Brupbacher was profoundly discouraged about the present and future of humanity. Reich
shared his diagnosis but not his prognosis.
From Zurich, Reich went to the Tyrol in the Austrian Alps to see his children at
Christmas time. Eva and Lore were now attending a Viennese private school directed by
Margaret Fried, a friend of Annie’s. Mrs. Fried and her husband had a home in the Tyrol
where pupils could, if they wished, spend summers and Christmas vacations.
Some thirty-five years later, Mrs. Fried remembered the Reich of the Tyrol visit well
as being “friendly and liberal”^21 She noted that he was an excellent skier, with a mobile body
more like a man of twenty-five than thirty-five. He had good contact with the schoolchild-
ren and some vacationing adolescents. Lore, then almost six, tended to cling to her father.
Eva, almost ten, was concerned whether people liked “Willy,” as she called him. Her disqui-
et here undoubtedly reflected the growing bitter schism, to be described in Chapter 19,
between her father and his world and Annie, her grandfather, and the analytic community.
Annie also came to the Frieds’ for Christmas. According to Reich, there was no hint
of the acrimony that “later devastated our lives.”^22 However, Reich could overlook signs of
trouble when he preferred not to see them. In Mrs. Fried’s view, Annie was embarrassed and
displeased by Reich’s presence—something of a surprise—on her turf. Mrs. Fried did criti-
cize Reich for being “too outspoken” on sexual matters. A few of the adolescents present
had read his book The Sexual Struggle of Youth, and they seized the opportunity to discuss it
with the author in person. His answers to their questions were frank and the discussion spir-
ited. Mrs. Fried and her husband were disturbed because some of the pupils were from con-
servative, Catholic homes. At one point Mrs. Fried took Reich aside and said that the stu-
dents’ parents would be very upset if they should hear about this kind of conversation.
Reich said he hadn’t realized the difficulties and subsequently desisted from such exchanges.
After Christmas Reich went on to Vienna, where he stayed with friends. Some six
weeks later the Dollfuss government would raid the Socialist headquarters there and the
Socialist leaders would be forced to flee or be arrested.Reich, who predicted this outcome,
heard friends and colleagues still mouth their old positions:the Communists were prepared
for the revolution and the Social Democrats believed that compromises would avert disas-
ter.What had happened in Germany could not happen in Austria. Later, visiting friends in
Prague, he noted the same kind of illusions—in this case, about Hitler’s overthrow by the
Church, the Western powers, the German Army, and, “of course, the increasingly mature
workers in the factories.”^23
To avoid a long trip back to Sweden through Poland, Reich traveled by way of
Germany after ascertaining that no lists of names were kept at the border. He made a
stopover in Berlin: “Soldiers everywhere. Depression, sluggish movements, anxious peer-
ing.” He thought he recognized a former Communist comrade but was uncertain whether
to greet him.Many Communists had become Nazis now. Reich wondered about the worth
of convictions: How did it happen that a person could be passionately for one doctrine and
then suddenly just as fervently support a radically different ideology?^24
Reich’s journey through Europe gives another vivid example of how he lived with-
190 Myron SharafFury On Earth