sought advice from others. He could also appreciate Schjelderup’s position that he could not
evaluate the bion research. Yet he felt an intense aversion to hesitation, to standing aside. As
Charles Peguy has written: “Woe to the lukewarm. Shame on him who is ashamed. Woe to
and shame on him who is ashamed. The question here is not so much to believe or not to
believe. Shame on the man who would deny his faith to avoid ridicule, to avoid being
laughed at, to avoid being branded a fool. The question here concerns the man who does
not trouble to find out whether he believes or does not believe.”^28
The enduring problem for Reich’s students remained: how to take the trouble to
find out whether they believed or did not believe; it was no small task for persons not trained
in the natural sciences.
A related problem between Reich and his colleagues was that he felt he had burned
his bridges for the sake of his work. It was he, not most of his followers, who had left the
Psychoanalytic Association; he, not his followers, who bore the full brunt of the accumulat-
ing newspaper campaign. He resented the fact that someone like Schjelderup could have the
best of both worlds, learning from Reich, but not endangering his secure position within the
psychoanalytic movement or academia. Reich discerned a certain small-mindedness in his
supporters’notfinding out whether or not they believed, say, in the bions. If they found his
findings convincing,as persons of integrity they would have to defend them and be subject
to similar hostility. So there was immediate safety in ignorance. And there was historical safe-
ty. If Reich were later proved correct, they could say they had always been sympathetic to
his work; if proved wrong, they had always been skeptical and scientifically unable to judge.
Confronted by the opposition of his enemies, the license requirement to practice
therapy, and the uneasiness of his friends, Reich no longer found Norway a viable home for
his work. A possible solution emerged when, late in 1938, a psychiatrist came from the
United States to study with Reich. Theodore P. Wolfe, then thirty-seven years old, had been
born in Switzerland, and had acquired most of his medical and psychiatric training in that
country before moving to America. At the time he met Reich, he was a member of the
Department ofPsychiatry at Columbia Medical School, and had done research for the pio-
neering psychosomatic text Emotions and Bodily Changes,written by his former wife, H.
Flanders Dunbar. Reich’s writings and his whole approach deeply impressed Wolfe, so he
resolved to visit Norway, to undergo therapy with Reich, and to study his work firsthand.
For Wolfe, as for many others, meeting Reich and his work represented the turning
point in his life.As Gladys Meyer, Wolfe’s last wife, wrote in an obituary:
“Real” life began for Dr. Wolfe with his work with Dr, Reich. He would
describe how everything he read, saw, heard, and felt changed in quality; and the
vague, impatient emptiness [he had previously experienced] began, with great anx-
iety to be filled up. A bond of gratefulness to Reich stemmed from that deepest
core of himself which Reich had made accessible to him. And he loved Reich, as
Neill and Raknes and other old associates loved him^29.