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Help us maintain the legacy of Wilhelm Reich by making a tax-deductible donation.

October 2010 Update
From
The Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust
& The Wilhelm Reich Museum

We thank you for your continual interest and support. For newcomers to our e-mail Update list, none of the names on this list--nor the names of any Museum visitors, conference attendees or bookstore customers--are shared with any other individuals or organizations. If at any time you wish to be removed from this list, please let us know.

Our previous Update (from August 2010) as well as all previous updates, dating from March 2004, available online. You can access them through the Updates option at the top of this page or via the Quick Links along the left side of the page. These Updates (50 of them) provide the best contemporaneous accounts of the Trust's ongoing activities over the past six years.

Invitation to Speak in Philadelphia
Invitation to Speak in Brazil
Projects in the Works
Recap of Our Summer Season
Summer Jazz at Orgonon
Man's Right to Know Now "Officially" on YouTube
Renting Our Cottages
Enjoy the Rangeley Lakes Region
We Have Speakers Available

A QUOTE FROM REICH

"I have to withdraw, always, again and again, in order to save my line of thought, my science. In order to save the energy principle of psychoanalysis, I had to withdraw from the psychoanalysts. In order to proceed in natural science, I had to withdraw from the technicians of natural science. In order to save the good family life, I had to withdraw twice from my own family. In order to fight my way through the cancer problem, I had to keep off the cancer researchers. Outside, always, and yet within. Always. What a life!"

              Journal entry – March 18, 1950

INVITATION TO SPEAK IN PHILADELPHIA

The Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust has been invited by the Institute for Orgonomic Science to deliver one of two afternoon talks in Philadelphia on "The Scientific Legacy of Wilhelm Reich, M.D." The date for these presentations is Saturday, November 13th.

Representing the Trust will be Kevin Hinchey who will join science historian and author James Strick, Ph.D., of Franklin and Marshall College for this event. Professor Strick's current book-in-progress--his third book--is about Reich's bion experiments on the origins of life. Mr. Hinchey, co-director of the Trust, is currently working on what will be the first full-length American documentary film about Reich. (See details for this event below.)

Two Afternoon Lectures on

THE SCIENTIFIC LEGACY OF WILHELM REICH, M.D.

First Lecture:

Second Lecture:

Where: Philadelphia Ethical Society
1906 Rittenhouse Square
Philadelphia, PA. 19103-5793

When: Saturday – November 13, 2010 from 1:00 – 4:00 p.m.

Cost: $25.00 General Admission. $5.00 for Students.

(All proceeds donated to The Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust for the preservation of Wilhelm Reich's Archives and the Wilhelm Reich Museum.)

Discounted parking will be available with Ethical Society validation at The Parkway parking garage, 1845 Walnut Street, Philadelphia.

For more information, contact the Institute for Orgonomic Science at (610) 896-4466 or e-mail: annals@orgonomicscience.org. 

INVITATION TO SPEAK IN BRAZIL

The Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust has been invited to deliver two talks in Brazil this October at the Second Congress of Core Energetics & First International Congress on Wilhelm Reich (II Congresso em Core Energetics & I Congresso Internacional Wilhelm Reich).

This three-day event will take place on October 30th, 31st, and November 1st (Saturday, Sunday and Monday) in Atibaia, a small city outside of São Paulo.

Representing the Trust will be Kevin Hinchey whose first talk, "The Legacy of Wilhelm Reich, M.D." will be given on Saturday, October 30th. His second talk, "The Opening of the Archives of Wilhelm Reich, M.D." will be delivered on Sunday, October 31st.

This invitation came from Monica Borine, who attended our 2009 Summer Conference at Orgonon, "From the Archives of the Orgone Institute". Monica is the Director of INIC (Institute of Integral Consciousness and Extension Education) and of ICEB (Institute of Core Energetics of Brazil). She is a clinical psychologist with degrees and post-graduate work in Mental Health Assessment, Neuropsychology, Yogatherapy, Core Energetics and Clinical Hypnosis.

