tions and dissensions so great as to preclude Reich’s establishing a viable therapeutic alliance
with any analyst other than Freud.
Reich’s political difficulties proved even greater than his psychoanalytic ones.
Austria was undergoing a severe depression and by the fall of 1929 the political situation in
Vienna had deteriorated sharply. The Heimwehr was showing increased recklessness, attack-
ing Social Democratic workers’ homes and meetings. The Christian Socialists were demand-
ing emergency powers for the national leadership, powers that would curtail civil liberties
and require constitutional changes. Fearful of even worse consequences, the Social
Democratic leadership was negotiating compromises with the Christian Socialists.
The Communists and the left wing of the Social Democratic Party were outraged
by such compromises. Reich organized the Komitee Revolutionar Sozialdemokraten
(Committee of Revolutionary Social Democrats) to oppose the party on the constitutional
issue^21. This committee had a small core often members, some of whom Reich had met
through his clinics. He financed the group’s activities, which included the brief publication
of a newspaper.
The first public meeting sponsored by the committee took place on the night of
December 13, 1929. (It is striking that this meeting occurred only one day after the discus-
sion at Freud’s home on the prevention of the neuroses.) Reich gave the main speech,
sharply criticizing the Social Democratic leaders for making militant press statements and
simultaneously behaving so cautiously toward the Christian Socialist government. Worse,
they had tried to gag party members who opposed this vacillating policy. Reich concluded
by calling for the mobilization of the working class, for their taking the offensive against the
Heimwehr and the Christian Socialists. Anson Rabinbach summarizes: “By openly con-
fronting the leadership with almost no support in the party except among certain discon-
tented elements among the youth and the Schutzbund, Reich clearly put himself in a posi-
tion that courted expulsion.”
Reich was, in fact, expelled from the party on January 16, 1930. He was accused of
violating party discipline by attacking the leadership and by working closely with the
Communists.The main witnesses against Reich were two associates from the committee.
They claimed they did not know that Communists were going to attend the December 13
rally.One of them said that he had visited Reich’s clinic after years of unemployment and
was vulnerable to Reich’s “seductive influences.” The two men were permitted to remain in
the party because oftheir testimony against Reich and for having seen the error of their
ways.
Reich’s account of the period in People in Troublein no way contradicts Rabinbach
but is far less complete. He emphasizes his empathy with some young Schutzbund members
who at the clinic discussed their political desperation as well as their sexual problems. 22 But
he says nothing about the committee or his expulsion from the party; Reich could at times
omit incidents unfavorable to himself. In later years, Reich liked to highlight his participa-
tion as a physician in the radical political parties.In the committee he had functioned as a
politician leading a quixotic venture.
152 Myron SharafFury On Earth