Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. Quick note before we get
Speaker 1: this train rolling. Uh, we are doing a two part episode.
Speaker 1: You're hearing this on a Thursday. Part two is on
Speaker 1: a Tuesday. So this is our shout out to the weekend,
Speaker 1: not the singer. You know what, No, the singer looking
Speaker 1: him out for the weekend? What do you spell his
Speaker 1: name that way? He leaves out like and E and
Speaker 1: and and and what the week n n D week
Speaker 1: e k n d R. He isn't in there side
Speaker 1: too much of our ury for the vowels, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? They saved the time. Spelly the name
Speaker 1: and pass the savings onto you. Uh. Speaking of saving
Speaker 1: the show, shout out to our super producer, Mr Max Williams.
Speaker 1: They called me Ben No, we're working for the weekend.
Speaker 1: We yeah, it's but it's but it's Tuesday, so we
Speaker 1: got we gotta waits to go. Unfortunately, the weekend is okay.
Speaker 1: By the way, he always he sounds so sad in
Speaker 1: his songs, and yet he's he's he's a chieved such
Speaker 1: success a meteoric rise. I hope he can just take
Speaker 1: a step back and enjoy what he's created for himself
Speaker 1: and and and you know, cheer up a little bit.
Speaker 1: I'm waiting for his next album. We're talking about this
Speaker 1: last time I was hanging out with him. It's called
Speaker 1: t G I F Thank God it's Friday by the Week. All.
Speaker 1: It's all re workings of of of of nine these
Speaker 1: sitcom themes, the ones that described five. Yeah, I talked
Speaker 1: about this previously on sitcoms. I love this, Oh no way.
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was this show. But we're
Speaker 1: not talking about sitcoms today, though I would watch a
Speaker 1: sitcom about our protagonists. There is something you may have
Speaker 1: heard of once upon a time. Some call it vibes
Speaker 1: great films. Some call it a connection great film, Yes, agreed,
Speaker 1: and one guy called it We're going today is part
Speaker 1: one of our story. Odd the one and only villain
Speaker 1: Reich Bill Halm Reich and the sexual revolution baby that
Speaker 1: many thinkers, um philosophers, thought leaders credit this man with
Speaker 1: starting UH in no small part. And I did not
Speaker 1: quite realize that he was such an acolyte of Freud,
Speaker 1: who also gets a lot of credit for are you know,
Speaker 1: um starting the idea of thinking about where our sexual
Speaker 1: urges lead us in terms of our mental progression or
Speaker 1: lack there of stuntedness. I suppose arrested development all of that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, folks from you know as far Afield in
Speaker 1: terms of their work as James Baldwin two Susan Sun
Speaker 1: talk to Kate Bush, one of my favorite artists of
Speaker 1: all time. Um have read and written and kind of
Speaker 1: digested Wilhelm Reich's work and kind of made it their own.
Speaker 1: We're gonna get to all of these luminaries and how
Speaker 1: Right kind of affected their work, you know, as we
Speaker 1: go through this to part Also huge shout out to
Speaker 1: research Associate extraordinariy Zach Williams. He really, um, you know,
Speaker 1: went above and beyond for this one. This is a
Speaker 1: subject that we've covered briefly in our early episode about
Speaker 1: a scam, a rain making scam. We talk about right
Speaker 1: just in terms of his contribution to the idea of
Speaker 1: cloud seating cloud busting, uh in fact, and we also
Speaker 1: talked about that extensive, extensively stuff they don't want you
Speaker 1: to know back before, back before it was YouTube, when
Speaker 1: it was just Apple video or whatever. They called it
Speaker 1: back then. Also in our audio episodes for the show.
Speaker 1: We started doing podcasts there. But you're right, we have
Speaker 1: a we have a closeness with this man. Dare I
Speaker 1: say a vibe um? And it is true. We have
Speaker 1: to remember in his time he was born just on
Speaker 1: the cusp of the twentie century, right, he's born in
Speaker 1: March of We have to remember that during this time, uh,
Speaker 1: and during the time it was active, there were many
Speaker 1: uh let's call them pioneers of thought, right for good
Speaker 1: or for ill? Would you agree with that? Absolutely? Yeah.
Speaker 1: And again, like we mentioned Freud, we are going to
Speaker 1: hear Einstein wang And at some point this is important
Speaker 1: era in thought leadership beyond science. It really is the
Speaker 1: birth of kind of ecology which many would have you know,
Speaker 1: kind of maligned as being a pseudoscience at the time.
Speaker 1: It was not always thought of kindly by the scientific community.
Speaker 1: But we're gonna we're gonna explain, you know how, right
Speaker 1: kind of he pushed the boundaries of that to a degree.
Speaker 1: But you're right, then he was born March seven in
Speaker 1: dobro Zenia, which was a part of Galicia, which sounds
Speaker 1: like a made up place like from or something, but
Speaker 1: it's sounds like, yeah, that's right. You may not have
Speaker 1: heard of it though, because at the time that belonged
Speaker 1: to the Austrian Empire. I don't know that it exists anymore.
Speaker 1: But after his birth, his family, which was quite well
Speaker 1: to do, they moved to what you could maybe compare
Speaker 1: in an American equivalency to a ranch uh and this
Speaker 1: was in the Ukrainian part of Austria. Uh and that
Speaker 1: is where um Reich's father started to He became a
Speaker 1: cattle rancher for specifically the government, the German government. And
Speaker 1: this was a pretty relatively high post, even though the
Speaker 1: idea of being a cattle rancher, you know, we know
Speaker 1: that Hannibal Lector would have looked down his nose at that,
Speaker 1: but it was kind of a big deal. This put
Speaker 1: him in an upper echelon of German society. I think
Speaker 1: he looked down on on Shepherd's right, it's the silence.
