Book Review Report

by Stergios Tsiormpatzis

James E. Strick: Wilhelm Reich, Biologist, Cambridge, MA, Harvard

University Press, April 2015, pp. 480 (Hardcover, 9780674736092)

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.1.1713.2003

11/08/2015
Finland
 Stergios Tsiormpatzis: Book Review Report, 11/08/2015, Finland

James E. Strick, Wilhelm Reich, Biologist, Cambridge, MA, Harvard, University

Press, April 2015, pp. 480 (Hardcover, 9780674736092)

Introduction

Who was Wilhelm Reich? Was he a crackpot charlatan as he is usually depicted? Or was
he a genius scientist, far ahead his time as most of his followers claim? Whichever of the
two options you choose, you are not going to find evidence to support your claim in the
latest book by James E. Strick, published recently by the Harvard University Press under
the title Wilhelm Reich, Biologist.

About the Author

James E. Strick is Associate Professor in the Department of Earth and Environment and
Chair of the Program in Science, Technology and Society at Franklin and Marshall College
in Lancaster, PA. He is trained in microbiology and in the history of science. His interest in
the history of ideas and experiments about the origin of life, isre evident in his previous
publications that include Sparks of Life: Darwinism and the Victorian Debates over
Spontaneous Generation (Strick, 2000) and, co-authored with Steven Dick, The Living
Universe: NASA and the Development of Astrobiology (Dick & Strick, 2004). In addition,
this interest is obvious in his editorial work of the two 6-volumes primary sources
collections entitled Evolution and the Spontaneous Generation Debate (Strick, 2001) and
The Origin of Life Debate: Molecules, Cells, and Generation (Strick, 2004). He has also
contributed to the Encyclopedia of Microbiology (Strick, 2009b) an article on Spontaneous
Generation. Furthermore, he has contribute chapters in the edited volume Exploring the
Origin, Extent, and Future of Life: Philosophical, Ethical, and Theological Perspectives
(Strick, 2009a) and Genesis - In The Beginning: Precursors of Life, Chemical Models and
Early Biological Evolution (Strick, 2012a). He has also written the introduction to the
Where's the Truth? (Strick, 2012b), the last part of a 4-volume collection of Wilhelm
Reich's letters and journals, which includes archival material from the last period of Reich's
life and work, 1948-1957. Scientific papers of his have been published in peer-reviewed
journals including the Journal of the History of Biology, Endeavour, The British Journal for
the History of Science, The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine, Journal of Natural

James E. Strick: Wilhelm Reich, Biologist 1/10

 Stergios Tsiormpatzis: Book Review Report, 11/08/2015, Finland

Resources and Life Sciences Education, Soil Biology and Biochemistry, Isis, Studies in
History and Philosophy of Science and Annals of Science. He has been an advisory editor
of Isis and a member of the History of Science Society Council. Furthermore, he is a
member of the Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust Archives Committee. He has taught a college
level one-semester course (in 2013 and 2015) on Wilhelm Reich, based on a curriculum
prepared with other academics at the Wilhelm Reich Museum in 2012.

About the Book

The book is a kind of scientific biography, both of the laboratory work of Wilhelm Reich
during the period 1934-1939 and of the scientific community of this same period. Strick
argues that Reich's laboratory work during the 1930s is worthy of reconsideration by the
contemporary scientific community. In order to achieve his aims, he has consult an
incredible amount of primary archival resources in both the US and Europe, including the
Archives of the Orgone Institute at the Countway Library of Medicine in Boston. In this
way, he reconstructs the social atmosphere where Reich was working to demonstrate to
the reader that the dismissal of his work by some of his scientific contemporaries was not
because of his laboratory inadequacies but instead was due primarily to social reasons.
His main audience, the life scientists of the 21 st century, are invited to re-evaluate Wilhelm
Reich as a serious laboratory scientist of his time. Hence the book's title, Wilhelm Reich,
Biologist.

