Another, more dangerous, incident concerned the investigation of Orgonon by a
representative of the state police. The investigator went to a children’s camp nearby, which
had no connection with the Orgone Institute. There a counselor was interrogated about
where the children canie from, whether the camp “fed” children for the Orgone Institute,
whether it was a nudist camp, and so forth. Another investigated rumor involved my alleged
chasing girls at night.
Reich took various actions against these rumors. He continued the policy estab-
lished earlier of confronting very directly the originators of the rumors, going to some
lengths to determine who they were. One particular example was telling. We suspected a
local citizen, seemingly friendly toward Orgonon, of saying that Reich and his associates
were Communists. At Reich’s direction, I wrote the person asking if he had in fact circulat-
ed the rumor. There was no reply, but others confirmed his identity as the rumor-spreader.
Reich prepared a letter, signed by the Orgonon staff”, which was sent to a number of
Rangeley citizens. In it, he described the danger of slander and gossip, and the way that slan-
derers, or people with emotional plague, rely on other people’s fear of being slandered them-
selves. Here Reich was applying concretely—and I think with some success, in this
instance—his sociological emphasis on the interaction between emotional plague citizens
and the average neurotic.
During this period, however, a far more ominous, if subterranean attack was con-
tinuing. I am referring to the Food and Drug Administration’s investigation of the orgone
energy accumulator.
24 : Personal Life and Relations with Colleagues: 1941-1950 333
and Learning in Children,” honoring the publication ofRecord of a Friendship: The Correspondence Between Wilhelm Reich
and A. S. Neill.The chairman of the symposium was the Head Teacher for the Rangeley Head Start Program, and
another participant was a high-school teacher in Rangeley. No one was impolite enough to mention that thirty years
earlier the Rangeley School system would not hire a teacher connected with Orgonon. “A tragedy enacted secures
applause/That tragedy enacting too seldom does”—Emily Dickinson.