From a short-term viewpoint, Reich had by no means abandoned his political con-
cerns. Right at the start of his American experience he expressed great admiration for
Franklin Delano Roosevelt. On November 7, 1940, in his still clumsy English, he wrote A.
S. Neill the day after Roosevelt’s third-term election about his great pleasure in Roosevelt’s
victory. He also expressed his disgust when he encountered Socialists and Communists who
denounced Roosevelt^27.
Gertrud was undoubtedly one of those European Socialists who disliked
Roosevelt. According to Ilse Ollendorff, Reich’s stress on work democracy rather than polit-
ical parties led to a sudden break with his assistant, following a violent discussion one
evening early in 1941. Gertrud left his employ the next day and eventually returned to
Norway. It was one of the less admirable sides of Reich’s personality that he forbade Ilse to
keep in touch with her old friend. The two women did not resume their friendship until the
I960s^28.
But the most complex relationships of all were undoubtedly with his children.
Reich resumed seeing them after his arrival in New York, under strained conditions. Eva
recalls Reich’s visiting her mother’s apartment in New York sometime in 1941 on the occa-
sion of her (Eva’s) graduation from high school at seventeen. There was a huge quarrel
between Reich and Annie and Thomas^29.
Annie permitted the children to visit their father but remained uneasy about the
contact. Ilse did everything she could to facilitate such visits and to serve as an intermediary
between Reich and the Rubinsteins. On one occasion, Annie was reluctant about Lore’s stay-
ing overnight with Reich and Ilse. Ilse was conducting the negotiations when Reich took the
phone and asked bitterly: “What’s the matter—are you afraid I’ll seduce her?” to which
Annie replied with equal bitterness:“I wouldn’t put it past you”.^30 (The old accusation that
Reich was seductive and “hypnotizing,” especially with Eva, continued to be made by Annie
and her circle.)
Despite reaching out warmly to her father by letter after her arrival in New York,
Eva remained highly ambivalent toward him during her highschool and college years. She
was no longer in analysis with Bornstein but continued to be divided by the conflict between
her parents and her internalization of Annie’s judgments concerning Reich’s sanity.
Reich connected Annie’s animosity toward him with a dangerous incident that
occurred shortly after Pearl Harbor. On December 12, 1941, Reich was picked up at his
home at 2:00 A.M. by the FBI on the grounds that he was an “enemy alien” and taken to
Ellis Island,where he was detained for over three weeks. Since his credentials as an anti-Nazi
and anti-Stalinist were impeccable, it was hard to understand why he was being held. It may
have had something to do with his earlier Communist Party affiliations, or with his views on
sexuality (a factor that gains weight in the light of J. Edgar Hoover’s obsession with that sub-
ject), or his generally “subversive” ideas^31.
In any case, for Reich to be arrested by agents of a country he was coming to
admire and love was intolerable. As always, he preferred to blame persons who were or had
been close to him. In the case of the FBI arrest, he blamed Annie and her friends. His evi-
254 Myron SharafFury On Earth