By Sean Hustedde
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders reportedly built a device that would harness a supposed sexual life force energy and release it in the form of explosive orgasms when he was in college, according to a book set to be released Tuesday.
Dan Chiasson, author of “Bernie for Burlington: The Rise of the People’s Politician,” claims Sanders became a devotee of Dr. Wilhelm Reich, an Austrian psychoanalyst and sexologist, in his early 20s, the Daily Mail reported. Sanders then built a five-foot-long prayer mat made of spiked copper wires that he would sleep on to channel “orgone,” what Reich theorized was a universal energy heavily rooted in sexuality, according to Chiasson.
Reich also notably believed there was correlation between sexual repression and fascism. Reich also “connected political liberation with the cultivation of cosmos-shattering orgasms,” Chiasson wrote in his book, the Daily Mail reported.
The psychoanalyst also created a shed-like device known as an “Orgone Accumulator” which would supposedly accumulate “orgastic” energy circulating in the air which Reich believed could cure various diseases, such as cancer, left-wing outlet Mother Jones reported in 2015, during the senator’s first White House bid. Reich died in 1957 while serving a two-year prison sentence connecting to his breach of an injunction from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that barred Reich from selling orgone accumulators across the country, according to the Daily Mail.
A woman sits in a replica of Wilhelm Reich’s ‘orgone accumulator’ during a press preview of ‘The Institute of Sexology’ exhibition at The Wellcome Trust in London on November 19, 2014. (Photo by Adrian Dennis/Getty Images)
Sanders was influenced by Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, and Reich during his time at the University of Chicago and would read their works to better understand what he regarded as the disadvantages of living life under capitalism, according to the Daily Mail.
While attending the University of Chicago, Sanders wrote an article in the Maroon, the university student newspaper, titled “Sex and the Single Girl – Part Two,” an homage to the feminist book by Helen Gurley Brown, where Sanders argued against the college housing policy which barred women from living off campus and not being allowed to have male visitors in their housing, according to the outlet. Sanders labelled the university’s policy as an “oppressive code of morality” that amounted to “forced chastity” according to the Daily Mail.
Sanders came under scrutiny during his presidential campaigns due to an article he wrote about gender roles which controversially stated that women have “rape fantasies.” The controversial essay contained statements such as “a women enjoys intercourse with her man – as she fantasizes being raped by 3 men simultaneously,” and “do you know why the newspapers with the articles like ‘Girl 12 raped by 14 men’ sell so well? To what in us are they appealing?”
Sanders’ office did not respond immediately to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
