she had to get back to herself, to protect herindependence against Reich’s demands, and to
consider calmly whether she really wanted to continue their relationship.
Reich’s jealousy must have been all the more painful to Elsa because he himself had
been having an affair quite recently with a young Norwegian textile designer named Gerd
Bergersen. This relationship, more serious than the one with the actress-patient, came to
light in the late 1970s, when Gerd sent tapes describing her involvement with Reich to Colin
Wilson, who was working on The Quest for Wilhelm Reich^22.
In Wilson’s account, the relationship appears to have lasted several years and to
have been of considerable significance to Reich. However, in one letter to me, Gerd
described it as lasting a “short year,” and, in another, she mentions the “very short period”
she was close to Reich. She adds: “Emotionally, I do not think I got under his skin.”^23
Briefly, summarizing Wilson’s account, Reich and Gerd met in 1936, when she was
twenty-five, he thirty-nine. Reich was taken by her from the moment he met her, saying:
“You interest me. I want to know you.” Gerd had had some disappointing experiences with
men’ and was not eager to enter a new relationship, but Reich pursued her. His interest was
not primarily sexual he was attracted to her vibrant spirit, her quest for a creative, independ-
ent life. He wanted to be a mentor to her and he succeeded, for Gerd has described their
relationship as “perhaps the most fruitful of her life.” A well-known, older, brilliant man was
taking her seriously even when she challenged his basic views. “Reich was unoffended,”
Wilson writes, “when she told him that she rejected Freud’s view that sex was the most basic
human drive.” In Gerd’s words: “He accepted me as a rational human being.”^24
There is no suggestion that any effort was made to conceal their relationship from
Elsa even when it became a sexual one. Reich and Gerd met with Oslo intellectuals where
Gerd participated eagerly in discussions.At one point Elsa became hurt and disturbed by
their growing intimacy. She was now in the same position—that of the injured wife—to
Gerd as Annie had once been to her.
When the Norwegian newspaper campaign erupted in 1937, Gerd saw another side
ofReich. It was not the ragefui side Elsa experienced; rather, it was a “hunted and torment-
ed”Reich.After some particularly bitter attack had appeared, he would go to her apartment
with the newspaper under his arm to talk until the early hours of the morning. He spoke of
the coming Nazi invasion of Norway, something few people in Oslo envisioned at that time.
At some point during the newspaper campaign Reich half-proposed marriage and Gerd
refused him.
There is some question of just how deeply involved Reich was, how much he was
spinning out a fantasy to escape from reality, a fantasy he knew she would not accept. More,
he may have wanted to end the relationship by getting her to reject him. At any rate, it
appears to have ended soon after Gerd’s rejection. Gerd felt relief as well as pain at the ter-
mination,for she had been startled by her physical responses “The passion of the body was
taking charge, and there was something frightening about this. It was destructive.”^25
On Reich’s side, the relationship with Gerd is revealing in that it shows once more
one of his patterns with women. When his work was under fire, he turned to his mate for
19 : Personal Life and Relations with Colleagues: 1934-1939 241