Discussion of my 1/11/25 Substack and Facebook post, “On falling”

[This discussion involves various aspects of the theory of “orgonomy” developed by psychiatrist and sociologist and scientist Wilhelm Reich and then further extended by others. I do not here interrupt the flow of the discussion by trying to explain all these terms and concepts for readers of my Substack blog, but a reader unfamiliar with orgonomy may almost certainlybe able to infer some of the meanings and find the discussion interesting even without understanding all the terminology completely. Anyone wishing further clarification about the terminology and concepts may make a comment and I will explain.]

My post:

Falling apart isn’t the problem. The problem is not believing that you can put yourself back together again.

Sometimes you have to “fall.“ Fall asleep, fall in love, sometimes fall apart with the courage and knowledge and faith that your “parts” will put themselves back together when they are ready.

A friend and Substack subscriber who I will refer to as “X” wrote the following:

X: A follow up adding failing would be most interesting. Falling being an internal process and failing being external or relational.

I also would tend to believe that failing is left to the perceptual function, while falling a sensation.

This lends to the idiom of sorts being ‘letting things fall into place’

Falling in love

Failing in marriage

Falling for the same bullshit

Failing to put two and two together.

Harsh, identifiable yet applicable outside of myself.

DH (me): My main attraction to thinking about falling has to do with it being an orgonotic phenomenon. Reich quite often discussed “falling anxiety.” There’s an article that appears in a number of different publications of his titled something like “Falling Anxiety In A Three-Year old.” I believe it’s in The Cancer Biopathy and also in Children Of The Future. Falling anxiety is essentially orgasm anxiety. It’s a fear reflex elicited from the energy, moving down without being able to tolerate it moving down. In reference to cancer, my recollection/understanding is that he associates it with anorgonia. He writes that anorgonia is involved with the cancer biopathy.

Viewing falling this way (as a function of the spinning wave, which is involved in longitudinal energy movement) carries with it a lot of implications.

By the way, the different orgonometric functions are always inseparable. What happens in the relationship of one set of paired variations also occurs in all the other paired variations, essentially. It’s all connected. Specifically, how free the longitudinal energy movement is depends not only on the spinning wave function, but on the pulsation function because pulsation and the tolerance for pulsation function is actually what determines whether the spinning wave energy movement can move down. The pulsation function of course is radial and is arranged segmentally and I suppose you would have to say that it is much more closely related to armoring than the spinning wave function, although I’m not sure whether that is an incomplete understanding.

Also, spinning wave is associated with sensation and pulsation is associated with emotion. One thing I think of in that regard, and I’m not sure whether Reich ever wrote this but it seems to me to be implied in these conceptualizations, is that it seems that sexual sensations are an aspect of the spinning wave and love is an aspect of pulsation. I know that thinking of love as an aspect of pulsation is something that is discussed to some degree amongst orgonomists although I’m not 100% sure whether I can recall Reich making that connection. I believe other orgonomists do make that connection, and might have put that in writing somewhere.

Anyway, an interesting aspect of this is that it has occurred to me that the split between love and sex is that the “core” of armored civilization. In the authoritarian era love was permitted, but sex was suppressed and punished. In our current anti-authoritarian era any kind of seeking of sexual sensation is allowed and encouraged and applauded, whereas love or a discussion of love seems to be almost entirely absent, with people seeming to think of love as some kind of sentimental idea, and not quite real, whereas sex is real somehow. So what we have is loveless sex, whereas in the authoritarian culture, we have sexless love. It seems fair to me to say that so much of Reich’s conception of clinical orgonomy has to do with removing the armor separating sex and love, which requires that both the spinning wave and the processes function be free and unarmored.

