PRESS RELEASE FROM EYES OPEN MEDIA
For immediate release Oct. 17, 2014
“Wet Goddess” author pens memoir of childhood sex abuse
PUNTA GORDA, Fla. – Malcolm J. Brenner, author of the controversial 2010 interspecies romance novel “Wet Goddess: Recollections Of A Dolphin Lover,” has published a second book, “Growing Up In The Orgone Box: Secrets Of A Reichian Childhood.”
The memoir of Brenner’s youth in a pseudo-scientific cult rips the veneer of respectability and self-righteousness off the bizarre sexual theories of notorious 1950’s psychotherapist Wilhelm Reich and questions his judgment of character.
“Reich wanted to create a sexual Nirvana for everyone, including children of all ages,” Brenner said, “but when he founded his Orgonomic Infant Research Center, he ended up putting a fox in charge of the henhouse.”
The “fox” Brenner is referring to is the late Dr. Albert Duvall, a student of Reich’s who administered painful, punishing and sometimes sexually invasive “orgone therapy” to the children sent to him for treatment of various psychological disorders.
Reich boastfully called them his “Children of the Future.” He hoped to create a world free of neurosis brought on by sexual repression, while unbeknownst to him, one of his closest associates was routinely abusing children mentally, physically and sexually – and getting paid by their parents to do it!
Now, decades later, the former pediatric patients who survived abuse at Duvall’s hands are finding each other through the Internet and sharing their horror stories. “My book is written for all the children who endured these tortures,” Brenner said. “A common thread is that we complained repeatedly to our parents about what was going on in Duvall’s locked, soundproof office, and none of them listened to us or seemed to care. Since most of our parents were also in therapy with Duvall, he may have exerted a Svengali-like posthypnotic control over their misguided decisions to keep us in therapy with him.”
Duvall practiced in New Jersey in the 1950’s, but suddenly moved to Los Angeles shortly after Reich died in a federal penitentiary in 1957. Reich had been serving a short sentence for shipping his “orgone energy accumulator” boxes across state lines without FDA approval. Before he died, the agency also ordered six tons of Reich’s publications, writings, notes and orgone boxes burned in a New York incinerator.
In Los Angeles, Duvall became an “orgonomist to the stars,” treating Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, Judy Garland’s daughter Lorna Luft and blogger Roger Wilcox.
“The orgone accumulator is nothing more than a large, weak, electrical capacitor,” Brenner explained. “The only mysterious thing about it is Reich’s claims that sitting in this empty, sheet-metal-lined box could do everything from revive a flagging libido to treat cancer.”
The memoir covers the period of time from Brenner’s first concrete memories, around age five, through his parents’ breakup and divorce to his leaving home to attend college at 18. In between, he experiences terrifying fears, social stigmatization, PTSD and bizarre sexual urges. The foreword was written by the author’s brother Hugh R. Brenner, himself a practicing orgonomist.
“You could say this is a psycho-sexual history of my family and how Reich and his bogus ‘orgone therapy’ failed us,” Brenner concluded. “I want the truth to be finally known.”
“Growing Up In The Orgone Box: Secrets Of A Reichian Childhood,” 341 pages, $18.95 + $5 S/H. Published by Eyes Open Media, 5895 Swaying Palm Drive, Punta Gorda, FL 33982 malcolmb2@centurylink.net http://www.amazon.com/Growing-Up-Orgone-Box-Childhood/dp/0615902677/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1410896559&sr=1-2
Malcolm J. Brenner 