Speaker 1: Was the labs not they were? They were We'll have
Speaker 1: to ask him. We'll have to have Hannibal Lector on
Speaker 1: the show. Anthony Hopkins, you were disinvited to Ridiculous History.
Speaker 1: You can only show up as your character Hannibal lector.
Speaker 1: And we also want to shout out, by the way,
Speaker 1: David Elkins from the New York Times, who wrote an
Speaker 1: excellent article back in ninety one, called Philim Reich the Psychoanalyst,
Speaker 1: as revolutionary. This goes into his early life in depth,
Speaker 1: and it's very well worth the read. Now, yes, you're right.
Speaker 1: The family was well to do, relatively speaking, and they
Speaker 1: had Jewish heritage, but if you asked them out there
Speaker 1: on the official German government cattle ranch, they would identify
Speaker 1: more with German culture. Wilhelm and his brother were not
Speaker 1: allowed to play with the poor kids in the neighborhood.
Speaker 1: They also, looking back, the brothers did not appear very
Speaker 1: close to each other. They were sort of alone in
Speaker 1: the crowd of their family. And since we're being a
Speaker 1: little Freudian folks, and since we're talking a little bit
Speaker 1: about psychoanalysis, we have to say that this is not
Speaker 1: us saying that. Some people would say that Reich's familial
Speaker 1: dynamic had an effect on him later in life. His
Speaker 1: dad was sort of domineering and a bit of a tyrant,
Speaker 1: and his mom was sort of cowed by him. And
Speaker 1: when Reich was young, when it was an adolescent, his
Speaker 1: mom had an affair with one of the tutors living
Speaker 1: with the family, and it was pretty common for well
Speaker 1: to do families back then to have tutors, right to
Speaker 1: have kind of these all pairs or the instructors rather
Speaker 1: than Cindy door kids to school. And there's an interesting
Speaker 1: line in the New York Times article. It's interesting. That's
Speaker 1: why I shout out Elkins here, the author of that article,
Speaker 1: because he says, this is a quote. He says it
Speaker 1: is likely that Right bores some responsibility for his father's
Speaker 1: discovery of the affair and for his mother's subsequent suicide.
Speaker 1: And Wright goes on to be married several times throughout
Speaker 1: the course of his life, and one of his spouses
Speaker 1: his third spouse, I'll say Ollendorff Reich will later write
Speaker 1: that she believes Reich may have felt some responsibility for
Speaker 1: his mother's death, and this may have been one of
Speaker 1: the things that stopped him from completing what she called
Speaker 1: his own analysis, like there were things he could never
Speaker 1: fully process after that moment. Yeah, that makes sense. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's a lot to contend with, and it's the
Speaker 1: kind of these kind of things that carry follow us
Speaker 1: from childhood into adulthood that we sometimes can never fully
Speaker 1: deal with or process unless we meet them head on,
Speaker 1: and sometimes it's very difficult to do. Uh. That is
Speaker 1: where therapy is a very important thing. But it wasn't
Speaker 1: necessarily something that he, as the analyst or as the
Speaker 1: therapist maybe was willing to look inwardly upon. Um. But
Speaker 1: you know, we'll get to more of that in a
Speaker 1: bid as well. UM. So he actually joined the military
Speaker 1: UM during World War One. He was an Austrian Army
Speaker 1: Officer UM and he served in Italy and again Elkin
Speaker 1: writes for The New York Times that he he liked it.
Speaker 1: He seemed that the military life seems to suit him.
Speaker 1: He was a man of many, Um, let's just say exuberances.
Speaker 1: You know. He he had a lot of gusto and
Speaker 1: get up and go. He was able to kind of
Speaker 1: give that a home, you know with some of this, uh,
Speaker 1: this kind of military life is regimented military life. Um.
Speaker 1: He was very intuitive. Any skill that he sought he
Speaker 1: could he could pick up pretty easily. I think we
Speaker 1: all know people like that where it's like borderline obnoxious,
Speaker 1: but like he could ride a horse. Uh, He's like,
Speaker 1: you know, he picked it up instantly. Um, and you
Speaker 1: think it's obnoxious when people are talented obnoxious. It's just
Speaker 1: like when people when there's some people that are just
Speaker 1: good at everything without very much effort. I say this,
Speaker 1: you know, half jokingly, but yeah, I mean it's like,
Speaker 1: must be nice, you know, to just be able to
Speaker 1: be like naturally gifted at all the things. They leave
Speaker 1: some for the rest of us. No, you're not gonna stay,
Speaker 1: so I say, yeah, it's so annoying, like you have
Speaker 1: that thing that you've been working on for a long time.
Speaker 1: Then look a lot of years like, oh that's interestingly,
Speaker 1: like three weeks later they're better out than you. And
Speaker 1: it's like I've been working on this for four years
Speaker 1: and you're already better than me. Maybe I need to
Speaker 1: work on this with a therapist. Also, yeah, I think
Speaker 1: we're probably gonna all find some things that are gonna
Speaker 1: bubble up about ourselves in this one. But yes, skiing,
Speaker 1: you know, horseback riding, piano, you know. Art um. He
Speaker 1: was also obviously very very gifted in academics. So as
Speaker 1: the person in ridiculous history who is not angry at
Speaker 1: other people doing well, let me shout out Wilhelm. He
Speaker 1: did some awesome stuff. He didn't find his true north
Speaker 1: right away. And this is something we see with many
Speaker 1: uh many people who are kind of like you guys said,
Speaker 1: kind of always talented. It's stuff, right. Their question becomes,
Speaker 1: am I a jack of all trades master of none?
