1 : Introduction 23
tively the lessons of Reich’s life in living our own. Primarily for these reasons, 1 intend to pres-
ent in the next chapter an unusually full account of my own background and involvement with
Reich. I do not do this simply to help the reader watch for possible biases stemming from my
ten years of association with Reich as student, patient, and assistant, and from the kind of
transference I had toward him. This is important, but it is only part of the story. For as with
Reich, and as with you, my biases are inextricably interwoven with my emotions and my talent.
In my understanding Reich and your comprehending him, everything must rest as it did with
Reich upon what emerges from the interaction between clear and tainted perceptions, upon
what emerges from the struggle to see and experience the truth about Reich and about our-
selves, free of denigration or idealization.
People often ask why there are so few “objective” studies of Reich and his work by
a writer neither strongly for nor against him. They also assume more objectivity on the part of
those who did not know him. Although it has merit, this approach contains major oversimpli-
fications. It assumes the possibility of a calm objectivity toward a man whose work is pro-
foundly subversive to much in our usual thinking and feeling about ourselves and the world.
Reich and his work touch people with peculiar intensity, whether they knew him or not,
whether they are favorably or unfavorably disposed toward the man and his assertions. We can
try to overcome the neurotic distortions of even our deep and honest assessments. However,
some elements working toward distortion will remain as they remained in Reich. We can only
hope to achieve what he achieved: sufficient contact with the core of ourselves so that some
of the time at least we can transform our conflicts and permit them to further rather than to
impede the quest for truth.
Biographies of Reich as well as commentaries on his work present the danger that
both man and work will be seen through a series of distorting mirrors. As I have made clear,
distortion is as destructive in the form of deification as it is in slander. To quote James Agee:
“Every fury on earth has been absorbed in time, as art, or as religion, or as authority in one
form or another. The deadliest blow the enemy of the human soul can strike is to do fury
honor.... Official acceptance is the one unmistakable symptom that salvation is beaten again,
and is the one surest sign offatal misunderstanding, and is the kiss of Judas.”^22
Reich was well aware that he was a “fury on earth” and of the fate meted out to such
furies.Indeed,this very problem preoccupied him during the last years of his life the danger
of his work being transformed into the opposite of what it was intended to be, as he believed
had happened to Christianity,Marxism,and psychoanalysis. It was the fear of distortion that
led him to specify in his will that his archives should be “stored” for fifty years after his death.
But Reich also had a strong desire for honest scholarship, a wish that caused him in
the last years, when he was virtually alone at Orgonon, to spend considerable effort arranging
in clear order all the documents concerning his life and work. He often said that he himself
was too involved in the events to write the history of orgonomy with sufficient detachment.
What he could do was make the evidence available for others.
Reich’s hopes have as clear a basis as his fears. For if there is the image of distorting
mirrors, there is also the metaphor of the relay race. Great men can hand the torch on and it