This book describes Reich's medical and scientific work onthe living organism from his first efforts at the Medical School of the University of Vienna in 1919 to the laboratory experiments in Oslo in 1939 which revealed the existence of a radiating biological energy, orgone energy. The subject of "sexuality" is basic to this work, and Reich shows clearly its importance for human life and its relevance in understanding the social problems of our time.

In the 1940s, Dr. Wilhelm Reich claimed discovery of a new form of energy. Declaring "the orgone energy does not exist," U.S. courts ordered all books on the orgone subject to be banned. Reich was thrown into prison, where he died. Dr. DeMeo examines Reich's evidence and reports on his own observations and laboratory experiments, which confirm the reality of the orgone phenomenon.

One of The Economist's 2011 Books of the Year A Boston Globe Best Nonfiction Book of 2011 Well before the 1960s, a sexual revolution was under way in America, led by expatriated European thinkers who saw a vast country ripe for liberation. In Adventures in the Orgasmatron, Christopher Turner tells the revolution's story—an illuminating, thrilling, often bizarre story of sex and science, ecstasy and repression. Central to the narrative is the orgone box—a tall, slender construction of wood, metal, and steel wool. A person who sat in the box, it was thought, could elevate his or her "orgastic potential." The box was the invention of Wilhelm Reich, an outrider psychoanalyst who faced a federal ban on the orgone box, an FBI investigation, a fraught encounter with Einstein, and bouts of paranoia. In Turner's vivid account, Reich's efforts anticipated those of Alfred Kinsey, Herbert Marcuse, and other prominent thinkers—efforts that brought about a transformation of Western views of sexuality in ways even the thinkers themselves could not have imagined.