Pulsation

The First Function of Life

Peter Jones

C O R E Publications
Preston, Lancashire

Contents
Preface

Introduction

The Foundations of Orgonomy, the Science

of the Life-Energy

Chapter 1

Pulsation in Nature (including You!).

Chapter 2

The Living Orgonome

Chapter 3

The Common Functioning Principle (CFP)

Chapter 4

Orgonomic Functionalism

Chapter 5

The Microscope in Orgonomy and the

Bion Experiments

Chapter 6

Orgonomy and Evolution

Appendix

a) Basic Research Principles

b) References How They Work
c) Useful addresses

Glossary
Index

Preface
This small book is an expanded version of the booklet I wrote for C
O R E in 2005, Orgonomy and Natural History. I wrote that as a response
to finding out that even at Orgonon, the museum and conference centre
situated in Reichs old home and work-place, the nature walks that they
took children on there had no orgonomic content whatsoever and were just
the usual version of childrens nature activities how to identify common
species in the local environment, the basics of the annual breeding cycle,
the migration of birds (very much in evidence at Orgonon, with the loons,
great northern divers, present in the summer and disappearing to warmer
climates in the winter), and the ecology of the local environment. I have no
argument with such a range of activities. All those topics are interesting
enough, but it seemed strange to talk about nature to children, while
excluding Reichs pioneering discoveries of orgonotic pulsation and other
orgonotic functions, such as superimposition, orgonotic contact, orgonotic
attraction between mates, and so on, even on his very doorstep. As well as
all these there were the obviuous questions of Reichs momentous
discoveries of bionous disintegration and the bions and the implications for
evolution of these discoveries.
While these discoveries do not in themselves give us a complete
orgonomic model of nature and evolution, they certainly imply a very
different model of nature to that peddled by conventional Darwinism and
give some pointers towards the foundations of an alternative, orgonomic
model. It seemed important to start this project, even though it is nowhere
near complete yet, and probably never will be. Still, if I set a few hundred
young scientists thinking along this pathway, we shall be a little nearer
completion and making some progress.

Introduction The Foundations of Orgonomy, the Science of the Life

Energy
Sopulsation? What do we mean exactly by this word? I am sure
most readers will immediately have some feeling for this meaning, even if
they have not given it a minutes serious thought. The word is in everyday
use in almost the same sense as I use it in the title of this book. The
atmopshere at an exciting sports event is often described as pulsating. It is a
commentators clich. Everyone knows what he means when he uses the
word in this way. It is strange, perhaps significant, that it is used to describe
something that is noisy and very public and rarely used to describe private,
intimate pulsation of a sexually loving couple or the silent, invisible
pulsations that continue all over our bodies as long as we are alive.
I shall try to be as exact as I can be and define the word very
precisely. In everyday use the word pulsation means alternate expansion
and contraction. If I look carefully at your wrist, I can probably see your
blood vessels pulsating. I can both see and feel my radial artery in my right
arm pulsating now, if I stop to look and feel. Yes, I am alive. As well as
recognising the simple physical process, most people would immediately
recognise pulsation as a sign of life. This brings us close to Wilhelm
Reichs use of the word. To him, pulsation was the basic life process per se.
(Whos Reich? Ill come to him. Please keep on reading.)
We can see pulsation as a simple mechanical process of filling and
emptying. An attempt to explain the onset of labour in women uses this
model in a well-known textbook on birth and pregnancy. The authors,
Beischer and McKye, compare the onset of labour contractions to the
expulsive contraction that we see in any organ, once it has reached a certain
level of fullness. They are, doubtless, thinking only of physical fullness and
do not remotely have in mind the idea of the bio-energetic charge that
accompanies this mechanical charge. My own limited research in this field
shows that bio-energety levels play an important part in this onset of
contractions. If we help a woman in the last weeks of her pregnancy to
breathe more fully (by the standards of orgone therapy, see below), we find
that she will start to have mild contractions. The fuller breathing generates
more bio-energy and so tilts her phsyiology towards having contractions.
For orgonomy the crucial element is the bio-energetic charge, so lets get
down to explaining this and how the discovery of this charge came about.
We are already deep into the natural proesses of the human body
and we have hardly started. I did not plan to write that paragraph above. It
4

just popped out of my mind. Pulsation is like that, once you have realised
how basic it is to nature.

The Discovery of the Orgone and Orgonotic Pulsation

Reichs Background in Psychoanalysis
I have already started talking of Wilhelm Reich and an example of
deep biological pulsation, the onset of labour in humans and I have not
even started with the history. So let us move back from these two important
mentions and begin with a short history of Reichs discovery of the life
energy and its primordial pulsatory function.
Reich lived from 1897-1957. He was born in the eastern part of
what was then the Austro-Hungarian empire, a country that no longer
exists. The actual site of his childhood home is now in Ukraine. He fought
in the First World War as an artillery officer and immediately after the war
moved to Vienna, where he studied medicine at the university. While still a
medical student he made contact with Sigmund Freud, the inventor of
Psychoanalysis and started work as an analyst himself at an early age, as
soon as he had qualified as a doctor. Psycho-analysis was and still is a way
of treating people with emotional problems that relies entirely on talking.
The patient, the person with the problem, talks to the analyst, who listens to
what the patient says and offers interpretations. It is a very slow method of
treatment and takes a long time, some patients being in analysis for years.
In Reichs early days patients were treated for much shorter periods, often
just for a few months.
Libido, Energy, Sensation, Muscular Armouring
I have already mentioned energy. Early psychoanalysis worked
with the idea of energy and used the word libido to describe it. You may
know this word, as it is still used in everyday conversation. People use it in
a very loose, inexact way, but the usage does connect with the use of
Reichs days. Nowadays libido is sued to describe sexual desire or feelings.
We hear oit very commonly in comments on the side-effects of medicine.
This drug may affect your libido. In plain English that means it may make
you feel less sexual. In Reichs early years in psychoanalysis the word was
used a little more precisely and referred to the charge behind any emotion,
in particular behind a persons sexuality. Needless to say, there was no such
5

thing as a libido-meter. You could not measure someones libido in the way
you can measure someones temperature or blood pressure. But
psaychoanalysts talked of someones libido being inhibited or strong or
weak.
Reich cottoned on to the importance of libido, the charge behind a
persons feelings. He wondered what this charge was. He noticed that it
changed greatly from day to day. Sometimes it appeared to suddenly
vanish, as a patient switched on a defence against a feeling that they
experienced as threaetening, even dangerous. When a patient did this, what
had they done with this energy? A simple but obvious question that no-one
else seemed interested in finding an answer to. (Also, incidentally, no-one
dares ask any question to which this next item is the answer muscular
armouring.)
Reich found that his patients bound this energy by tensing up
muscles. He also found that it was much easier to help people release
blocked feelings by helping them to breathe more fully and digging at their
tense muscles. As these ttense muscles gave, people reported strong
sensations of something moving within themselves. They often described
this something, as if it were water flowing or streaming. They felt very
strong sensations as this something streamed through their organism. The
more Reich was able to loosen their armouring the stronger these
sensations were and the more widespread they felt them in their bodies. It is
possible to walk out of an orgone therapy session literally buzzing or
streaming all over.)
The Function of the Orgasm and Bio-Electricity
These sensations were, of course, part of peoples sexuality. Reich had
tracked down the libido much more concretely than other analysts, but he
was still not sure what this something moving was. He discovered that
when the excitation of these sensations reached a certain level, a person felt
a natural urge to discharge this energy sexually. Once they had discharged
this surplus energy it needed to build up again, as it would naturally, in the
absence of armouring, before they felt sexual again. Sexuality, the natural,
spontaneous contractions of the musculature in the orgasm, was natures
way of regulating the energy level of the organism.
Reich carried out some experiments to try to measure the electrical
potential in volunteers bodies according to different emotional states and
different states of excitation. He thought that this something moving might
6

