For those curious, the miracle cure was sitting inside a special magic box he claimed would do something with your "orgone energy", which was like that orgasm/organism joke but posited as a real thing his device could help you with.
They burned his books, including "The Mass Psychology of Fascism" and his seminal "Character Analysis" in what has been called one of the worst instances of book burning in US history at the time. Looks like the burning times are back, eh?
He was jailed for refusing not to proselytize the Orgone box, but that was really a pretext. Orgone boxes aren't in any way dangerous. He was jailed because his theories and practice were a threat to the status quo.
To be perfectly clear, I'm familiar with multiple political prisoners in the USA and am well aware that the US does imprison people for political reasons. I'm just not convinced that this guy is one of them.
This. Pioneering psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, father of character analysis made a similar claim. He was pilloried for suggesting that we should focus on prevention of mental illness over treatment. To do this he said that we should radically reorient our societies so that they meet people's organismic needs. He died in US prison.
The psych establishment now is a tool to rehabilitate workers who have become unproductive, not a way to help humans fulfill their potential. Therapy has been helpful to me, but woefully inadequate. That is by design. It's not about my needs, it's about my employer's needs.