Orgasm anxiety and falling anxiety involve a fear of the energy “going down.” In the chapter “The Living Orgonome” in Cosmic Superimposition, which to me seems obviously to be one of the most important and foundational discussions in all of orgonomy, Reich looks at examples in the animal kingdom from single celled organisms upwards of how the energy moves in living organisms with a membrane. It’s in that chapter where he describes energy moving up along the dorsal (“back” surface) of the organism, and then down the ventral (front) of the organism, and then in sexual organisms, like humans, the energy is discharged through the genitals when the energy moves down the ventral surface. So here Reich emphasizes the spinning wave function in the orgasm function, whereas in his earlier writings, he emphasized pulsation and had not yet discovered the spinning wave function. Much of his later life involved exploring the spinning wave function. It seems to me that historically we have discussed the pulsation function a lot in orgonomy, but have not really discussed the spinning wave function as much.

So anyway, thinking of “falling” in this manner points to an energetic understanding. Falling in love involves the energy moving down. Falling anxiety involves an anxiety about the energy moving down. Falling apart also involves the energy moving down without it being tolerated. “Falling apart” apparently refers to the dissolution of contact, the dissolution of integration. Perhaps one could say that the pulsation function “holds us together,” “keeps our shit together.” And incidentally, during the orgasm we do essentially “fall apart“ transiently. And that is part of the function of the orgasm, I would say. All the armor is loosened and for a moment, we essentially merge with the cosmos. Similarly, when we fall asleep, the energy also tends to move down. Incidentally, I think of sleep as a massive nightly DOR-busting operation. Energy movement is restored. During REM, there is a flaccid paralysis where the muscles relax, and therefore energy can move. This was written about by Konia and Harman:

Harman states that, "...sleep involves necessary processes of the autonomic nervous system that cannot take place during waking life"(2007, page 9). "In sleep, the plasmatic system in general, and the autonomic nervous system in particular, establish and maintain their predominance over the brain. This process includes an increase in the level of parasympathetic excitation and in overall motility, which expands the organism....orgonotic charge is reorganized so as to enable a higher level of functioning. This includes a reorganization of muscular and character armoring" (Harman, 2007, page 7).

"In dreams...basic functions of contraction and expansion are integrated..." (Harman, 2007, page 8). "Tentatively, we can say that in non-REM sleep the brain serves the function of visualizing muscular armor while the orgonotic charge is readjusted in the musculature....This enables the organism to more fully expand and enter REM sleep. Visualization of Coexistent Action (Attraction and Lumination) is necessary for the perception of the plasmatic system in REM sleep"(Harman, 2007, page 7). "In most armored individuals sleep serves to reinforce and maintain armoring. To the degree that conflicted motor activity remains unbound in the musculature and unexpressed in social life (for example in the excitatory schizophrenic), then increasing charge is not tolerated and REM sleep is experienced as traumatic....Much of the restructuring that occurs after medical orgone therapy dissolves sympatheticonia happens during sleep." (Harman, 2007, page 8).

"...every dream is primarily a direct visualization of the bioenergetic processes occurring within the dreamer's body." (Harman 1999, page 111). Konia explains that, "The dream consists of psychic (whole) and somatic (component) elements....Both thoughts and dreams originate from the perception of excitation of emotions and sensations and are integrated into a whole as the psychic realm, from which the psychological meaning of the dream appears. Dream images arise from component functions and usually do not contain meaning until they become integrated into a whole function....In the dream state there is an absence of motor activity and the muscles are in a state of flaccid paralysis. As a result, muscular armor is reduced or absent and this allows for the perception of psychic material that is not available to the waking mind. "(Konia, 2007, pages 53-54).

Regarding the role of dreams in medical orgone therapy, Baker stated that, "Dreams are unimportant in the therapy until one reaches the pelvis, although they can be useful to indicate the progress and trend of therapy."(Baker, 1967, page 225). "A patient's dreams often indicate his trend before it becomes evident in actual living. His functioning improves in dreams before he can achieve the improvement in reality. "(Baker, 1967, page 216).

Framing things orgonometrically, Konia states that, "The emotional function in general and the biosexual function in particular consist of both variations of orgonotic excitation, relative motion and coexistent action. "(Konia, 2001, page 58). "...Most of the individual's waking state is determined by the perception of relative motion. "(Konia, 2007, page 54). Harman defined sleep as "...the state in which the organism acts in the realm of Coexistent Action, as opposed to Relative Motion." (Harman, 2007, page 9). Konia elaborates: "Orgonotic attraction and lumination" [functions which are in the realm of coexistent action] "occur in both states of consciousness" [the waking and dreaming states] "as demonstrated most clearly in the sexual function of the waking state and the dream function of the sleep state. Both function to regulate the organism's energy economy." (Konia, 2007, pages 56-57).

