In the course of his visit, Wolfe suggested that Reich move to America, where he
could find a more congenial atmosphere. Exhausted by the Oslo situation, fearing the out-
break of a disastrous war in Europe, attracted to settling in America ever since 1933, Reich
leaped at the idea. Furthermore, Wolfe now offered to help facilitate the move.
Like others who at least in the early stages of their relationship with Reich were
grateful for the contact with their “core,” Wolfe was prepared to expend endless energy to
aid Reich and to further his own association with him. On Wolfe’s return to the United
States, he managed to obtain an official request from an academic institution for Reich to
teach in the States, an invitation that was necessary for a residence visa. The New School for
Social Research was prepared to make such an offer, after Wolfe and Walter Briehl, another
American and an old student of Reich’s, put up several thousand dollars guaranteeing
Reich’s salary^30. However, the immigration question was so complicated at that time with
the influx of refugees from Nazi Germany that Wolfe had to pull strings through Adolph
Berle, a high official in the U.S. State Department, for Reich actually to get the visa^31.
Reich meanwhile was waiting impatiently in Norway. He had sent his secretary and
laboratory assistant, Gertrad Gaasland, ahead to New York in May 1939 to find a new home
and to set up the laboratory. Reich expected to follow in a matter of weeks, but the bureau-
cratic entanglements entailed a longer delay.
The months of waiting proved difficult. In anticipation of an early departure, Reich
had stopped his research, teaching, and therapeutic activity. He had sold his car to Ola
Raknes and dismantled his apartment, staying with friends. He and Elsa still saw each other
but she had definitely decided not to accompany him to the States then, although she did
not exclude the possibility at a later time.
His letters to Gertrud Gaasland during this time reflect his mood about the visa,
the difficulties of waiting, almost elegiac thoughts about his Oslo life and friends, and—
most ofall—hope for the future of his work in America. The relative isolation of this time
as well as the sense ofthe “end ofa period”contribute to the unusually introspective mood
of these letters.Reich generally revealed himself more in dealing with women than with
men.
Above all,there was the steady drumbeat of his work. He could not wait until the
bureaucracy decided to let him live. With his talent for finding the good news in the bad, he
had the feeling that the move to America, uprooting as it was, might help the work to go
forward. He also told Raknes that without his work he simply could not live. The experience
of yet another exile reinforced Reich’s sense of his heroic mission^32.
Not even Reich with his occasional sense of doom could have predicted the near-
total break with his Norwegian colleagues that was to ensue. Only Ola Raknes, by no means
the person closest to Reich then, would maintain an intermittent relationship. Sigurd Hoel
was never to see Reich again, claiming that he felt Reich had abandoned him. Schjelderup
would bitterly complain that Reich abused the therapeutic relationship with him. Havrevold
denounced Raknes for his close ties with Reich, a man of questionable scientific practices.
For most ofthem,it was a relief to see Reich leave.
244 Myron SharafFury On Earth