The book begins with a rich introduction by the author, that gives the context for
consideration for the work of Reich in his own time and now, and evaluating the
characteristic absence of interest in this work by serious contemporary researchers:

When it comes to Wilhelm Reich, there seem to be only two kind of audiences
discussing his work: cheerleaders and, far more often, repeaters of old false
slanders. Both live in echo chambers. (Strick, 2015, p.3)

Strick positions his book as similar to biographical projects that use scientist's stories as a
lens that brings into focus much in the politics, psychiatry and life sciences of the same
period. (Strick, 2015, p.4). Thus we see him present not only the clinical and logical
thread that lead a successful medical doctor and psychoanalyst to the realm of biophysical
sciences but the roles that his political involvement, his usage of dialectical materialism

James E. Strick: Wilhelm Reich, Biologist 2/10

 Stergios Tsiormpatzis: Book Review Report, 11/08/2015, Finland

and his progressive sexual theories could have played in the strong opposition to his
laboratory work. Furthermore, it become clear in the book that the competition inside the
scientific community during the Great Depression of the 1930's likely also played a
significant role in the discrediting and isolation of Reich during his six years in
Scandinavia.

In the life sciences core of the book, having studied Reich's laboratory notes on the Bion
experiments, including details on staining and media preparation protocols and which have
only recently become available to scholars (Anonymous, 2009) side by side with Reich's
principal book on this work (Reich, 1979), Strick exposes many details that illustrate
Reich's advanced methods of microscopy and photomicrography that were difficult to
achiev not only for his contemporary critics but for some of his co-workers also. Confident
that Reich during his laboratory work did indeed observe something important, he argues
that some modern interpretations might help to explain his findings.

The structure of the book is very friendly to the reader, with seven main chapters, each
one divided in smaller sections with their own titles. In the first chapter, Strick examines
the medical and Marxian background of Reich's early carrier and the origins of his
research program. He then dives in the mechanism vitalism debate in biological
sciences, to explain Reich's third way, giving us a very interesting account of the
scientific debates at the end of the 19 th and beginning of the 20th century. He examines the
ideas that influenced Reich during his student years, illustrating in a very lively way some
of the key scientists involved in the debate. The concept of a specific biological energy
that was a constant in the interpretations that Reich gave to the results of his laboratory
experiments, is also presented here. Furthermore, he presents the so-called medical
holism, a well defined tradition in the 1930's, and the logic of dialectical materialism, both
of which contributed to Reich's scientific development. By giving a detailed view of the
uses of dialectical materialism by some of Reich's scientific contemporaries, Strick also
describe how Reich's use of dialectical materialism was different from their's. Finally, the
first chapter concludes with a description of the clinical facts and the theories that first
drove Reich to move to the laboratory work, beginning with his bioelectric experiments on
sexuality and anxiety.

The second chapter is mostly a descriptive account of the bioelectrical experiments and
the logic that led from them to the bion experiments. Yet, the story is more interesting since

James E. Strick: Wilhelm Reich, Biologist 3/10

 Stergios Tsiormpatzis: Book Review Report, 11/08/2015, Finland

it does not offer only details of the sequence of findings but also position them, once again,
in the broader context of the scientific movements of this time. Furthermore, those readers
familiar with the relevant laboratory techniques who have previously worked on bion
experiments, in this chapter can begin to appreciate the potential scientific importance of
the primary archival material that Strick has uncovered during his research for this book,
especially the laboratory notebooks and the correspondence kept in the Archives of the
Orgone Institute.

Continuing to the spirit of the second chapter, the third chapter introduces one of the
most important scientific relationships that Reich developed during that period, with the
philosopher Roger Du Teil. Du Teil was well connected with the academic circles in France
and, as one can read in this chapter, he begins doing in a very creative way independent
control experiments. He visited Reich's laboratory in Oslo to study the techniques that
Reich used and also expended much effort to interest the French scientific community in
the work of Reich. Strick follows closely the development of this collaboration examining
also issues that arise from the efforts of Du Teil to independently replicate Reich's
experiments. Thus, in this chapter the author discusses Brownian Movement as well as
technical issues such as the high magnification microscopy techniques that Reich was
able to use, thanks to the extremely high quality state-of-the-art (and expensive)
equipments that he was able to include in his laboratory. The chapter concludes with the
further developments of the bion Experiment that occured during different control efforts,
naturally leading Reich to another step in his work, the creation of bions from incandescent
solids. During the whole examination of this period, archival sources are used to support
the reconstruction of the actual story and the environment of the laboratory work.

