The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- Heaven Help Us -- (Chapter VIII, Part 38)

Since Inge joined the museum in 1986, the number of visitors has more than tripled to nearly 80,000 a year from around the world.

The main hotspot for psychoanalysis now, she says, is Eastern Europe and Russia.

'Present Russian society is very open to any therapeutic help. So we have close connections to Moscow and St. Petersburg, because they have severe issues in terms of family problems, homeless children and alcoholism.'

She also notes that at least one Indian doctor has tried to mesh psychoanalysis with his native culture.

'And I'm no expert on this, but I think one of the very interesting future viewpoints will be if Islamic societies would try to integrate psychoanalytic findings in their culture.'

And I'm thinking: heaven help us.

Time's cover from 1993

Like its namesake, the museum tends to promote the Freudian myth rather than the reality, though maybe it's wrong to expect a place called the Sigmund Freud Museum in the homeland of Hitler to be objective. It might be too much to ask—if this weren't the home of modern self-analysis.

As I'm on my way out, a staff member mentions that contrary to the impression the museum gives, Freud actually had his practice downstairs when he wrote some of his most famous works, including The Interpretation of Dreams.

'So we do some lying up here,' the staffer jokes.

Old Sigmund would feel right at home.

* * *

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- The Prophet of the Second Sexual Revolution? -- (Chapter VIII, Part 37)

In keeping with the demented sci-fi theme, the modern videos on display promoting 'orgone therapy' are cheesily reminiscent of Scientology promos, minus the celebs.

Unlike L. Ron Hubbard, though, the Austrian never lived to see the triumph of his new reich.

As an ex-Commie flogging sex boxes to American gullibles during the Red Scare of the 1950s, it was only a matter of time before Reich attracted the Feds.

In a disturbing parallel to the Nazis' book burnings, the US government ordered all his writings about 'orgone therapy' to be incinerated.

Prosecuted as a fraud and sentenced to two years in jail, Reich died in captivity in 1957, turning him into a martyr of sorts for later free spirits.

In its cover story announcing 'The Second Sexual Revolution' in 1964, Time magazine conceded reluctantly that 'Reich may have been a prophet. For now it sometimes seems that all America is one big Orgone Box.'

And since then, the West's libido has been unleashed to roam the world—and come back and pee on Freud's very own doorstep.

Just down the street from his former home in Vienna is a high-brow erotica shop with a painting of an eighteenth-century woman crouched on a bed, her naked hindquarters quivering in the air.

With a winged penis as its symbol, the store takes its name from de Sade: Die Philosophie im Boudoir. 

Though its counterpart in London boasts more relics, the Freud Museum in Vienna is obviously hallowed ground, for it's here that psychoanalysis was born—his most famous patients passed through these portals—and it's here that the prophet of a new age was persecuted by the heathens of his own land and forced to flee (Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.)

'It was one of the most privileged emigrations of the Nazi regime, because they allowed him to take everything with him,' says the museum's director, Inge Scholz-Strasser, noting that after Freud left, his home became a 'Jew-collecting apartment:' a temporary residence for poor Jews who were dispatched to concentration camps.

The History of Sex: Graz and Vienna -- Orgasmatrons and Orgasm Guns -- (Chapter VIII, Part 36)

Whereas old Sigmund tried to support the status quo—not least because the bourgeoisie kept him in cigars—Reich was an avowed Marxist who aimed to free the libidos of the lumpenproles.

Unfortunately, like his fellow Galician, Sacher-Masoch, he also wasn't right in the head.

Early on, the psychiatrist claimed to have discovered a new form of energy.

'Orgone' derived its name—and power—from the orgasm.

What's more, Reich claimed that this magical sex energy could be captured and concentrated to produce earth-moving miracles.

After fleeing to the US in 1939, he set up a research lab called Orgonon in the boondocks of Maine and started advertising 'orgone accumulators.'

The idea was that patients would sit in these special boxes—they look like posh, blonde-wood porta-potties—and wait for orgasmic energy from the atmosphere to build up in their, um, organs.

Unbelievably, Reichian therapy and many of its offshoots are still going strong today.

To my immense disappointment, though, no one's allowed to sit in the specially imported orgasmatron here in Vienna's Jewish Museum.

In fact, it's strictly verboten to take pictures of it, or the equally bizarre invention that Reich cooked up in his later years (God forbid the technology should fall into the wrong hands).

Convinced of the power of sex energy, the increasingly paranoid scientist built orgone 'guns'—basically, big hollow tubes lashed together—that he claimed could repel enemy UFOs.

Nailed it!