ness and simplicity he sorely missed among his more “cultivated” friends and colleagues.
Zadniker strongly supported Reich’s view that he should work as a physician
rather than as a politician within the leftist movement. Reich should help the people med-
ically and educationally. Accordingly, during the spring and summer of both 1928 and
1929, Reich engaged in a kind of “community psychiatry,” or at least his version of it.
Reich, together with a pediatrician, a gynecologist, and his friend Lia Laszky (who had
become a nursery-school teacher), would go out several days a week into the suburbs and
rural areas around Vienna. They would drive in a van, announcing their visits in advance.
Interested persons gathered at a local park and Reich’s group spoke to them about sexu-
al matters. Reich would talk with the adolescents and men, the gynecologist with the
women, and Lia with the children. Upon request, the gynecologist would also prescribe
and fit contraceptive devices^2.
Sometimes the group would go door to door distributing pamphlets with sexu-
al information. Most of these activities were of course illegal. More than once the group
was chased away by the police, and on a few occasions members of the “team” were
arrested on spurious charges. One of these was that the children, who enjoyed exploring
the van, were “corrupted” by contact with sex information and devices. However,
charges against the group were usually dismissed. They were just “nuisances.”
In addition to the sex counseling, Reich would also give political talks in the
evening. He began with questions or problems people had raised in smaller discussions
with the team during the day. For example, young men and women complained about
how the lack of money forced them to live at home, hampering their sexual freedom.
Others spoke of their fear of unwanted pregnancies. Reich would deal with some of the
personal aspects of these problems. However, at some point he would invariably connect
them with larger political issues. People could not have a satisfying sexual life without
adequate housing for all; hence this kind of public policy required a truly Socialist soci-
ety. The problem of unwanted pregnancies could only be met by progressive sex legisla-
tion,in other words,the legalization of birth control and abortion, the kind of legisla-
tion the Christian Socialists always opposed. In their turn, the Social Democratic leaders
avoided these issues; the public should pressure them to take a strong positive stand.
Reich had an unusual ability to start with a concrete example and then find the
larger concepts and implications contained in that example. This ability was important in
all his teaching,but it especially facilitated his contact with nonprofessional audiences.
While he was frank in answering questions, he had considerable sensitivity to the
“touchy” issues for any given audience or individual questioner, and he would approach
them with care.In simple language he could appeal to people’s longing for a richer sex-
ual-emotional life, while recognizing the fears and guilts they experienced at the idea of
such an existence. This was true of the audiences that attended sex-political meetings.
With professionals, Reich could use the same kind of sensitivity to highlight the differ-
ences between his position and that ofothers in a way that often was abrasive.
Reich had a superb speaking style. Dr. Kurt Eissler, a prominent psychoanalyst
128 Myron SharafFury On Earth