How Bernie Sanders built a device to give himself 'cosmos-shattering orgasms'
Bernie Sanders was a follower of the 'Father of Free Love' in his youth and built himself a device so he could achieve 'cosmos-shattering orgasms', according to a new book on the senator.
He was heavily influenced by the controversial sex therapist Wilhelm Reich who believed that liberation could be achieved via enhanced climaxes.
During his 20s and while at college, Sanders became a devotee of Reich, an Austrian psychoanalyst, who believed that a universal energy called 'orgone' powered everything.
Reich constructed a shed-like device called an 'Orgone Accumulator' which supposedly collected energy to be later released in the form of explosive orgasms.
According to the upcoming book 'Bernie for Burlington', Sanders saw Reich's teaching as the 'answer' to his own hardscrabble childhood.
Such was his devotion to Reich that he even built his own orgone orgasm device, a 5ft-long prayer mat made of copper wire with spikes on it that he slept on to channel the 'energy' into his body, author Dan Chiasson claims.
Chiasson, a poet and journalist who is a regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine, grew up in Burlington, the largest city in Vermont, where a the now 84-year-old Sanders became mayor before becoming a US Representative and then Senator.
The book charts Sanders's ideological development as a democratic socialist and says that he was 'deeply influenced' by Reich, who 'connected political liberation with the successful cultivation of cosmos-shattering orgasms'.
Before he became a politician, Bernie Sanders was a follower of the 'Father of Free Love' and became heavily influenced by a controversial sex therapist
The therapist was Wilhelm Reich, an Austrian psychoanalyst who believed a universal energy called 'orgone' powered everything and that liberation could be achieved through extra-strong climaxes
Food and Drug Administration commissioner George Larrick exhibited an orgone accumulator in the run-up to Reich's trial
While attending the University of Chicago between 1960 and 1964, Sanders read the works of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud to understand the downside of life under capitalism.
In 1963 he wrote a 2,000-word manifesto, in capital letters, in the Maroon, the daily student newspaper, laying out the case for sexual freedom, Chiasson claims in his book which is subtitled 'The Rise of the People's Politician'.
Titled 'Sex and the Single Girl - Part Two', a play on a feminist treatise by Helen Gurley Brown, Sanders criticized the college's housing policies for banning women from living off campus and not being allowed to have visitors from the opposite sex.
With the same fire he would later direct at billionaires, Sanders called the rule an 'oppressive code of morality' and said the college's policy amounted to 'forced chastity'.
But it wasn't just Freud and Marx who were behind the essay by Sanders, who has been married twice and has one son, Levi, 58, with a third woman, Susan Mott.
According to Chiasson, Reich was a major influence too.
What appealed to Sanders was how Reich linked social conditions to lack of sexual freedom, the book says.
Reich argued that since working class people were denied the kind of sexual freedoms enjoyed by the bourgeoisie, they suffered from additional physical and mental impairments.
According to the upcoming book Bernie for Burlington, author Dan Chiasson says Sanders viewed Reich's teachings as the 'answer' to his difficult childhood
While at the University of Chicago from 1960 to 1964, Sanders studied Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud to better understand life under capitalism (Sanders standing left with back to camera)
Sanders was drawn to Reich's claim that social conditions stifled sexual freedom, leaving the working class with extra physical and mental burdens, the new book claims
As Reich once wrote, 'civilized living conditions' were essential for 'sexual order': in other words people needed free, uninhibited orgasms to release the tensions of daily life.
Sanders regretted the 'tragic harm' of his parents' lives in a cramped apartment in Brooklyn, New York, as it meant there was 'no privacy' for them, and so no chance for sexual exploration.
Chiasson writes that friends of Sanders from his college days said he read 'Reich deeply, carefully'.
Sanders was also drawn to Reich because of his persecution, or at least that was how Sanders saw it, by the US government
Reich had died in 1957 while serving a two-year prison sentence for contempt for breaching an injunction obtained by the Food and Drug Administration to stop selling Orgone Accumulators across state lines.