Among some of the other presentations of the three-day conference are: "Revisiting the Research Methodology of Reich: The Scope and Applicability of Functional Orgonomy," "The Place of the Body in Psychotherapeutic Practice," "Thinking of Research with Concepts of Wilhelm Reich: Masters and PhDs in São Paulo University," and, from Monica Borine: "Corpo and Conscience" and "Contact With Space, UFOs and Emotional Plague." The complete conference brochure is available online.

PROJECTS-IN-THE-WORKS

• An American Documentary Film About Wilhelm Reich
  
  The Trust has been in discussions with several documentary film producers who have expressed interest in being involved in a full-length American documentary about Reich. The budget for a 90-100 minute documentary, produced in the style of PBS's American Experience, will be approximately $800-900,000.
  
  Reich is a largely unknown figure in the United States. Because of that, and the controversial nature of his life and work, this film does not lend itself to many traditional sources of documentary funding and sponsorship. Financial support for this endeavor will have to come from untraditional organizational and individual resources.
  
  Our strategy now is a fairly common one in documentary film production: (1) to seek a portion of the entire budget, known as "start-up funding", i.e. $200-250,000 (2) begin film production (3) assemble a short "promotional" version of the film (4) and use this promotional piece to secure the remaining funding.
  
  To secure the necessary "start-up funds," we are now in the process of putting together a more detailed film proposal that will clearly elucidate the film story itself: i.e. identifying key events in Reich's life and organizing them into a coherent film narrative.
  
  This revised proposal will also include the names of the film's project researchers in America and Europe, the names of interview subjects, and the names of key venues for location filming in New York City; Rangeley, Farmington, Portland and Ellsworth, Maine; Arizona; Washington, D.C.; and Europe.
  
  
• Creating a One-Semester College Course About Wilhelm Reich
  
  The Trust is in the earliest stages of creating an educational "product" or "prototype" that might, at some point in the future, help to bring Reich's legacy into a college curriculum--and in a way that addresses Reich's entire medical and scientific legacy, and not simply his psychiatric, political and social work.
  
  We already have a working group exchanging ideas for a one-semester, 14-week college course comprising a once-a-week, 2:45 hour session of lectures, reading assignments from Reich's writings, and assignments. And we are planning to meet around a table in January to continue our work on this "prototype" course.
  
  To the obvious questions, "What are the chances of any college or university wanting such a course? And who could even teach such a course?", our candid response is: "Excellent questions, to which we don't have the answers. But if the survivability of Reich's legacy for future generations depends on reaching new and younger people, then we need to at least create an intellectually honest model for teaching Reich in a higher-educational curriculum."
  
  This project grew out of several days of discussions this past July with a small group of supporters, in which we tackled critical concerns and questions about the future and survivability of Reich's legacy into the next generation. A specific purpose statement guided our discussions, ideas and strategies: "To make Wilhelm Reich's legacy alive, relevant, accessible and usable to a newer and younger audience in ways that encourage practical applications of Reich's scientific and medical work, so that the positive impact of Reich's legacy will benefit human health and the health of the planet for generations to come."
  
  
• A Future Book About the Origins, Development and Applications of the Orgone Energy Accumulator
  
  The orgone energy accumulator was Reich's principal scientific and medical tool. But even among many committed or favorably disposed to Reich's legacy, there seems to be little understanding of Reich's specific research and experimentation from February 1939 to October 1940 that led to the development of the first full-size orgone energy accumulator in October-November 1940.
  
  Few people seem to be aware that the orgone accumulator is, in fact, a modified Faraday cage, and that the development of the accumulator originated with Reich's observations and experiments using Faraday cages, a commonplace scientific apparatus. Faraday cages are described as "metallic enclosures that prevent the entry or escape of an electromagnetic field," which is precisely why Reich began experimenting with them after his discovery of the radiation phenomenon in bion cultures in January 1939 that he named "orgone energy."
  
