Bion (Wilhelm Reich)

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Under bions understood Wilhelm Reich - who coined this term to refer to him in microscopic examinations found objects - "energy bubbles transitional stages between inanimate and living matter present."

Reich describes the experiments that led him to their discovery in the detailed monograph Die Bione. On the Origin of Vegetative Life (1938). Bions as an “elementary functional unit of all living matter” arise, according to Reich, in nature constantly “through a process of dissolving inorganic and organic matter”, can be cultivated and “can develop into protozoa and bacteria.” Reich also identified this process of dissolution when studying the Sample of the tissue of a cancer patient. Reich made observations on a "bion culture" (SAPA = sand packet bione) obtained from annealed sea sand that he could not explain with the terms and theories he was familiar with; from this he concluded that there was a previously unexplored "biological energy" that he called orgone .

Academic science dealt only marginally with Reich's relevant work. However, in 2015 Harvard University Press published the extensive critical monograph Wilhelm Reich - Biologist , which mainly deals with the Bion experiments.

The Bion experiments

Reich (1897–1957) was a doctor and one of Sigmund Freud's most productive students in the 1920s . In particular, he worked on fulfilling the prediction of Freud, who always saw himself as a natural scientist, that his initially only psychoanalytic conception of neurosis would one day be placed on a physiological and still a biological basis. In his opinion, the first stage in this is marked by his book The Function of Orgasm from 1927, in which he presented a psychoanalytic, but already clearly “energetic” - and sociologically flanked - theory. As a result, Reich and his teacher Freud got into a conflict - slowly intensified by Reich's parallel political activities - which finally ended in 1934 with Reich's exclusion from the International Psychoanalytic Association (officially declared as resignation), without the underlying theoretical conflict ever being the subject of any scientific discussion has become.

In his Scandinavian exile, Reich continued his work on the biological foundation of psychoanalysis. He tried to tie in with new work by other researchers, especially the theory of the “vegetative flow” developed by Friedrich Kraus , one of the leading physicians at the time.

This led him in the therapeutic field to the development of vegetotherapy , which is considered to be the origin of all later directions in body psychotherapy , and in the microbiological field initially to those vesicular structures that he could not classify and therefore presented as newly discovered bions . A little later he found that these bions were, so to speak, charge carriers of a specifically biological energy that he called orgone. Reich carried out numerous experiments with which he wanted to make the psychic energy postulated by Freud, the libido , measurable. He observed protozoa , unicellular eukaryotic organisms that were heterotrophic and motile. Reich's experiments can be read in detail in his book Die Bione. On the emergence of vegetative life (1938), expanded and placed in the framework of Reich's "Orgonomie" in his book The Cancer Biopathy (1948, German: Der Krebs , 1971).

reception

The Bion experiments were certified by Professor Roger du Teil in Nice in 1937, subject to other explanations for the processes observed. After the book Die Bione (1938) appeared, five reviews appeared: two in English by psychoanalysts and three in Dutch, two of them in (bio) chemical specialist organs. The new edition of the book in 1995 was not discussed in specialist bodies.

The first scientific presentation and criticism of Reich's biological research in the years 1933–1939 was published in 2015 by Harvard University Press in a 467-page monograph by James E. Strick using material from the Wilhelm Reich Archive, which has been accessible since 2007 .

literature

Primary literature
  • Wilhelm Reich: The Bione. On the origin of vegetative life . Appendix with articles by Roger Du Teil ( Life and Matter. Drei Versuchsreihen , pp. 117–135) and Arthur Hahn ( The history of views on the origin of organic life since the 17th century , pp. 137–205). Oslo: Sexpol Publishing House, 1938
  • Wilhelm Reich: Bion Experiments on the Cancer Problem (with 38 Micro-Photos). Appendix: Three experiments on the static electroscope. Sexpol-Verlag, Rotterdam / Oslo / Copenhagen 1939
  • [New edition:] Wilhelm Reich: The Bionexperimente. To the origin of life. Appendix with article by Roger Du Teil. Zweiausendeins, Frankfurt am Main 1995, ISBN 3-86150-099-X (with an accompanying booklet by Heiko Lassek)
  • Wilhelm Reich: The orgone energy bubbles ("bions") and the natural organization of protozoa. In: ders .: The cancer. Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch 1974 (1948), pp. 37–93 (and 94–114) ISBN 3-462-00972-9
  • Wilhelm Reich: Beyond Psychology. Letters and Diaries 1934–1939. Edited by Mary Boyd Higgins. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1997 ISBN 3-462-02621-6 (from December 12, 1936 numerous entries on working with "Bionen")
Reviews of Die Bione (1938)
  • Chemisch Weekblad (Leiden / Holland), No. 695 (1938), p. 1025 (J. Selman)
  • Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Vol. 7.4 (1938), pp. 568-569 ( Martin Grotjahn )
  • Vakblad voor Biologen, Vol. 20 (1938/39), pp. 158–159 ( AJ Kluyver )
  • Algemeen Nederlands Tijdskrift voor Wijsbegeerte en Psychologie, Vol. 32,4 (1939), p. 248 (FWV)
  • Journal for Nervous and Mental Diseases, Vol. 91 (1940), p. 132 ( Paul Schilder )
Secondary literature
  • Heiko Lassek: About Wilhelm Reichs Bionexperimente. Two thousand and one, Frankfurt / M. 1995, ISBN 3-86150-109-0
  • James E. Strick: Wilhelm Reich, Biologist. Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA / USA and London 2015

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Quotations from the glossary in Wilhelm Reich: The discovery of the orgons. Volume 1: The function of orgasm. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1969, p. 346.
  2. ^ David Boadella: Wilhelm Reich. Life and work ... , Scherz, Bern / Munich 1981, p. 153.
  3. ↑ Rainer Gebauer and Stefan Müschenich: The Reich's orgone accumulator. Scientific discussion, practical application, experimental investigation. Nexus-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1987 (coordinated diploma thesis at the University of Marburg ), ISBN 3-923301-19-7 .
  4. ^ Günter Hebenstreit: The orgone accumulator after Wilhelm Reich. An experimental study of the voltage-charge formula. Diploma thesis, University of Vienna 1995.
  5. ^ Bernhard Harrer: Critical evaluation of life energy research by Wilhelm Reich (orgone theory). Berlin 1997 ( abstract ); the criticism by James DeMeo .
  6. ↑ Not to be confused with Reich's book of the same title, first published in German in 1942 in English translation and in 1969, which is a "scientific autobiography" (until 1940).
  7. ↑ See the report on the exclusion of Wilhelm Reich from the Psychoanalytic Association
  8. ↑ See Martin Lindner: Die Pathologie der Person. Friedrich Kraus' redefinition of the organism at the beginning of the 20th century. GNT - Verlag für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften und der Technik, Berlin and Diepholz 1999. Lindner calls Reich probably the only one “who tried to get practically serious with the vegetative flow as life flow, as deep life” (p. 57).
  9. ^ David Boadella: Wilhelm Reich. Life and work ... Scherz, Bern and Munich 1981, p. 320 f. (there: Message from Roger du Teil to the Natural Philosophical Society in Nice of March 7, 1937)