In chapter four, Strick steps back from the lab to interpret Reich as an independent
scientist. Here, he takes another look in Reich's usage of dialectical materialism, while he
also explores the concepts of colloid chemistry that Reich used while interpreting his bion
experiments. Furthermore, we are reminded again of the political stance that Reich
considered connected with science. Strick also examines the responses of contemporary
dialectical materialist scientists, such as J. D. Bernal, to his work. Strick argues that Reich
had a unique approach to the life sciences that recognized a role for intuition in research,
very often being the first step which would later have to be tested by careful experimental
controls. Furthermore, seeing in Reich an independent scientist with a unique background

James E. Strick: Wilhelm Reich, Biologist 4/10

 Stergios Tsiormpatzis: Book Review Report, 11/08/2015, Finland

in other disciplines, Strick brings to the forefront how Reich's bion research led him to
cancer research and the conflicting opinions that developed between Reich and Du Teil
concerning such further steps into existing scientific disciplines. Actually, now we can
already recognize the main difference between Reich's approach and the established way
that most scientists would likely take in similar situations, with Du Teil's opinions being very
close to those of the average scientist of our day working in formal academic institutions.

Following the thread of the actual research in time, chapter five returns to the laboratory
to investigate the logical development of Reich's theory of cancer from the bion
experiments. Here Strick describes Reich's integration of Otto Warburg's theory of cancer
as a result of anaerobic cell respiration with his own clinical findings on disturbed
respiration on patients. The series of bion experiments that led to the development of the
so-called Reich blood tests is also presented, as well as an overview of the concept of
biopathies and the possible relevance of this research to more recent understandings of
disease. Furthermore, the difficulties that Reich began to face from the scientific
community in Norway unfold as well as his realization of the role that profit plays in
research.

Logically, chapter six is devoted to the opposition that the bion experiments encountered,
shedding new light on a history well known in the circles of Reich's supporters as the
Norwegian campaign. Here Strick presents the role that competition for Rockefeller
Foundation grants might have played in this campaign against Reich as well as the role of
the politics of eugenics and sterilization in Norway. The support offered Reich by some
scientists and a plan finally aborted - for an International Commission to investigate the
bion experiments is also presented. During that time, we also follow the growing tension in
the relationship between Reich and Du Teil, and more importantly, the troubles that Du Teil
had that led to him being fired from his job in the university (which suggested that he
perhaps wasn't a tenured professor). In this chapter, Strick also presents interesting data
from an investigation that the US State Department had ordered in 1951-52. This
investigation included interviews conducted by an official at the US embassy in Oslo with
key scientific figures of the Norwegian campaign of the 1930's. The results suggest that
not only scientific considerations were behind this campaign, bringing in light, among other
things, the importance of conservative sexual ideas to some of the opponents of Reich.
The chapter concludes with a comprehensive description of the shift that occurred

James E. Strick: Wilhelm Reich, Biologist 5/10

 Stergios Tsiormpatzis: Book Review Report, 11/08/2015, Finland

throughout the life sciences research agenda in the 1930's, making very difficult for current
scholars to even understand the logic of Reich's research program.

The last part of this story is presented in chapter seven, where Reich's discovery of what
he later named Orgone energy is described. In the lab, we learn about the SAPA bion
cultures, produced from sea sand, and their radiation. This series of experiments, led
Reich to collaborate with the Dutch physicist Willem Frederik Bon in a relationship similar
in some respects to Reich's earlier collaboration with Du Teil. In addition to the laboratory
details about the cultures and the electroscope experiments, description of thoughts
regarding profiting are presented, similar to the ones that Reich share earlier with Du Teil.
We also follow Reich during his departure in the United States, with new ideas concerning
the role of high atmospheric humidity in problems encountered by Bon in reproducing the
SAPA results.

In the Epilogue of his book, Strick reviews some recent discussions of reductionism in the
life sciences as well as more recent experimental work related to the bion experiments of
Reich.

The book concludes with a glossary of terms, a list of Reich's different bion preparation
types, a biographical index of the most important persons involved in the story, a
chronology of events, a list of the periodicals that were important during the Norwegian
Campaign and a detailed list of the primary archival resources that were consulted during
the writing of the work. Furthermore, the book has a lengthy section of detailed end-notes
(more than 100 pages!) that offer details for the interested reader who might want to study
the biological work of Wilhelm Reich more deeply. Finally, there is a detailed and accurate
index.

