Red Emma’s

Psychoanalyst, political theorist, pioneer of body therapies, prophet of the sexual revolution—all fitting titles, but Wilhelm Reich has never been recognized as a serious laboratory scientist, despite his experimentation with bioelectricity and unicellular organisms. Wilhelm Reich, Biologist is a an eye-opening reappraisal of one of twentieth-century science’s most controversial figures—perhaps the only writer whose scientific works were burned by both the Nazis and the U.S. government. Refuting allegations of “pseudoscience” that have long dogged Reich’s research, James Strick argues that Reich’s lab experiments in the mid-1930s represented the cutting edge of light microscopy and time-lapse micro-cinematography and deserve to be taken seriously as legitimate scientific contributions. In Wilhelm Reich, Biologist, James Strick diffuses the defamation that surrounds Reich’s legacy and reestablishes Reich as the serious and pioneering scientist that he was. Studying Reich’s laboratory notes from recently opened archives, Strick presents a detailed account of Reich’s bion experiments, foundational to his theory of cancer and later investigations of orgone energy. As Strick elucidates, Reich’s experimental findings and interpretations were widely considered of shoddy lab technique, as has often been claimed. Scientific opposition to Reich’s experiments, Strick contends, grew out of resistance to his unorthodox sexual theories and his Marxist political leanings. Through the lens of a defamed biologist, this important book brings into focus the politics, psychology, and science of the early 20th century.