Glitches in The Technology of Orgasm

We’ve covered The Technology of Orgasm before, a hugely influential book arguing that 19th century doctors were using Victorian vibrators to cure ‘female hysteria’ through the induction of [serious look] ‘hysterical paroxysms’, but it seems that the main argument may not be as breathtaking as it first appears.

Cory Silverberg discusses how historians of sex have been less than impressed with the idea and the issue has now become a hot topic because the book, written by author Rachel Maines, has been made into a film starring Maggie Gyllenhaal.

The Technology of Orgasm is a somewhat controversial book. Controversial in that the thesis of the book has been almost universally accepted and embraced by the mainstream press and the sex toy industry, while at the same time being quite seriously critiqued by historians of sexuality. In her book Maines contends that the vibrator was regularly used by doctors to treat “hysteria” which they had previously been treating by manually stimulating women to orgasm. Included in this argument is the idea that the women didn’t know they were having orgasms and the doctors didn’t seem to worry about the professional boundaries involved in essentially masturbating their patients.

Silverberg also notes a comprehensive page by historian Lesley Hall who has detailed difficulties with the ‘Victorian vibrator cure’ idea.

The page also has loads of other fascinating information about 19th century sex.

Don’t be put off by the page’s dreadful green background – as the title suggests, it is full of wonderful ‘Victorian sex factoids’, including why it is unlikely that Queen Victoria ever used cannabis to help alleviate period pains.

Link to Cory Silverberg’s coverage of the new film (via @DrPetra).
Link to Lesley Hall’s page on ‘Victorian Sex Factoids’.

View the original article here

From character analysis to orgasm batteries

Slate has a brilliant article on one of the most troubled and yet fascinating people in the history of psychology – William Reich – inventor of the orgasmotron.

Reich was one of Freud’s inner circle but decided to propose his own ideas rather than follow the Freudian orthodoxy, something which got him promptly kicked out of the chosen few.

The point of contention was that Reich favoured analysing the personality as a whole, rather than individual symptoms, using a system he developed call ‘character analysis’.

His system had a massive impact on psychoanalysis but as time went on he became more and more radical to the point of seeming to have lost his marbles.

Merging abandoned versions of Freudianism and Marxism, Reich saw repression and neurosis as causes and results of bourgeois property ownership and patriarchy. He established free sex clinics and roved the city in a van from which he proselytized for Communism and orgasm. The open expression of libido, beginning with free love between adolescents, would raise the proletarian political consciousness. Soon, Reich was drummed out of the analytic movement and the Communist Party.

This, you may be surprised to hear, was not Reich at his most left-field.

He also began to believe that the power of orgasm, called orgone, could be stored in batteries and could be absorbed from the sky by the use of a special machine called a cloudbuster.

If the name of the machine seems familiar, it’s probably because it ‘Cloudbusting’ was the title of a song and video by Kate Bush which told the story of Reich’s machine and his downfall.

He eventually died in prison after being arrested by the FBI for illegally distributing his ‘orgone energy accumulator’ leaving a chaotic legacy that stretches from the profound to the ridiculous.

Link to Slate article on Willhelm Reich.

View the original article here