Arcanum Wholistic Clinic

Reich knew that our locus for misery lies in thwarted love and that the libido’s only master is love. He knew the biological connection between both rage and love and he knew how to harness this force endowed by God to liberate humans from their misery when he said, “For both pleasure and rage occur with an expansion of the life apparatus. Contraction is excluded. Plasmatic expansion, which finds its counterpart in contraction, rests in a deeper functioning level on the principle of general excitation. It will itself become, on a higher functioning level, the common functioning principle of the two, related variations: pleasure and rage. As a functioning principle, expansion is narrower than general excitation. Hence, it is a functioning principle of a ‘higher’ and with that of a ‘lesser’ order… ” Effective therapeutics need to know not only how to thread the needle, but how to gently yank the patient through to the other side. That can only be done effectively if the physician is wholly, lovingly, engaged with their own pleasure and rage function, expanding and contracting in full orgastic potency. Otherwise the patient’s red thread (with respect to effectively resolving their core karmic themes through Heilkünst treatment) lies with bated breath, never wholly threading the eye.

Reich was able to discern an autonomous energy that enlivens each human organism, which he termed “orgone energy.” These vortexes of energy can even be seen with the naked eye if you stare into the blue sky and shift your vision as if trying to pull forth a 3D image out of the ether. It is the energy that powers our grids, so to speak, and imbues the process of discernment or thought with levity as it is borne on the cusp of pleasure and anxiety. It pulsates through our bodies while our hearts answer in ram-pump style to bridle its thrust. Orgone is in our living foods and in our living water and we harness it to break down armoring so that we can know pure enthusiasm and joie de vivre. It would seem that we have both capacities from birth and it is up to our healthy organism to be able to straddle the divide between the two, holding the polarity in good stead for the whole of our lives. If this state of being is not attained, then the charge to the level of the skin is not achieved and the resultant rage will boomerang off of our armoring, back in on itself towards the core of our frustrated organism. In my imagination I feel it as the male side of our selves unable to purvey the female—our pleasure—to arrive at the contra-dance at the level of the skin. Once again we find the inner phenomenon simply mirrored in our ambient.

In orgone therapy, Heilkünst style, we are able to harness the “negative” anger expressed in the patient’s “force field” in order to break down the resistances, allowing the pleasurable streamings to be wholly carried to the surface of the human being; rage is employed to break down the barriers to allow for the healthy will to surrender to full orgastic potency. Reich describes this process in the following terms:

The common functioning principle of pleasure and rage is the expansion of the life apparatus. The antithesis of pleasure and rage is a result of the fact that in pleasure the biological excitation seizes the body surface, whereas in rage it mobilizes the deeper-lying musculature and does not reach the skin. The charge of the skin increases in pleasure and decreases in rage; this is demonstrable with an oscillograph. Since the skin surface functions mainly as a perceptual apparatus—the musculature, on the other hand, chie?y as an apparatus of movement and destruction—the difference between the goals of the pleasure and rage emotions can be explained: the goal of the ?rst is the factual sensation of pleasure at the surface of the organism, the goal of rage is motor activity and destruction of resistance.

In the case of the perpetuation of rage, the organism will “contract” and be hooked to activities called “secondary drives.” Secondary drives, which decrease skin charge and mobilize just the muscles (think of conditions like Cerebral Palsy, Multiple Sclerosis and Fibromyalgia, the latter affecting mostly women), can include compulsive shopping, drinking, chronic internet surfing, over-exercise, buying and selling materialistic commodities, chronic talking about others, masturbation, and illicit sex and pornography. Anxiety, more indicative of the Upper Man’s plight, is also contractive and often loops through the intellect perpetuating the plight of “doing.” It avoids the etiology of the much thrustier “terror and rage” found in the Nether Man of our being. Busyness is many modern folks’ drug of choice.

Pleasure and healthy excitation are “expansive,” and you will generally find the individual engaged in healthy life-giving pursuits, including acts of generative creativity aimed at “knowing the self” in an intimate way. Healthy individuals are generally engaged and engaging, lit up and illuminated in their eyes, skin, and body movements. They are more connected to resonant pursuits out of their relationship with their deeper inner selves. They are fulfilled solely by generative work and make up the community of artists, writers, poets, filmmakers, architects, or teachers. Others will describe them as inspiring and wonder how they find the time to dedicate themselves to such creative pursuits. They clearly demonstrate a deep love for themselves and generally feel a pleasurable compulsion to engage in activities that they feel ordained to cultivate. They move through life as a smooth vehicle, unfolding their innate inner wisdom or the “Sophia”-imbued self. Folks may describe these individuals as having an inner fount of original thoughts or “genius” that somehow propels them, and humanity, forward in some capacity. There is a supersensible aspect to them, as if they have access to some hidden fount of knowledge. The works that come forth from them often become generative emblems of their relationship to God. This proffered work is often full of “truths” for humanity and is like the gift that just keeps on giving, often invoking powerful feelings and thoughts in others. Folks such as Dr. Samuel Hahnemann, Rudolf Steiner, and Wilhelm Reich are lesser-known geniuses, perhaps, but most people can relate to the works of Leonardo Da Vinci, Charles Darwin, and Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe.