Rangeley, Maine - Sixty years ago, in this lakeside village renowned for fly-fishing,
psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich recorded his discovery of what he believed was a cosmic life force associated with sexual orgasm.
This week, 15 to 20 people will construct devices designed by the discredited scientist to concentrate a mysterious force he called "orgone energy" for use in the treatment of psychological and physical illnesses.
The devices, called orgone accumulators, will be among the highlights of a conference starting on Monday at the Wilhelm Reich Museum, founded four decades ago at the Austrian-born scientist's hillside retreat.
After breaking with mentor Sigmund Freud, Reich went on to emphasise the role of sexual gratification in achieving psychic health. He believed that the body discharged excess energy through orgasm; if that function was blocked, the undischarged energy became a source of neurosis.
Reich developed the orgone accumulators, made of alternating layers of metallic and nonmetallic materials and designed either as a blanket that wrapped around a person or as a box in which a person sat, to heighten vitality and help heal disease.
People who believe in their therapeutic value say they get a warm, tingling sensation when they use them.
Reich's devices were branded a fraud by the United States Food and Drug Administration, which obtained an injunction against Reich in the 1950s. After a trial in Portland, he was found guilty of contempt of court and sent to prison, where he died in disgrace at the age of 60.
Many in the scientific world continue to ridicule him as a quack and crackpot.
But some believe in his theories and his work is carried on by the American College of Orgonomy in Princeton, New Jersey, which publishes a journal twice a year with developments in the field.
The museum, an offbeat tourist attraction housed in the modernistic, fieldstone building where Reich carried out his most controversial work, serves as a shrine to him.
Bernard Grad, a biologist at McGill University who worked with Reich in the early 1950s, said: "His ideas are very powerful. It's a mistake to think that Reich is just going to go away."
Grad, now 80, is one of the conference speakers. He will discuss a study on the orgone accumulator's therapeutic effects on mice with leukemia.
"He is much more respected in Europe, particularly in Germany, where quite a bit of research continues," said Dr Richard Schwartzman, a Philadelphia psychiatrist. "In the United States, he's still someone to poke fun at."
"We can't prove anything. We present things," said Mary Boyd Higgins, who oversees the publication of Reich's work and administers the trust fund that owns and operates the museum. "But if somebody leaves here with a sense that something serious went on here, that this is not a joke, then I feel that we've accomplished a great deal." - Sapa-AP
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