Don’t be put off by the silly title. “Orgasmatron” was an inside joke in Woody Allen’s 1973 film “Sleeper”. And no, Wilhelm Reich did not invent sex (as far as I know). But title aside, this is a wonderful book. I’ve just finished reading it for the second time.

There were at least two Wilhelm Reichs. The first was Freud’s brilliant student and possible successor, who developed an interest in Marxism, leading to his becoming estranged from the psychoanalytic movement. That Wilhelm Reich, who ceased to exist in the mid-1930s, is of enormous historical significance. He attempted to reconcile the ideas of two 19th-century German Jews — Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud — with some success.

And not only in theory: Reich led the creation of a large social movement in Germany before the advent of the Nazi regime, which campaigned for sexual freedom, especially for teenagers. Its demand that rooms be set aside for teens to use for sex proved enormously — and unsurprisingly — popular. But the stodgy Communist leadership was not happy at all. Reich soon found himself outside the Freudian and Communist movements by the mid-1930s, just as he’d completed his masterpiece, The Mass Psychology of Fascism.

At this point, the second Wilhelm Reich appeared on the scene — the “discoverer” of the energy source throughout the cosmos, which he called “orgones”. He eventually battled aliens from distant planets and controlled the weather with his “cloud-buster” gun, and so on. Oddly, this latter Reich is the one who so profoundly influenced a whole generation of American intellectuals, including Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Norman Mailer. This latter Reich, who was almost certainly mentally ill, is the one most people know, and explains the book’s title. Reading the second half of Reich’s life — he died in a US federal prison — is sad and tragic.

The first part of Reich’s life, however, remains relevant in a world where sexual repression has not gone away, and where fascists continue to weaponise it. A revitalised Left needs to take on board many of Reich’s insights in order to survive — and grow — in that world. ( )