Speaker 1: What is my true calling? First? Reich tries law. He
Speaker 1: tries the legal world, and he finds that it is boring,
Speaker 1: so he switches to the medical world. And this is
Speaker 1: you'll love this, Max. This is the moment where he
Speaker 1: takes a six year program in med school and finishes
Speaker 1: it in four years, and he uh he supports himself
Speaker 1: during the last few years by tutoring his fellow students.
Speaker 1: This is also where he meets his first spouse, Annie Pink.
Speaker 1: They marry in nineteen one. Yes, that's pink like the color,
Speaker 1: and Pink would go on to become an a well
Speaker 1: known analyst in her own life. But we need to
Speaker 1: backtrack a little before he meets Annie. Picture the meat
Speaker 1: cute rom com moment they have and then just rewind
Speaker 1: in the ridiculous history cinema of the mind to a
Speaker 1: pivotal moment that occurs just a few years earlier. He's
Speaker 1: still a student it's nineteen nineteen. But no, this is
Speaker 1: the crossroads moment hashtag bone, Thugs and harmony where Right
Speaker 1: attends a lecture that will change his life. He sits
Speaker 1: in on a little ted talk of the time about
Speaker 1: psycho analysis, and he is into it. He is ted
Speaker 1: toes down on this. He is so intrigued that he
Speaker 1: immediately decides he is going to be a psychiatrist. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, because again, this is kind of like the
Speaker 1: early days of this, uh, this discipline. And I've always
Speaker 1: kind of found psychiatry to be sort of an interesting
Speaker 1: combination of like medicine and philosophy. You know, it's like
Speaker 1: mind science of the mind or whatever like it is.
Speaker 1: It does it It kind of combines a lot of disciplines.
Speaker 1: And then him being this guy that was sort of
Speaker 1: all over the place and the stuff that he was
Speaker 1: interested in, you know, from art to philosophy to various
Speaker 1: academic studies. This made sense that it would kind of
Speaker 1: be this sort of fusion of a lot of things
Speaker 1: into one relatively new field. Not to mention that he
Speaker 1: was kind of a cutting edge guy, and it was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I want to get on the ground floor of this.
Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense. Um, So you're right. Um,
Speaker 1: it was something that really grabbed him right away. I
Speaker 1: was asking very profound questions that he himself had been asking. Uh.
Speaker 1: He found the study to be challenging and less kind
Speaker 1: of you know, paint by numbers than something like medicine
Speaker 1: or the law. Um, this was a very good fit
Speaker 1: for him, so he decided to pursue that with Gusto. Uh.
Speaker 1: And because of that kind of you know, enthusiasm that
Speaker 1: he put forth, it was noticed and he was very
Speaker 1: quickly admitted to the Vienna psycho Analytic Society and started
Speaker 1: seeing patients pretty quickly. And this will certainly be frowned
Speaker 1: on today. But before he completed his medical training, Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's talk a little more about Freud, because Freud influences
Speaker 1: Reich well before he um gets associated with a psychoanalytics society,
Speaker 1: Freud thought the world of Reich. He looked at him
Speaker 1: and said, this guy has potential, at least in the beginning,
Speaker 1: will get their folks in the nineteen twenties, and this
Speaker 1: comes from the Guardian, wonderful article by our pal Olivia Lang.
Speaker 1: We haven't met Olivia, but we love the way she writes.
Speaker 1: Right kind of does something heretical, right to the Viennese
Speaker 1: school of thoughts. At the time, he's listening to his
Speaker 1: patients speak and he keeps looking at their body language. Basically,
Speaker 1: they're laying on the couch or the chaise lounge, and
Speaker 1: they are rigid, they're guarded, and he thinks, maybe there's
Speaker 1: something else they're trying to commune. K. Perhaps it is
Speaker 1: not something one can articulate in words. Maybe he thinks
Speaker 1: Freud isn't going far enough. Maybe the past is not
Speaker 1: just hiding in your memories, your verbal like the memories
Speaker 1: you can vocalize, but maybe it's also hidden physically. Maybe
Speaker 1: your your your distress, your past experiences are somehow stowed
Speaker 1: away in your body, almost like a battery, you know,
Speaker 1: can store electricity. Uh. He he felt that this these
Speaker 1: emotions um manifested themselves as energy, as some sort of
Speaker 1: almost electrical current. I'm sort of editorializing here, but definitely
Speaker 1: a form of energy that could be in some ways
Speaker 1: store in the body and possibly harnessed or re you know,
Speaker 1: um directed, diverted UM. And this was sort of like this,
Speaker 1: this aha moment really was kind of the the genesis
Speaker 1: of his later Some would say more out there, you
Speaker 1: know studies. Yeah. Yeah, it's strange because he senses a
Speaker 1: tension in people, and he says, maybe this is a
Speaker 1: defensive move. Maybe this is some sort of instinct towards
Speaker 1: self preservation. Maybe someone is trying to restrain their anxiety,
Speaker 1: their rage, their anger, their sorrow, their sexual excitement. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he thinks, if you're in a place where these
Speaker 1: emotions are repressed, or where they are traumatic or very upsetting,
Speaker 1: then the only alternative in his mind is that the
Speaker 1: patient must tense up and try to bottle it down
Speaker 1: right deep inside. Why are you so tense? Why are
Speaker 1: you so rigid? That's just how I stand man. Uh.
