Reich noted other aspects of infancy. He began to see that the aliveness of the new-
born requires aliveness of the environment:
I mean aliveness not only in the expressive language of the adult, but
movement in the strict sense of the word. The infant prefers alive colors to dull
ones, and moving objects to stationary ones. If the infant is placed in a higher posi-
tion so that the walls of the carriage do not obstruct the view and if one removes
the roof, the infant can observe his environment; he will show glowing interest in
people who pass by, in trees, shrubs, posts, walls, etc.^31Several years later, Reich would also emphasize the importance of the infant’s eye
contact with its mother. “The eyes, those silent tongues of love (Cervantes) played as impor-
tant a role between mother and infant as between lovers.” However, whereas one could
arrange vivid colors for the infant to see, in spite of one’s own emotional state, one cannot
“arrange” a lively visual contact between mother and child. If the mother has a hostile or
dull look, the infant will fail to respond with full contact. It may “turn away” figuratively
from such contact altogether, “blanking out” with its eyes, for example. Here was rooted the
armoring ofthe eyes Reich had noted so vividly in the case history of schizophrenia.
Reich’s experience with Peter led him to opposite concept of a “withdrawn” autis-
tic infant, although he emphasized that infants would withdraw if they met false “baby talk”
or strict, distant expressions. “It is possible to evoke in an infant of a few weeks vivid pleas-
ure and lively response if one talks to him in his guttural sounds, if one makes hismotions,
if one has, above all, a lively contact oneself.”^32
I have summarized Reich’s paper on infancy in some detail not only because of
what he discovered about infancy per se, but also because it illustrates with unusual clarity
his capacity to integrate the strands of his work. Some of his concepts were:
The conceptualization of Peter’s falling anxiety was informed by, and in turn
enriched,Reich’s experiences with adult patients. Both neurotic and cancer patients experi-
enced falling anxiety, accompanied by such symptoms as pallor and shocklike states, follow-
ing a sharp increase in their capacity for pleasurable excitement. After his experiences with
Peter, Reich more fully understood this process from an energetic viewpoint. Falling anxi-
ety resulted from a suddencontraction of energy after a strong expansion. The process was
sufficiently distinct from the chronic contractions of a rigid armor and sufficiently impor-
tant to warrant its own name—anorgonia—which clearly expressed Reich’s evolving
orgonomic framework of thought.
Secondly, the absence of pleasurable excitement in the mother had an impact on
the infant. The energetically charged lips that moved out for contact as well as milk often
got, at best, only the latter. The infant’s pleasurable impulse diminished, the energetic “juici-
ness” and suppleness of the oral segment was replaced by “deadness,” dryness, contrac-
tion—in short,the armor. Prior to the study of Peter, Reich had to rely on analytic recon-
struction in tracing adult oral symptoms such as “speech disturbances, emptiness of emo-
306 Myron SharafFury On Earth