Raphael, and Sidney Handelman each entered treatment with Reich not long after Baker
started. Of these new recruits Raphael was to become the most important, participating
actively in cancer studies, the OIRC, and administrative matters. Boyish in appearance,
Raphael was very intelligent and often a man of independent judgment but not inclined to
contradict Reich openly.
The Reichian Marlboro cohort (which also came to include some nonmedical staff)
began to alarm the hospital’s medical director, J. B. Gordon. Gordon spread rumors that
Baker was schizophrenic and that he masturbated his patients. Such was the noxious effect
of Reich, for previously Gordon had considered Baker an outstanding psychiatrist. In 1948,
Baker, Raphael, a social worker, and a psychologist were personally reprimanded by Henry
Gotten, Deputy Commissioner of Mental Health for the state of New Jersey^15.
Cotten’s interview with Baker, et al., covered such topics as whether Reich was in a
mental hospital, whether Baker masturbated patients, whether patients undergoing orgone
therapy screamed with pain, and what the “orgone box” was.
Four weeks later, Gotten committed suicide. The reasons for this act or even its con-
nection with Reich are open to doubt. At the time, Reich commented vengefully: “That’s a
good way to get rid of the emotional plague.” Suicide, by friend or foe, always had a partic-
ular fascination for him, a reaction undoubtedly connected with the suicide of his mother.
The war against the Reichians at Marlboro State Hospital continued. Several young
physicians who had started therapy with Reich were fired. Baker himself had too secure a
position to be dismissed, but the unpleasantness generated by the attacks led him to resign
in October 1948. By this time his private practice in orgone therapy had grown to a point
where he no longer needed or desired a state position.
Another newcomer in 1946 who was to become important to Reich was Simeon J.
Tropp. Tropp was a surgeon in New York City at the time he met Reich. During his
American years Reich held the policy, one that Wolfe opposed, of accepting physicians for
training who had not had prior psychiatric experience. Tropp was among this small group.
Reich had hoped that Tropp would be especially active in developing medical orgonomy, for
example,the use of the accumulator in the treatment of various physical illnesses and the
short-term use of psychiatric techniques for certain acute somatic disturbances that had an
emotional component.For a few years Tropp did pursue these interests, but eventually his
main concern became the psychiatric treatment of neuroses.
Tropp’s special contribution for Reich lay not in any intellectual achievement but in
the personal friendship,approbation, and support he gave him. Tropp had a warm, whimsi-
cal personality and was financially more affluent and personally freer than many of the other
therapists. He made many generous contributions to Reich’s work. He was the only thera-
pist who moved with Reich to Rangeley in 1950 and had frequent contact with him in the
remaining years. But much as Reich liked him, Tropp’s lack of intellectual discipline led
Reich to hold him in distrust as well as affection.
Other therapists to join Reich in the late 1940s were Oscar Tropp (Simeon’s broth-
er), Victor Sobey from the Veterans’ Hospital, Philip Gold, Charles Oiler, Morton
24 : Personal Life and Relations with Colleagues: 1941-1950 321