  Reich published all of this research in the 1940s, first in the International Journal of Sex-Economy and Orgone Research, and later in The Cancer Biopathy. It's not always easy reading, but the information is there. And to make this critical information more accessible to a general readership, the Trust's next book will be a collection of "selected writings" about the orgone accumulator from Reich and his co-workers.
  
  This proposed volume will (1) explicate, in Reich's own words, his observations and experiments from February 1939 to October 1940 that led to the development of the orgone accumulator (2) his experiments with cancer mice using small orgone accumulators, starting in 1940 (3) Reich's medical case histories using large accumulators for patients with cancer and other diseases, starting in March 1941 (4) a compilation of medical case histories by Reich's co-workers, originally published in various issues of the Orgone Energy Bulletin.
  
  
• Reich's Books on Kindle
  
  In a recent conversation with our publisher Farrar, Straus & Giroux, we were told that FS&G has entered into agreements with Kindle, one of the leading e-book providers, to make many of FS&G's titles available on this popular digital platform. FS&G asked us if we'd like to have Reich's titles accessible on Kindle, to which we eagerly replied, "Yes, of course!" We'll have more details for you as they develop. 
  
  

RECAP OF OUR SUMMER SEASON

The autumn foliage is peaking now in Rangeley and the mountains of northwestern Maine. And the loons, so vocal this summer, are now quiet on Dodge Pond where our two rental cottages are located (Tamarack and Bunchberry). Maybe the loons are still here, or perhaps they're preparing to migrate to the Maine coast for the winter--it's sometimes hard to tell.

The Museum officially closed for the season on Sunday, September 26th, although we give Special Tours in the off-season: $100 for groups of up to ten people. We had about 740 visitors this summer. We've had better seasons and we've had worse, but this is certainly a respectable number of summer visitors. The important thing to point out, however, is that no matter how many visitors we have, the Museum loses money whenever we open its doors. No museum in the world survives on what its visitors pay for admissions. For example, it costs us $200 each day we open, and with $6.00 for adult admissions, we seldom take in $200 unless it's a particularly busy afternoon.

Our Museum Bookstore sales will occasionally make us profitable for a few days here and there. But when all is said and done, our Museum--like all museums--operates at a loss. This year, with admissions and Bookstore sales, we took in $8582.76. Our expenses in July, August and September totaled $9500. 

SUMMER JAZZ AT ORGONON

One of the highlights of our summer season was our July 14th "Evening of Music: Jazz and the Standard Song," a piano performance by Andy Kahn, one of the Trust's longtime supporters. Andy--who performed at our summer Evenings of Music in 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2009--returned this year for a solo repertoire featuring tunes from the songbooks of Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, George Gershwin, and Richard Rodgers and Lorenzo Hart.

Andy also played some of his favorite jazz selections, and throughout his performance shared anecdotes about all of the songs he had chosen. Andy's performance drew close to one hundred Rangeley residents and vacationers. All of Andy's musical events at Orgonon are an important part of our continual efforts to strengthen our ties with the Rangeley community. 

MAN'S RIGHT TO KNOW NOW "OFFICIALLY" ON YOUTUBE

The Trust recently opened a YouTube account to post our 28-minute biographical video, Man's Right to Know. We encourage all of you on Facebook to please post this link on your pages in an effort to create a viral awareness of factual, intellectually honest information about Reich and his legacy. And we hope that everyone else will forward our YouTube link to any friends or colleagues who you think might be interested.

For years, people have posted Man's Right to Know--or portions of it--on their own websites for their own purposes, a violation of copyright law. Unfortunately, violations like this are so prolific that there's little we can do to. We hope that our posting of Man's Right to Know, with our accompanying written statement (see below) will drive more people to accurate information and bookstore materials on our website.