He became a martyr in certain quarters, including to Sanders, who bought into the idea of orgone, which was named after orgasms.
The 'Orgone Accumulator' was a shed-like structure which was supposed to concentrate this sexual energy.
It was pseudo scientific at best, not least when Reich claimed it could cure diseases like cancer, a claim which led to the FDA intervening.
Sanders later reflected that the cramped Brooklyn apartment his parents lived in caused 'tragic harm,' leaving them no privacy and no opportunity for sexual exploration
Reich died in 1957 behind bars for defying an FDA ban on selling Orgone Accumulators - and became a martyr to fans, including Bernie Sanders
Sanders married twice, including to his current wife Jane O'Meara. He also had a son with a third woman
Among those who tested the device was Albert Einstein, who even took delivery of a small version and did experiments on it.
Others who tried it out included authors Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer and William Burroughs.
The 'Orgone Accumulator' even featured in Jack Kerouac's book 'On The Road' where it was described as a 'Mystic Outhouse'.
Chiasson is scathing about the whole thing, saying that it was a 'ludicrous prop' for the free love movement and calls it a 'deception' by lecherous men to snare women.
But that didn't put Sanders off and he told friends that when he eventually got to Washington he wanted to 'immediately look into Reich's imprisonment'.
According to Sanders's friend Jim Rader, the future presidential candidate's device was rectangular and 'maybe 5ft high made of copper wire'.
Rader likened it to a spiky 'prayer mat' or an 'Indian breastplate' and he suspected Sanders had put it together himself.
Sanders told Rader that he put the device under his back as he slept on it as a way of 'directing orgone energy into the body'.
Even Albert Einstein tested Reich's 'Orgone Accumulator,' receiving a small version to conduct his own experiments
Reich's 'Orgone Accumulator' even appears in Jack Kerouac's On the Road, where it's described as a 'Mystic Outhouse'
At Sanders' urging, Rader did the same and lay down on his back on a hill and tried to 'see orgone energy'.
Chiasson writes: 'Jim concentrated on his visual field and stared up into the blue sky. All these years later Rader swears he saw 'something there'.
'I would describe it almost as corpuscles, like paramecia under a microscope'.
Sanders' brother Larry told Chiasson that these days, Reich was an influence that his brother 'wanted to downplay'.
However during Sanders's first run for the presidency in 2015, another of his articles about sex would come back to haunt him with critics describing it as a 'rape fantasy'.
The article was published in 1972 in an alternative newspaper called the Vermont Freeman and was titled 'Man-and-Woman' and was supposed to be a commentary on gender roles.
But it included some extremely controversial lines.
They read: 'A man goes home and masturbates his typical fantasy. A woman on her knees, a woman tied up, a woman abused.
During Sanders's 2015 presidential run, a 1972 Vermont Freeman article on sex titled 'Man-and-Woman' drew criticism as a 'rape fantasy,' though campaign spokesman Michael Briggs (right) called it a 'dumb attempt at dark satire'
Sanders lost the 2016 Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton, who was defeated by Donald Trump, and ran again in 2020, losing the Democrat nomination to Joe Biden
'A woman enjoys intercourse with her man – as she fantasizes being raped by 3 men simultaneously.
'The man and woman get dressed up on Sunday – and go to Church, or maybe to their "revolutionary" political meeting.
'Do you know why the newspaper with the articles like '"Girl 12 raped by 14 men" sell so well? To what in us are they appealing?'
At the time, his campaign spokesman Michael Briggs called the article a 'dumb attempt at dark satire in an alternative publication'.
The piece 'in no way reflects his views or record on women', Briggs said, adding that 'it was intended to attack gender stereotypes of the '70s, but it looks as stupid today as it was then'.
Sanders lost the Democratic nomination to Hillary Clinton who was beaten by to Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential election.
Sanders ran again in 2020 but lost to Joe Biden as the Democratic candidate.
The Daily Mail has reached out to Sanders for comment.
