late 1945, and after reading the book, he decided to seek treatment from Reich. He moved
to New York, initially with the idea of staying only as long as his treatment required. As
often happened in people’s relationships with Reich, Willie got more than he intended: he
became so involved with orgonomy that he never returned to Oklahoma.
A few months after Willie began his treatment, Reich urged him to start seeing
patients. Willie did not feel ready to begin, but Reich prevailed upon him. It was character-
istic of Reich that he tended to take it as a sign that someone was ready to start if the per-
son felt he was not. Such an attitude indicated a sensitive awareness of the difficulties rather
than the cocksureness Reich detested.
Willie was an independent person, never to be Reich’s yes-man. Difficulties devel-
oped in the early 19505, but in the first years Reich had a high opinion of him. One saw
Reich at his least dictatorial and most accepting in many of his interactions with Willie. To
give a single example: Not long after Willie started psychiatric treatment, Reich urged him
to use the accumulator. After Willie had used it a few times, Reich asked him what he
thought of it. Willie responded that he had felt nothing in it and that he thought the accu-
mulator was “a lot of bullshit.” Reich simply laughed and told him to go on using it. Later
Willie, a red-faced, hypertensive individual, became so charged by the accumulator that he
could not tolerate using it even for a short time.
Another physician to study with Reich, starting in 1946, and one who was to be the
most important to him in subsequent years, was Elsworth F. Baker. A quiet, modest man,
Baker was chief of the Female Service at Marlboro State Hospital in New Jersey at the time
he met Reich. He was also secretary of the New Jersey Medical Society. Like Willie, Baker
was depressed at the start of treatment, and he began therapy simply with the idea of being
a patient and working on his problems^14. Again like Willie, Reich urged him to begin see-
ing patients and cautiously to use Reich’s techniques soon after he started treatment. Baker
also made a considerable effort to become familiar with the totality of Reich’s work, spend-
ing time in the laboratory doing microscopic work under the direction of Ilse, and, occa-
sionally,Reich himself.By 1948 or so, Baker was part of the informal inner circle that includ-
ed Wolfe, Ilse, and Willie.
Initially, Baker saw Reich for six months, three times a week. Reich felt Baker could
stop at that point,but the latter insisted on another six months of treatment. At that time
Reich wanted to make therapy as short as possible, urging his students to go out on their
own,coming back for additional treatment if necessary. In this respect, his treatment phi-
losophy had become similar to Freud’s, who also tended to give relatively brief treatment to
many analystsin-training. Freud considered analysis a lifelong process, a process the treat-
ment per se only initiated.Things had come full circle. Now with his concentration on
armoring and energy flow, on prevention rather than treatment, on orgone physics and bio-
physics, Reich was impatient with long-term treatment and used a highly modified form of
character analysis in addition to his body techniques.
Since Baker was held in high regard by his colleagues at Marlboro State Hospital,
his interest in orgonomy stimulated several other staff members. Drs. A. Allan Cott, Chester
320 Myron SharafFury On Earth