to Lucerne showing Elsa and Eva dancing, both nude to the waist^27.
At Lucerne the “family” continued to camp out, now by the lake near where the
Congress was held. This, too, led to stories. In discussing those days with Dr. Eissler, Reich
mentioned that he didn’t like hotels, and, besides, it would have been difficult for him to live
in one with Elsa since they were not married. Reich went on to say that he lived with Elsa
in a tent at Lake Lucerne. He also had a camping knife with him. Out of these facts the high-
ly distorted rumor later circulated that he had been psychotic, wore a dagger, and lived in a
tent in the lobby of a hotel^28.
People interpreted the story as further evidence of how far Reich had gone astray.
Grete Bibring, his student friend, saw it as another sign of his sinking into psychosis. Eissler,
who assigned the diagnosis of psychopathic rather than psychotic to Reich, used the story
to show how wantonly provocative Reich could be, considering how conservative the Swiss
were at that time^29. And various interviewees referred to Elsa as “Reich’s concubine” or
“Reich’s dancer,” much as one might speak of a kind of prostitute.
Whatever the interpretation, Reich’s relationship with Elsa in general and his
appearance with her at Lucerne in particular fanned the outrage against him. There were sci-
entific and political differences between Reich and many analysts, but there were also
intensely personal reasons for other analysts to resent him. For him to appear with Elsa,
when Annie was also attending the Congress, exacerbated the family quarrel aspect of the
whole imbroglio. Many analysts who were Annie’s good friends as well as Reich’s took her
side in the dispute. By all accounts, they regarded her as a very kind, gentle, intelligent per-
son, much abused by Reich. She advanced no controversial theories, she was not an embar-
rassment to them, and, as they saw it, she was the injured party.
All ofthis was conveyed rather than explicitly stated in interviews. Most partici-
pants intellectually held an “enlightened viewpoint”:one did not blame a husband or wife
for having affairs, or for leaving a marriage. Analysts did have affairs and did divorce, with-
out a cause celèbre.But somehow Reich was different. From his viewpoint, he was more open;
from theirs, he was provocative and indiscreet. Everything Reich did had a quality of being
underlined,a kind ofglamour and dash ifone liked it, a note of wanton provocation if one
didn’t. He was not just a Communist, he was a militant one; he was not just a psychoanalyst,
he claimed to be thecontinuer of the vital tradition within psychoanalysis; he did not dis-
creetly have an affair, he openly avowed his love. Nor would he curb his freedom even if the
Swiss—or the analysts—did not like his living with a woman not his legal wife in a tent by
the lake.
From today’s viewpoint it is easy to forget how conservative the average middle
class was in the 1930s in Europe—and America. Even in Denmark, supposedly one of the
centers of sexual permissiveness, the atmosphere then was quite puritanical. Sexual relations
were fully appropriate only within marriage; maybe, it was not so terrible if an engaged cou-
ple had intercourse. But the taboos against open discussion of sexuality and open relation-
ships outside marriage were very strong. And it is worth underscoring that the analytic com-
munity as a groupwas not so different in its outlook from society generally.
192 Myron SharafFury On Earth