dence was extremely tenuous, based as it was on some ambiguous statements made by his
children when they were angry at him. There is no solid evidence that Annie ever took any
specific action against Reich, or that she reported him to the FBI or any other agency. She
and her friends had little use for him. They badmouthed him among themselves; they
thought his work delusional and his influence on the children destructive. But there was
never a question of taking retaliatory action of the kind Reich suspected.
The Ellis Island arrest left other scars on Reich. His skin condition erupted. The
doctor agreed that he needed special care and had him transferred to the hospital ward,
where Ilse was permitted to visit him twice a week. Wolfe and a lawyer tried their utmost to
find out what the charge was against Reich. Wolfe went to Washington several times and the
lawyer insisted on an immediate hearing, but despite all efforts the hearing did not take place
until December 26. Eventually, after Reich had threatened to go on a hunger strike, he was
conditionally released on January 5, I942^32.
In the edgy atmosphere right after Pearl Harbor, the authorities may have been con-
cerned about certain books the FBI seized when they searched Reich’s home a few days after
his arrest: Hitler’s Mein Kampf, Trotsky’s My Life, and a Russian alphabet for children Reich
had bought in 1929. At the hearing, Reich was questioned about his possession of these
books.Once again he had to point out that in order to understand mass behavior, one had
to study such books—to understand Hitler was not the same as supporting him.
The stress of being arrested not only aroused Reich’s suspicions about who had
instigated it but also about what went on during his absence. Here again his suspicions fell
on those closest to him. During his detention on Ellis Island, he nursed the idea that Wolfe
and Ilse might be having an affair.^33 Not much was made of this suspicion at the time, but
a great deal was to be made later when his relations with both had deteriorated markedly.
Once again in this early American period it is important to stress the familiar mix
whenever Reich entered a new phase ofhis life and work: the break-up of old professional
and personal relationships;the establishment of new ones; changes in both his scientific and
his social outlook. However, there was a special quality to his American reorientation. The
change ofcontinents was accompanied by a shift in his identity comparable only to that of
the Davos period, when he had committed himself, with or without Freud’s approval, to the
study of the function of the orgasm.
We can see the background of this shift most clearly in the way he resolved his rela-
tionship with Elsa Lindenberg. During the fall of 1939, he missed her intensely. Elsa told
me he wrote once that even though a particular day had brought him a scientific success, by
night the success meant nothing compared to his anguish over her absence; he had cried like
a baby. For her part, Elsa missed him acutely and saw the relationship in a far more positive
light; the time for reflection had led her to realize her contribution to their problems. Still
she feared submergence in his work and personality—“I did not want to be just a wife.”^34
And,to her dismay, he kept pounding at her to reveal fully “the secret” of her affair.
When Elsa finally but vaguely acknowledged that some sort of liaison had
20 : Getting Settled in America: 1939-1941 255