be electricity. His experiments showed changes in the potential according to

what his volunteers were feeling, though these were very small, only just
measurable. He felt that he had still not got to the bottom of the problem.
Expansion and Contraction: the Bions and Bionous Disintegration
He pushed on with his experimentation. His next step was to observe very
small organisms under the mciroscope to see if he could see the somehtin
gmoving in them and iof the expansion and contraction that his patients had
reported to him in such very small organisms. If he could see it, this would
suggest that the expansion and contraction that he was studying was a basic
process seen thoughout all nature, in both the smallest organisms and much
larger organised ones such as humans and everywhere in between.
He obtained cultures of amoebae and started to study them under
his microscope. He was able to observe this expansion and contraction
quite clearly in such tiny animals. (As you may have noticed, we have
already come up against with pulsation.) He was also interested to know
where these creatures came from, He was told, (as you would be if oyu
asked the same question today) that they originated from spores attached to
the grass in the hay-infusion supplied to him by Oslo university. This
explanation did not convince him and he set to examining with his
microscope what happened to dead grass under water. To his amazement he
found that the grass started to break down, producing large numbers of tiny
dancing vesicles (blisters). He also noticed gatherings of these vesicles
forming inside a membrane on the edge of the grass. Sometimes these
bubbles within the membrane full of the vesicles, broke away from the
grass and moved off into the water as independent organisms. He called the
vesicles bions and the process that produced them bionous disintegration.
After he had observed this process in materials that had once been
alive, Reich tested dead materials that had never been alive to see if the
same process occurred. He tested sand, ash, iron-filings, and ground stone.
He was able to observe the same process of swelling and disintegration into
bions. He presumed that he had witnessed the process by which dead
matter moves into living matter. The bions had some characteristics of the
living.While conducting these experiments Reich started to sense a
radiation that his test-tubes were giving off. He found that the tubes
produced visible effects on photographic paper kept in the dark. They also
produced effects similar to sunburn on the skin. He was able to see this
radiation in the dark, if he sat for long enough for all irritation of the
7

optical nerve by light to die down, so that the eye is not seeing anything.
(This takes about 30 minutes.) He asked colleagues to sit with him and
describe what they saw. All these unusual experiences are written up in his
book The Cancer Biopathy.
Orgonotic Pulsation the Life Formula
He realised that this radiation that he and his colleagues could see
in the dark was the something moving in his patients and that this radiation
or energy was the mobilising energy at work within the bions. He had at
last tracked down the libido of psychoanalysis and the vital force or lifeenergy of the nineteenth-century vitalists. He was ridiculed and abuse for
his pains, though none of his critics took the trouble to repeat his
experiments and to confimr or disprove his findings, which is what
ordinary science says any scientist should do when facing unusual or
anomalous findings. These findings were somehow different and not worth
checking. Science shows the same attitude today. It is impossible to get
anyone active in ordianry science tot ake this work seriously, however
scientifically and carefully one repeats the experiments. Because science
has decided that this life energy does not exist it refuses to look at any
experiments that suggest that it does exist.
All this is disressing but does not affect our work. We can still
study this life energy, do our experiments and carry out our observations.
Now Reich realised that there was a concrete, graspable life energy he in
luded it in his four-beat model of biological pulsation. He devised this
formula to describe the natural sexual process in an unarmoured person:
mechanical tension bio-energetic charge bio-energetic discharge
mechanical relaxation. As he advanced with his study of the energy that he
had discovered, which he called the orgone, he realised that this four-beat
process was at work throughout nature. It was the life formula itself, a
cycle that all life followed in the functions of the organs, as well as the
organism as a whole. He then called it orgonotic pulsation. Orgonotic
means charged by, driven by an orgone charge.
Sothere we are. We have got our model of pulsation laid out. I
have had to use some quite complicated concepts and go into the story of
Reichs research quite deeply. I hope you have been able to follow me. If
you havent been able to follow the plot so far, I suggest you try re-reading
8

this chapter slowly and quietly without trying too hard. Try not to furrow
your brows into a fury of effort to understand it. It will come with time.
Now we know what orgonotic pulsation means we can get on with
the rest of the book.
Chapter 1 Pulsation in Nature (including You!)
Where can we see some examples of natures pulsation? If it is that
basic a function in nature we should not have to look far, should we? No,
we wont. If you want to feel out your own capacity to notice pulsation, try
and think of a few examples before you read the ones that I am going to
cite for you. Try paying attention to your own body functions and you
should soon make contact with some of your own pulsation. You may need
to lie down in a quiet place to notice any of these. Lets assume you are
lying down quietly on the floor on a mat or makeshift mattress or on a bed.
Close the door and draw the curtains, if you can, and just listen in to your
body sounds and sensations.
You may be able to hear or feel your stomach rumbling. (If you are
seriously interested in our project, you can buy a medical stethoscope. This
allows you to hear these stomach sounds quite easily. You can find them on
line or in the small advertisements in Nursing Times for a few pounds. A
stethoscope is a useful tool in any study of the human body.) If you have no
idea what might be going on to produce this rumbling, take a look at the
diagram below. It may remind you of an earthworm. Lets have a careful
look at an earthworm and see how it works.
Take a small hand-fork and gently turn over a few handfuls of
garden soil. Before long you should find an earthworm amongst the soil.
Place a handful or so of the soil and the worm on a newspaper. The worm
will actively move to bury itself in the soil as fast as it can. As you see the
worm consists of rings at right angles to its fore and aft axis. You will see
these rings contracting one after another from the rear end towards the head
end. This propels the worm forwards. Now imagine the worm as a hollow
tube full of fluid or a soft solid and the sequence of the contractions going
the other way. This is more or less what happens in your gut as it propels
what you have eaten from your stomach to your anus. (As the food moves
along your gut the lining extracts from it anything that your body can
absorb and use.)
If you were holding the stethoscope over the upper end of your
digestive tract you may have also heard your heart-beat in the background.
9

Move it a little further to the outside of your rib-cage and the beat will
come louder. If you havent got a stethoscope just try placing your right
hand flat against your ribs a couple of inches below your left nipple. You
should feel a gentle pulsing. You can feel this pulse much more strongly
and clearly by pressing three fingertips against your radial artery at one of
your wrists, as you may remember a doctor or nurse doing, if you have ever
had your pulse counted by a health professional. (Nowadays this is often
done with a machine through a rubber, inflatable sleeve wrapped round
your upper arm, which also measures your blood pressure while it is at it. It
can also be counted with an oximeter, a little gadget like a plastic clothes
peg which snaps over your fingertip and measures the oxygen level of your
blood as well.)
You will get a much better feel for the workings of your body, if
you can do these tests manually and feel the beat through your fingertips.
You can also hear your heartbeat, well, someone elses heartbeat by putting
your ear to their chest.
You can play about with these two basic examples of pulsation. To
do this you will need a partner whose touch you welcome and who you feel
completely safe working with. You can do this without massage oil, but the
experiments will probably work better if you use oil. You can buy this from
any health shop or nowadays probably even from a big chemist. If you
cant find any proper massage oil, use some baby oil, which should be safe
and free from nasty additives or scents.
Decide between yourselves who is going to be the patient first.
Whichever of the two of you is going to be the patient needs to lie face
down stripped to the waist on a large towel which you have laid over
something comfortable to lie on, a bed or a mattress on the floor. Even a
camping mat or yoga mat will do. It is actually easier for the masseur if you
are lying on the floor.
Now, (this guidance I snow for the masseur), ask your partner to
just relax and breathe normally, without trying particularly hard to do
anything or to relax. Observe his or her breathing carefully. Before you do
anything to change your aprtners breathing pattern, ask her how far down
her body she can feel her breathing or anything connected with it. This will
vary a lot from person to person. Note to yourself this point. Place you
hand on their stomach and the other hand on their upper rib-cage. Do not
do anything to influence your partners breathing just pick up the pattern
thoguh your hand. If you find you feel he is holding his breath for a second
or two at the end of the inbreath, point this out to him and ask him to not
10

