addition to doubting how much sex education and counseling would influence the masses
politically, she was far from committed to the affirmation of childhood and adolescent gen-
itality. Undoubtedly, Reich’s personal influence, his charisma, and the desire of those close
to him to win his approval pushed some of them to go along with his work more than they
actually believed in it. Edith Buxbaum, one of Annie’s university friends, participated in
Reich’s sex-counseling centers; she also tried to “enlighten” the students at the high school
where she taught, an effort not appreciated by the school officials.
In looking back on her relationship with Reich, Buxbaum underscored his person-
al influence on her and her admiration of him as a brilliant young analyst and as first the
lover, then the husband, of her closest friend. She also stressed how much she learned by
attending his technical seminar and being supervised by him. However, she looked back on
her sex-political activity as foolishness done under Reich’s influence^9.
Even the “younger generation” of analysts and analytic candidates, whom Reich
viewed as sympathetic in contrast to the older, more hostile analysts, went only a part of the
way with him and seldom on the aspects he valued most: his clinical concept of orgastic
potency and his social, mass-psychological work. Richard Sterba and Grete Bibring, both
very positive members of the technical seminar, were after 1927 joining those like Helena
Deutsch who had early regarded Reich as a “fanatic,” although they still considered him an
excellent analyst and teacher.
Many of the personal characteristics mentioned—Reich’s principles that violated
the general consensus, his passionate determination to live by those principles, his tendency
to badger others into following his beliefs, his polarization of colleagues, his blindness to
friends’ criticism unless such criticism was clearly stated remind us of intellectual adoles-
cents. So, too, does Reich’s desire to work in a variety of fields and not “settle down” to one
thing.
Goethe has said that the genius periodically re-experiences all the expansion of
adolescence, the excitement of new intense emotions, concepts, and creations. What the
adolescent—or genius—discovers seems so self-evident,so important, and so enchanting
that he or she cannot believe others will not share the excitement once they are exposed to
it.
The difference between the truly creative adult and the adolescent is that the for-
mer is repeatedly able to channel his or her excitement into enduring accomplishments,
however many realms of creation are involved. However, it often takes time for the creator’s
discoveries to be seen in their fullness. Meanwhile it is the adolescent aspects of the person-
ality—the storms and demands rather than the achievements—that most impress and
depress his or her family and friends.
In September 1930, Reich decided to move from Vienna to Berlin. Despite his mar-
ital difficulties and the worsening of his collegial relationships, it is my guess that Reich
might well have remained in Vienna had it not been for two factors: Freud’s attitude toward
his sex-political work and his own conflict with the Social Democratic Party.
148 Myron SharafFury On Earth