response from the poor, who had to deal with the harsh economic reality of post-imperial
Vienna of the late 1920s, and he felt more at home among them. There is a fascinating pic-
ture taken of Reich in 1927 or 1928 that highlights his increasing identification with the
working class. The photo shows him standing with a group of twenty or so other people in
front of a building with signs posted up saying: “Mit den Kommunisten gegen die
Faschisten” (With the Communists against the Fascists) and “Wahlt Kommunisten!” (Vote
Communist!). Reich stands at the edge of the group, wearing a tie but also a leather jacket,
a frequent part of his dress during this period. The picture is in sharp contrast to photos
taken of Reich with his analytic colleagues. The latter, in other photos, are clearly middle
class and professional, and dressed accordingly. In the political photo Reich is with simple
people, some of the working class, all very nonacademic in appearance. There is a man in
some kind of uniform standing in the front of the group, straddling a bicycle. A boy in a
knit cap watches the scene. The photo is haunting, bringing to mind the Depression years,
the rise of fascism, and the searing political struggles of the late 1920s and early 1930s.
In these years Reich was still trying to combine different milieus—the world of the
poor and the world of his professional colleagues, the world of marriage and the world of
his political relationships. Ottilie, for example, recalled Reich reading to her one night from
something he had just written:“He was so warm,so full ofcompassion for people that I
loved him at that moment. And then the next day he could be cold and callous to the peo-
ple around him.” She also contrasted the different ways he could look his dark brown eyes
sparkling with that “wonderful smile” when he was happy, then the angry look, when his
eyes became smaller, his mouth tightened, and the redness of his skin was accentuated.
Ottilie also described a trait of Reich’s that was a characteristic throughout his life.
At times he could exert a heavy-handed pressure on people around him, not only to follow
his work but also to be guided by him in personal matters. For example, after Robert’s death
Ottilie was not interested in other men for some time. Reich frequently urged her to have a
sexual relationship, to overcome her “genital anxiety.” He also diagnosed her as having a
“martyr complex.” He combined these two notions into an informal “character analysis,”
which Ottilie sometimes found helpful,at other times very annoying. When she expressed
her irritation, Reich apologized and stopped.
Reich’s diagnosing ofOttilie is a good example of how he interwove professional
and personal concerns. The same kind of interlacing was apparent in his relations with his
children. Both in his writings and in his rearing of Lore, Reich began to emphasize “self-reg-
ulation”for anal as well as genital life. He no longer feared that an absence of strictness
would lead to a fixation through over-indulgence. Rather, there was a maturational progress
toward the genital stage, just as there was a natural progression from sitting to walking.
However, it was not until some years later that Reich would stress the negative consequences
of a strict feeding schedule during the oral phase of development.
Reich’s upbringing of his daughters was most influenced by his concepts concern-
ing genitality.Eva was early told the “facts of life,” and as a youngster of four or five (in
1928 or 1929) she took some pride in the fact that older children would come to her for sex
12 : Personal Life and Relations with Colleagues: 1927-1930 145