Given the potential significance of these findings, why did Reich not immediately
seek confirmation from the scientific community? In his own way Reich did just that. First,
as noted, Wolfe and he were making every effort to publish a journal with the results of
Reich’s experimental work. Second, and more immediately, on December 30, 1940, he wrote
to Albert Einstein, requesting a meeting to discuss orgone energy research^10. On January
13, 1941, a five-hour meeting between Reich and Einstein took place in Princeton, New
Jersey^11.
It was highly characteristic of Reich to go right to the top of the scientific commu-
nity. As a young analyst he had wanted to deal directly with Freud as much as possible rather
than Freud’s lieutenants. Later, as we shall see, when he believed his work had great signifi-
cance for national public policy, he tried to deal directly with the White House and the
Atomic Energy Commission.
Why exactly did Reich seek a meeting with Einstein? After his experiences with the
Norwegian scientific authorities, Reich was determined not to turn again to presumed
experts for support or validation of his work. He would quietly publish his findings and let
the world react as it would. Yet when A. S. Neill sent Reich’s books and journals during the
1940s to people like H. G. Wells, Reich was at first appreciative. Then, when Wells and oth-
ers dismissed the work as rubbish, Reich became angry at Neill’s seeking approval from
upholders of established modes of thought. As Reich once commented, Neill would have
been indignant if his books on Summerhill were sent to the New York Department of
Education for approval.
Now Reich was turning to Einstein. As we have seen, Reich felt armed with the
important objective evidence of the discovery of the temperature differential and the slow-
er electroscopic discharge. Certain positive medical effects of the accumulator (to be dis-
cussed in detail later) also made him hope that his work in general, and the accumulator in
particular,might play an important part in the war effort.
Although he was quite aware of the revolutionary quality of his work and the con-
sequent need to proceed slowly (or organically, as he would say), he continued paradoxical-
ly to think that his work could be rapidly accepted in times of social crises. This led him to
hope that the crisis of World War II, with America’s involvement imminent, might provide
the stimulus, the emergency, to propel his work to its rightful place. In addition, Einstein
might help supply the badly needed resources he lacked to push a concerted effort on
orgone research.
But probably the most important reason for going to Einstein was Reich’s profes-
sional loneliness. In a letter to Neill around this period, he wrote that only Wolfe and Ilse
understood what he was doing. Here he was being optimistic. Wolfe did not work in the lab-
oratory, despite considerable pressure to do so. Ilse participated in laboratory work; with
extraordinary conscientiousness, she shared an existence, as she later described it, dominat-
ed by the stopwatch measuring the electroscopic discharge rate. However, she lacked the sci-
entific training to understand truly the nature of Reich’s investigations. A. S. Neill, the per-
266 Myron SharafFury On Earth