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Adventures in the Orgasmatron: How the Sexual Revolution Came to America
Adventures in the Orgasmatron How the Sexual Revolution Came to America Author:Christopher Turner The captivating and untold story of science, sex, and postwar America — 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 st... more »ory 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??rid the body of repressive forces and improve sexual potency. Norman Mailer, Saul Bellow, and William Burroughs sat in the orgone box seeking synthesis of sexual and political liberation.
The box was the invention of Wilhelm Reich, an outrider psychoanalyst and disaffected disciple of Freud who brought his theories of sexual energy to America during World War II. His is an archetypal story of a determined scientist in conflict with a suspicious society: he faced a federal ban on the orgone box, an FBI investigation, a fraught encounter with Einstein, and bouts of paranoia that left him unable to defend himself.
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.« less