#but i think the context of reich is important to understand how sad this is

[holdoncallfailed]

“In fact the first time I ever saw [an orgone accumulator] was when Kurt Cobain tried out Burroughs’ rusty garden accumulator in Kansas in 1993. He was photographed waving through a porthole in the door: a melancholy, earthbound astronaut, frozen in time six months before his suicide. Every time I saw that photograph, it seemed retroactively to condemn Reich as a hopeless fraud.”

— (Everybody: A Book About Freedom, Olivia Laing)

the austrian psychoanalyst wilhelm reich (1897–1957) was once considered one of the most radical, forward-thinking figures in psychiatry; he is still known today for his writing on anti-fascism and marxist psychoanalysis and as a preeminent researcher of sexuality who coined the phrase “sexual revolution.” however, his legacy was marred by his obsessive interest in harnessing a kind of life force or energy which he called ‘orgone’. he believed that concentrating the orgone in a person could cure them of practically any ailment, particularly schizophrenia and cancer. this could be achieved by sitting naked inside an orgone accumulator, a five-foot tall box made of plywood and sheet iron, where the the concentration of orgone would supposedly be much higher. reich’s insistence on the efficacy of this pseudoscience and its false healing properties ultimately ruined his reputation.