Frederick Crews
ANXIOUS ENERGETICS
"Words can be relied upon only so long as one is sure that their
function is to reveal and not to conceal."
Hannah Arendt
Until fairly recently it seemed apparent that Wilhelm
Reich, though a persistent presence in "left" or "advanced" circles
since the 1940's, was fated eventually to be dismissed as a minor curios–
ity of American cultural history. The founder of character analysis and
orgonomy, who died in disgrace in 1957 after being imprisoned as a
cancer quack, has never been entirely forgotten, either as therapeutic
innovator or as a prophet of sexual freedom. But the most prominent
and sophisticated Reichians of the postwar period either gradua lly lost
interest in his ideas or felt required
to
hedge them with major reserva–
tions, and Reich gradually became a remote and implausible figure
whose zealous advocacy of the orgasm seemed more quaint than
courageous.
Now, however, in a distinctly altered cultural atmosphere, Reich
has begun to find something like the broad following he always ex–
pected. Political radicals and ex-radicals, whose hopes for a better soci–
ety have become increasingly focused on an end to neurosis, adm ire
him not only for his stand against capitalism and patriarchy, but for
his rejection of "adj ustment" as a therapeutic goal. Orgonomy and its
offshoot "activity therapies" are attracting favorable notice from psy–
chiatrists and psychologists who feel that psychoanalysis has proved
itself too cumbersome and cautious for purposes of broad social hy–
giene. Reich's scientific propositions, once generally ridiculed, are the
