course, I had to deny, and the patient understood the reason^22.The patient’s subsequent complaints included pain but even more an intense fear
of pain, strong fear of falling, and weakness to the extent of being bedridden for weeks
again. Reich offered to work with her in psychiatric orgone therapy and saw her for two
hours every day. Now he noticed many of the usual reactions in character-analytic vege-
totherapy, particularly the intense fear of falling and contractions in the face of pleasurable
expansion. Some improvement occurred, but it was followed by an unforeseeable catastro-
phe: the patient fractured her left leg. In the next four weeks she declined rapidly, and final-
ly died. Reich concluded: “The orgone therapy had prolonged her life for about ten months,
and had kept her free of cancer tumors and cancer pains for months and had restored the
function of her blood system to normal. The interruption of the orgone treatment ... inter-
dicts any conjecture as to a possible favorable outcome.”^23
This case deserves further comment since it well illustrates Reich’s handling of can-
cer cases, and, indeed, his overall approach. First, one cannot but be impressed by Reich’s
synthesis of various data—psychiatric, social, medical, biological—that were apparent in the
case history. As different aspects of the case emerged, he was ready with different weapons
from his own theoretical and technical arsenal. When the patient improved physically with
accumulator treatment, but then succumbed to depression and fear over the state of her life,
Reich brought into play the psychiatric treatment he had evolved to deal with just such prob-
lems. The oft-made criticism that he jumped from field to field does not so much miss as
make the point. It was the very multiplicity of his work that permitted his elucidation of
complex underlying aspects of the cancer process.
It is also characteristic that Reich failed to report some of the elementary details of
the case. Thus, we do not know the patient’s age. We know she had at least ten sessions in
the accumulator, followed by marked improvement, but there may have been more than ten,
and we do not know ifthese sessions were daily.Reich speaks of the orgone accumulator
as the main treatment,with psychiatric therapy occurring only after her subsequent collapse.
Still, he must have spent considerable time talking with her before more intensive psychiatric
treatment.As is often the case with his highly condensed writing, the specific sequence of
events remains unclear.
Third, in treating the patient described above, as well as other cancer patients who
had shown improvement, Reich noted that attending physicians and surgeons were singular-
ly unimpressed by the results with the orgone accumulator. They simply ignored its help.
One physician told the patient’s relatives that he was not interested in the accumulator until
it was “recognized by official medicine.”
A frequent criticism of Reich’s treatment was that its real harm lay in depriving
patients of genuine medical therapy. However, Reich was not opposed to the use of other
treatments for cancer in addition to the accumulator. In one particular case, he urged the
excision ofthe tumor even though it had decreased in size. On the other hand, he felt that
the illness was being combated by the accumulator with sufficient efficacy to warrant a
22 : The Medical Effects of the Accumulator: 1940-1948 285