The effect of armor is to block or restrict the flow of orgone energy in the body, and in consequence, to block or limit the emotion rooted in this energy flow. Armor limits the capacity to experience and express deep feeling. It destroys the capacity for a natural sexuality, the most intense pleasurable emotion. The armor shapes the character and mentality; it affects how people think, including how scientists think. Armor is the cause of psychosis, of crime, of fascism and of other political irrationality. It is the root of contradiction between mechanism and mysticism, which is so important to understanding resistance to the orgone energy concept.

   Our civilization is rooted in mystical religion and mechanistic science. These together comprise the principal intellectual forces in the world we live in. Both of these forces are products of armored man. Reich has said that mankind is ruled by a contradictory and murderous mixture of machines and gods, by which he meant the mystical forces of religion and the mechanistic forces of science. The mechanist armors himself in such a way that he cuts off his perception of and his contact with his own deepest nature. He becomes rigid and limited in his thought processes. He develops a mechanical concept of nature and becomes deterministic in his view of causality. He tends to think compulsively and has a deep-seated fear of the alive, the free, the spontaneously moving, the unpredictable, the deeply emotional. The mechanistic scientist reacts against orgone energy functions because they correspond to exactly that portion of nature that he has armored against. For this reason, the mechanist forms a mechanical view of creation and of life.

   The mystic, by contrast, is not completely cut off from his nature, from orgone energy phenomena within himself, but has distorted this contact because of his armor. The mystic is capable of achieving some great insights because he is in partial contact with his deepest nature; still his contact, especially his contact with his own body, is distorted, and in most cases, deeply distorted. The mystic tends to split off bodily love from the mental, the "spiritual, " and often to become ascetic and anti-sexual. This is perhaps the greatest tragedy of all, because it contributes the most to reproducing armor in the young.

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MECHANISM Matter is the primary reality Mechanical view of creation Life is a biological accident Matter has always existed or appears from nowhere for no reason. Emotion, volition, sensation are inexplicable, or explicable only as the results of material processes.		MYSTICISM Mind or spirit is the primary reality. Magical view of creation (religious legends) Life and matter were created by a superintelligence in an' unobservable supernatural process. Emotion, volition, sensation a r e inexplicable or magically explained.
	ORGONOMIC FUNCTIONALISM "Mind and body" or "matter and spirit" are different aspects of one reality. Creation is a continuous observable natural process. "Emotion," "volition," "sensation" are integral parts of the creative process.

Figure 3.

The relation of mechanism, mysticism, and orgonomic functionalism. Armor causes functional thinking to split into two antithetical off shoots as shown. Human thought is almost completely dominated by these pathological offshoots.


   The many who might not be threatened by the orgone energy concept per se are threatened by the attitude others take towards it, by the scorn, the abuse, the contempt which invariably stem from pathological individuals, but unfortunately, easily infect others. It is a sad fact that the desire to be respectable is a primary motivation among scientists. Individuals threatened by the orgone energy concept attack it by making it disreputable. "Respectable" scientists then will not consider the concept or the evidence for it.

   Finally, a factor which hurts acceptance of the orgone energy concept which must not be ignored lies in the effects of the armor on the very individuals who support the concept. Those who work in orgonomy are also members of the sick human race; they too are armored, with tendencies toward mechanism and/or mysticism. Even highly-qualified scientists professing interest in orgonomy (and there are many) are usually incapable of productive work in the field. Many brave plans for research in orgonomy are made, but few materialize. For every article in the 29 volumes of evidence for orgone energy that have been cited, there were 20 or 30 planned by supporters of orgonomy but never carried out. And it is a sad fact that the quality of those which have appeared has sometimes suffered in comparison with what could be reasonably expected of the individuals involved. Research in orgonomy is extremely difficult; the process of actually working with orgone energy exposes the worker fully and directly to its threatening qualities. Other scientific work is easier to do because it is more peripheral, further removed from the core of life itself, and for this reason, less threatening to the scientist.

   This should not be construed as an apology for what has been accomplished in orgonomy. Much of this work, particularly that of Reich himself, is of the highest caliber. At present the need for additional work to confirm experiments previously done and to carry out new research is not being met, however. This is only partly because of the lack of funds, facilities and time, a lack, incidentally, due to the activities of the frightened and hateful souls who have so maligned orgonomy that they have destroyed the possibility for it to obtain research funds through normal channels. Of equal importance with the lack of funds and facilities are the characterological problems of those of us who would carry out the research.

   In summary, the fact that the orgone energy concept is not generally accepted is not due to the absence of evidence but to a widespread pathology of the human animal. This pathology consists of a rigidity of body and character that cuts the individual off from life energy functions within himself, and makes him either blind to or threatened by the functioning of this same energy in nature. The mass pathology works against acceptance of the orgone energy concept in many ways:

 

• It brings about the mechanistic -and mystical character structures which prevail in our
  world.
• It causes pathological fear and hatred in a minority of individuals, who attempt to destroy
  orgonomy by gross distortions of fact, defamation, and ridicule, and sometimes by direct
  violence. This minority is effective because of the characterological soil in which it works.
• The "characterological soil" consists not only of the prevailing mechanistic and
  mystical characters of the majority, but also the fearfulness of scientists and
  intellectuals to be associated with "disreputable" ideas.
• Finally, the work done in orgonomy itself suffers from the fact that the mass disorder of
  the human animal afflicts the proponents and investigators of the orgone energy concept
  as well as their opponents, and affects the amount and quality of their work.