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Adventures in the Orgasmatron: Wilhelm Reich and the Invention of Sex - Hardcover

 
9780007181575: Adventures in the Orgasmatron: Wilhelm Reich and the Invention of Sex
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The untold story of Wilhelm Reich and the dawn of the sexual revolution. An illuminating, startling, at times bizarre story of sex and science, ecstasy and repression.

Adventures in the Orgasmatron is the untold story of the dawn of the sexual revolution in America – an illuminating, startling, at times bizarre story of sex and science, ecstasy and repression.
In the middle of the 20th century, the United States became an adoptive home for dozens of expatriated European thinkers, who saw this rich, young country ripe for sexual liberation. One of the most left-field of them was the Viennese psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, a disciple of Freud’s who had broken with the master. Reich’s own approach was based on his theories of the orgasm and sexual energy, which he dubbed ‘orgone energy’. Instead of the couch, he made use of a tall, slender construction of wood, metal, and steel wool, which he called the orgone box. A highly sexed man himself, Reich thought that a person who sat in the box could elevate their ‘orgastic potential’ ridding the body of repressive forces, improving sexual potency, and enhancing overall health.
After World War Two, Reich’s theories caught on among writers and artists, the early adopters of the counter-culture. Norman Mailer and Saul Bellow were amongst those for whom the orgone box represented a yearned-for synthesis of sexual and political liberation, and of physical science and psychology.
Meanwhile, Reich himself faced one debacle after another. Albert Einstein heard him out before rebuffing him. The FBI investigated him as a Communist sympathizer: it turned out that they were hunting the wrong man. The federal government banned the orgone box and tagged Reich as a fraud. There were claims of sexual misdeeds, and bouts of Reich’s own mental instability.
This is the story of the blossoming of the 20th century’s sexual revolution, and the unshackling of a repressed society, and sex before science.

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Review:
"How [Reich] went from being one of the inspirational figures of the psychoanalytic movement, as a clinician, a teacher and a writer, to being a cult figure on the margins of 1960s America is an extraordinary story, and Turner tells it with subtlety and panache. Turner has interviewed many people who knew Reich well, and he casts his net wide, setting Reich's quirks and crimes in their historical context so that a portrait of the man emerges rather than a diagnosis." --Adam Phillips, "The London Review of Books "" Very amusing and intelligent . . . This book will change the way in which we employ that increasingly lazy phrase 'thinking outside the box.'" --Christopher Hitchens, "The New York Times Book Review ""Christopher Turner's smart, thorough, wholly engaging book takes the reader on a tragicomic adventure of the history of an idea that became an object: Wilhelm Reich's orgone box. What began in Vienna with Sigmund Freud's belief that the sexually repressive mores of society can make people sick evolved into a utopian, quasi-scientific fantasy that spread through Europe as fascism rose and eventually crossed the ocean to the United States, where it would play a crucial role in what is now called the sexual revolution. Turner's measured account, bolstered by interviews with various characters close to the action, is a study in charisma, belief, and mental contagions that infected an entire culture, and which are still with us today." --Siri Hustvedt, author of "The Summer Without Men ""Turner has created a masterful synthesis of social history, psychosexual theory, obsession, and farce. The narrative is a madcap parade: Freud and Einstein, Leon Trotsky and Mabel Dodge, the Red Scare and UFOs, Ginsberg and Burroughs, Bellow and Mailer, Dwight MacDonald and James Baldwin, Woody Allen and Kurt Cobain--and Wilhelm Reich's quixotic hunt for the ideal orgasm." --David Friend, Creative Development Editor at "Vanity""Fair, " and author of "Wat
Synopsis:
A scintillatingly unusual approach to the history of sex and attitudes to sex in the twentieth century from a very promising new cultural historian. This is a book about the prehistory of perhaps the key revolution of the twentieth century -- the Sexual Revolution which broke out, first, in the USA. It traces the history of an idea that is born in the crucible of the new thinking of Freud and Jung, twisted into interesting, sometimes preposterous, new shapes by their disciples Reich, Marcuse and Perls (all of them German Jews who fled the Nazis and fetched up in America in mid-century), and then finds widespread expression in the new liberties announced and hungrily devoured by the ringleaders of the Sixties -- Mailer, Ginsberg, Goodman et al -- and their legion of happy followers. Christopher Turner, a very interesting young writer and thinker (& husband to the excellent Gaby Wood of the Observer), is proposing nothing short of a fascinatingly oblique new history of sex and sexuality in the twentieth century that will trace the roots of the freedoms so many in the American-led West enjoy to the hilt without a thought of how they became licensed so to do!

A fascinating debut from an interesting young British writer who can be seen going on to be a star in the Alain de Botton-to-Ben Rogers corner of the bookshop.

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  • PublisherFourth Estate
  • Publication date2011
  • ISBN 10 0007181574
  • ISBN 13 9780007181575
  • BindingHardcover
  • Edition number1
  • Number of pages544
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: fine. First edition. First edition. Fine in fine dust jacket. Hardcover. 532 pp. with bibliography, index. Illustrations. Fascinating story of Wilhelm Reich, a memeber of a group of dozens of expatriated European thinkers who came to the United States in the mid-20th century. Reich, a Viennese psychoanalyst, was one of the most offbeat of these; a Freud disciple, he brocke with the master and his own approach was based on theories of the orgasm and sexual energy. In his practice, he made use of a contraption of wood, metal and steel wool that he dubbed "the orgone box", claiming that by sitting in it, a person could elevate their "orgastic potential", thereby ridding the body of repressive forces, improving sexual potency and enhancing overall health. His theories caught on with such post WWII counter-culture writers and artists such as Burroughs, Ginsberg, Mailer and Bellow. Personally, he faced one debacle after another and eventually the federal government banned his device and branded him a fraud. Seller Inventory # E16482

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