Archives of the Orgone Institute - History

In the 1950s, Wilhelm Reich, M.D. kept his Archives—which he called the Archives of the Orgone Institute—in two locations in the Orgone Energy Observatory at Orgonon in Rangeley, Maine (now the Wilhelm Reich Museum):

• in a photographic dark-room on the first floor, which today is part of the museum’s Exhibit Hall
• and in a large closet in Reich’s study and library on the second floor

In the opening paragraph of his Last Will & Testament—signed on March 8, 1957—Reich wrote:

“I made the consideration of secure transmission to future generations of a vast empire of scientific accomplishments the guide in my last dispositions. To my mind, the foremost task to be fulfilled was to safeguard the truth about my life and work against distortion and slander after my death.”

To accomplish this task Reich created a Trust, originally known as The Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust Fund. This Trust was so named because of his conviction that the only real solution to eliminating psychological disturbances and somatic illnesses was in prevention, which was possible only by ensuring what he called “the unspoiled protoplasm” and the “unarmored life” of infants.

And in his Last Will & Testament, Reich included directives to this Trust specifically regarding the Archives:

“In order to enable the future student of the PRIMORDIAL COSMIC ENERGY OCEAN, THE LIFE ENERGY discovered and developed by me, to obtain a true picture of my accomplishments, mistakes, wrong assumptions, pioneering basic trends, my private life, my childhood, etc., I hereby direct that under no circumstances and under no pretext whatsoever shall any of the documents, manuscripts or diaries, found in my library among the archives or anywhere else, be altered, omitted, destroyed, added to, or falsified in any other imaginable way. The tendency of man, born from fear, to ‘get along with his fellow man’ at any price, and to hide unpleasant matters, is overpoweringly strong. To guard against this trend, disastrous to historical truth, my study, including the library and Archives, shall be sealed right after my death by the proper legal authorities, and no one shall be permitted to look into my papers until my Trustee, hereinafter named, is duly appointed and qualified and takes control and custody thereof.

These documents are of crucial importance to the future of newborn generations. There are many emotionally sick people who will try to damage my reputation regardless of what happens to infants, if only their personal lives would remain hidden in the darkness of a forsaken age of the Stalins and Hitlers.

I therefore direct my Trustee and his successors that nothing whatsoever must be changed in any of the documents and that they should be put away and stored for 50 years to secure their safety from destruction and falsification by anyone interested in the falsification and destruction of historical truth.

These directives are established by me solely for the preservation of documented truth as I lived it during my lifetime.”

In March of 1959—during her first visit to Orgonon—the newly-appointed Trustee, Mary Boyd Higgins, discovered that the Archives were gone. They had been removed illegally in 1958 by Aurora Karrer, the last woman in Reich’s life, who transported the materials hundreds of miles away to Maryland.

In 1960—unable to obtain any cooperation from Ms. Karrer—The Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust took legal action against her, which resulted in the bulk of the Archives being turned over to the Trust. Subsequent legal actions over the years to recover still missing materials were unsuccessful. And the Trust’s efforts to retrieve additional materials from Ms. Karrer would stretch across almost five decades. In 2007, the Trust took possession of other archival materials that Ms. Karrer had stolen.

For years after the Trust had retrieved the bulk of the Archives, Mary Higgins kept these materials at her home in Forest Hills, New York. During this time, she looked into several institutions—including the Library of Congress—as possible repositories for these materials.

Meanwhile, New York publisher Roger Straus—of Farrar, Straus and Giroux—was also aware of the need for a safe and permanent repository for the Archives. Straus contacted Richard Wolfe, Chief Librarian of the “Rare Books and Special Collections” at Harvard University’s Countway Library of Medicine, one of the world’s premier medical libraries. Mr. Wolfe agreed that Reich’s legacy was significant and that his Archives would be an important addition to the library’s other collections.

In October 1973, The Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust signed an agreement with the Countway Library, whereby Reich’s archival materials would be periodically given to the library over the years, to be stored in their “Rare Books and Special Collections,” with the Trust retaining all copyright title and publishing rights to these materials.

The “Rare Books and Special Collections” was recently renamed “The Center for the History of Medicine.” And today the Center’s temperature-controlled environment houses the Archives of the Orgone Institute, comprising 98 cubic-feet of materials currently stored in over 280 archive boxes. These Archives constitute one of the Countway Library’s largest collections.

[Access Policies and Procedures for the Archives]

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