APRIL 2004 UPDATE
FROM
THE WILHELM REICH MUSEUM

Table of Contents

Summer Conference 2004
Back in Print: The Murder of Christ
Down East – The Magazine of Maine
Yankee Magazine – Editor’s Choice
Our Latest Communications Tool
The Thomas E. Ross Sheltered Classroom
The Chester M. Raphael Reading Room
Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust Endowment Fund
Rental Cottages

Hello. The Wilhelm Reich Museum and The Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust thank you for your interest and support. And for your positive response to our first Update in March. To those of you who are new this month to our e-mail list and have not read our previous Update, please contact us if you'd like to receive a copy.

We want to assure everyone that all names on this list--as well as the names of Museum visitors, conference attendees, and bookstore customers— are held in strictest confidence and are not shared with any other organization. And, as always, if at any time you wish to be removed from our e-mail list, please let us know. 

SUMMER CONFERENCE July 19-23, 2004
The Orgone Energy Accumulator: Its Scientific and Medical Use

"The Orgone Energy Accumulator is an instrument assembled and materially arranged in such a manner that Life Energy, present in the atmosphere of our planet, can be collected, accumulated, and made usable for scientific, educational, and medical purposes."

With these words, Wilhelm Reich defined the essential research tool of the previously unknown energy he discovered and called "orgone."

For twenty-five years Jorgos Kavouras, M.D. has maintained a general practice in Germany and Greece in which the orgone accumulator is his principal therapeutic tool. His book Healing With Orgone Energy will be published in Germany in Fall 2004. In it Dr. Jorgos documents over 40 case studies of his practical experience with the orgone accumulator. We are pleased that Dr. Kavouras will be an instructor at this year's Summer Conference.

The conference will trace the historical development of the accumulator, demonstrate experiments in which it was used, and present current experimental data on the use of accumulators with plants and humans.

Attendees will participate in laboratory activities, utilize the Orgone Room for visual observations, and construct small accumulators for specific applications, such as orgone irradiation of the neck, breast, knee and shoulder areas. Neither a scientific background nor biological training is necessary for participation in this conference.

In addition to Dr. Kavouras, our instructors will include:

• Robert Dayton, an artist-builder whose paintings and sculpture are exhibited frequently in Easthampton, N.Y.
• Joseph Heckman, Ph.D, a plant biologist who has designed studies of orgone accumulator applications for seeds and plants.
• Grier Sellers, M.S., a college biology instructor who has conducted research into endosymbiosis in protists, and has a longstanding interest in Reich's work.
• James Strick, Ph.D, a science historian specializing in the history of research about the origin of life. He is the author of Sparks of Life: Darwinism and the Victorian Debates Over Spontaneous Generation; and co-author of a book to be published in Fall 2004: The Living Universe: NASA and the Development of Astrobiology.

Conference brochures have just been mailed to those on our regular postal mailing list. For more information please contact us at (207) 864-3443, or visit our web site at www.wilhelmreichmuseum.org 

BACK IN PRINT: THE MURDER OF CHRIST

For years The Murder of Christ has been out-of-print and available in the Museum bookstore only in bound xerox copies. Thanks to the collaborative efforts of our publisher Farrar, Straus & Giroux and Lightning Source, a books-on-demand publishing house, The Murder of Christ is back in print in soft cover and available in our bookstore.

In the past few years the partnership of Farrar, Straus & Giroux and Lightning Source has brought the following titles back into print:

• The Bio-electrical Investigation of Sexuality and Anxiety
• The Cancer Biopathy
• Children of the Future
• Ether, God and Devil/Cosmic Superimposition
• People in Trouble
• Selected Writings: An Introduction to Orgonomy
• The Sexual Revolution 

DOWN EAST - THE MAGAZINE OF MAINE

Down East, Maine's premier magazine, celebrates its 50th anniversary this year and has chosen The Wilhelm Reich Museum as one of 50 select museums, historic houses, and sites of interest in Maine to be recognized and featured in its August issue. Down East enjoys a wide readership that extends far beyond the borders of Maine. And its August issue reaches more readers than its other editions. So we look forward to a host of first-time visitors this summer. 

YANKEE MAGAZINE'S EDITOR'S CHOICE

The Wilhelm Reich Museum has been selected as an Editor's Choice in the Yankee Magazine 2004 Travel Guide to New England. Editor's Choice destinations include must-see scenic areas, attractions, and dining and lodging accommodations. Now in its 33rd year of publication, this travel guide reaches over 600,000 readers. 

OUR LATEST COMMUNICATIONS TOOL

As we continually analyze our needs, goals and strategies, we find ourselves increasingly thinking in terms of new "communications tools." How can we best deliver key messages and information to a wide variety of audiences? Our latest tool, now being developed, is a user-friendly "Organizational Chart of The Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust."

In the past few months as we've met and spoken with friends, supporters, fund givers, state and local community leaders, students, journalists, and magazine writers, we've come to realize the need for clarification about the The Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust. While the goals and functions of the Wilhelm Reich Museum are generally understood and relatively easy to explain, the nature of the Trust is more complex.

Briefly, The Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust was created by Reich in his Last Will and Testament, signed on March 8, 1957, three days before his imprisonment. Its mission was to transmit Reich's scientific legacy to future generations, to safeguard the truth about his life and work against distortion and slander, and to help children in need.

To carry out this mission, Reich stipulated that the Trust was to "operate and maintain the property at Orgonon under the name and style of the Wilhelm Reich Museum... to preserve some of the atmosphere in which the Discovery of the Life Energy has taken place over the decades." The Trust was also tasked with safeguarding Reich's Archives, among other responsibilities.

The Organizational Chart will succinctly visualize the breadth of the Trust by breaking down its responsibilities into three principal areas:

1. Operating the Reich Museum in Rangeley, Maine.
2. Maintaining and managing the Reich Archives at the Countway Library of Medicine at Harvard University in Boston.
3. Publishing activities with Farrar, Straus & Giroux in New York City.

Each of these responsibilities will be broken down into further detail, illustrating specific functions and activities.

This Organizational Chart will provide a uniform picture of the workings of the Trust for different audiences and applications. For Museum visitors, a large display of the Chart will be posted in the Orgone Energy Observatory and in the Conference Building. A Power Point version will be installed in a laptop computer for our offsite educational and fundraising presentations. Printed versions will be included in information packets and fundraising applications. And the Chart will also be accessible on our new web site.