make any pause at the end of the inbreath, blending the inbreath into the
outbreath without a break. Ask them to pause briefly and quietly at the end
of the outbreath. If you can establish this pattern for a few cycles you
should sense your partners breathing beginning to swing and a high level
of energy being generated within their body. If you are not too armoured
ourself you will be able to feel this expansion. You may even find yourself
involuntarily breathing in tume with your patient. A breathing rhythm,
when two people are physically very close, is very infectious. After a few
more complete breathing cycles ask her how far down in her body she can
feel her breathing now. You may find a significant change. With your
partner feeling her breathing down her legs or even into her feet. This is
part of natures basic pulsation, the energy pulse downwards from the chest
as a person breathes out. It is not known about by ordinary medicine or
biology.
Ask your partner to turn over and lie on her front after a few of
these fuller breathingt cycyles and give her a minute or two to settle down
again and re-establish the same deeper breathing. Once you feel she has
managed this and she is happy to take the next step, lean over her and as
she breathes out knead the shoulder muscles with your thumb and finer
tips, as outlined in the sketch. Ask her what, if anything, she feels as you
knead these muscles. She may feel something similar to what she felt as a
the result of the fuller breathing, a pulse of sensation, of energy moving
downwards into her abodmen, legs, and feet. What you have just done is
the basic first stage of an orgone therapy session. You have helped your
partner to mobilise her energy and to feel it in motion. This is a basic stage
in natures pattern of biological pulsation.
You will have noticed that you need to ask your partner how far
down her body he can feel his breathing. As he gets into fuller breathing
with your therapeutic suport you ask again and when you are kneading his
neck and shoulder muscles you ask yet again, What are you feeling, if
anything, while I am doing this? This is a basic part of orgone therapy,
repeatedly asking the patient to focus on the awareness of his body
sensations. This is not something that is commonly encouraged in our
culture. Many people are not very good at doing it and have no idea what
we mean when we ask them to focus in this way. Bu this awareness can
develop with practice. If you lie down quietly on your own, or even better
with a therapist helper to do the asking, you will find that your awarenss
of your own body sensations and your contact with them grows.
11

Some people with a deep awareness of their own body sensations

know the most surprising things about their own physiology. For example
occasionally a woman in labour will know exactly how far down in the
birth canal her babys head is and how close to wanting to push she is.
Normally women do not feel these things and are not encouraged to. The
information is obtained by an uncomfortable (at best) vaginal examination.
I have known a few women who are aware of when they ovulate in their
monthly cycle. Notice both these examples come from women. Generally
women in our culture are much more able to make contact with their own
sensations than men. I assume that this is the effect on men of the
conditioning towards social maleness, the desirable qualities that men are
expected to have, physical toughness, emotional hardness, and insensitivity
to pain and sensation.
Once you realise you are able to feel your own pulsation and your
own orgone energy in motion within your own body you will, I hope, find
that you are becoming more and more aware of the same function in other
people and in nature at large. Where else might you easily see orgonotic
pulsation in nature?
An obvious example is the pulsation of a jellyfish in the sea. If you
are in the right place this is very easy to see, but if you live in a town away
from the seayoull have to wait until your next visit the seaside. You can
find beautifully pulsating jellyfish in aquaria. The film at the beginning of
my video about Robert Brown and Wilhelm Reich on YouTube was filmed
at Waterlife in Blackpool. I would have had to go a long way to find a
jellyfish to film in nature. You need deeper and clear water to see it in
nature and all the waters within easy reach of Preston are shallow and full
of sand scoured out by the strong currents in the local estuaries.
Now we know what we are looking for there are plenty of fairly
simple ways of observing pulsation nature. You may know of some of them
without realising them. If you keep goldfish or other coldwater fish in a
tank at home you will know of daphnia, water fleas. You can buy these
from petshops as food for aquarium fish. I have never kept fish in a tank,
but my brother who used to, tells me that goldfish go crazy with excitement
if you drop some daphnia into their water. You can also find daphnia easily
enough in most standing water which has any rotting vegetation in it.
Collect a sample from some local pond in a small glass container and when
you get it home, hold it up to the light and examine the water with a 10x
handheld magnifying glass. You should be able to see either daphnia or
cyclops flitting around in the water.Once you are sure there are some of
12

these organisms in your sample pour the water out into a flat dish, ideally a
Petri dish, which biologists use for cultures of micro-organisms. These are
very wide and shallow and make observation of anything in the water very
easy. I will come to the use of microscopes later in chapter 4. It is useful to
know at this point that a simple stereoscopic microscope makes the
observation of these creatures much easier than it is when you use a
magnifying glass.
Sooner or later you will find one of these creatures still enough for
you to observe it in some detail. You will see that the body is transparent
and that you can see all its body functions going on within. This is like
looking at a human through an X-ray machine. You can see the animals
digestive tract and its food travelling along it. You may even catch them
mating, defecating, or laying eggs, if you are lucky, though obviously you
will need to do a lot of patient watching to see these details.
Chapter 2 The Living Orgonome
The living orgonome is the title of a crucial chapter of Reichs
book on orgonomic functionalism, Cosmic Superimposition. According to
Reich, the living orgonome is a collection of forms that nature produces
when the freely moving and spinning orgone energy is confined within a
membrane, that is, the skin of an organism, as opposed to its free motion
in the atmosphere, which we can easily observe with the naked eye in the
right conditions. As you can see from the sketches below, (all after Wilhelm
Reich) the basic form of the orgonome is rather like a birds egg or an
embryo in its early stages of development.
Any form that can pulsate
is by definition a living orgonome or a collection of them.
Once you are familiar with these shapes ypou will start to
recognise them throughout nature, whether you are looking at someones
ear or the internal organs of a water-flea. A visit to a natural history
museum or a look at some fossils will show you many more orgonomes. If
you have a microscope to hand, or even a hand-held magnifying glass, you
will find you can see many more of these orgonomes. There is nothing
mysterious or rare about them. As with pulsation, which you will start
seeing all over the place in nature, once you know about its existence, you
will start to see these forms everywhere, once you are aware of them and
the principle of their origin.

13

Chapter 3 The Common Functioning Principle

Chapter 4 Orgonomic Functionalism
This short essay on orgonomic functionalism is a modest attempt to
explain to students of orgonomy the exact nature of orgonomic
functionalism, an expression which we come across frequently, especially
in Reichs later works, and which may be confusing to newcomers to
orgonomy. Once we are familiar with orgonomic concepts we use the
expression very often, possibly without realising how strange and
apparently meaningless it is to newcomers to the science. Bewildered
enquiries from readers of C O R Es conference programme have recently
reminded me how easy it is to do this. At the conference, amongst many
other topics, we were going to have a discussion on orgonomic
functionalism. Those drawn to Reichs discoveries of muscular armouring, 1
the orgone energy,2 and the orgone accumulator,3 for example, are often
quite unaware of the thought processes that enabled Reich to make such
original contributions to science and how deeply different and
extraordinary these thought processes were. He did not just make a few
original discoveries but a whole series of massive strides over terrain that
classical science either ignores or finds totally baffling. Readers may,
therefore, find this booklet a helpful accompaniment to a reading of any of
Reichs major works, but in particular any written after and including The
Cancer Biopathy. Of Reichs own writings on this subject, (which will be a
far better introduction than mine), I recommend his original texts, Ether,
God and Devil and Cosmic Superimposition,4 in which the basic concepts
of orgonomic functionalism are discussed and developed in detail. These
are published as one volume by Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Needless to say,
orgonomic functionalism did not spring ready made out of Reichs forehead
and a knowledge of it will enable attentive readers to perceive glimpses of
it throughout his life-work, even in his earliest works. His work becomes
more explicitly functional as his explorations continue throughout his life.
An understanding of orgonomic functionalism will enable the serious
student of orgonomy to appreciate Reichs writings much more deeply and,
even more importantly, to think orgonomically and to see connections and
opportunities for useful research that would otherwise remain unseen.
What, then, is orgonomic functionalism? Calling it a thought
system gives a false impression, as if it were something we can learn from
a book. It is a way of thinking about life and the universe that views any
14

