money and madness and political frenzy. People live their lives in
ideologies, and are avoiding the realities evolved in honest pioneering. I
see for instance educators raving with enthusiasm about your writings,
but in reality taking no steps to fight the misery of children all around
us. What is the use of all this struggle, if the common man, teacher or
physician, spoils the fruits of hard work when he touches it? Do I
exaggerate? Am I pessimistic? They call me a damn optimist, and yet
there is reason to be desperate in view of this flattening out of everything
that is meant to change our lives in a rational manner. They hail me
now because I introduced the understanding of the Character. They say
it is accepted everywhere, but I know that no one who is not under my
immediate control is actually doing anything practical about the core of
the problem. They still don't mention the issue: Healthy sexual living
of children and adolescents!!!!!
Did you get your Orgone Accumulator already? I want you and your
family to have its benefits.
January 21
I wonder, my dear Neill, whether you are still the great Menschen
liebhaber [lover of humanity] you used to be? I have the impression
that you withdrew from them to some degree.
Summerhill School
Leiston, Suffolk
My dear Reich,
- I •
January 25, 1947Your letter came just after a visit from Barakan. He is in a
bad way emotionally. He says that you will stand no criticism at all from
any co-worker, that you get into a fury and throw them out if they dare
question your rightness in anything ... your physics, electricity, maths.
I listened. All I said was that you and I have criticised each other for
years, and have remained the best of friends, but his answer was that
that is different, for Neill isn't working under Reich nor Reich under N.
This loyalty business is hard to be wise about. B. hadn't been ten
minutes in S'hill on his first visit before he started to tell me it was
wrong, that I was swindling myself, that I wasn't really on the child's
side at all, that S'hill shouldn't have any failures etc. Yet I took him on
as a teacher, knowing that he would continue to criticise me. (True,