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Academic & Professional Books  Natural History  Biography, Exploration & Travel

Wilhelm Reich, Biologist

Biography / Memoir
By: James E Strick(Author)
480 pages, 28 b/w photos, 4 b/w illustrations, 3 tables
Wilhelm Reich, Biologist
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  • Wilhelm Reich, Biologist ISBN: 9780674736092 Hardback Apr 2015 Not in stock: Usually dispatched within 6 days
    £40.95
    #221726
Price: £40.95
About this book Customer reviews Biography Related titles

About this book

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 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.

Trained in medicine and a student of Sigmund Freud, Reich took to the laboratory to determine if Freud's concept of libido was quantitatively measurable. His electrophysiological experiments led to his discovery of microscopic vesicles (he called them bions), which Reich hypothesized were instrumental in originating life from nonliving matter. Studying Reich's laboratory notes from recently opened archives, Strick presents a detailed account of the bion experiments, tracing how Reich eventually concluded he had discovered an unknown type of biological radiation he called orgone. The bion experiments were foundational to Reich's theory of cancer and later investigations of orgone energy. Reich's experimental findings and interpretations were considered discredited, but not because 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.

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Biography

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.

Biography / Memoir
By: James E Strick(Author)
480 pages, 28 b/w photos, 4 b/w illustrations, 3 tables
Media reviews

"Wilhelm Reich, Biologist portrays a fascinating, unexpected episode of the interwar life sciences, and provocatively calls for a reappraisal of Reich's laboratory work on the basis of novel archival insight."
– Mathias Grote, Lecturer, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

"Wilhelm Reich, Biologist is a bold and well-researched book, with refreshingly new perspectives on a famous and controversial scientist who continues to fascinate new audiences as a remarkable personality in the history of science."
– Håvard Friis Nilsen, historian of psychoanalysis

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