B’nai Brith homes for the elderly, but Josephine had no such recourse. Ottilie asked Reich
for a contribution to the relatives’ fund so that his grandmother would not have to depend
on public charity. Ottilie became incensed when Reich not only refused help but couched his
refusal in callous terms. He said his grandmother could live in a poorhouse as far as he was
concerned. He would have been happy to help support the old family cook, a working
woman, but he would not give a penny to help such a “meddlesome parasite” as Josephine.
Ottilie appealed again on the grounds of his contributing in memory of his mother, but to
no avail.
Immensely upset, Ottilie vowed never to see him again. Four years later, Reich had
to flee Berlin when Hitler came to power in March 1933. While passing through Vienna, he
got in touch with Ottilie. She agreed to see him and they had a generally cordial meeting.
She told him his grandmother had died in the intervening years, and that she had not had to
live out the remainder of her life in a poorhouse. Ottilie’s relatives had managed to support
her without her ever knowing that she was dependent on the generosity of others. When
Reich heard the story, he shook his head and said: “Sentimental fools!” Ottilie replied: “We
may have been sentimental fools but you are a pig so it’s a good combination.” Not long
after this meeting, Reich gave her a copy of his new book,The Mass Psychology of Fascism, with
the inscription:“To my beloved sister-in-law.”^8
Why did Ottilie remain angry with Reich over a period of years? There seems to
have been something more at work in the intensity of her reactions than the particular inci-
dents she cites. Yet Reich was to be accused many times of breaking off relations with peo-
ple he knew well. The completeness of their rupture was also so characteristic of Reich’s
personal relations that I shall postpone a fuller analysis until later; but two aspects deserve
some discussion here.
The first concerns the way Reich insisted on making a principle out of what others
considered a “failing.” To have an affair was one thing; to make a principle of it another. Not
to help out a relative was one thing; to assert that it would be wrong to help a “parasite,”
that one’s money was better spent elsewhere, was different. Then there was Reich’s anger
toward the target of his disapproval. Not only did the grandmother not deserve his support;
she merited the “poorhouse.”
The second factor,associated with the first, concerns the lack of empathy most of
Reich’s friends felt for his principles, or what he called the “red line” of his life and work.
Even when,like Ottilie, they did not actively oppose his interests, they often felt he made
too much of them. This, in turn, made them less sympathetic to the ways he implemented
his “mission” and the people he hurt along the route.
Reich himselfwas not always aware of just how limited was the support he received
for his concepts. In his polarizing way, he tended to regard his associates as either against his
work or for it. He was usually right about those he labeled against it. Analysts like Paul
Federn, in fact, thoroughly opposed him. However, his friends often liked him and even
parts ofhis work,without fully sharing in what he regarded as his central concerns.
Lia Laszky, for example, participated closely in Reich’s sex-political work. Yet, in
12 : Personal Life and Relations with Colleagues: 1927-1930 147