him from New York in a chartered plane that landed dramatically on Dodge Pond on the
evening of August 31, where many of the conference participants were already on the small
wharf. I recall Reich rather peremptorily waved the rest of us back as he stood alone to wel-
come Hoppe.
Hoppe proved to be a delightful, witty man. Short and wiry, his low-keyed ironic
approach offered an interesting contrast to Reich’s. He had taken his detention philosophi-
cally, with much less upset than Reich. Yet his talk showed the same kind of appreciation for
orgone energy, and the same awareness of man’s tendency in general and of scientific
authorities in particular to explain away the results of the accumulator.
A full report on the conference has been presented elsewhere^27. Here I will limit
myself to some highlights, with particular emphasis on the ways the conference illuminated
Reich’s interactions with his colleagues and his mood and thinking at that time.
On August 31, in a meeting limited to physicians, Simeon Tropp spoke on the
short-term, experimental use of psychiatric orgone therapy in the ordinary medical office.
Here he was dealing with a wide variety of so-called psychosomatic complaints that might
well lend themselves to orgone therapy. Reich was intensely interested in this particular kind
of application of orgone therapy. However, he worried about the incautious use of these
methods by insufficiently trained physicians.
Hoppe, speaking in German as Wolfe translated, related how he had used a twen-
ty-fold accumulator (as well as regular accumulators) in order to establish the work by show-
ing the rapid and intensive effects of orgone treatment. He also spoke of the ridicule he was
receiving from physicians; as with Reich, his positive results were dismissed as “miracle
cures,” faulty original diagnoses, and the like.
In the discussion period, Reich noted that Hoppe had gone further than American
orgone therapists, including himself, in the extent of his use of the twenty-fold accumula-
tor. Here the fear existed that there might be danger in such an intense application of orgone
energy, but Hoppe reported no injurious effects. Nevertheless, Reich advised the greatest
caution in using the accumulator.
Hoppe’s experience with mocking physicians was instructive, Reich stated, in that it
showed that the hostile reaction to orgone energy was not caused by Reich’s aggressive per-
sonality.The mildest ofmen, Hoppe could not be accused of belligerence. Yet he had met
with the same skepticism and ridicule Reich had.
Beside the formal papers given at the conference, there were opportunities in the
mornings for demonstrations of orgonomic phenomena such as the bions in the orgone
energy dark room.
During these demonstrations Reich moved around, pointing out certain things and
answering questions. He gave several informal talks in which he stressed the technique of
orgonomic functionalism underlying all experimental results—a technique that was neither
mechanical nor mystical, that moved from the complicated to the simple, and that was based
on a thorough study ofemotional functioning.Reich emphasized that orgone energy could
not be understood without a knowledge of the emotions, nor could the energy behind the
24 : Personal Life and Relations with Colleagues: 1941-1950 327