occurrence in nature as an energy process. It is not a mere philosophical

technique: it is a highly practical work-tool which produces findings which
can be tested scientifically. It is the energy processes of nature perceived by
the energy processes of the scientific observer undistorted by muscular
armouring. Orgonomic functionalism is aware of what the energy involved
is actually doing, how it is functioning. 5 We do not mean functioning in the
sense of classical science, as a transfer of energy, as in a steam engine or
electric motor, but as a natural function of the cosmic orgone energy as
discovered by Reich, for example, the discharge of bio-energy and
reduction of tension when an amoeba undergoes meiosis or when a more
complex organism, say, a human being, experiences the discharge of energy
brought about by the orgastic release of bio-energy in the sexual embrace. 6
These are two examples of what Reich first called the tension-charge
formula, then the orgasm formula of mechanical tension bio-energetic
charge bio-energetic discharge relaxation, and eventually the life
formula.7
Lest readers think that orgonomic functionalism applies only to the
world of the living, we can just as easily cite examples from non-living
nature,8 and 9 the lumination of the earths atmospheric orgone energy
envelope or the pulsation of the atmospheric orgone that can be observed in
certain conditions during daylight and more easily at night as the twinkle of
stars or terrestrial lights.
We have already in our short essay come across the common
functioning principle,10 an understanding of which is the major tool of
orgonomic functionalism. It brings together energy processes in nature
which the mechanistic scientist sees as totally disparate, with no
conceivable connection, because they are bio-chemically different and
occur in different systems or different organisms. As Reich points out so
lucidly at the end of the chapter Animism, Mysticism and Mechanistics in
Ether, God and Devil,11 the mechanist can see no connection between the
origin of the cancer cell in the human organism and the amoeba from dead
grass. Seen functionally the connection is simple and obvious, although we
must not in saying that deny Reich his due and forget that it was only his
courage, vitality, and openness that allowed him to see, acknowledge, and
describe this process for the first time. In the same way, conventional
observers will be baffled, if not outraged, by his equation (described in The
For more information on the observation of the atmospheric orgone
energy, see C O R Es booklet Observing the Atmospheric Orgone Energy.

15

Cancer Biopathy) of the sexual embrace and breast-feeding. 12 Both involve

superimposition of two highly charged orgonotic systems. As the baby
approaches the mothers nipple will erect spontaneously, if her response is
not too inhibited by armouring. This is her reaching out towards the baby. If
the babys is sufficiently alive, bio-energetically speaking, he will reach out
towards the mother and embrace the nipple with his highly excited mouth.
This movement out towards the mother is acknowledged even by carers
unversed in the bio-energetics of breast-feeding. Midwives will describe
such a positive and active response from the baby with the words this
baby jumps on. Anyone who assists mothers with breast-feeding will
recognise this as a very accurate description of the babys strong urge
towards the mother. If the baby has not absorbed any narcotic medication
during birth and the birth has not been too exhausting or traumatising for
her she will feel this urge to jump on and take the breast immediately after
birth. Even in rigid NHS hospitals with armoured policies and practice the
importance of this energy charge between mother and baby is implicitly
acknowledged. If a baby does not respond to the breast, a common way of
encouraging a stronger response is to place her in skin-to-skin contact with
the mother. The effect of this is readily explicable bio-energetically. As the
infants bio-energy responds to the stimulation of the mothers skin, her
orgonotic response to the breast and nipple becomes much stronger and the
baby then takes in the nipple more actively and feeds effectively.
Reich was able to see this connection only because of his own bioenergetic vitality and his ability to think and observe functionally. I think
we can fairly assume that the actual observation of a baby at the breast
inspired this insight and eventual formal functional formulation.
It is wrong to call orgonomic functionalism a thought system: it also
reflects the character structure of the person doing the thinking. Yet again,
thinking is a very limiting, inaccurate word, because functional thinking
inevitably involves feeling and sensation. Chapter III of Ether, God and
Devil has the orgonomically wonderful title Organ Sensation as a Tool of
Natural Research.13 Such a commitment to orgonotic aliveness will strike a
conventional scientist as a terrible admission, which puts the functional
thinker immediately beyond the pale. The conventional scientist prides
himself on his divorce from feeling and sensation, on the objectivity of
science. We can use the word mechanistic to describe his mode of
thought.14 I shall explain that term, too, as most readers probably have no
clear understanding of that either. Scientific thought now is so totally
mechanistic and has such a monopoly of our understanding of the world
16

that few people are even aware that there is any other mode of thought. The
mechanist believes that the world and life can be explained entirely in
terms of the already acknowledged physical and chemical forces of modern
science. To the mechanist, therefore, life is nothing but a very complicated
string of chemical reactions. The mechanistic scientist needs no other force
to explain life.
We need to go into the history of science, particularly biology, to
clarify this belief. Until the early nineteenth century there was a strong
belief that the chemistry of life was somehow deeply different from that of
non-life.15 (This distinction still survives in word form in the two classes of
chemistry - organic and inorganic.) As far as I know the term functional
was not in use at that time. What was in use was the term vitalism. Those
who advocated a view of life that assumed it was chemically different from
non-life were called vitalists.16 Vitalists explained life with the assumption
of some power, force, or drive in nature towards life. The mechanist
biologist, especially modern supporters of Darwinian evolution, consider
the belief in the existence of such a driving force in nature as utter
anathema. No modern academic biologist would dare come out in public as
a supporter of this view of life and orgonomic biologists often publish
articles under pseudonyms to avoid scientific excommunication,
particularly in the USA.
There is no democratic pluralism of thought in modern western
science and the newcomer to orgonomy and functional thought needs to
know this. Becoming a serious student of orgonomic functionalism puts us
outside the realms considered respectable by conventional science. Those
who are starting an involvement in orgonomy may be surprised to read this.
The backdrop of western scientific attitudes that we all live against and
which pervades all discussion, study and research, particularly in the lifesciences and medicine, is so all-pervading that few people are even aware
that there are other legitimate points of view.
This conflict between vitalism and mechanism is referred to briefly in
Reichs introductory survey at the beginning of The Function of the
Orgasm.17 Although this book is not specifically functional and the term
does not occur in it, the final sections of the book are in fact thoroughly and
explicitly functional and the whole text is imbued with a functional

For a good discussion of this question see Forbidden Science by Richard

Milton.

17

approach. In chapter VII, The Breakthrough into the Biological Realm,

Reich assembles what we can now see as the foundations of orgonomic
medicine. He there draws together the common functioning principles
within the workings of the autonomous nervous system; expansion and
contraction, pleasure and anxiety, the parasympathetic and the
sympathetic.18
I shall point out here, before we go into the common functioning
principle, the basic orgonomic functions here. Expansion and contraction
are the two opposite directions of energy movement within the organism
with reference to its core. Expansion is away from the centre towards the
periphery and the outer world. Contraction is movement towards the core
away from the periphery and the world. 19 This is the first characteristic that
any orgonomic biologist notices when examining a biological process or
function. Is the bio-energy moving outwards (expansion) or inwards
(contraction)? This statement does not contradict the explanations of
classical physiology. It just re-interprets them in terms of energy functions
and brings them together as either expansion or contraction. Orgonomic
functionalism finds a deeper realm of life energy functions that is
foreign and invisible to mechanistic biology. This link is not made in
textbooks of classical physiology. It is only a further step to realise that
many chronic diseases can then be understood simply as chronic
overstimulation of one or other side of the ANS, especially the sympathetic
side. In the subjective, emotional realm, this equals anxiety. 20 Amongst
scientists and doctors brought up within the all-pervading western tradition
it is forbidden to make any connection between physiology and emotions,
so Reichs simple and productive model has gone ignored for decades.
Nothing raises the hackles of the mechanist more than a suggestion that
physiology is connected with emotion. This orgonomic view of illness and
the ANS will probably find some support from the many people who
believe without analysing it too closely that all illness is in the mind. Even
if this intuitive understanding of illness is true, the belief has no
explanation for the connecting links between the mind and the organs
Reichs clear and precise formulation of orgonomic functionalism comes
relatively late in his writings and was the result of his questioning his own
thought processes. He wondered what it was in his own work and thought that
had allowed him to make discoveries that most other scientific workers had
been unable to make. It is clear that he was in fact working functionally all the
time, right from the beginning of his life-work, but at first in a less articulate
and worked out way.

