Reprinted from The Creative
Process
The effect of armor is to block or
restrict the flow of orgone energy in the body, and in consequence, to block or
limit the emotion rooted in this energy flow. Armor limits the capacity to
experience and express deep feeling. It destroys the capacity for a natural
sexuality, the most intense pleasurable emotion. The armor shapes the character
and mentality; it affects how people think, including how scientists think.
Armor is the cause of psychosis, of crime, of fascism and of other political
irrationality. It is the root of contradiction between mechanism and mysticism,
which is so important to understanding resistance to the orgone energy
concept. Our civilization is rooted in mystical
religion and mechanistic science. These together comprise the principal
intellectual forces in the world we live in. Both of these forces are products
of armored man. Reich has said that mankind is ruled by a contradictory and
murderous mixture of machines and gods, by which he meant the mystical forces of
religion and the mechanistic forces of science. The mechanist armors himself in
such a way that he cuts off his perception of and his contact with his own
deepest nature. He becomes rigid and limited in his thought processes. He
develops a mechanical concept of nature and becomes deterministic in his view of
causality. He tends to think compulsively and has a deep-seated fear of the
alive, the free, the spontaneously moving, the unpredictable, the deeply
emotional. The mechanistic scientist reacts against orgone energy functions
because they correspond to exactly that portion of nature that he has armored
against. For this reason, the mechanist forms a mechanical view of creation and
of life. The mystic, by contrast, is not completely
cut off from his nature, from orgone energy phenomena within himself, but has
distorted this contact because of his armor. The mystic is capable of achieving
some great insights because he is in partial contact with his deepest nature;
still his contact, especially his contact with his own body, is distorted, and
in most cases, deeply distorted. The mystic tends to split off bodily love from
the mental, the "spiritual, " and often to become ascetic and anti-sexual. This
is perhaps the greatest tragedy of all, because it contributes the most to
reproducing armor in the young.
Vol. II Nos. 2&3 September 1962
with an
introduction by the author July 1999
Copyright c 1962 Charles
R. Kelley
KELLEY/RADIX
13715 SE 36th Street
Man is sick en masse, and the sickness is rooted in
his structure, a structure which, for some reason, has become biologically
rigid. This rigidity is shown primarily by a chronic muscular tension which
Reich called armor. Armor affects most of the human race throughout all the
continents. The variations in type and degree of armoring are legion, but almost
every human being is armored to some extent.
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A split perception of mind and body develops in the
mystic, so that the mind seems to him capable of existing in nature in the
absence of the body. Along with this the mystic tends to develop a magical view
of causality. And the mystic, of course, forms a mystical or magical view of
creation and life revolving about "spirit, " or "god, " which is out of contact
with real physical processes. It is this view which the mystic finds most
threatened by the concept of orgone energy. Recognition of the real tangible
creative process as expressed in orgone energy functions threatens the mystic's
concept of god as an intangible, essentially unknowable
entity.
Figure 3 depicts the relation between
mechanism, mysticism, and what Reich termed "orgonomic functionalism. " Reich
defined orgonomic functionalism as the natural way of thinking by the unarmored.
The armor distorts natural thinking in the mechanistic or mystical direction.
Both mechanistic and mystical thinking find functional thought processes
foreign. Interestingly, mechanists are apt to regard them as mystical; mystics,
as mechanistic.
This is a rather cursory treatment of
mechanism and mysticism. Reich discusses them in some detail in ETHER, GOD AND
DEVIL and in THE MURDER OF CHRIST. Perhaps enough has been covered to show how
predominant forces in our civilization are by their nature in opposition to the
orgone energy concept. It will hardly be sufficient to show how deep-seated and
powerful these forces are, nor to show the extreme hatred and fear that can
arise from them; this is hard to believe until it is experienced personally, but
to the skeptic, let me remind him that Reich's publications were burned and
banned on the flimsiest of pretexts by an agency of the United States
Government, that Reich himself died in a United States prison although entirely
innocent of wrong-doing, and that Reich and his work have always been subject to
the most incredible attacks, involving defamation, vilification, and gross
distortions of facts.