Speaker 1: He believes that this shows evidence in the physicality of
Speaker 1: the patient, so he starts working with the patient's bodies.
Speaker 1: Now at this point, he's verging into territory, which is
Speaker 1: completely forbidden in psychoanalysis. He starts talking with patients about
Speaker 1: their bodies, their body language, and then he starts physically
Speaker 1: touching them. And surprise, surprise, at least in Reich's opinion,
Speaker 1: when he is physically touching folks, he starts putting his
Speaker 1: hands on what he sees as the physical expression of
Speaker 1: these emotions, right, expressions of fright, clinched fist, you know,
Speaker 1: tensed shoulders, that sort of stuff. And he believes that
Speaker 1: by touching them, he can bring these feelings to the
Speaker 1: surface it's the physical and emotional surface and release them.
Speaker 1: And it's a lot like um memory regression almost. You know.
Speaker 1: He feels that patients are experiencing memories they had kind
Speaker 1: of forgotten and they would release them upon this physical stimulation.
Speaker 1: This is true. And when they released those feelings, when
Speaker 1: they process that stuff and let it out, they would
Speaker 1: have something that that right called streaming, which is not
Speaker 1: a subscription service online. It's a pleasurable rippling feeling. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean there's a lot of parallel thought here, um
Speaker 1: that I think we we both see the idea of tension,
Speaker 1: you know, carrying stress in the body. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: that aligns with a lot of like kind of holistic
Speaker 1: met medicine and massage therapy and things like raiky and
Speaker 1: energy work and you know other things things that maybe
Speaker 1: you're not fully embraced all the time by the scientific community,
Speaker 1: even parts of scientology. The idea of storing these like
Speaker 1: theatan's or whatever, these like weird dead ghosts, uh, sorry
Speaker 1: spoiler alert for anyone that hasn't made it down the
Speaker 1: bridge yet. Um, but that stuff been online for years,
Speaker 1: um down the bridge of the bridge. But yeah, there
Speaker 1: is some parallel you know kind of stuff going on here. Um,
Speaker 1: the idea that these energies stored in your body or
Speaker 1: in your muscles or you know, are in some way
Speaker 1: a sign of repression of holding onto things, and that
Speaker 1: they can you know, get worse, um even just like
Speaker 1: you know tensions and your muscles that can be relieved
Speaker 1: by you know, pressure points and things like that. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's all kind of a similar ball of wax here.
Speaker 1: I think it's really interesting. Freud, on the other hand,
Speaker 1: he was not about the touchy touchy um. He was
Speaker 1: much more into you know, the pure psychoanalysis and and
Speaker 1: he believed that it all needed to be you know,
Speaker 1: on a purely um talking kind of talk therapy, the
Speaker 1: talking cure kind of modality. I guess he wrote that
Speaker 1: he was a little bit on the fence about you know,
Speaker 1: what Reich was doing. So Freud was he wasn't really
Speaker 1: against Reich's methods, but he he wasn't necessarily coming out
Speaker 1: in full support of them either. He clearly gave, you know,
Speaker 1: some sort of test that like, okay, you should try
Speaker 1: to explore this more. Uh, for the more kind of
Speaker 1: base level methods that Reich was exploring. With some of
Speaker 1: the more extreme methods he actually, you know fully kind
Speaker 1: of withheld his his support for. And then, by the way,
Speaker 1: we've got another great article to site here, the scientific
Speaker 1: Assassination of a sexual Revolutionary, How America interrupted Wilhelm Reich's
Speaker 1: Orgasmic Utopia by Jason Louve from Motherboard. M Yeah, out
Speaker 1: of vice. Yeah, this is the thing right now, at
Speaker 1: this period of time, in the nineteen winnings or so,
Speaker 1: Freud is a big deal. And if Freud likes you,
Speaker 1: that's great for your career. If Freud says you're middling,
Speaker 1: that's middling for your career. And god forbid, Sigmund have
Speaker 1: a problem with your work or you know what you
Speaker 1: see as your work. He didn't really take this streaming.
Speaker 1: So the psycho analytic community at this time, which we
Speaker 1: have to remember, is pretty young. Uh, they say accidental
Speaker 1: pun they're not j U n G there, y o
Speaker 1: U n G. Thank you, Max, I appreciate your support.
Speaker 1: So he So the thing is because Freud is objecting
Speaker 1: to some of Reich's thoughts. Here the overall community, which
Speaker 1: of which Freud is an integral part, the other psychoanalysts,
Speaker 1: they start saying, okay, well, let's dismiss right here. He's
Speaker 1: not on the same page, the same therapist couch as us.
Speaker 1: Things start to get worse and worse for Wilhelm. It's
Speaker 1: he's trying to deal with a backlash of his community saying, hey,
Speaker 1: you're a bit heretical, you're a bit crazy. And he
Speaker 1: asked Sigmund Freud to psychoanalyze him. It's like, Sigmund, big bro,
Speaker 1: maybe you can help me, Maybe you can help me
Speaker 1: figure out where I have misstepped. And this guy, who
Speaker 1: very much is like a father figure to Villam he says,
Speaker 1: uh no, can't do it. We don't know whether it's
Speaker 1: scheduling or a flat out refusal, but this really cut
Speaker 1: right to the war. And then right after that, his
Speaker 1: brother dies of tuberculosis. Right gets tuberculosis. He has to
Speaker 1: go to a sanitarium in Davos, Switzerland. This just like,
Speaker 1: it feels like this is a um a cavalcade of catastrophes.