affected They will probably treat the model as a mere metaphor and ignore
the great deal of scientific experimentation that supports it. Orgonomic
medicine does not at all assume that all illness is in the mind, but that
there are different layers of human functioning, psychological and
physiological ones, that reflect identical energy functions and which
function in different realms and which we may experience in different
realms. In both cases we are talking about bio-energetic functions. This has
already brought us to another of Reichs pioneering concepts the common
functioning principle.21 This is a basic concept vital to a full understanding
of orgonomic functionalism and I go into it below in more detail below.
Another characteristic of functional thought is that it is the thought
processes of the thinker uninhibited by pathological blockages of bioenergy, in other words, the thought processes that reflect the free movement
of orgone energy within the organism. One of Reichs most profound
discoveries was that thought processes are a reflection of armouring
patterns (or the lack of them) and that the view of the world of the
mechanistic scientist is inevitable and understandable, as is that of the
primitive animist who sees a spirit in every single item in nature. Very
few people in our culture are totally free of armouring, so it would appear
that some armouring patterns permit one to think more or less functionally
while others do not. As Reich pointed out, we all, even orgonomists, have
our mechanistic tendencies and need to check our thought and work for
mechanistic errors. One of Reichs ways of confirming an orgonomic
finding was that such a finding based on functionally correct assumptions
automatically led on to new discoveries and formulations. 22 As far as I
know, he nowhere stated the converse of this, but it occurs to me as an
inevitable corollary that when we come up against an apparent brick wall
in our research we must be caught on an unfounded, mechanistic
assumption which has, in fact, no foundation in reality. Alert readers will, I
hope, realise here that classical science is all the time coming up against
such brick walls. They are an accepted part of ordinary science, whereas
the striding discoveries made in orgonomy seem to the prejudiced observer
to be just too good to be true. It cannot be that easy. Look how hard we are
working without solving the problem. How can you be any different?
Another surprising aspect of functional thought and research is that
as long as we rely on observation and fact, they speak to us clearly and
eventually correct errors of thought that may have crept into our work.
Reich recounts this graphically in his bion research in his history of
orgonomic functionalism.23

The Common Functioning Principle

The common functioning principle24 is the cornerstone of
orgonomic functionalism. As we have seen above, we do not have to
venture far into the realm of orgonomic functionalism before we come
across it. It is not a difficult principle to understand, though we can only
claim to fully understand it, if we can see new common functioning
principles ourselves, as we observe nature and carry out orgonomic
experiments and if we make new discoveries while doing so. It can be
represented quite clearly on paper as a sort of equation thus;
anxiety/contraction
Movement of orgone energy
pleasure/expansion
This can also be formulated thus: anxiety pleasure.
The function common to both pleasure and anxiety within the organism
is the movement of bio-energy. This can be portrayed even more graphically
if we use Reichs symbol of orgonomic functionalism, which we see on the
cover of many of his books;
contraction/anxiety
pleasure/expansion
orgone energy in motion

This brings the attentive reader, I hope, to the obvious realisation that
orgonomic science in any area works in the opposite direction to
mechanistic science, which divides the object of investigation into ever
smaller parts and finds out more and more about them, often mentally
drawing boundaries round the parts under investigation and resolutely
refusing to see what to a functionalist are the most obvious connections.
This is the much criticised reductionism of modern science.25 It continually
sees life-processes as nothing but processes, almost always bio-chemical
ones. For example powerful emotions are explained by modern neuroscience as simply bio-chemical or bio-electrical processes.

Orgonomy looks at processes in nature and sees common processes

involving orgone energy at work in them. Instead, therefore, of piling up
complex and numerous facts about different things in nature, as does
mechanistic science, orgonomy sees a small number of basic energy
processes at work and so connects things, which to the mechanist have no
connection whatever. The examples cited above on page 2 of the meiosis of
the amoeba and the genital embrace in humans are a good example of two
functions which orgonomically we see as functionally identical, but
between which the mechanist would see no connection at all. Yet again, this
connectedness is often acknowledged in broad terms, particularly by new
age mystics, who say all the time that everything is connected. This,
however, like the all in the mind slogan is only a metaphor and carries no
deep understanding of how things are connected. In the orgonomic concept
of the common functioning principle we can see identical processes at work
in two apparently different and disconnected processes, for example, the
growth of bions from a disintegrating blade of grass in water and the
growth of cancer cells in devitalised tissue, brought about by the effects of
muscular armouring. The common functioning principle at work here, the
single bio-energetic process at work in both cases is bionous
disintegration.26
A common functioning principle does not necessarily need to be a
healthy, natural function that we find in nature at large. As Reich points out
in his detailed exposition of the history of functional thought reprinted in
Orgonomic Functionalism, a common functioning principle may be, for
example, muscular armouring or biopathic shrinkage or orgasm anxiety. 27
It is important to distinguish here between the carefully observed or
sensed common functioning principle of orgonomy and the slapdash
mystical labelling of things as connected or even identical that we come
across which has no further understanding of the apparent connection. This
slapdash labelling is rightly seen by classical science as thoroughly vague
and worthless and, unfortunately, earns orgonomic functionalism a bad
name, as it is usually tarred with the same brush. The slapdash mystical
labelling leads to no further understanding or any possible scientific
understanding, or possibilities for further investigations or useful
experimentation. An orgonomically functional understanding, however,
nearly always leads us on to further deeper understanding of what we are
studying and further experiments. One of Reichs tests for the correctness
of a functional finding was whether or not it led to further useful findings
and formulations.

Functional Identity
Closely connected to the above observations is Reichs (and
orgonomists in general) use of the expression functional identity and
functionally identical.28 We can say that the origin of bions from
disintegrating grass in water and the origin of cancer cells in devitalised
tissue in the human organism are functionally identical. Any pair of
processes is functionally identical, when the same bio-energetic function or
process is taking place within them. We can now see why mechanistic
science is so often up against so many brick walls in its research,
particularly its research into sickness and health. It understands everything
in terms of bio-chemistry and must therefore inevitably see two or more
processes that show quite different bio-chemical reactions as completely
disparate and unconnected.
This inability to see connections is very clear in the way textbooks of
physiology present the autonomic nervous system. Whether a function is
innervated by the parasympathetic or sympathetic appears to be completely
random and bewildering for the scientific beginner. Once we have an
orgonomic understanding of the paired functions of expansion and
contraction, pleasure and anxiety, we can even guess correctly which side
of the ANS a physiological effect belongs to by observing its part in the
functioning of the organism as a whole. Note here that expansion and
contraction refer to the general direction of movement, not simply whether
smooth muscle is contracting or not during a process, such as urination,
when the smooth detrusor muscles of the bladder contract. As Reich points
out in his schema in chapter VII of The Function,29 this is an opening,
relaxing, out- towards-the-world process, the opposite of a holding in or
contracting. (It is worth pointing out here for the beginner in orgonomy and
orgonomic medicine how important and frequent a part smooth muscle
plays in the function of orgonotic pulsation, one example of which is the
repeated filling and emptying of the bladder, which continues all the time in
a state of health.)

These examples of functions within the human organism which are

readily recognisable to us all are good examples of paired opposites
processes that Reich labelled as functionally identical and
antithetical.30 (This means workingin opposite directions.) As in
sexuality and anxiety the processes cannot both function at once in the
same direction. This is not just a figure of speech. The functional
understanding of nature permitted Reich to make major discoveries
and formulations. He even formulated what we might call functional
equations with missing items or quantities and found the missing
function by the functional thought processes. One of his outstanding
achievements in my opinion is his pairing of lumination and attraction
as a functional pair, as related in the article Orgonomic Functionalism
in Non-Living Nature: Lumination and Attraction reprinted in
Orgonomic Functionalism.31 This is not at all obvious at first sight and
if we formulate the functional equation without one of the pair it is
quite baffling until we read further into Reichs solution. He found that
he could confirm this formulation that light is the effect of the
atmospheric orgone energy luminating as the result of being excited by
the suns electro-magnetic radiation and that this lumination is
accompanied by an increase of the earths gravitational attraction with a simple and telling experiment. A laboratory balance is placed
over the earth and balanced exactly. Under one of the pans an iron pipe
has been dug into the soil. As the atmospheric energy luminates at its
strongest, usually in the early afternoon, the pan above the iron pipe in
the earth is drawn downwards towards the soil. 32 He states in this
article that the measured deflection of the balance arm from the
horizontal correlates with the readings of the T T apparatus and the
slower discharge rate of the electroscope inside an orgone
accumulator. In other words, three objective indicators of the strength
of the atmospheric energy charge correlate exactly. The experiment
with the balance and the pipe in the ground is fairly simple to do and
could be repeated by any serious student of orgonomy with a small
sum of money to spare and access to a few square feet of open ground.
T = the temperature within a small orgone accumulator: T = the
temperature inside a control container similarly constructed but with no steel
layers and therefore no accumulating capacity. In dull weather with low
atmospheric energy levels there is little or no temperature difference. In good
conditions with a highly charged atmosphere there is a difference of a few
tenths of a degree Celsius.

