Annie said bitterly that this would be of little help since if it were not Elsa there would be
another woman^12.
Reich and Annie did not actually live apart until they left Berlin singly for Vienna
early in March 1933. Annie stayed on in Vienna a few months, then moved to Prague, where
she reestablished her analytic practice. Eva and Lore had left Berlin a few days before their
parents and returned to Vienna to live for almost a year with their grandparents, Alfred and
Malva Pink.
As with many of Reich’s separations, there was some question of who finally left
whom. Annie’s version was that she found life with Reich intolerable, not because of his
affairs per se but because of the way he treated her—his domineering insistence that she
completely follow hiswork and hisways, his explosive rages, his alternating coldness and ten-
derness, the quarrels about money^13. Reich’s version is simple: “She was sick. I just had to
leave her.”^14 However, when Reich was quarreling with someone, he could use the word
“sick” with a meaning of his own—Annie was not a “genital character.” For some time
before the separation and in the many years after it, she symbolized for him all that enraged
him in the analytic community, the intellectual “smugness,” the “mustiness,” the fear of the
“juices oflife,” and with that fear, the fear and hatred, however politely wrapped up, of his
own work^15.
Lia Laszky, who visited Berlin in 1932, conveys some of the tensions between Willy
and Annie in the last years of their marriage. Willy, Annie, Fenichel, and the two children
were taking a trip through the German countryside, and Willy invited Lia along. But he
became furious when his car kept on stalling en route. Eva was getting very upset and the
atmosphere was tense and charged. During a stop, Fenichel took Lia aside to say that he had
gone along in order to testify about Reich’s behavior at a possible divorce proceeding Annie
planned.“And you want me to testify, too?” Lia asked. Fenichel nodded. Lia decided imme-
diately to leave the group. She told Reich of her intention without giving the reason for it.
Even more upset,he begged her not to leave, saying that it would turn out to be a good trip.
When she insisted, he became angry. Then, at the next train stop—not the one she would
have chosen—he let her out. Characteristically, if someone was planning to leave Reich, he
would reverse the situation so that he determined the parting.
Reich’s separation from Annie opened the way for living with Elsa. However, much
as Elsa was in love with Reich, she was hesitant about leaving Germany. For one thing, she
was active in the movement against Hitler. For another, her professional independence was
important to her:she had a good career in Germany, and was uncertain of her opportuni-
ties outside the country. Reich partly supported her aspirations, but typically also wanted her
to center her life around him.
Between March and May 1933, Reich bombarded Elsa with letters urging her to
join him in Vienna.He also persuaded their mutual friends to encourage Elsa to take the
step. Eventually, she joined him in Copenhagen in late May.
In spite ofall his difficulties with the Communists, the International Association,
and the state authorities in Denmark,in spite ofhis pain over separation from his children,
15 : Personal Life: 1930-1934 187