Speaker 1: We promised he gets a little better, but right now
Speaker 1: he's in a sanitarium, he gets radicalized. I found this
Speaker 1: interesting knoll. He joins the Communist Party, and then he
Speaker 1: becomes an activist. That's right. And he you know, he
Speaker 1: was never really that guy per se. He was more
Speaker 1: into his studies than he was into politics. You know,
Speaker 1: he never really seemed to take a particular stance politically
Speaker 1: up until this point. But after witnessing some horrific violence
Speaker 1: at the hands of police during the July Revolt of
Speaker 1: nineteen seven in Vienna, where he saw police kill, shoot
Speaker 1: and kill eighty four workers and injure and another sick hundred,
Speaker 1: he decided that there was something very, very very off
Speaker 1: about this or this organization of of you know, power
Speaker 1: dynamic in the world, and he decided that he needed
Speaker 1: to speak out against it. He believed that the police
Speaker 1: were inherently a an occupying force, you know, very similar
Speaker 1: to a lot of the you know, defund the police
Speaker 1: kind of movement that we see today, you know, around
Speaker 1: a lot of police brutality. So he was very much
Speaker 1: ahead of ahead of the curve there, as he was
Speaker 1: with a lot of things. He Vice. This Vice article
Speaker 1: described him as thinking that the police weren't only brutal,
Speaker 1: he observed. But they were robotic as if in a trance. Uh,
Speaker 1: and also armored. So nothing worse than robots in a
Speaker 1: trance that have guns. Well, think about it, because it
Speaker 1: goes back to his original finding, right where he strayed
Speaker 1: from the path of established psychoanalysis. They're moving like robots.
Speaker 1: Their physicality is affected, perhaps by some emotional trauma or repression.
Speaker 1: That's where Reich's thoughts are headed. And he is he
Speaker 1: is now pulling demonstrations in the streets. He is thinking
Speaker 1: about all of these factors and he's doing a Charlie Day,
Speaker 1: always sunny in Philadelphia conspiracy board. You know, so picture
Speaker 1: picture young Billy. I'll call him and he's he's saying,
Speaker 1: you know what, economic repression, sexual repression. It's all related, man,
Speaker 1: It's all connected. This goes all the way to the
Speaker 1: top and the bottom. And I, he says, I am
Speaker 1: opening a series of clinics throughout Vienna, and I you know,
Speaker 1: I recently went to Austria for a thing. And it's nuts.
Speaker 1: How um, it's nuts how Freud is treated or regarded
Speaker 1: versus Philam Reich. And we're about to why his clinics
Speaker 1: that open up scandalizing established psycho analysis. They say, look,
Speaker 1: we'll give you the psychoanalysis you've come to love and expect.
Speaker 1: We will also give you some sex head and we
Speaker 1: will also supply contraceptives to young and working class people. Interesting.
Speaker 1: I didn't know this at the time. Back then, the
Speaker 1: folks who consider themselves more liberal would say, yes, you
Speaker 1: can have contraception, but only if you're already married, if
Speaker 1: you're in wedlock, that's kind of nuts, right, No, it's
Speaker 1: interesting that you mentioned to Ben that like this, he
Speaker 1: was getting pushed back from the psycho and now an
Speaker 1: analytical community, which was already kind of a controversial field.
Speaker 1: So he was sort of like the next level in
Speaker 1: in controversy surrounding this field, and he was sort of
Speaker 1: pushing the envelope even farther than than those folks. The
Speaker 1: more you know established psychoanalysts for wood and obviously it
Speaker 1: was very popular and it was very like in vogue
Speaker 1: of the time, but it was also, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: seen by some as dangerous. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, they're playing
Speaker 1: with live fire, and this community is exploring things that
Speaker 1: were considered maybe off limits or forbidden in polite conversation.
Speaker 1: And Reich moves from Austria to Germany. He moves to
Speaker 1: Berlin in n and uh, fellow history enthusiasts, you know
Speaker 1: that there was something evil brewing in Berlin at this time.
Speaker 1: It's the rise of the Nazi Party and rich um
Speaker 1: Reich is continuing to write and explore his theories and
Speaker 1: he showed them to his colleagues in the Communist Party
Speaker 1: and various Communist organizations, but they're not super into it.
Speaker 1: And he keeps making um, I don't want to say,
Speaker 1: making enemies, but he keeps sort of burning professional bridges
Speaker 1: because he's just too controversial. He has this contract with
Speaker 1: a publishing outfit, the International Psychoanalytic Publishers. They cancel the
Speaker 1: deal because he goes a little further with sex head
Speaker 1: than they are used to or comfortable with. He says, look,
Speaker 1: we're not going to do abstinence only education for teens
Speaker 1: for teenagers. Instead, we're gonna talk to them bluntly about
Speaker 1: sex and sexual interactions and contraceptives. Yeah, it reminds me
Speaker 1: of Kinsey. I think this is roughly around the same time.
Speaker 1: He might have even been a little later, but um,
Speaker 1: you know the American um, you know, sex psychologist. I
Speaker 1: guess he proposed was a lot of these same things,
Speaker 1: but I think a little bit later and even then
Speaker 1: he was persona on grata and a lot of circles.
Speaker 1: So this was absolutely above and beyond what society was
Speaker 1: willing to uh to to bear. And of course it's
Speaker 1: easy to spend some of this stuff out of context.
