plenty of room for her there; there was no reason for her to return to the dreadful collec-
tive. As a clincher, she said: “Anyway, you are the Communist. You go live at the center. Tm
staying here.”^4
One of Reich’s stated reasons for moving to Berlin was to have analytic sessions
with Sandor Rado to determine whether there were any neurotic motives behind his scien-
tific conflict with Freud.
There are several versions of what happened in the Reich-Rado relationship.
According to Annie Reich, Rado mistreated Reich by permitting him to enter therapy know-
ing that he, Rado, would be moving to America six months or so after the start of treatment.
However, from Rado’s account, he did not know that he was going to stay in America when
he planned an extended vacation in 1931^5. It was only after his arrival in the United States
that the deteriorating German political situation led him to turn the trip into a permanent
change of residence.
By Rado’s account again, after Reich heard of Rado’s vacation plans, he wrote that
he was stopping analysis because his sex-political responsibilities were so time-consuming.
In other words, Reich would leave Rado before Rado left Reich.
Reich had his own version of what happened. In his interview with Dr. Eissler, he
stated: “I saw Rado several times. Nothing came of that. Rado was jealous, awfully jealous...
. Emmy, his wife, and I had very strong genital contact with each other. Never anything like
full embrace happened between us, but we danced a lot together and we had very strong
contact. And Rado was jealous.”^6
More importantly, according to Edith Jacobson, Rado told Annie that Reich was
suffering from an “insidious psychotic process,” and advised her not to continue living with
him^7 .Annie rejected the diagnosis and the advice,at least for a few more years. We do not
know the context in which Rado communicated his opinion about Reich to Annie, but on
the face ofit for an analyst to vouchsafe such opinions to a patient’s mate seems thorough-
ly unprofessional We do know from one other source that Rado bandied damaging diag-
noses ofReich,basing his opinion by inference on his analytic experience with the man^8.
Reich cannot have known what Rado told Annie, for as late as 1933 he was writing
Rado a friendly letter from Denmark, seeking his advice about emigration to the United
States. He described Rado as “among the few colleagues with good judgment.’ ”^9
Rado’s diagnosis of an “insidious psychotic process” completed the fateful picture
of Reich from around 1934 on: his concepts on genitality, his social views, and his person-
ality were seen singly as dangerous, combined as deadly. Prior to the 1930s, some analysts,
especially Federn, had called Reich a “psychopath.” However, as far as I can determine, it
was not until Rado that the diagnosis of a “psychosis” was made.
According to Reich, Rado’s diagnosis was also circulated, starting around 1935, by
both Annie Reich and Otto Fenichel. Thus Reich’s former therapist, his former wife, and
former best friend were to launch with some authority a very damaging view of his person-
ality. These evaluations of his personality and his work mutually reinforced each other: his
“psychosis” would underlie his “erroneous” work, and his “crackpot” ideas would prove his
15 : Personal Life: 1930-1934 185