Baker, E. 1967. Man In The Trap. New York: Collier Books.

Harman, R. 1999. Effects of Adolescent Marijuana Use: A Case History. Journal of Orgonomy 33/1&2: 95-113

Harman, R. 2007. The Autonomic Nervous System and the Biology of Sleep (Part I). Journal of Orgonomy 41 (1).

Harman, R. 2009. The Autonomic Nervous System and the Biology of Sleep (Part II). Journal of Orgonomy 42 (2).

Konia, C. 2001. Orgonotic Contact (Part II). Journal of Orgonomy 34 (2).

Konia, C. 2007. Applied Orgonometry V: The Function of Dreams. Journal of Orgonomy 41 (1).

To me, these articles on sleep by Harman and Konia were revolutionary and had very wide implications about orgonotic functioning outside of the discussion of sleep. But I never saw those implications discussed further in the orgonomic literature.

Other than the similar spelling of “falling“ and “failing,“ I’m not sure that there is really a connection functionally. Looking at the etymology on the Internet:

Interestingly, “falling” also describes committing sin, “yielding to temptation.”

Apparently, the word “falling” is derived from old English and German forms, and ultimately from old Norse “fall,” meaning “downfall, sin.” so here we see the connection with sexuality, and also the concretization of the emotional plague concept of sin based on orgasm anxiety. I call it emotional plague, but pretty clearly it does involve an aspect of functional thinking: the notion of sexuality being divorced from love.

X: A follow up adding failing would be most interesting. Falling being an internal process and failing being external or relational.

DH: Okay, that’s interesting. I wonder what more could be said about “failing” in an orgonometric, orgonotic, functional manner, as a function or hindrance of functioning.

X: I also would tend to believe that failing is left to the perceptual function, while falling a sensation.

D: I don’t know what you mean by “left to the perceptual function.“

X: This lends to the idiom of sorts being ‘letting things fall into place.’

D: Yes, interesting. That does seem to describe a functional process, essentially perhaps a function of integration. Reich uses the terms “integration“ and “contact“ interchangeably in his lecture on processes of integration in the newborn and the schizophrenic:

Reich on contact and integration:

Reich, W. 1949/1996. Processes of Integration in the Newborn and the Schizophrenic. Orgonomic Functionalism 6. Rangeley, Maine: The Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust:

"...in connection with the contact function, I would like to bring in a very important field of functioning, realm of functioning. And that is scientific insight. What do we do here, right here, as living organisms? What we do right now, for more than a half hour?...We are integrating. We are integrating different functions. We are integrating the function of the schizophrenic breakdown with the function of the growth of self-awareness of the infant. We are integrating two things which apparently have nothing to do with each other. That is scientific knowledge, organic scientific knowledge. If you study or do searching, research, what do you do? You integrate and unite different facts into an understandable unit. You do the same thing that your organism did in infancy with your organs or with your perception. It's only a continuation of that. The better integrated an organism is, the better it will function as a integrating organism." (Pages 64-65)

"Excellent, Doctor, excellent. That's good thinking. Very good. What did you do now biophysically or bioenergetically? What happened to you now, Doctor? What happens to me all the time when I talk? The contact of two or three functions, the hook-up, the integration of two or three functions to the whole, into a unit, creates something new....That's creation. The creative mind works that way by lucidity. What is lucidity? Lucidity is oneness or complete integration of different functions. The more functions you integrate, the more functions you have in one piece together hooked up with a common functioning principal, as we call it, the more complete is your understanding. That means knowledge, understanding, and so on, depend on these functions.” (Page 69)

X: Falling in love

Failing in marriage

Falling for the same bullshit

Failing to put two and two together.

D: So perhaps one can speak of “failing“ as a lack of contact, a lack of integration.