“Orgone Box:” A tale of two brothers and therapy

PRESS RELEASE FROM EYES OPEN MEDIA

For immediate release, Nov. 21, 2014

“Orgone Box” book tells a tale of two brothers and therapy

PUNTA GORDA, Fla. – The latest mind-bending book from “Wet Goddess” author Malcolm J. Brenner also involves his younger brother Hugh R. Brenner – on the opposite side of the issue.

“Growing Up In The Orgone Box: Secrets of a Reichian Childhood” is Malcolm’s memoir of his family’s involvement with Wilhelm Reich’s “orgone therapy” movement in the 1950’s and 60’s and his torturous treatment at the hands of one Dr. Albert Duvall, a vicious and sadistic pedophile who hid his perversions behind Reich’s teachings on the sexual liberation of children.

Malcolm’s painful and disruptive experience left him with what his brother describes as “a generalized hatred of orgonomy.” Ironically, Hugh, who had very little therapy with Duvall, came to incorporate many Reichian techniques into his private practice as a psychiatric family nurse practitioner in the Philadelphia area. For many years, the brothers shared an uneasy truce on their conflicting opinions of Reich and his work.

When Malcolm was ready to self-publish “Orgone Box,” he asked Hugh to write a forward for the book, only to find his brother had been planning to ask him for the same privilege.

“It only seemed fair,” Malcolm said. “I love my brother and he’s helped me a lot in life. His own research independently substantiated the horrible reality of what happened to me and many other people in New Jersey and Los Angeles who were Duvall’s patients.” Duvall died in 1975.

Hugh’s five-page forward to the 327-page memoir is a brief summary of Reich’s life, work, and the conflict with the FDA that led to his 1957 death in federal prison. Prior to that, the agency had burned some six tons of Reich’s equipment, notes and books relating to “orgone accumulators,” his experimental devices that somehow got shipped across state lines in defiance of federal law.

Hugh is quick to emphasize that the way he treats his patients bears no resemblance to Duvall’s harsh and invasive methods. He describes them in his forward as “a hideous betrayal of the patient-physician relationship” and “cruel distortions of psychiatric orgone therapy.” As president of the Institute for Orgonomic Science, an international non-profit group that carries on Reich’s work and research, Hugh reported on Duvall’s misconduct at an international meeting of Reich’s followers in Italy last year.

So far, Malcolm said, his controversial book and Hugh’s report have elicited little response from the small band of Reich’s remaining supporters.

“Many of Reich’s followers worship him with a frightening, almost-god-like intensity, as if the man could do no wrong, when in reality he had serious feet of clay,” Malcolm said. “Not only was Reich wrong about the existence of ‘orgone energy,’ he was a lousy judge of character.

“These ‘Reich worshippers’ stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the sordid reality behind Reich’s benevolent façade. Adults who impose their sexuality on immature children, regardless of their good intentions, create a terrible situation for their patients and subjects.”

Malcolm J. Brenner is available for interviews, contact him through malcolmb2@centurylink.net. Joint interviews including his brother Hugh R. Brenner can be arranged. “Wet Goddess,” a novel based on Malcolm’s 1971 love affair with a dolphin, is available on Amazon and as an e-book on Smashwords; “Orgone Box” is currently available on Amazon, with an e-book version to follow.