His next step is even more profound a posited solution to the apparent
conflict in classical physics between the wave-like behaviour of light and
its equally particle-like behaviour.33 He explains this as the conflicting but
functionally identical behaviour of orgone particles in their typical
movement pattern of the spinning wave or Kreiselwelle, as he calls it in
German. In the expansive phase of the spinning wave the orgone particle
behaves as a wave: in the contracting phase of the cycle it behaves as a
particle. Reich commenced these formulations and conclusions from
observation of the orgone particles inside his orgone dark-room. After a
while, when the eyes have adapted to conditions in such a dark-room, we
can, according to Reich, see the orgone wave movements, the spinning
wave, described and portrayed so often in his later work. 34 (C O R E hopes
to construct such a dark room when we have our own premises.) We can
also make these observations within an orgone accumulator in the dark.
Basic Orgonomic Functions
a)
b)
c)
d)
e)

The Orgasm Formula and Orgonotic Pulsation

Superimposition
Attraction (and Attraction and Repulsion)
Lumination
Movement

Before we look at orgonomic functions in any detail we need to note

the major difference between a mechanistic, possibly bio-chemical
understanding of natural functions and an orgonomically functional
awareness of the same. The basic characteristic of orgone energy is
movement and when we describe orgone energy functions we are in
effect trying to take a still photograph of a moving object. We can
therefore, as Reich points out clearly in the Animism Mysticism and
Mechanistics, never find a perfect, routinely identical process in nature
with identical quantities on every occasion. No orgonotic function is
identical in the way that a chemical reaction with the same quantities
of reagents always produces the same quantities of products or a
physics or engineering experiment always produces identical and
predictable results. This highlights an important difference in
orgonomic functionalism we are much of the time talking about
qualitative aspects of a function, whereas the mechanistic scientist will
be focusing on quantities. Even when discussing quantity we are
actually focusing on energy charge, for example the intensity or
otherwise of a sensation or emotion, which first caused Reich to focus
on the bio-energetic charge behind emotions and which led him so
fruitfully to the discovery of the orgone. Perceptive readers may
realise here how, without even trying to, we have brought together two
items, typically separated in mechanistic psychology or biology,
quality and quantity under the common functioning principle of
orgone energy. As we find throughout orgonomic work, connections
are throwing themselves at us as we go along. We do not have to look
for them. Reich himself repeatedly says that he did not look for the
links in his functional research: the links presented themselves to him.
a) The Orgasm Formula and Orgonotic Pulsation
Reich had worked out the orgasm formula even before he had
discovered the existence of the orgone.35 At that stage in his work he was
using the expression bio-energy. The formula itself needed no modifying
once he had discovered the orgone and made a much more concrete
foundation for his developing new science of orgonomy. The orgasm
formula follows a four-beat cycle of mechanical tension bio-energetic
charge bio-energetic discharge mechanical relaxation. As Reichs
work advanced he came to realise that this formula was the biological life
formula itself and so modified the name. He eventually called it the life-

formula.36 This reflects the developing breadth and depth of his work and is
also yet another example of the common functioning principle. It also
appears to include within itself other orgonomic functions, for example
lumination and attraction. See below (d) for more on this.
b) Superimposition
This function is proposed in some detail in Cosmic
Superimposition,37 both in the animate realm and the inanimate, for
example in the formation of hurricanes, galaxies, and matter itself. It
provides the basis for a new, orgonomic cosmology, astronomy, and
meteorology. It gives us yet another example of functional identity and the
common functioning principle. The biological drive towards
superimposition, so familiar in the mating instinct, also occurs on the
cosmic level in the formation of galaxies. Notice here how a commonly
held belief amongst mystics that there is a fundamental unity throughout
the cosmos and all living beings acquires an orgonomic explanation
without in any way destroying the awareness. Unarmoured children also
show the same awareness of this basic unity of life and cosmos. Orgonomy
explains it without explaining it away, in the way that mechanistic science
explains away so much intuitive awareness of life.
c) Attraction (and Attraction and Repulsion)
Orgone energy appears to have an attraction for itself so that any
orgone system or accumulation is attracted to another orgone system. 38 This
functions in both animate and inanimate nature. Thus animal organisms are
mutually attracted in the sexual instinct and a highly charged cloud attracts
more orgone energy to itself. One of the laws of this attraction, inevitable,
if we consider the function of attraction, is that orgone energy functions in
the opposite direction to other forms of energy, as observed in classical
physics.39 This contradicts the laws of conventional physics, which states
that if we connect two objects or systems with differing energy charges, for
example a hot and a cold lump of a metal, the temperatures in the two will
eventually equalise. There is therefore an inevitable direction of flow
downhill from the high to the low. (The well-known third law of thermodynamics, which explains the entropy in the universe.) In certain conditions
this attraction turns rapidly into repulsion in an endless dance of towards
and away from a material or organism. 40 We see this in the behaviour of
orgone energy in relationship to iron, where it is attracted and repelled

again immediately.41 In good conditions it is possible to observe this. We

can see the orgone particles dancing around a railway line in bright,
expansive weather. Bions appear to follow the same pattern. If we observe
a bion culture under the microscope we can see pairs of bions apparently
linked by some invisible tie, presumably an energy attraction, dancing
round each other in an endless to and fro as they cavort around each other
in the fluid.42 Such movement is written off as Brownian motion,
incidentally, though if we observe it carefully over a longer period, it is
obviously nothing of the sort.
This mutual attraction between orgone energy systems and the
reverse potential law presumably has a connection with gravity. Reichs
later work on gravity was lost with his papers in prison. It is not usually
mentioned in physics textbooks, but gravity follows the same law. Reich
comments in one of his published diaries that Newton had discovered that
gravity worked. He, Reich had discovered how it worked.43
A corollary of this function which has occurred to me while
reflecting on the orgonomic understanding of health and the effects of
armouring is that there must be differing levels of normal orgonotic
excitation throughout the organism and that physiology uses these and the
resultant forces of attraction to transport substances around the organism.
Armouring will presumably disrupt this pattern of normal energy charges
and affect this healthy movement. An obvious example that occurs to me is
the phenomenon of persistent anaemia in some people, regardless of how
much iron-containing food or medication they ingest. Since orgone energy
and iron are mutually attracted, this deficit, we may conclude, may be
brought about by an undercharging of the red blood cells. There is
anecdotal evidence amongst medical orgonomists that haemoglobin levels
can be improved by treatment in the orgone accumulator.44 It would be a
relatively cheap and simple experiment to check this evidence using the
accumulator and a control group who did not use it.
d) Lumination
Lumination is the expansion and increase in energy charge of an
organism under certain conditions, for example in a fever, 45 in a state of
high sexual excitation, or when threatened by some external force (anger).
At first sight it would seem that lumination depends on the presence of
another organism for mutual excitation to bring about lumination but this is
not always so. A healthy organism luminates in response to infection, as

described by Reich in The Cancer Biopathy.46 Relatively unarmoured

women appear to luminate in labour, too. Many of these orgonotic
functions are, of course rarely seen in our culture, because most people are
armoured too much for them to occur.
e) Movement
It may seem a truism but the most obvious function of orgone
energy is movement. This confirms the intuitive awareness that most
people, especially small children have, that if something moves of its own
accord it is alive. This is not absolutely true in all circumstances. Brownian
motion is the obvious exception and we get other movement as we move
down the scale of size in nature to electrons and similar very small
particles. This is irrelevant to the function of movement in the orgone.
Orgone energy outside the realm of the living is also in endless
movement.47 We can see this at the level of single orgone particles that we
observe in the atmosphere or inside an orgone accumulator or orgone darkroom48 and in the growth of clouds and the endless mobility of weather
patterns.49 It is also noticeable that the rigid authoritarian who has
suppressed all their own spontaneous movement by armouring themselves
continually strives to suppress the natural movement of the unarmoured
child and that school, in order to enforce its discipline, above all trains
young children to sit still. No small child sits still for long. All
authoritarians recognise spontaneous, joyful movement as inimical to their
cause of life-denial.
Readers perusing these brief summaries may have noticed how
connected they all are and how easily one function moves into and becomes
another. For example it is very likely that unarmoured partners luminate in
a state of high bio-energetic excitation before they merge sexually. Reich in
fact paired lumination and attraction as a functionally identical pair in his
writings on the history of orgonomic functionalism. 50 The common
functioning principle in this case is orgonotic excitation, even excitation
outside the organism and in the atmosphere. He devised a fairly simple
experiment to demonstrate that the gravitational attraction of the earth
increases as its energy field luminates. 51 The lumination will be preceded,
by mutual attraction. In mechanical or commercial sex we can assume that
this mutual excitation does not occur and that the level of energy charge
and discharge in any orgasm occurring is relatively low, thus producing the

