theoretical persuasiveness of Reich’s approach.
One supporter of Reich during this period not at all involved in therapy was Roger
du Teil, whom Reich had met on a visit to France in February 1936. At the time, du Teil was
a professor of philosophy at the Centre Universitaire Méditerranée in Nice. A man of broad
interests and great personal charm, he had published a book of poetry as well as psycholog-
ical and philosophical works. Du Teil had a theoretical interest in problems of biogenesis
but apparently had done no experimental work prior to his association with Reich. Reich
attended one of du Teil’s lectures and saw in him a potential supporter, one well situated in
French intellectual circles.
For his part, du Teil was interested in Reich, “whom I knew by name for he had
written a book,Character Analysis, which immediately interested me since my research in psy-
choanalysis was along the same lines.” Du Teil describes how, “After a long conversation
which continued late into the night, Reich asked me if I would be willing to control his
experiments ... on biogenesis. ... He was near forty then, and I fifty-one, which explains his
request. ... To him I was an influential person. He counted on me to make his discoveries
‘official’ so to speak, and get them accepted in high scientific circles.”^17
When Reich returned to Oslo, he sent some bion specimens to du Teil. During the
summer of1937,du Teil came to work with Reich in the laboratory in Oslo, “Upon my
return to France I carried out some other experiments on the same subject [bions] not with-
out first having conceived and devised an adequate apparatus for the purpose of avoiding
all possible contamination from air germs.”
One of the criticisms later directed against Reich’s work was that du Teil was no
more a scientist than he was. In response, du Teil declared that it was “unnecessary to be a
director of research or a Nobel Prize winner to know how to work correctly and under ster-
ile conditions in a laboratory/* In any case Reich valued du Teil’s work, and, in an unusual
gesture, included his report on several bion experiments in his new book Die Bione(The Bion),
which was published by his Sexpol Verlag in 1938.
Du Teil’s role became somewhat problematic, however, when he began to speak of
the discovery of the bions as a joint achievement. Reich had no intention of sharing the dis-
covery with anyone. Whatever his annoyance with du Teil, it never affected the respect he
felt for the man.And du Teil never questioned the originality and value of Reich’s work on
the bions, although he did not entirely agree that bions represented living forms. In 1973,
when du Teil was eighty-seven, he still wrote of Reich with affection and respect, if also with
the somewhat patronizing tone of an older man assessing an extremely gifted but impulsive
younger colleague^18.
In 1936, du Teil was also responsible for initiating contact between Reich and the
Academic des Sciences in Paris. Reich sent the Academy a preparation of charcoal bions. In
January 1938, Louis Lapicque of the Academy sent a reply:
Dear Dr.Reich:
Charged by the Academy to study your communication of January 8, 1937,214 Myron SharafFury On Earth