Record of a Friendship

is disastrous to any kind of human endeavor to confuse the liberal
principle of the dignity of man, to which I subscribe, with being liberal
toward crackpots and potential future murderers. I know from past
discussions with you that you basically agree with the following: dis­
tinguishing authoritarian discipline for the sake of cruelty from the
naturally given work democratic discipline of work processes. Hu­
man operations require a natural discipline crucial to any professional
activity. Looking back I find that though you have clearly distinguished
between license and freedom you have not clearly enough emphasized
the requirement for a natural disciplined way of procedure in any type
of human natural work. In the Ritter sense, I have never been a rebel,
never a revolutionary, but an orderly, well-organized, professionally
disciplined man of science and medicine. In this respect I always have
been conservative in the good sense and I hope to remain so the re­
mainder of my days. In other words, nature is functioning in a work
democratic manner but not in a libertine sense of democracy.
To return to the example of social pathology in Ritter, he is mad
because I don't accept him as a work democratic partner. He doesn't
understand, and never will, that before an organ is functioning work
democratically in an organism it had to integrate itself into the totality
of the specific organismic function. It had to grow slowly, carefully, and
patiently in continuous well ordered and, if you don't mind, "disciplined,"
coordination, and cooperation with the total purpose. Orgonomists, as
any other specialist, have to go through training. We are training our
workers in a free way respecting their personalities, letting them choose
their own ways to the common goal, but we are training them in a
disciplined manner in the above sense, just as a pilot has to be trained
carefully and strictly to get his airplane safely from New York to
London.
Nothing shows up the psychopathic crackpot better than the fresh
remark that "Birth is NOT a shock, the baby works for it with in­
voluntary movement and then it purrs with delight. ... Not a shock,
please-that makes nonsense of life-but an orgasm for mother and
child." The idiot wants to be equal with me, does not realize and forgot
what he has read, namely that most uteri have for ages been spastic and
therefore the births have been painful. Neill, whether you like it or not,
agree or not, I'm ready to teach. But the world of the Barakans and the
Ritters has nothing to do with learning. In that world grew all the
misery through the ages.