Peter’s integration into the busy home life reflected Ilse’s ability to handle a great
variety of tasks with remarkable “grace under pressure.” She exuded a calm, unpretentious
serenity that provided a fine grounding for Reich’s volatility. At a deeper level, the relation-
ship remained more problematic. As noted, Ilse was never in therapy, although almost every-
one else involved in Reich’s work had been or was in treatment. Partly, Reich was relieved
that Ilse was not preoccupied by her own emotional problems. When students raised the
question of why she had not been in therapy—the kind of personal question one could raise
with Reich in the context of the relative safety of a treatment session—he would reply impa-
tiently that she did not need it. But Ilse had trouble getting close to people. This kind of psy-
chological distance bothered Reich, and he would frequently erupt over one or another of
its manifestations. Reich also continued his practice of acting out on those around him the
frustrations he felt from other sources.
Reich and Ilse did not marry legally until April 17, 1945, when Peter was a little over
a year old. Reich retained his animus against legal marriage; he decided to take this step on
the advice of their lawyer, Arthur Garfield Hays, who warned that they would not be able
to pass the naturalization hearings as they planned unless they were married^8. It was a civil
ceremony with strangers as witnesses. The wedding was unadorned because Reich and Ilse
initially intended to get a legal divorce as soon as they both became U.S. citizens. Ilse sailed
through her naturalization hearings in November 1945. After a much longer but friendly
hearing, Reich became an American citizen on May 28, 1946. For reasons not entirely clear,
they relinquished the initial plan to get an immediate divorce.
While Ilse was visiting her mother and brother in England during April-May 1947,
Reich had a brief affair^9. (He may well have had other affairs during the 1940s but there is
no record of them, and, indeed, no gossip about this one. Reich successfully kept a very tight
lid on his personal life.) Characteristically, he went into a jealous rage when Ilse returned
from England, interrogating her mercilessly about her fidelity to him during her vacation.
Reich had shown such pathological jealousy once before when he was detained on Ellis
Island.Typically, this second outburst occurred after a vicious article against his work—the
first of its kind in America—was published in May 1947 in The New Republic(to be described
in Chapter 25).
Reich’s relationship with Eva and Lore remained problematical. While she was a
college student in the early 1940s, Eva visited fairly often. At one point, Reich had hoped
she might come and live with him; he kept a room available for her, but she was still too
much torn between her parents to accept this offer. She moved closer to her father in the
second halfofthe 19405,when she was attending medical school. Her interest in his work
grew steadily but was accompanied by considerable anxiety. Eva recalls being surprised to
hear a student of Reich’s talk very glowingly about him—she was not used to hearing her
father referred to in this way^10 .Reich remained eager to win her over completely as a
daughter and a student. When she visited in Maine, I noted with some surprise his being
upset that she “did not spend more time with him,” a common parental complaint one did
not expect from Reich.Reich contributed to Eva’s medical education, but only very modest-
316 Myron SharafFury On Earth