Record of a Friendship

positive work problems. To you in that I believe your formerly some­

what confused attitude toward Russian imperialism and fascism has

clarified to a great extent. Basically, I don't think there is any disagree­

ment between us. I only feel that I am a decisive stretch farther removed

from my socialist past than you are. I would not call it a curtain that

has fallen between us, but only a thin veil which a breeze of a clean talk

will easily remove again. I am also sure that sooner or later the con­

fusion brought about by the international conspiracy will clear up and

that you will surely get your visum to reach Orgonon.

I did not shift from being a seeker of truth to being an authoritarian

general. It is true, however, that I learned to pursue the truth with much

greater determination, vigor and decision to fight the obstacles in the

way, than I ever have before.

Summerhill School

Leiston, Suffolk

My dear Reich.

• ••

November 16, 1950

Thanks for letter received 3 days after posting. I also had
Sharaf's Report [of a Symposium held at Orgonon in the latter part of
October]. It has raised thoughts like these: If all your doctors have
something that is a danger to a new-born babe, what chance has any
infant with doctors and others who never heard of O. Therapy? lise
and Ena must be character-structured in some ways and a danger to
infants, yet they have both raised a more or less self-regulated child. I,
with all the neck stiffness and the Calvinist background you know of,
although I haven't had infants to deal with, have allowed a few hundred
children to grow freely when compared with other children. Maybe I
am prejudiced by the thought that if an Ena, who never had any therapy,
can do so good a job with Zoe, why is it that you have to tell your own
trainees that some of them aren't fit to deal with the young? True, they
are your disciples, and most disciples remain so ... and as such are in­
ferior and possibly not teachable. The teachable ones don't remain as
disciples; you left Freud when you felt you had to go on alone; I left
Homer Lane and the Freudians and Stekelians. I make the guess that
you often feel you want to shake the lot of them and make them big men.
Re the doctor who confessed he grudges paying money: let me be his