The design and printing of the book adheres to the standard of Harvard University Press
publications. A fabric hardcover with a nice jacket, featuring a photograph of Wilhelm Reich
and Roger Du Teil standing at Reich's in Oslo in 1937. The jacket include a short
description, providing an overview of the disciplines where Reich's contribution is well
recognized today as well as a presentation of the main argument of Strick, ie that the main
reason that Reich's laboratory work was considered dismissed was antipathy toward his
sexual theories and his Marxist background. Furthermore, it includes the statement that
Reich was perhaps the only writer whose scientific works were burned by both the Nazis

James E. Strick: Wilhelm Reich, Biologist 6/10

 Stergios Tsiormpatzis: Book Review Report, 11/08/2015, Finland

and the U.S. government, a statement that will attract the interest not only of readers
interested in the history of science per se, but also anyone interested in the interplay
between science and social or political forces. Inside the book, there are 35 illustrations
and tables, mostly photos of the main characters involved and documents from the
Archives of the Orgone Institute. Furthermore, a website
(http://www.wilhelmreichbiologist.org/) accompanies the book, with a very interesting
Resources section, where the author provides access to a growing collection of original (or
translated) documents related to the story of the book.

What I Got out of the Book

First of all I shall keep the book next to the English translation of the original publication on
the bion experiments by Reich (Reich, 1979) as well as with two other recent publications
that examine the bion experiments in parallel to the work of Robert Brown (Jones, 2013,
Maglione, 2014). If nothing else, it will be more than interesting to attempt replication of
some of Reich's bion experiments using information provided for the first time in Strick's
book. In other words, this book may provide key laboratory details missing from Reich's
published accounts that could enable the amateur or professional researcher to achieve
better results in attempted replications of the bion experiments. As Strick mentions in the
book, the whole laboratory cookbook of media recipes that he found in the Archives of
the Orgone Institute is now available in bound photocopy through the Wilhelm Reich
Museum Bookstore (Anonymous, 2009). However, it is in German and mostly handwritten,
so it is not very handy for the readers of other languages. Much better than a cookbook
(that we can hope that one day will be published also in English language), Strick in the
book compares the details from all available sources (published writings, the cookbook,
letters, diaries, laboratory notebooks etc.) providing details that every person wanting to
replicate the bion experiments will find invaluable.

Now I return to the way I began this review: Reich was neither a crackpot nor a semi-god,
but he was part of the scientific movement of his time. His work was not the product of
madness or merely the intuition of a genius, but part of the scientific production of the
society during this period. Even if one intended audience for this book is the contemporary
life science researcher or student, one may be very confident that it will also reach the

James E. Strick: Wilhelm Reich, Biologist 7/10

 Stergios Tsiormpatzis: Book Review Report, 11/08/2015, Finland

Reichian cheerleaders who portrait Reich with the glorious crown of the hunted genius. If
the book is able to serve science well by arousing an interest in a neutral but rigorous
laboratory re-evaluation by the former audience, it will even better be able to serve science
by dispelling the blind worship of Reich by the second audience, holding his research
legacy to the standards of real science and all of the problems it poses. Reich was not a
victim of a conspiracy (at least at this period of his life), even if people plotted against his
research and his radical ideas. Reich was a victim of the usual factors that affect scientific
research even today: social struggles, scientific formalism, dominant paradigms,
competition for grants and underlying assumptions.

Finally, I retain from the book an appreciation of the further details presented in the book
that connect the scientific methodology of Reich with dialectical materialism and Marxism.
Strick presents some aspects of this relation, supporting the idea that during these years
the characteristics that Reich brought to his method of thinking alienates him from the
dialectical materialistic methodology as espoused by others. Even if Strick hints as what
may be his own sympathies (e.g. in the accompanying website, the first bookshop featured
is the radical Red Emma's, which is self-described as a worker cooperative and a family
of projects dedicated to autonomy, sustainability, participatory democracy, and solidarity),
he does not take the next step by connecting the changes that Reich brought with a further
development of dialectical materialism. This is something that Reich himself hadn't declare
either. Yet one should not forget that dialectical materialism at this time was strongly
associated with the authoritarian (or, so-called Stalinist) communist parties from which
Reich had already distanced himself. Considering also the claim of Reich's student Dr.
Sobey that Reich himself declare that Im still a Marxist even in the latest years of his life
(Sobey, 2011) as well as the anti-authoritarian developments in dialectical materialism that
are in contrast with the dogmatic version of the authoritarian parties, one could argue that
even if Reich abandoned the terminology of dialectical materialism, in fact he remained
true to this logical method and he further developed it with his understanding of the
concept of simultaneous identity and antithesis, in light of what he called the Common
Functioning Principle.