Man's Right to Know was produced in 2002 as the opening video exhibit of the Visitor's Tour of the Wilhelm Reich Museum. Read the Trust's remarks about this production at: www.wilhelmreichmuseum.org/mrtk.html. For additional factual biographical information about Wilhelm Reich, M.D., please consult the brief biography of Wilhelm Reich on this website.

For additional factual biographical information about Wilhelm Reich, M.D., please go We will continue to sell DVDs of Man's Right to Know in our museum bookstore. The visual and audio quality of these DVDs is far superior to the YouTube version. 

A PERFECT WAY TO SUPPORT US – RENTING OUR HOUSEKEEPING COTTAGES AS YOUR GETAWAY SPOT

Are you looking for a peaceful, reasonably priced get-away? And did you know that it can be found right here at Orgonon?

Our two furnished housekeeping cottages offer quiet, seclusion and access to the shores of Dodge Pond, with a private dock for each cottage. And because these cottage rentals have become a substantial source of income for the Trust, what a perfect way to express your support in a practical way for all that we do.

Please take a look at the descriptions of our cottages.

The smaller cottage that we call "Bunchberry"--after the prolific, indigenous bunchberry plant--was originally built by Wilhelm Reich as a study in the 1940s. At that time, while in the Rangeley area, he resided at his cabin on Mooselookmeguntic Lake several miles to the west, and would retreat to this study at the abandoned farm property he bought in 1942 and which he named "Orgonon." Later, this study was expanded to become the home of Orgonon's first caretaker, Tom Ross, and his family.

The other cottage, which we call "Tamarack"--after one of our native trees--was built a few years after Bunchberry, is substantially larger, and provided living quarters for Reich and his family. In his writings and voice recordings, Reich refers to it as the "Lower Cabin" because of its location near Orgonon's south property line.

Both cottages have monitor and electric heat. In addition, Tamarack has a large stone fireplace and Bunchberry has a wood-burning stove. Wood is provided for both cottages. Bunchberry sleeps four while Tamarack sleeps eight. Both have complete kitchen facilities and linens. Children's furniture is available. Pets are welcome. Each cottage has DirecTV and a DVD player.

And did we mention that you can hear the hauntingly beautiful call of the loons who live on Dodge Pond? Bunchberry is available year-round. Tamarack is available year-round except for a four-week period from mid-June to mid-July when it is donated to the Adoptive and Foster Families of Maine. For more information, call (207) 864-3443.  

A PERFECT WAY TO ENJOY THE RANGELEY LAKES REGION

Both cottages are located on the west shore of Dodge Pond with convenient access to all that the Rangeley Lakes Region has to offer:

• Next to snowmobile trail ITS 89.
  
  
• 3.5 miles to Rangeley Village, where there is ample dining and shopping.
  
  
• Easy access to the six Rangeley Lakes--Rangeley, Mooselookmeguntic, Cupsuptic, Upper Richardson, Lower Richardson, Umbagog--plus the Kennebago River and Cupsuptic River.
  
  
• Less than 10 miles to the Appalachian Trail.
  
  
• 10 miles to the Saddleback Mountain Ski Area.
  
  
• Four-season outdoor recreation: hiking, swimming, boating, fishing, downhill and cross-country skiing, snowmobiling.
  
  
• Snowshoeing, sledding and cross-country skiing on the Orgonon property.
  
  
• Deer, moose and many small animals frequent the area.  
  
  

WE HAVE SPEAKERS AVAILABLE

Are you planning an event or are you part of an organization where you'd like to hear more about the life and legacy of Wilhelm Reich? Or more about The Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust or The Wilhelm Reich Museum? The Trust has available speakers to address your group. For more details, please contact us at: wreich@rangeley.org.

UNTIL NEXT MONTH

Please share this Update with colleagues, friends, and family who may be interested in the life and legacy of Wilhelm Reich and the good works of The Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust and The Wilhelm Reich Museum. Thank you again for your friendship and support.