For decades, Reich's late major work "The Cancer," which first appeared in America in 1948 but was subsequently withdrawn from circulation and burned by court order in the 1950s, remained unknown and tabooed. Now, at a time of great openness towards unorthodox treatments of the cancer issue, the book is being published simultaneously in America and various European countries. Unlike conventional cancer research, which examines the causes of the disease in a separate-mechanistic way, Reich views cancer as a total disease of the organism, a process of shrinkage that originates from a chronic stagnation of biological-sexual energy. The typical characterological resignation of cancer patients, which has now been scientifically confirmed, has already been recognized by Reich as an essential feature. For him, they are not just a consequence, but.