James E. Strick: Wilhelm Reich, Biologist 8/10

 Stergios Tsiormpatzis: Book Review Report, 11/08/2015, Finland

Conclusion

With this monumental work, James Strick, if nothing else, has succeeded in making a well
supported argument for the necessity to re-evaluate scientifically the biological work of
Wilhelm Reich, removing the blind of willful ignorance, falsification and hero-worship. This
task, as the book suggests, could open new possibilities for the understanding of disease
and of the origin of life. The book, by its existence, stresses the importance of open
archives, inviting an even more open-access policy for the Archives of the Orgone
Institute, similar to the archives of other important scientists like, Newton, Darwin or
Einstein that made their works available online. Furthermore, after Strick has succeeded in
publishing this work, there are no more excuses either for the slanders against Reich's
work to continue to circulate, or for the researchers involved in the replication (or
advancement as claimed by some) of his work to kept outside of academia. It's all matter
of quality and Strick's book indeed sets the bar very high.

James E. Strick: Wilhelm Reich, Biologist 9/10

 Stergios Tsiormpatzis: Book Review Report, 11/08/2015, Finland

References

Anonymous (2009) From The Archives of the Orgone Institute: A Laboratory Manual for Bion
Experiments, Notes by a Laboratory Worker, Norway February, 1938, Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust,
Rangeley, ME, USA.
Dick, S. J. and Strick, J. E. (2004) The living universe: NASA and the development of astrobiology.
New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Jones, P. (2013) Artificers of Fraud: The Origin of Life and Scientific Deception. Preston, UK:
Orgonomy UK.
Maglione, R. (2014) The Motions of Life: Was Einstein Really Modeling Brownian Movement?
Reich, W. (1979) The Bion Experiments: On the Origin of Life. Edited by Mary Boyd Higgins and
Chester M. Raphael. Translated by Derek Jordan and Inge Jordan. New York: Farrar, Straus and
Giroux.
Sobey, V. (2011) The Scientific Basis of Orgonomy (script). Available at:
http://www.psychorgone.com/history/the-scientific-basis-for-orgonomy-script (Accessed: 11 August
2015).
Strick, J. E. (2009a) From Aristotle to Darwin, to Freeman Dyson: changing definitions of life
viewed in a historical context, in Bertka, C. M. (ed.) Exploring the origin, extent, and future of life:
philosophical, ethical, and theological perspectives. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
pp. 4760.
Strick, J. E. (2009b) Spontaneous Generation, in Encyclopedia of microbiology. Amsterdam:
Elsevier/Academic Press, pp. 8090.
Strick, J. E. (2012a) A History of Origin of Life Ideas from Darwin to NASA, in Seckbach, J. (ed.)
Genesis - in the beginning: precursors of life, chemical models and early biological evolution.
Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 907921.
Strick, J. E. (2012b) Introduction, in Higgins, M. B. (ed.) Wilhelm Reich: Wheres the Truth?
Letters and Journals, 1948-1957. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, pp. viix.
Strick, J. E. (2015) Wilhelm Reich, Biologist. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Strick, J. E. (ed.) (2000) Sparks of life: Darwinism and the Victorian debates over spontaneous
generation. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Strick, J. E. (ed.) (2001) Evolution and the Spontaneous Generation Debate (Thoemmes Press -
Evolution and Anti-Evolution: Debates Before and After Darwin). Facsimile Ed edition edn. Bristol:
Thoemmes Continuum.
Strick, J. E. (ed.) (2004) The Origin of Life Debate: Molecules, Cells, and Generation (Thoemmes
Press - Evolution and Anti-Evolution: Debates Before and After Darwin). Facsimile Ed edition edn.
Bristol: Thoemmes Continuum.

James E. Strick: Wilhelm Reich, Biologist 10/10