Whatever her later difficulties with Reich, she never wavered in her conviction that he had
been a great innovator in the human disciplines. She took a more neutral position toward his
natural-scientific research since she lacked the training and experience to evaluate these
investigations.
For his part, Reich valued highly Meyer’s use of orgonomic findings in her own
work, but was suspicious of her lack of a deeper commitment. An advantage of Meyer’s
position was that she was more disinterested—in the good sense of the word—than many
of his followers. She never gave off the odor of belonging to a “smelly little orthodoxy” (to
use George Orwell’s phrase) as do so many “Reichians.” With her warm, judicious interest
in the lives of others, she had a profound influence on hundreds of students, and she intro-
duced some of them to the psychological and sociological aspects of orgonomy.
Her position on the periphery of the orgonomic movements had its disadvantages,
too. When Reich entered new domains, she could be more aware of his excesses than his
contributions. Critical-minded intellectuals like Gladys Meyer often viewed Reich as an
extremely creative but erratic person (child-peasant). With his keen emotional antennae,
Reich would pick up the slightest hint of such an attitude and reject it. I recall once going
over some documents with Reich when I was in a critical mood toward him. He wrote a note
and passed it to me.The note read:“What is disturbing now? Yourfantasy ofmanaging
me”—a comment that caught the exact quality of my critical attitude.
But the main issue of controversy between Meyer and Reich concerned Wolfe.
Around 1948, Reich began to feel that Meyer was undermining Theo’s relationship with
Reich and orgonomy. Wolfe had some of the same feeling. Meyer vigorously denied this.
Wolfe suggested that she see Reich for further therapy to determine the truth, and Meyer
agreed. During a number of sessions Reich and Meyer “waged a battle,” in her words. Meyer
kept insisting she only wanted Theo to do what he wanted to do. In the end, Reich partly
accepted Meyer’s explanation, but kept to himself his own interpretation^7. Thereafter he
was much more distant toward her.
Gladys Meyer may well have resented the extent of Theo’s involvement with
orgonomy, although this feeling never went so far as Reich surmised. When I interviewed
her, I said that Wolfe must have given a great deal of money to the Orgone Institute Press.
Meyer said bitterly: “He [Reich] took every cent Wolfe had.” She then altered this statement
to express the same idea but emphasizing that Wolfe wanted to help orgonomy wherever
possible.Still the resentment was there, all the more when Wolfe died in 1954, leaving her
with no sources of money other than her own income to support their young daughter. Nor
was her bitterness mitigated by Reich’s total lack of concern for her financial plight. Even
after Reich’s death he gave her cause for anger, since his will made no provision for the
Wolfe family to share in the royalties from Reich’s publications. According to Meyer, Reich
and Wolfe had had an understanding that should orgonomic literature ever make money,
they would share the proceeds.
The seeds ofher later resentments may have been sown long before Wolfe’s death,
in the years when she saw Wolfe so zealously devoting his energy and money to support the
360 Myron SharafFury On Earth