisonment; Foundation: $10,000 fine

SIGNIFICANCE: The judge in this case told the jury, "It's probably the first time in the annals of jurisprudence that the government has presented a case only to have the defendants come in and say they did it." The fact is that, while the Food & Drug Administration succeeded in proving that its injunction had been violated, it has never brought further legal action against the defendants' Public Orgonomic Research Exchange (PORE), which continues to function.

Born on a farm in Austria in 1897, Wilhelm Reich early developed an interest in natural science. Following service in World War I (1914-1918), he entered medical school and soon caught the attention of the well-known psychiatrist, Sigmund Freud, who welcomed him into his Viennese Psychoanalytic Society and, in 1922, made Reich his clinical assistant.

While administering clinics on sexual hygiene, Reich became sensitive to the problems of working-class people. His interest in the social causes of neurosis led him to activity in the Socialist Party. Over a decade, he published papers that compared Marxian and Freudian concepts, married a patient and produced two daughters, and became vice director of Freud's clinic.

Discovers "Orgone"

Before 1930, Reich published his book, The Function of the Orgasm. It theorized that physical and mental health were founded on the circulation through the body of a biological energy he called "orgone," repression of which led to physical or mental disease. While Freud's theory of libidinal energy established the libido only as a metaphorical concept, Reich insisted that the orgone was a physical reality.

Reich broke with Freud in 1930. Moving to Berlin, he established a lucrative psychiatric practice and became involved with the German Communist Party until its leadership declared his books, which emphasized sexual health rather than the class struggle, counter-revolutionary. Then, as the Nazis included his articles and books in their public book-burning in 1933, Reich fled to Vienna. There his wife dissolved the marriage, taking the children with her.

Reich moved to Norway, establishing an open marriage with Elsa Lindenburg, who had been in his Berlin Communist cell. There he conducted seminars in psychotherapy and published his findings on biogenesis. The year 1937 brought vicious attacks by the press on his "Bion Experiments," which he said revealed building blocks of life—pulsating microscopic material—that came from inorganic matter. Leaving Lindenburg, Reich next accepted an offer from the New School for Social Research in New York City to teach medical psychology. He sailed in August 1939, two weeks before the Nazis invaded Poland to start World War II (1939-1945).

Invents "Accumulator"

On Christmas day, 1939, Reich married Ilse Ollendorf. She became his laboratory assistant as he experimented further, labeling the bion energy with his earlier name, "orgone." This energy, he theorized, existed not only within living organisms but also in the atmosphere. In 1940, he devised a six-sided box for a person to sit in. Its alternating layers of organic material (plywood or cotton) and metallic material (sheet metal or steel wool) would, he said, attract the energy and radiate it to the box's center. The human sitting in the box, added Reich, would absorb the energy, with a resultant healing effect. Reich called the box the "orgone accumulator."

For nearly 10 years, Reich developed and tested his theories. He created smaller boxes and blanket-like orgone accumulators that could enwrap a human arm or leg. His reports announced that the accumulator could reduce and eliminate cancer tumors, relieve heart and arthritis pain, heal burns, reduce or eliminate the need for prescription medication, and tone up the immune system against disease.

Reich and Ilse moved to Rangeley, Maine, building a laboratory and research center called Orgonon. There they supervised the manufacture and nationwide sale, by mail order, of the orgone accumulator. Meantime, Reich had his attorney, Peter Mills, incorporate The Wilhelm Reich Foundation to own the Orgonon laboratory.

Word of Reich's work reached journalist Mildred Brady. In 1947, in Harper's Magazine, she published an article that condemned the orgone accumulator as ineffective and fraudulent. Only weeks later, The New Republic published her second piece, "The Strange Case of Wilhelm Reich." In Washington, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) dispatched an agent to Rangeley to investigate.

Builds "Cloud-buster"

For nearly five years, while the FDA was compiling a case, the laboratory sold and rented accumulators. Meanwhile, Reich built a device—his "cloud-buster"—that some credited with causing severe rain in the Arizona desert and with diverting a New England hurricane.

February 10, 1954, brought a Complaint for Injunction, a formal civil action by the FDA against Reich, his wife, and the foundation. It charged them with violating the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act by making false and misleading claims and delivering misbranded and adulterated devices in interstate commerce. As plaintiff, the FDA requested the U.S. District Court to "perpetually enjoin" the defendants from continuing to manufacture, distribute, or publicize the orgone accumulator. Peter Mills, formerly Reich's attorney but now U.S. Attorney for the District of Maine, signed the complaint.

Reich decided not to appear in court to contest the complaint. Rather, he wrote a letter to District Court Judge John D. Clifford, Jr. "I shall not appear," he said, "against a plaintiff who by his mere complaint already has shown his ignorance in matters of natural science."

On March 19, Judge Clifford issued a sweeping injunction ordering the destruction of all orgone accumulators owned by Reich or leased to others, as well as all printed and graphic material related to the device.

Ignores Injunction

Reich took his cloud-buster to Arizona and allegedly produced rain that, in turn, produced 12-inch-high grass where—the locals said—none had ever sprouted. During his absence from Rangeley, his assistant, psychiatrist Michael Silvert, shipped orgone accumulators to New York City and the foundation continued distributing its books and other printed material. By early 1955, the FDA accused Reich, Silvert, and the foundation of criminal contempt for failing to comply with the injunction.

The trial opened before George C. Sweeney, senior judge of the U.S. District Court, on Thursday, May 3, 1956. Reich and Silvert both served as their own lawyers. Prosecutor Peter Mills first presented witnesses who had built and shipped the accumulators. A Brooklyn, New York, customer testified that he had rented an accumulator after the March 1954 injunction. Ilse Ollendorf testified that income from accumulators in the first four months after the injunction was the same as earlier. Thomas Mangravite told of repairing used accumulators and reshipping them to other customers after the injunction ordered them destroyed. Two Orgonon laboratory office employees testified that literature was distributed and accumulators rented after the injunction.

Reich's opening defense statement emphasized that he had indeed violated the injunction order. Judge Sweeney warned him, "You're practically pleading guilty."

Reich insisted that the injunction "had to be violated." He then introduced witnesses who established that he and his colleagues "were armed constantly" with rifles "to protect our work against espionage."

Defense witness Thomas Ross testified that his orders were to be armed and admit no one to the Orgonon laboratory. "Tell the jury," Reich said to Ross, "if I was ready to die last summer."

"He can't possibly know that," said the judge.

"Did you prepare a grave for me during the time we were armed?" Reich asked the witness.

The prosecution objected, "That is ridiculous."

"It's not ridiculous if you're in it," said Reich.

The judge permitted Ross to say he did dig a grave. But he refused to permit testimony on the defendants' motives in arming themselves and employees, saying the only question for the jury was whether the injunction had been violated.

The three women and nine men of the jury deliberated for 20 minutes before finding Reich, Silvert, and the foundation guilty. Reich was sentenced to two years' imprisonment, Silvert to one year and a day. The foundation was fined $10,000.

On December 11, 1956, the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld the district court verdict, and on February 25, 1957, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to accept the case. Reich was incarcerated in the Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, federal prison, where he was found dead on his cell cot on November 3, 1957. An autopsy reported "myocardial insufficiency with sudden heart failure."

Silvert was released on December 12, 1957, after serving three-quarters of his sentence. In 1958, he committed suicide.

—Bernard Ryan, Jr.