streamings of energy-emotion and their blockage by the character-muscular armor.
However, only at times could he directly glimpse these streamings and their culmination in
the “orgasm reflex,” the goal of his treatment. Microscopic observation of the primitive
protozoa was one key path Reich traveled to the discovery of the bions. By studying proto-
zoa he could move much closer to his own domain—the question from medical school days:
What is life?—with far fewer extraneous processes than was the case with patients. He could
directly observe the streamings of vesicles and reproduction through cell division.
If Reich’s path was logical, one can still question its wisdom. There is something
brave and foolhardy, effective and self-defeating, about Reich’s working in such diverse
fields. Brave and effective because if he was on to something in each research realm, he was
undoubtedly right that the initial breakthrough was harder than the subsequent details.
Foolhardy and selfdefeating because others were more likely to join any such effort only if
a solid, well-controlled set of studies was available for scrutiny.
Reich would argue the last point by stating that even where he had provided con-
siderable detail (in his clinical studies of orgastic impotence and orgastic potency, for exam-
ple), few saw fit to collaborate with him on studying the particular issue of involuntary body
convulsions during sexual intercourse. Only those aspects of his work that could be sub-
sumed within existing conceptual schemes,his character-analytic and his mass-psychological
studies, received wide acclaim.
In order to observe protozoa, Reich went to the Botanical Institute in Oslo to
obtain cultures of amoebae, the most common form of protozoa. An assistant at the
Institute told him that all he had to do was put blades of grass in water and examine them
after ten to fourteen days. Reich reported that he asked the assistant—“at the time naively
and without any special reason in mind”—how the protozoa came into the infusion. “From
the air, naturally,” the assistant replied, with an astonished look at Reich. “And how do they
come into the air?” Reich asked further. “That we do not know,” the assistant answered^2.
Reich may have asked his questions “naively” at the particular moment, but the question of
the origin ofliving organisms from nonliving matter was very much on his mind. As we shall
see,right around this time he was starting another series of experiments on biogenesis.
Reich was always put off by vague explanations that were difficult to test. Finally, the reac-
tion of“astonished”looks to his questions led him to believe that his questions were impor-
tant.
Reich had recently obtained an excellent Leitz microscope, which he proceeded to
use to examine the grass infusion. As he had been told, protozoa did appear after some days.
He was able to observe various types of amoebae and paramecia (another form of proto-
zoa).He observed both the place-toplace serpentine movements of the protozoa and the
internal plasmatic streaming that had been noted by Ludwig Rhumbler and Max Hartmann.
However, Reich was also interested in the developmental processes he noticed at
the edge of the grass blade. He was struck by the following phenomenon: If the plant tis-
sue was kept under continuous observation from when it was first put in to soak, the cells
at the edge gradually disintegrated into vesicles, which eventually broke off from the main
17 : The Bions: 1936-1939 207