2 : My Relationship with Reich 27
Korzybski’s. His reply came succinctly: “This isn’t a ‘theory.’ The orgone is burningin the air
and in the soil.” He illustrated the “burning” by rubbing his fingers together and gestured
toward his laboratory instruments to indicate the concreteness of his work. (I was later to
become familiar with Reich’s rubbing his fingers together whenever he wished to demon-
strate something quite realistic as opposed to “words” or “theories” unsupported by facts.)
When I raised the practical issue of how I should go about preparing for work in
orgonomy, Reich surprised me by questioning the whole idea. He would advise me, he said,
“not to go into the work, it is too dangerous, there is too much opposition, the work is very
difficult.” Of course, this kind of warning only increased my zeal.
We talked for half an hour or so. Soon after I had gone upstairs, he followed, stood
in the doorway, and asked his assistant to record my name and address in his files. I was very
pleased that he had taken this step. Perhaps he would permit me after all to enter this “dan-
gerous” field. I remember staring, full of admiration, as he stood there in the doorway. He
noticed my stare, then assumed a “back to work” expression and returned to the basement.
Later he commented that he had recognized the mystical, religious look in my eyes, the
“burning eyes” he had seen so many times when people first made contact with him and his
work. That same adoration, he was to say later, would often turn to hatred when the long-
ing to be “saved”by Reich was disappointed.
At the time I knew nothing of all this. I only wanted to help, as I thought. And I
left his house exhilarated—I would convince him of my suitability. Meanwhile, I would use
my Army time, my work with death, to prepare for the future: for work with life, with Reich,
with “orgastic potency” and “orgone energy,” no matter what the “armored” people
thought or however much they scorned these most important truths.
I have not yet made clear why Reich meant so much to me. Let me do so, first, by
giving some of the relevant events from my background, then making explicit their connec-
tion to my interest in Reich.
It all began with my mother.In 1931,when she was twenty-six and I was five, my
mother had a psychotic breakdown. She never fully recovered, although when not under
stress she could function fairly well.In any case, children cannot comprehend madness in a
parent.For me she was an extremely perceptive, erratic, and magnetic person. As a child I
worshipped her, was dependent on her, and enjoyed making her happy. Retrospectively, I
know that somewhere I also felt exploited by her, as she dragged me into one or another of
her obsessions while I often yearned for a more normal life.
Let me speak ofher obsessions.The first and most enduring one concerned her
“dream,” as she called it. The dream occurred during her psychiatric hospitalization, which
lasted two years. The main themes of her psychosis involved an apocalyptic destruction of
the “present order” (capitalism) through a big war, from the ashes of which a “new order”
would emerge that was economically Communist and psychologically “free.”
Certain aspects of my mother’s dream were elastic. She would incorporate current