Record of a Friendship

(Ben Green) #1

(^193)
Summerhill School
Leiston, Suffolk
My dear Reich,


[ 1947 ]

June 17, 1947

Thanks for the magazines. They might have been worse, but I
hope this publicity doesn't interfere with your work. *
Had a letter from Hamilton saying he is to take me to the fann first.
I do hope he doesn't keep me there long, for I am coming to see you
primarily. He wrote that he wants to take me to the top of the Empire
Building to see the city. I have replied to him that I don't want that. My
emotional pest at the moment has revived myoId height phobia.
By the time I sail I hope that the Accumulator will have made me
more balanced emotionally. But apart from this phobia of mine, which
by the way operates on the top of a mountain with sloping sides, and
would operate if the Empire Bg. had a wire cage at top, I hate being
taken sight-seeing. In Stockholm when they thought they were enter­
taining me by showing me old castles etc. 1 was just bored to death. So
I have told Hamilton that I merely want to go around seeing the things
that take my fancy, and 1 guess that after 7 years of empty shops, the
N.Y. shops will fascinate me ... and the food.
Now, Reich, if you can do so without offending the HamiItons, try to
arrange that I see YOU as much as possible. I want a quiet time with
you and Ilse and Peter, and when H. writes that Ranger has arranged
a seminar of teachers "at the farm"... well, es lut mir leid [I am
sorry]. Of course I may like them a lot, but 1 wouldn't have crossed the
Atlantic for anyone but you.



  • I •


* Reich had sent Neill two magazines, each containing an article about Reich's
theories and his work: "The New Cult of Sex and Anarchy," Harper's Magazine
(April 1947), and "The Strange Case of Wilhelm Reich," The New Republic
(May 26, 1947), both by Mildred Edie Brady. Purporting to be objective descrip­
tions, both articles, and particularly that in The New Republic, were virulently
hostile.
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