disturbances in children as the cause of trouble are to the incidental
lack of sleep as all the water in all the oceans of the earth is to the
incidental break in a water-main. Of course lack of sleep will make for
trouble. But that is nothing compared with the tremendous background
of the horrible genital frustration of children during first puberty.
Genitality is a total bodily function with special qualities of energy
discharge.
I am glad that you are working with children again therapeutically.
They need it.
Things are moving fast in a slow way, if I may say so. The talk about
my work does not stop, but increases considerably. The other day we
had a message from the West Coast that the Director of the Veterans
Administration there and a score of physicians have ordered Character
Analysis and are eager to get our literature. We have also started to
fight the gossiping psychoanalysts. Some of our physicians are hitting
hard. Great interest is popping up everywhere.
Peter tells now nearly every day about the children in school not
breathing. He shows exactly how they keep their mouths closed and
their chests up.
Yesterday we had a report from Sim Tropp* that an X-ray taken on
Bill Steig's mother, who had developed a cancerous tumor in her chest,
has shown a great reduction in the size of the tumor. This will get around.
I hope so in the name of the thousands of cancerous people.
Write as often as you like, Neill; this year will be one of hard fighting
and pushing through to the top.
Summerhill School
Leiston, Suffolk
My dear Reich,- I •
January 21, 1949I went to see Eastmond. He says he knows of no one attempting
therapy in connection with his end of things, barring Barakan of course
who isn't considered a Reich man anyway. Eastmond now counts only
as a book distributor.* Simeon Tropp, M.D., for a number of years a student and practitioner of
Reich's medical orgonomy.