work, averaging around a year and a half, then more sporadic sessions as need dictated.
However, when Reich had a close working relationship with someone—especially as close,
extensive, and intensive a one as he had with Wolfe—he preferred to see the person, literal-
ly and figuratively, as a co-worker rather than patient as soon as possible. The period of
intensive therapeutic work was often shortened.
Wolfe worked like a demon. His advice to Reich on all kinds of matters was always
frank and incisive; his attitude was as uncompromising as his mentor’s. But he was not afraid
to disagree with Reich, as were so many of Reich’s students. All the people closest to him
during this period—Wolfe, Ilse, and A. S. Neill (through correspondence)—spoke their
minds. These were not yes-men or -women.
A third essential ingredient for Reich in establishing his new life was to form a cir-
cle of people around him. He needed patients, he needed assistants, he needed a response
from the world. One resource was his course at the New School for Social Research, which
was entitled “Biological Aspects of Character Formation” and given in the spring of 1940
and again in the spring of 1941. Of the several dozen persons who attended, about eight to
ten pursued a more serious interest in Reich’s work, seeking therapy with him and attending
a biweekly seminar in his home. Among them was Alexander Lowen, at that time a teacher.
By 1944,he was practicing Reichian therapy with young people and would be very active in
the totality of Reich’s work.*
More pertinent to establishing himself was Reich’s need to provide the American
public with access to his publications. Here Wolfe as translator, editor, and publishing advis-
er was crucial. Reich and Wolfe made the decision not to translate one of the earlier works
for the initial American publication. Each of his earlier major books—Character Analysis,The
Mass Psychology of Fascism,The Sexual Revolution,The Bion—dealt with one or another aspect of
his work, but none showed clearly the development of his thought or the interlacing of the
different facets. In addition, all of these books were fast becoming out of date in one way
or another,lagging behind the surge of his current work.
Reich solved this problem by writing a new book and giving it an old title,The
Function ofthe Orgasm^8 .The choice of title reflected his commitment to that function, or to
what he called the “red thread” running through his protean labors. It was also confusing
because in 1927 he had published a quite different book with the same title. But Reich rarely
cared about such confusions. As he once put it: “We don’t write forpeople, we write about
things.”^9 Ifthe same title fitted a new work as well as an old one better than any other title,
then use it and let the public wend its way through any subsequent confusion!
There was a further source of confusion. Reich mixed a provocative but clear title
with an unclear one. On the title page,The Function of the Orgasmis listed as Volume I of a
series named The Discovery of the Orgone. Nothing about this new term had been previously
20 : Getting Settled in America: 1939-1941 249
*In1948,partly due to Reich’s insistence that practitioners of his therapy be MDs, Lowen went to medical school
in Switzerland. On his return to America in the early 1950s he launched his career in bio-energetics, an offshoot
and popularization of Reich’s therapy.