Speaker 1: The idea that he was advocating for, you know, young
Speaker 1: people having sex, it wasn't exactly what he was doing.
Speaker 1: He was advocating for young people to understand their bodies
Speaker 1: and to you know, have access to things that would
Speaker 1: allow them to have sex if they so choose, without consequences,
Speaker 1: without getting getting pregnant or I don't know that even
Speaker 1: std s were part of it as much at this
Speaker 1: time or the conversation, but it was more about just
Speaker 1: you know, having access to information than it was about
Speaker 1: encouraging some sort of like sexual free for all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he points out that there's a bit of hypocrisy,
Speaker 1: or at the very least there's a bit of u
Speaker 1: contradictory messaging that young people are receiving at this time
Speaker 1: in Europe. In N two, he makes this pamphlet called
Speaker 1: the Sexual Struggle of Youth, and it's his sort of
Speaker 1: condemnation of current society and the ways in which it
Speaker 1: makes it difficult for adolescence to navigate these huge changes
Speaker 1: in their lives. And I think that's a valid point.
Speaker 1: He's saying, Hey, these kids need help, right, And we
Speaker 1: have a quote from him. I'm not going to do
Speaker 1: a voice for it, but just you get a sense
Speaker 1: of the flavor of this. He says, young people are
Speaker 1: contaminated on the one hand by moralizers and advocates of abstinence,
Speaker 1: and on the other hand by pornographic literature. Both influences
Speaker 1: are extremely dangerous, the former no less than the latter.
Speaker 1: And at this point he's twenty seven. Yeah, my mind
Speaker 1: blowing to me whenever I read that. Just Wow, those
Speaker 1: guys really ahead of the curve. Um. But that that
Speaker 1: that one part of the quote that you'd read Ben,
Speaker 1: the idea of pornographic literature, that's really important because you know,
Speaker 1: as pro sex and sex positive as Reich was, he
Speaker 1: was vehemently anti pornography. He thought that was like a
Speaker 1: toxic influence um and and not something that was beneficial
Speaker 1: in any way, shape or form. That it was a
Speaker 1: repressive force rather than a liberating force. And he was
Speaker 1: also against the concept of bonogamy. He he argued against yeah,
Speaker 1: he said, uh. He said, you should have lasting, loving
Speaker 1: relationships that are held together by affection rather than legal
Speaker 1: can straints. And he said, you know, if you tried
Speaker 1: to do anything else, you're going to get tired of
Speaker 1: each other. Basically the phrase he uses is secual dulling. Yes,
Speaker 1: I feel like I have to say seck sex. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, you absolutely do and did beautifully. Um. He
Speaker 1: also was very uh, it was very It was a feminist.
Speaker 1: I mean, he he felt that women were kept down
Speaker 1: by economic dependence, you know, on men, and that it
Speaker 1: caused them to be kind of essentially like you know,
Speaker 1: in a in a carrying forward of the old ways,
Speaker 1: put into these kind of forced marriages or arranged marriages,
Speaker 1: even if they weren't politically arranged, they oftentimes were. I mean,
Speaker 1: if if wealthy families would would very oftentimes kind of
Speaker 1: force you know, their families to be united and there
Speaker 1: wasn't much choice. It wasn't the same as like you know,
Speaker 1: in the House of the Dragon or whatever, but it
Speaker 1: definitely had a an air of that kind of like
Speaker 1: you know, I will wed my first born first of
Speaker 1: his name to Marjorie of House you know whatever you
Speaker 1: know down the street, and you know it. Moneyed people
Speaker 1: wanted to marry their kids off too moneyed people so
Speaker 1: that they could carry on the legacy of money. Um
Speaker 1: and and the idea of a bloodline or whatever that
Speaker 1: is not something that has even gone to this day. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and he is uh, he is one of those guys
Speaker 1: who is proposing the idea that it takes a village, right, Like,
Speaker 1: if you have more parent figures, if you have more
Speaker 1: caretaker figures in a child's life, maybe you can help
Speaker 1: save them from some of the crazy stuff. You know.
Speaker 1: It reminds me of this wonderful Philip Larkin poem. It's
Speaker 1: a wonderful poem with a terrible name. It's called this
Speaker 1: be the Verse. Because we are family show, We're gonna
Speaker 1: have some beeps here. Courtesy of Mr Max Williams. Here's
Speaker 1: the poem, and this is something rich would agree with.
