November 3, 1957

At the turn of the century before last, people who, suddenly having found they could talk about sex, confused talking about it with having it. I am thinking about Wilhelm Reich, whose orgone box gained some fame.

Reich wrote this bit of explanatory prose: "[I]t is correct to connect the basic biological reflex of orgastic superimposition with the simplest plasmatic functions in order to understand it." He seems to be pointing to the fact animals repeat a few basic forms in a variety of ways, but then he mentioned something very silly about cats, and I found in myself little patience for unraveling his errors. He said:

Everyone has seen a cat lifted by being held up by the skin of the back. The body of the cat seems doubled up, the head brought close to the pelvis, head and legs hang down limply...

Reich could only be pointing to the way a cat hangs when picked up, not by the skin of the back, but being lifted, the way its mother did originally, by the skin of the back OF THE NECK. No one has seen what Reich described, for anyone trying it, would find the cat could twist in its skin and sink its teeth into the hands of the psychologist. Nor can we assume Reich merely spoke carelessly, and actually MEANT the skin of the back of the cat's neck; his subsequent description is also wrong: the cat's head is not hanging near its pelvis, when lifted in the only humane way possible, the way mother cats do it. Reich is ignorant about cat behavior.

Wilhelm Reich (March 24, 1897  to November 3, 1957)  would be a forgotten bit of cultural history were it not for the harshness of his treatment by the FDA. They made a martyr out of him and were very cruel. Our quote is from Wilhem Reich Selected Writings: An Introduction to Orgonomy (1960).