Wilhelm Reich

(1897 - 1957)

In 1933 the psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich fled Germany after publishing a book attributing the rise of Nazism to mass sexual repression. He theorized the existence of orgone energy, derived from the word orgasm. This anti-entropic life force was closely associated with the libido. Reich moved to New York in 1939 and built his orgone accumulator, a large metal-lined box meant to attract orgone energy from the atmosphere. A federal court banned the sale of accumulators in 1954.