Speaker 1: Theyque up your mom and dad. They may not mean to,
Speaker 1: but they do. They fill you with the faults they
Speaker 1: had and add some extra just for you. But they
Speaker 1: were faked up in their turn by fools and old
Speaker 1: style hats and coats who half the time where soppy,
Speaker 1: stern and half at one another's throat. Man hands on
Speaker 1: misery to man, it deepens like a coastal shelf. Get
Speaker 1: out as early as you can, and don't have any
Speaker 1: kids yourself. Philip Larket, I feel like I feel like
Speaker 1: Rich would agree with him, because he's worried, like you're saying, all,
Speaker 1: he's worried about this intergenerational trauma, right, that's what we
Speaker 1: would call it today. Yeah, exactly. And then and we've
Speaker 1: talked about the idea of intergenerational trauma or even what
Speaker 1: is it epigenetics, the idea of trauma that can be
Speaker 1: carried you know, in the genes generationally, um, not just
Speaker 1: things that you witnessed while you're alive. Um, it actually
Speaker 1: can have you know. Again, this is also a kind
Speaker 1: of of a of a modern day burgeoning, sort of
Speaker 1: of just the plan. But it's the idea that you know,
Speaker 1: the formation of our very the very core of who
Speaker 1: we are, you know, in terms of like you know,
Speaker 1: chemically speaking, can be impacted by trauma of of of
Speaker 1: our forbears, you know. So yeah, again I keep saying this,
Speaker 1: but it's true. I mean, Reich really was very much
Speaker 1: had his figure on the pulse of a lot of
Speaker 1: really fascinating concepts that would later be given a lot
Speaker 1: more you know, kind of credence, and then taking a
Speaker 1: little more seriously mm hmmm. And he does have another
Speaker 1: run in with his former mentors Sigmund Freud in nine
Speaker 1: he meets uh, he meets Sigmund again, and he says,
Speaker 1: old Doc Freud is kind of looking like a caged
Speaker 1: animal to me, and he felt that he had sold out. Right,
Speaker 1: He's looking at his old authority figure, not with the
Speaker 1: eyes of a young, up and coming psychoanaly us, but
Speaker 1: now with the eyes of a revolutionary. Right. Uh, some
Speaker 1: would say a sexuan revolutionary. That's the last time I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say every time. That is the only way to
Speaker 1: pronounce it at this point. Um, I fully support you.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean he'd like, like we said at
Speaker 1: the top of the show, I mean, he more or
Speaker 1: less did kind of come up with this concept, the
Speaker 1: idea of the sexual revolution. He actually did coin that phrase, um,
Speaker 1: very very early on, to kind of be this catch
Speaker 1: all for all of those forms of repression, societal repression
Speaker 1: that that that targeted sexuality and the idea of sexual
Speaker 1: identity and the revolution would be a way of of
Speaker 1: not necessarily it's not like some orgiastic, you know thing exactly.
Speaker 1: It's not like free love or whatever like it would
Speaker 1: maybe be more associated with in the in the sixties,
Speaker 1: But it was about freeing yourself from those kind of
Speaker 1: tackles because he really felt that a lot of these
Speaker 1: sexual as did Freud. I mean, we know that Freud's
Speaker 1: whole deal was, you know, right, right, was the idea
Speaker 1: of of of of being repressed by by these sexual
Speaker 1: desires and it causing problems and you know, falling in
Speaker 1: love with your mother and all of this stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: But Rick took it a step further, and I would
Speaker 1: argue he kind of got it a little bit more.
Speaker 1: I think, so, yeah, I I agree with you. I
Speaker 1: think so an old because Rych said something that a
Speaker 1: lot of people weren't willing to admit. But it's something that,
Speaker 1: at least from my perspective, is absolutely true. He said, hey,
Speaker 1: sexiest part of life, and it's kind of dumb to
Speaker 1: ignore that. And I believe, says villehelm Reich, that having
Speaker 1: a good orgasm can make you feel better. He goes
Speaker 1: a little bit further then I just did with that statement.
Speaker 1: He says it can make the difference between sickness and health,
Speaker 1: and he starts saying it is a panacea for not
Speaker 1: just any psychological issues people are having, but physical issues
Speaker 1: as well, and he basically thinks if more people are
Speaker 1: having more pleasurable physical experiences, then it will help fight fascism.
Speaker 1: So again, like you were just saying no, when he
Speaker 1: says sexual revolutionary or sexual revolution, he is talking about
Speaker 1: revolution in geopolitical terms that like that's it's you free
Speaker 1: the body and then you know, you free the body politic. Basically, hey,
Speaker 1: that's good, that's very true. And the stakes couldn't have
Speaker 1: been higher, right, you know, in Germany at this time,
Speaker 1: I mean, the youth were being completely indoctrinated into this
Speaker 1: Nazi um you know ideology, which was one based on
Speaker 1: repression and hate. Even though it sort of preached the
Speaker 1: idea of like, oh, liberation through a purity of blood
Speaker 1: and like let's let get rid of anyone that opposes us,
Speaker 1: and like, you know, this idea of like we are
Speaker 1: so powerful as as these Aryan brothers and all of
Speaker 1: this stuff, but it really was just an aggressive form
Speaker 1: of of repression and indoctrination. That's Right, tensions are building
Speaker 1: in Right comes out with paper called The Function of
Speaker 1: the Orgasm, and he says that a lack of full
Speaker 1: and repeated sexual satisfaction leads to neurosis. And he's trying
Speaker 1: to reconcile the school of thought that we would call
Speaker 1: psychoanalysis and the school of thought that we would call Marxism.
Speaker 1: And he says that this repression is a curable condition.
Speaker 1: You can get rid of a lot of problems that
Speaker 1: you would not think are sexual nature. You can get
Speaker 1: rid of them through better sexual activity. People don't like this,
Speaker 1: they call it. You can see how this red meat
Speaker 1: for the press. Right. They they call it a genital utopia.