Not everyone, not even a majority
react maliciously to the orgone energy concept. In fact, most people don't know
enough about it to have an inkling of what it really is. Those threatened by the
concept have largely succeeded in preventing others from investigating the
evidence that exists about it. If the concept is sufficiently ridiculed and
defamed, if the scientific reputations of those who support the concept are
destroyed, if the work that has been carried out in the field is made to seem
absurd and undeserving of serious study, then the concept of orgone energy can
be carefully buried again, as it has been so many times in the past. There is
then no necessity for scientists to examine the evidence, to repeat the
experiments, or to contend with the carefully thought out and consistent
scientific writing the field contains. There will always be "experts" who will
lend their authority to the burial by declaring the work unworthy of serious
consideration.
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| MECHANISM
Matter is the primary reality Mechanical view of creation Emotion, volition, sensation |
MYSTICISM
Mind or spirit is the primary reality. Magical view of creation Emotion, volition, sensation | |
 |
||
| ORGONOMIC FUNCTIONALISM "Mind and body" or "matter Creation is a continuous "Emotion," "volition," |
Figure 3.
The relation of mechanism, mysticism, and orgonomic
functionalism. Armor causes functional thinking to split into two antithetical
off shoots as shown. Human thought is almost completely dominated by these
pathological offshoots.
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The many who might not be threatened by the orgone
energy concept per se are threatened by the attitude others take towards it, by
the scorn, the abuse, the contempt which invariably stem from pathological
individuals, but unfortunately, easily infect others. It is a sad fact that the
desire to be respectable is a primary motivation among scientists. Individuals
threatened by the orgone energy concept attack it by making it disreputable.
"Respectable" scientists then will not consider the concept or the evidence for
it.
Finally, a factor which hurts acceptance of the
orgone energy concept which must not be ignored lies in the effects of the armor
on the very individuals who support the concept. Those who work in orgonomy are
also members of the sick human race; they too are armored, with tendencies
toward mechanism and/or mysticism. Even highly-qualified scientists professing
interest in orgonomy (and there are many) are usually incapable of productive
work in the field. Many brave plans for research in orgonomy are made, but few
materialize. For every article in the 29 volumes of evidence for orgone energy
that have been cited, there were 20 or 30 planned by supporters of orgonomy but
never carried out. And it is a sad fact that the quality of those which have
appeared has sometimes suffered in comparison with what could be reasonably
expected of the individuals involved. Research in orgonomy is extremely
difficult; the process of actually working with orgone energy exposes the worker
fully and directly to its threatening qualities. Other scientific work is easier
to do because it is more peripheral, further removed from the core of life
itself, and for this reason, less threatening to the
scientist.
This should not be construed as an apology
for what has been accomplished in orgonomy. Much of this work, particularly that
of Reich himself, is of the highest caliber. At present the need for additional
work to confirm experiments previously done and to carry out new research is not
being met, however. This is only partly because of the lack of funds, facilities
and time, a lack, incidentally, due to the activities of the frightened and
hateful souls who have so maligned orgonomy that they have destroyed the
possibility for it to obtain research funds through normal channels. Of equal
importance with the lack of funds and facilities are the characterological
problems of those of us who would carry out the
research.
In summary, the fact that the orgone energy
concept is not generally accepted is not due to the absence of evidence but to a
widespread pathology of the human animal. This pathology consists of a rigidity
of body and character that cuts the individual off from life energy functions
within himself, and makes him either blind to or threatened by the functioning
of this same energy in nature. The mass pathology works against acceptance of
the orgone energy concept in many ways:
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- It brings about the mechanistic -and mystical character
structures which prevail in our
world. - It causes pathological fear and hatred in a minority of
individuals, who attempt to destroy
orgonomy by gross distortions of fact, defamation, and ridicule, and sometimes by direct
violence. This minority is effective because of the characterological soil in which it works. - The "characterological soil" consists not only of the
prevailing mechanistic and
mystical characters of the majority, but also the fearfulness of scientists and
intellectuals to be associated with "disreputable" ideas. - Finally, the work done in orgonomy itself suffers from
the fact that the mass disorder of
the human animal afflicts the proponents and investigators of the orgone energy concept
as well as their opponents, and affects the amount and quality of their work.
Despite these severe problems blocking
acceptance of the orgone energy concept, I believe we are on the threshold of a
change. The evidence for orgone energy is now too great to bury successfully and
too strong to continue to ignore. More scientists will take the claims of
orgonomy seriously, will repeat experiments and try to understand the orgone
energy concept. This too will result in severe confusions, widespread denials of
the evidence by threatened individuals, and other difficulties with which we are
now familiar, and may be able to meet successfully. If so, the new direction in
science implicit in the discovery of orgone energy will at last emerge into its
own.