leaden and disillusioning sexual boredom that is so characteristic of many

cynical and bio-energetically deadened people.
Further Reading on Orgonomic Functionalism
There are few texts on orgonomic functionalism. The obvious
works to read, especially for the beginner, are Reichs two works
specifically devoted to orgonomic functionalism Ether, God and Devil
and Cosmic Superimposition, first published in 1949 and 1951 respectively.
These were republished as a single volume in 1973 by Farrar, Straus &
Giroux and, thankfully, have been recently re-published in that format. 52
This is by far the most important text on orgonomic functionalism and
should be the foundation of any serious study. These texts are not easy to
find in the British library system, though doubtless they will be obtainable
via the British Librarys inter-library loan system. It can take a long time to
obtain a book in that way. Three important chapters from these two texts
also appear in the section on orgonomic functionalism in Selected
Writings,53 which is probably more easily found in local libraries. This
volume is at the time of writing also available and may be a more economic
purchase for a young student with limited funds, as it contains many other
important extracts from Reichs books. These three chapters, Animism,
Mysticism and Mechanistics, Cosmic Superimposition, and The Living
Orgonome, comprise nearly 80 pages and are a significant part of the
whole. Together they make an excellent introduction to orgonomic
functionalism. The only recent text devoted to orgonomic functionalism, as
far as I know, is Before the Beginning of Time54 by Jacob Meyerowitz. This
is rather theoretical in approach and lacks the vigorous mental bite that all
of Reichs books have. Meyerowitz is not a therapist and so his work is not
grounded in clinical experience in the way that Reichs is. This text is still
worth reading, if you wish to broaden your grasp of orgonomic
functionalism. It contains many examples of worked out functional
equations and common functioning principles. If you find the basic
principle of orgonomic functionalism difficult to grasp from this brief
exposition, reading through a large number of examples may help you to
develop a feeling for functionalism.
Once you have grasped the basic principles of orgonomic
functionalism you will see the functional aspects of any orgonomic work.
An orgonomic research worker may write an article about cloudbusting or
childbirth, for example, without mentioning orgonomic functionalism, but

almost certainly the approach in such work will be functional. The writer
will have used orgonomic functionalism as a work-tool to make
connections that a mechanistic researcher would not see or allow himself to
make. It will be good practice for the beginner to peruse such orgonomic
writings and see if they can locate any specifically functional assumptions
or discoveries.
The journal Orgonomic Functionalism,55 published irregularly by
the Wilhelm Reich Museum, consists only of reprints of Reichs own
writings, many of them rare and intellectually and scientifically priceless
writings that have been unavailable for years. The first four issues contain a
series The Developmental History of Orgonomic Functionalism56, in which
Reich recounts the development of his mode of thinking and experimenting
in some detail. Issues 5 and 6 contain further articles with a different title
but which appear to be a continuation on Orgonomic Functionalism in
Non-Living Nature.57 This journal is a vital contribution to orgonomic
knowledge and literature. C O R E possesses a full set and serious students
are welcome to come and study them by arrangement.

58

Chapter 5 The Microscope in Orgonomy and the Bion Experiments

As you will have seen in the introduction, the bion experiments

were the crucial step in Reichs discovery of the orgone and orgonotic
pulsation. I have written guidance for the student who wants to do these
experiments herself and will not repeat all that here. But for the sake of
completeness we need a basic outline of the bion experiment and how to set
about getting a look at some bions of your own. So here is the information
you need to do your own basic bion experiment. I have chosen the material
most likely to succeed. (I have never known this one to fail to produce
bions in generous quantities.) Once you have done a single bion
experiment, there will be no holding you back. You could be doing bion
work for the rest of your life. (I have warned you!)
Before we start the actual experiment we need to know the basics of
microscopes and something about different types of microscopes. If you
bought any old microscope secondhand, for example, you could end up
with one that is useless for the bion experiments however good it is of its
own type. On page 13 I mentioned the use of a stereoscopic microscope for
observing small organisms at low magnification. Such a microscope might
have a maximum magnification of only 20x, but for observing the lifefunctions of small animals, small but big enough to see with the naked eye,
just, a sterescopic micorscope is the perfect tool for the job and all you
need. But if you want to observe bions originating from dead grass or
ground minerals you need an instrument that gives you much higher
magnification, around 1000x.
I will just give you an outline of the basic experiment here, as I have
written in much more detail and given all the information students need to
carry out this experiment themselves in another of C O R Es booklets. 59
The rock dust, which I recommend here seems to be the best material that I
know of for a simple bion experiment and produces bions generously and
easily with no difficulty. If you do not have any of this material to hand you
can try with plenty of other cheap and commonly available materials such
as sand, soil clay, ground stone, iron filings, (easily made with a file and a
bit of scrap-iron), oat or wheat bran, and so on. If you have none of these,
please dont think, oh, dear. I cant do this experiment. Use something that
you have got. You may discover something new for orgonomy, if you do
that. (C O R E can anyway send you a small sample of rock-dust, enough
for a few experiments.)

To conduct this experiment, you simply need to grind your rock-dust

very finely, (or any other material you are using), heat it on a spatula in a
flame, add it to some boiled water or potassium chloride (KCl), draw up a
sample in a syringe, place a few drops of it on a slide, cover it with a
coverslip, and your preparation is ready for examination under your
microscope. In C O R Es detailed booklet on this experiment I give a list
of all the equipment you need and a few, I hope, helpful tips on how to
avoid obvious snags and the likely mistakes that may hold your work up.
There are not many pitfalls to it and if you are reasonably good with your
hands, observant, and able to be careful when necessary, you should not
have any undue difficulty with this project. Once you have done the basic
experiment, you will probably feel quite confident and happy to carry on on
your own. There are hundreds, probably thousands of different materials
that you can test for bion growth.
The grass-infusion experiment, which allows us to observe bions
developing from dried grass, is a little more complicated, but still well
within the possible for an amateur learner. See the booklet for more details
and a diagram of the slide set-up, which allows continuing observation of
the grass under water for as many days as you want.
The main thing about this experiment is that it shows us the first steps
towards establishing a new example of pulsation in nature. Reich called the
first chapter of his Bion Experiments book The Tension-Charge Formula,
which is the first two steps of his orgonotic pulsation formula of tension
charge discharge relaxation.

32

Chapter 6 Orgonomy and Evolution

Since we now know that life in the forms of bions and protozoa is
organising itself into existence all the time, this puts in question the whole
Darwinian model of evolution. It may surprise present-day biologists to
know that Darwin himself did not rule out completely the possibility of
spontaneous generation and said it would be a discovery of transcendent
importance, if someone were able to show that it did in fact occur. Darwin
himself seems to have been typically open-minded and undogmatic about
this possibility and at the time of publication of The Origin of Species the
editors of Nature, the science journal, (still being published) were giving
space to serious correspondence and reports of work on spontaneous
generation. Reichs discoveries and experiments with the bions seem to
prove that there is a spontaneous urge towards life in nature, a finding
which seems, for reasons unknown, to strike dread and horror into the
hearts of modern biologists. I do not know why this should be so, but the
vituperation and bitter contempt with which the mere possibility of a
driving force in evolution other than sheer chance and natural selection is
greeted seems to bespeak fear. Orgonomy here offers a hypothesis,
experimental evidence, and a theoretical model. Where evolution goes once
life has started is as yet unknown. The bions would appear to have an urge
to form more complex life-forms almost as soon as they exist. We see
clumps of bions that appear to be physically joined together, (though we
must bear in mind that the apparent bond, so easily seen, may be bioenergetic rather than physical), and which move as apparently independent
organisms. If we observe the process of bionous disintegration in grass we
can actually observe the appearance first of individual bions and then of the
gradual organisation of organisms from clumps of bions. However much
neo-Darwinians shout and abuse, this process is undeniable and easily
replicable. Since Reich first observed, studied, and reported on this process,
other orgonomists have repeated his experiments and confirmed and
developed his discoveries.
Since we can observe the early forms dying as well as coming into
existence, it may be that some form of Darwinian selection is already
occurring as soon as there are life-forms for it to work on. We cannot be
certain that these forms have died, but they frequently show a burst of
frenzied activity before suddenly ceasing all movement for as long as one
can continue observing them.
33

Since the orgone drives the process of biogenesis, we must assume that
it also drives further stages of evolution. As far as I know no orgonomists
have devised an experiment to test this assumption, though it must be
possible to devise one. One fairly simple possibility that occurs to me is to
conduct some of the classic fruit-fly genetic experiments and see if
incubation in an orgone accumulator has any effect, for example, on the
return to a norm after a deliberately induced harmful mutation, or just the
mutation rate itself. Similar experiments with larvae, tadpoles, or eggs
would be easy to do and might yield information on evolution and
development from an orgonomic point of view. By the standards of
conventional biological research none of this work would be difficult or
expensive. It is all waiting to be done because there are so few orgonomists
at work in the world and even fewer with mainly biological interests.

