highly pent-up needs, and by its very nature can only be a transitory experience....
Civilization is built on renunciation of instinctual gratifications.... This “cultural”
privation dominates the whole field of social relations between human beings....
Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary
hostility of men toward one another.... Hence its system of methods by which
mankind is to be driven to identification and aim-inhibited love relationships; hence
the restrictions on sexual life^13.In commenting upon the meeting of December 12, Reich mentioned that the
atmosphere was “very cold.” Here he was referring to the other analysts present. As for
Freud, he was strict with Reich but it was a kind of strictness Reich could take without his
usual sensitivity^14.
The most specific example of this hardness was reported not by Reich but by
Richard Sterba, a guest at the meeting. I have already referred to his quote in connection
with Reich’s clinical concept of orgastic potency; the particular context was Freud’s criticism
of Reich’s social concepts (see page 100). According to Sterba, Freud commented that
“complete orgasm” was not the total answer. There was no single cause for the neuroses.
When Reich kept arguing for his own viewpoint, Freud replied sharply: “He who wants to
have the floor again and again shows that he wants to be right at any price.”^15
According to Reich, his most acrimonious discussion with Freud occurred in
September 1930 just before his move to Berlin. Reich visited Freud at Grundlsee, the
Austrian village where Freud spent his summer vacations. They continued their debate about
the family problem. Reich had argued that one had to make a distinction between the gen-
uinely loving family and the family bound together by guilt or obligation^16.
This account,of course, reflects Reich’s memory of the conversation twenty-three
years after it occurred.Given the context of 1930, it is quite possible that Reich stated his
position in a more extreme fashion. It was around this time, in his talk before the World
League for Sexual Reform, that he had spoken of the need to remove children from the fam-
ily setting,if the Oedipus complex and neuroses were to be prevented (see page XXX,
chap. 11).
In any case, whether he stated his views in their more moderate or in extreme form,
Freud did not agree. He had replied that Reich’s viewpoint had little to do with the moder-
ate stance of psychoanalysis. Reich had answered that he regretted the disagreement but he
had to maintain his position^17.
Reich clearly remembered Freud’s final comment to the effect that it was not
Freud’s intention or the intention of psychoanalysis to cure the world of its ills, in which
Freud was referring indirectly to Reich’s social ambitiousness, his need to “rescue” the world.
Reich remembered clearly his last impression of Freud. As he left, he gazed back at
Freud’s house and saw Freud in his room pacing to and fro. The image of Freud as a “caged
animal” lingered in his mind^18.
In spite of the sharpness of the exchanges between the two men, there was justifi-
150 Myron SharafFury On Earth