Speaker 1: And this is back when people were using the word
Speaker 1: utopia correctly and unattainable, inherently unattainable paradise. They also call
Speaker 1: him the profit of bigger, betteral orgasms. Uh. He gets
Speaker 1: kicked out of the Communist Party, He gets kicked out
Speaker 1: a psychoanalysis. He still is an important figurehead in both
Speaker 1: Berlin and Vienna, which means the Nazi party on the
Speaker 1: rise will have their eye on him. And given that
Speaker 1: Right has Jewish heritage, and given that the Nazis are monsters,
Speaker 1: They see him as a figurehead of a con spiracy
Speaker 1: cabal that for some reason wants to up end or
Speaker 1: undermine European society. His books start getting burned, along with
Speaker 1: the works of his one time mentor Sigmund Freud. Things
Speaker 1: are about to get harry, folks. This is where we
Speaker 1: end part one of this series, and uh, you know, no,
Speaker 1: I think we tease a little bit about part two,
Speaker 1: like we're we're stopping in media arrests here in the
Speaker 1: middle of the story. We're definitely it had a bit
Speaker 1: of a cliffhanger where things get real in terms of
Speaker 1: the Nazis, you know, coming for a Reich. This is
Speaker 1: really only the beginning. We're going to see Reich develop
Speaker 1: his philosophies and his sort of more out there, uh
Speaker 1: psychoanalytical you know, modalities into a full blown I don't
Speaker 1: know how you describe it, Ben School society. It really
Speaker 1: is something along the lines of the movements, Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it really is something along the lines of what you know, UM,
Speaker 1: a much hackier figure in UM in al Ron Hubbard
Speaker 1: did with scientology. But we're gonna see the full formation
Speaker 1: of this um, all the culmination of all of these
Speaker 1: ideas coming together with the idea of orgone energy, which
Speaker 1: we already kind of teat up a little bit at
Speaker 1: the very beginning of the show, and you may see
Speaker 1: a connection there with the word or gone and the
Speaker 1: idea of the function of the orgasm uh, and this
Speaker 1: notion that that Reich was really focused on this energy
Speaker 1: that was contained within the body and where does it go?
Speaker 1: What can you do with it? Those are questions we're
Speaker 1: gonna answer, at least in terms of you know, Reich's
Speaker 1: uh and many other great thinkers opinions on on those
Speaker 1: um in the next episode. Yeah. Well, also, just for fundsies,
Speaker 1: get into the etymology of the word orgasm. Pretty fascinating stuff, folks.
Speaker 1: We can't wait for you to be a part of
Speaker 1: the show. Thanks as always to our super producer, Mr
Speaker 1: Max Williams. Thanks to our composer Alex Williams. Thanks to
Speaker 1: Dylan Fagan, who inspired Max to make such a cool
Speaker 1: sound cue. Honestly, dude that I really enjoyed that one.
Speaker 1: It's good to do. Yeah, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Yeah, it's Dylan.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you guess so who's here? Oh he's my friend,
Speaker 1: good god, massive funk. Oh yeah, Dylan I sent a
Speaker 1: message to Andrew Howard, producer of Savor on Friday. I
Speaker 1: was like, Yeah, this is what happens when you let
Speaker 1: Max produce Ridiculous History on Friday. He gets weird and
Speaker 1: starts singing, Yeah, I love that Friday punchy Max energy.
Speaker 1: I live for it. So, you know, obviously, Hugh, thanks
Speaker 1: suproducer Max Williams and brother Alex Williams who composed this theme.
Speaker 1: Christopher Actiods, who we got to hang out with in
Speaker 1: the in the Flesh, Ben and I we were just
Speaker 1: in where were we have been? Dallas at a podcast
Speaker 1: movement um, and I think we may have armed twisted
Speaker 1: old Christopher into getting himself a microphone so we can
Speaker 1: have him on the show. More off him. Yeah, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I I threatened him. I'm not about saying it. So
Speaker 1: also thanks to uh, the ongoing threat to Ridiculous History,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland, a k a. The Quister Uh, and thanks
Speaker 1: to you know what, We're not gonna say thanks to
Speaker 1: Villiam Reich yet because his story is not over at
Speaker 1: this point. And of course we want to give a
Speaker 1: big shout out to all the psychologists and psychiatrists and
Speaker 1: therapist listening along today, some of this story may be familiar.
Speaker 1: We can't wait to hear your take on the story
Speaker 1: of Wilhelm Reich. Let us get to part two and
Speaker 1: let us know what you think. Over on Facebook, where
Speaker 1: we're ridiculous historians. That's right, you can find us there.
Speaker 1: You can find uh. We're working on getting some some
Speaker 1: show level social media happening on the Graham. But in
Speaker 1: the meantime, you can follow me exclusively on Instagram where
Speaker 1: I'm at. How now, Noel brown Man, I believe you've
Speaker 1: got a couple of presidencies on the worldwide webs It's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I classed up Instagram. You can find me in a
Speaker 1: burst of creativity being called at Ben Bulling bow L
Speaker 1: I n on Instagram. I recently discovered cheese flavored ice cream.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna be trying that out, So go to my Instagram.
Speaker 1: Uh you'll get the results as I do. Folks, wish
Speaker 1: me luck, but uh fortune flavors the bold hashtag no
Speaker 1: pun left behind. You can also find me on Twitter,
Speaker 1: where I'm app in bulling hs W. What's the big
Speaker 1: deal about Twitter? Ben? You might be saying, Well, the
Speaker 1: big deal about Twitter? Folks? If you're in the know.
Speaker 1: Is that that is one of the few places on
Speaker 1: the Internet where you can find Mr Max Williams. Yes,
Speaker 1: you can only find me in very specific parts of Twitter,
Speaker 1: such as, uh, you know, trolling Ben on his tweets,
Speaker 1: so you can find me there, or you can find
Speaker 1: me at at ahl Underscore Max Williams. All right, we're
Speaker 1: gonna psychoanalyze ourselves. Uh and and have a quick check
Speaker 1: in before we get to part two. Right, no anybody else?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm a chaise
Speaker 1: standing by. We'll see you next time. Folks. For more
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Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.