orgone accumulators, he will tell you how unutterably rotten is the underlying char-
acter of the average individual.In this passage Brady correctly plays Reich’s individual notes, but she totally distorts
his melody. Her deft insinuation that Reich was a swindler and a megalomaniac would per-
meate many subsequent articles on orgonomy as well as the FDA investigation.
Brady’s main point could be discerned from the insinuations: the psychoanalytic
organization should discipline itself, in other words, do something about “the growing Reich
cult,” or else it will “be disciplined by the state.”
The political context of the article is important, not only in itself but for what
Reich made of it. At the time of the Brady article, The New Republic was under the editor-
ship of Henry A. Wallace. Wallace had resigned from the Truman administration in 1946 in
protest of its cold-war policies. In 1948, he was to run for President on the Progressive Party
ticket. By even the most charitable accounts he was much influenced by American
Communists during this period^1.
As a sign of The New Republic’s Stalinist line under Wallace, the magazine on
December 2, 1946, had published a review by Frederic Wertham of Reich’s The Mass
Psychology of Fascism.Wertham accused Reich of “utter contempt for the masses” because he
stressed their mysticism and incapacity for freedom. Reich, Wertham said, represented a
threat to the left because he confused liberals by leading them away from the political strug-
gle. Reich advocated “psycho-fascism.”
Given the all but universal fear of orgonomy, Reich had long worried that a cam-
paign of the magnitude of the Norwegian one would break out in America. The American
Psychiatric Association, the American Medical Association, the psychoanalysts, the pharma-
ceutical industry, one or another political party—all were possible candidates to mobilize the
opposition. The appearance of Wertham’s and Brady’s articles in short succession in a fel-
low-traveling journal convinced Reich that the Stalinists had won this dubious honor.
IfReich was right in stressing Wertham’s and especially Brady’s role in spearhead-
ing the American campaign,he was wrong in ignoring the contribution of the political right
to his difficulties. In the late 19405, many Americans were shocked to discover both the bar-
barity ofSoviet totalitarianism and the extent ofStalinist penetration of various domestic
organizations. These genuine fears merged with an irrational anxiety about “un-American”
radicals.Right-wing demagogues such as Joseph McCarthy were quick to exploit and esca-
late this amalgam of concern over “subversive” individuals.
Brady’s article was extremely successful in drawing positive attention to itself and
negative attention to Reich. A condensation of it was published in Everybody’s Digest,a now
defunct popular magazine that then had a circulation in the millions^2 .Collier’s borrowed
from it heavily in an article which stated that the “orgone and the accumulator can lick
everything from the common cold to cancer, according to Dr. Reich.”^3 Excerpts appeared
in Scandinavian,French, and Swiss papers. As late as 1954, when Irwin Ross published a
long article on Reich in the New York Post,he took over Brady’s title and much of her con-
336 Myron SharafFury On Earth