emotions be fully understood without some knowledge of how the same energy functioned
outside the organism.
Ilse OllendorfF showed a film Reich had made in Norway on the bions and the
development of protozoa (it is now in the sealed Reich Archives). Another film shown had
been made by Reich that summer, with Kari Berggrav serving as photographer under his
direction. This film included more of his recent discoveries as well as footage on the
Rangeley lakes and mountains. Berggrav, whom Reich had known in Norway, had filmed for
him there, too; a spirited woman, she sometimes quarreled with Reich about procedure.
Once she remarked that he had given her more latitude in the filming in Norway. Reich
responded sharply, “This isn’t Norway. I’m the boss here,” contrasting his authoritarian lead-
ership with the more egalitarian arrangements earlier.
In making this film, Reich featured his own name in big letters as the discoverer of
orgone energy, commenting: “I used to hide under the table. But that didn’t do any good.”
Just as the American Reich was more distant from his students and more evidently the
“boss,” so he also was more intent on clearly identifying his name with his accomplishment.
“I took the beating—now I want the credit.” At other times he explained the emphasis on
his name in a different way: it was identified with the most uncompromising expression of
his concepts and he wanted that quality to come through.
For all the stress on his name, Reich was curiously reluctant to have his face appear
in the film. Kari wanted to take some footage of him, so he agreed to walk up and down in
front of some instruments. Later, when he looked at the resulting footage, he told Kari to
take it out—it looked phony^28. In the finished film the most one sees of Reich are his
hands. For a large man he had surprisingly small hands, thin, quick, and somehow more del-
icate than one would have expected.
Reich was at his best during the conference. One could see him then as one rarely
saw him—thoroughly relaxed, enjoying the companionship and success of his work that this
gathering in part reflected, eager to share knowledge, Reich the man who enjoyed people.
Yet he kept apart in a definite though not easily definable way. One example was that he did
not participate in any of the parties given by the people, like Willie and Wolfe, with summer
homes in the Rangeley region. While Reich was warm and expansive at the conference, there
was very little small talk from him.
On August 30, Ola Raknes had reported on sex-economy and orgone research in
Norway.After his visit to the United States in 1946, Raknes had built an accumulator in his
own home, with much opposition from everyone, including Nic Waal and Odd Havrevold.
Then, on September i, Reich spoke of the “Consequences of Orgone in Vacuum.”
The preceding winter he had made the discovery that orgone energy existed in the so-called
vacuum, and that a vacuum tube, if sufficiently charged with orgone energy in an accumu-
lator for several months, luminated blue when excited by another orgone field or a small
electrical charge^29. Reich demonstrated this phenomenon during his talk. However, on this
occasion he was not so much concerned with technical orgonomic problems as he was with
the question that had preoccupied him that summer while writing Ether, God and Devilname-
328 Myron SharafFury On Earth