A Book of Dreams

Product Information

Neuware - A Book of Dreams, the inspiration behind Kate Bush's 1985 hit song 'Cloudbusting', and widely regarded as a classic of writing about childhood, is at last available in paperback again. From the late 40s through to the mid-50s Reich was under investigation by the American Food and Drug Administration for providing an unauthorised form of treatment - the accumulators.

I was not entirely sure what to expect when I picked this up and paid the most money I have ever paid for any used book - but I did know that there was something special about it because of the sheer amount of other works of art that used this text as an inspiration. Peter Reich regales us with tales from his childhood spent largely with his doctor/psychologist/scientist/inventor/eccentric father Wilhelm Reich. This book really stuck out as original in my mind in the way it fuses together different scenes and characters with a narrative and descriptive flow identical to some of the dreams I've had. In A Book of Dreams Peter Reich tells us what it was like to have a father who stood defiantly against the status quo, who did strange experiments, who shared with him his deepest hopes and fears, and who was taken from him when he was only 12. In doing so I was surprised to learn that the song was actually based off of a memoir written by a man named Peter Reich about his childhood and experiences with his father, psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich.and then, the next time I heard "Cloudbursting" by Kate Bush (one of my favourite songs by one of my favourite singers), it all fell into place. The second third of the book seemed to zoom by and had I the spare time I would have probably read much farther if not finished the book. And in the end, the book gave me the same unfinished and sad feeling as the song: that Peter can never fully get past the yearning for the magical ideals he lived in childhood, or let go of his need for the closeness he had for his father, both of which are irretrievably gone. Having been a Kate Bush fan for decades, I was drawn into reading this from knowing she used the book as inspiration for the song lyrics Cloudbusting (bloody love that song!

He also built other devices, such as "cloud-busters", which were supposed to direct orgone into clouds and make it rain. This famous book, the inspiration behind Kate Bush's 1985 hit song 'Cloudbusting', is the extraordinary account of life as friend, confidant and child of the brilliant but persecuted Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich. Peter Reich is the son of Wilhelm Reich, one of the most controversial thinkers of the twentieth century. Wilhelm Reich studied under Sigmund Freud, who he later parted ways with due to a disagreement in their approaches to sexuality. His sister does not seem to have written anything about their father or his work or how it affected her.In “A Book of Dreams” Peter Reich tells us what it was like to have a father who stood defiantly against the status quo, who did strange experiments, who shared with him his deepest hopes and fears, and who was taken from him when he was only 12. Reich believed his Cloudbuster could be used to fight against aliens, who he believed were attempting to destroy the Earth.

In his writing, Peter celebrates the love between a father and son while also exploring the trauma he faced as a result of his father's eccentric beliefs. It reminded me of Richard Brautigan and similar authors from the 1970s: chronology and point of view lurch all over the place, reality and fantasy merge and are hard to disentangle. He is well-known for his theories regarding the Orgone Energy and for starting the health fad surrounding accumulators.The feeling of what it must be like to be a child caught up in events beyond one's comprehension is very powerfully conveyed. The book is short, slim, and important, written by a man whose careers spanned journalism and child daycare according to the jacket. In some ways this book reminds me of The Glass Castle in that much of it is in the voice and point of view of a young child relating the imaginative way they coped with a father who lived outside of the norm. After fleeing the Nazi regime to Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, Reich eventually settled down in the United States, where he began on a series of inventions and theories which made his colleagues question his sanity.

It sort of sucked me into a mystical pseudo-scientific world I used to experience when I was a kid reading those heavily illustrated UFO and Monster-Cryptid books you could get at elementary school book fairs.

Peter's poetic way of writing makes this experience all the more enjoyable, and I can absolutely see why both Patti Smith and Kate Bush were so moved by this book, and I'd highly recommend it to both fans and non-fans of these wonderful musicians.