orgonotherapy

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.

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