34

Appendices
a) Basic Research Principles

b) How References Work

You will have noticed little numbers dotted about this text above the end of
the words. These numbers refer to the name of a book or article from which
I collected the information contained in the text. This may be the first time
you have read a book with such a reference system. It is commonly used in
non-fiction books about history and science. This means that when I use
information first discovered by other writers I am acknowledging their
work which has enabled me to use facts that they have discovered. It also
means that if you want to follow the topic in more detail that you can
obtain the book or article in question and read it yourself. There are two
main systems for this referencing. It does not really matter which a writer
uses as long as it is used consistently. If you get the hang of these systems
from reading this book you are now equipped with skills and knowledge
that will be useful for the rest of your life.

c) Useful Addresses

35

Glossary
Armouring, Muscular
Autonomic Nervous System
Bio-energy
Brightfield lighting
Compound microscope
Contact
Contraction
Evolution
Expansion
Fruit-fly
Libido
Life-Energy
Life formula
Natural selection
Orgasm formula
Orgone (Energy)
Orgonomic functionalism
Orgonotic pulsation
Parasympathetic
36

Petri dish
Phase contrast
Physiology
Pulsation
Stasis
Stereoscopic microscope
Superimposition
Sympathetic
Vitalism

37

Reich W (1983); The Function of the Orgasm, chapter VII, 1, Muscular Attitude and Bodily Expression

2
2

Reich W (1973a); The Cancer Biopathy, chapter III, The Actual Discovery of Orgone Energy, FSG.

3
3

DeMeo J (1999); The Orgone Accumulator Handbook, Natural Energy Works, Greensprings, Oregon.

Reich W (1973); Ether, God and Devil and Cosmic Superimposition, published as one
Reich W (1973b); Ether, God and Devil, chapter I, The Workshop of Orgonomic

volume, FSG.
Functionalism, FSG.

Reich W (1983); op cit, chapter VII, 5, The Orgasm Formula: Tension Charge

Discharge Relaxation

Reich W (1973a); op cit, page 226.

8

Reich W (1994, 1996); Orgonomic Functionalism in Non-Living Nature, Parts One

Functionalism, Vols 5 and 6, Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust Fund, Rangeley, Maine.

and Two, Orgonomic

Reich W (1973b); op cit, chapter VI, 2, Movement.

10

Ibid, pages 103-104, also published as an extract in Selected Writings, (2000), pages 302-304, Welcome Rain Publishers,
New York.
11
11

Reich W (1973b); op cit chapter IV, Animism, Mysticism and Mechanistics, also printed in Selected Writings.

12

Reich W (1973a); op cit, page 383.

13

Reich W (1973b); op cit, chapter III, Organ Sensation as a Tool of Natural Research.
14

Ibid, chapter IV, Animism, Mysticism and Mechanistics,

15
15

Nordenskild E (1946); The History of Biology, pages 406-407, Development of Organic Chemistry, Tudor Publishing,
New York.

16
16

Thain M, Hickman M (1954); Penguin Dictionary of Biology, page 654, Vitalism, Penguin Books, London.

17

Reich W (1983); op cit, pages 22-24.

18
18

Ibid, chapter VII, 6. Pleasure (Expansion) and Anxiety (Contraction): Primary

Antithesis of Vegetative Life.

19

Ibid.
20
20

bid, chapter VIII, 6. Typical Psychosomatic Diseases: Results of Chronic Sympatheticotonia.

21

Reich W (1973b); op cit, page 103.

22

Ibid, page 113.

23

Reich W (1992); pages 14-15, Orgonomic Functionalism, volume 4, Wilhelm Reich Trust Fund, Rangeley, Maine.
24

Reich W (1973b); op cit, page 103.

25
24

Bynum W F et al (eds) (1983); MacMillan Dictionary of the History of Science, entries man-machine and reductionism.
MacMillan, London.

26
25

Ibid, page 104, and also Reich W (1973a); pages 237-245, The Development of
to the Understanding of Cancer.

Protozoa in Grass-Infusions: The Key

27
26

28

Reich W (1990); The Developmental History of Orgonomic Functionalism, in

pages 1-29, Vol 1, Spring 1990, Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust Fund, Rangeley, Maine.

Orgonomic Functionalism,

Reich W (1973b); op cit, chapter IV.

29
28

Reich W (1983); op cit, chapter VII, 6, Pleasure (Expansion) and Anxiety (Contraction): Primary Antithesis of
Vegetative Life.

30

Reich W (1990); op cit.

31
30

Reich W (1996); Orgonomic Functionalism in Non-Living Nature: Lumination and

Functionalism, Vol 6, 1996.

Attraction, in Orgonomic

32

Ibid.
33

Ibid, pages 9 17.

34
33

Reich W (1973a); op cit, chapter IV, 3, Enclosing the Radiation and Making It Objectively Visible.

35

Reich W (1983); op cit, page 275.

36

Reich W (1973a); op cit, page 5.

37

See reference 4.
38
38

Reich W (1973b); op cit, chapter IV, The Living Orgonome, and chapter V, Superimposition in Galactic Systems,

39
39

Illingworth V, (ed) (1991); Penguin Dictionary of Physics, thermodynamics, pages 483-484, Penguin Books, London.

40

Reich W (1973a); op cit, chapter IV, 4, The Orgone Accumulator.

41

Ibid.
42

Ibid, page 59.

43

Reich W (1999); American Odyssey, page 246, FSG.

44
44

Reich W (1999); American Odyssey, page 247, and personal communications from medical orgonomists.

45
45

Reich W (1973a); op cit, chapter VIII, 1, Orgonotic Cell Lumination: The Effect of the Orgone Accumulator and the
Therapeutic factor.

46

Ibid.
47

Reich W (1973b); op cit, chapter VI, 2, Movement.

48

Reich W (1973a); op cit, chapter IV, 3, Enclosing the Radiation and Making It Objectively Visible.
49
49

Reich W
New York.

(2000); The Principles of Cloudbusting, pages 441-447, in Selected Writings, Welcome Rain Publishing,

50

56 Reich W (1996); Orgonomic Functionalism in Non-Living Nature: Lumination and Attraction, in Orgonomic
Functionalism, Volume 6.
51

Reich W (1996); Orgonomic Functionalism, Volume 6, page 2.

52

See reference 4.
53

Reich W (2000); Selected Writings, V, Orgonomic Functionalism, pages 279-356, Welcome Rain Publishers, New York.
54

Meyerowitz J (1994); Before the Beginning of Time, rRp Publishers, Easton,

55

Pennsylvania.

Orgonomic Functionalism; published irregularly by the Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust

Rangeley, Maine.

Fund, Orgonon, PO Box 687,

56

56 Reich W (1990-1996); The Developmental History of Orgonomic Functionalism in

Volumes 1-4, 1990-1992, Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust Fund, Rangeley, Maine.

Orgonomic Functionalism,

57

Reich W (1994 and 1996); Orgonomic Functionalism in Non-Living Nature, Parts One and Two, in Orgonomic
Functionalism, Volumes 5 and 6, Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust, Rangeley, Maine.
FSG = Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York.

58
59