usurped got in the way.
Put differently, the macho side of Reich led to an exaggerated and persistent stress
on his preeminence in work and sex. In my view, this problem was connected with his unre-
solved homoerotic feelings. I do not mean this only in the narrowly sexual sense, but in the
larger context of close, tender, at times dependent feelings toward men. Reich’s failure to
deal with these themes led to their reemergence in distorted and destructive form. For exam-
ple, jealous, groundless preoccupations often indicate a wish for the apparently feared event.
The targets of Reich’s jealousy were frequently like Wolfe—handsome, clean-cut, non-
Jewish—men different from Reich in ways that he with his acne had always envied. To share
a woman with such a man is to be closer to him, in a sense to be more like him.
My interpretation is supported by the moralistic distaste Reich could express about
homosexuality. Once in therapy I recall telling him about how an overture from a homosex-
ual made me feel very uncomfortable. Reich replied proudly: “No homosexual has ever
approached me. They don’t sense it in my structure.”
At the time, I thought there was something wrong with me. Today, I am struck not
only by how untherapeutic Reich’s remark was, blocking as it did my further thoughts and
feelings on the subject, but even more by the reflection: Methinks he did protest too much!
Reich’s behavior toward Wolfe can be understood, but it certainly cannot be con-
doned. In a set of photos now displayed at the Orgonon Observatory, there is a picture of
Wolfe with a caption supplied by Reich: “Victim of the emotional plague.” Reich undoubt-
edly meant the emotional plague of others, not his own. But Wolfe was also the victim of
Reich’s emotional plague.
Concomitant with the Oranur experiment, Reich developed an interest in painting
during the late spring of 1951. He painted very quickly, ten canvasses in his first two weeks
of painting. Like the rest of his work, his artistic themes dealt with life, death, and nature.
Ilse Ollendorffhas written:“His pictures have a very definite character, use brilliant colors,
and I find them very fascinating not as great art but as a characteristic expression of the man
Reich.... There was much influence of Munch in color and choice of subjects.”^13
In a letter to Neill, Reich half-facetiously related his interest in painting to Oranur:
“Ifart is a disease,Oranur has brought out the artist in me ... I just enjoy painting tremen-
dously.”^14 It is noteworthy that Reich could allow himself so seemingly tangential a pastime
as painting under the tremendous stress of Oranur. But his “play” was closely related to the
development of his work: Oranur required a careful eye for the details of the natural world,
for the “sparkle”or “bleakness” of the atmosphere.
Through his painting, Reich became more acutely aware of a unity between art and
science—in general and in himself in particular. The artist in him was evident at the begin-
ning of a research enterprise, when he would permit the aesthetic, qualitative aspects of
what he dealt with (a patient, a bion, dots in the sky) to impress him. The scientist was man-
ifest when he went on to conceptualize his observations and find ways to test his hypothe-
ses. As he expressed it around the time he began to paint:
27 : Personal Life and Other Developments: 1950-1954 363