band). He would prove that he could win her. In many of Reich’s relationships with women
there was a tremendous battle quality. He just had to make them see he was on the right
track, had to win their total admiration. And this urgency grew virulently compulsive when
he had taken a new, insecure step in his life’s work.
I find it significant that all the women I interviewed or corresponded with who had
relationships with Reich attributed their difficulties with him to his problems, social difficul-
ties, or their lack of scientific knowledge and skill. None focussed on their emotional prob-
lems with him. One can speculate that this denial was also shared by his mother with regard
to Leon; all the difficulties were his fault, just as he entirely blamed her until her suicide. In
this respect at least, Reich chose women like his mother in an effort to make it come out
right this time. It never did.
Thus, Reich remained locked in repetitions of his past, even as he transcended
them in his ever grander work. Or transmuted them is perhaps the better term. For the
“excess” from his personal problems and compulsions undoubtedly contributed to the pas-
sion of his scientific comprehension.
The obverse is also true. By channeling so much irrational rage and groundless sus-
picion into his personal relations and into some distorted, paranoid explanations of animos-
ity against his work,Reich was free to direct an almost unblemished magnaminity toward his
great scientific and human themes. As petty as his grudges against Ilse and Theo, as large
was his generosity toward Freud, who in fact had “betrayed” him far more than Ilse or Wolfe
ever did.
How much was Reich aware of his past as an irrational influence on his actions and
beliefs during his last years? I do not know. Once he said to Lois Wyvell: “I fear your moth-
er in you just as I fear my father in me,” but he did not expand on that awareness, nor in his
later years did he ever criticize his mother, to my knowledge. During this period the only per-
son who suggested the possible role of his family dynamics was Ola Raknes in a letter to
Reich.In reply, Reich quickly and without getting angry dismissed Raknes’s tentative and
sensitively worded interpretation.
One old friend suggested he needed help.Lia Laszky visited Orgonon in 1953 or
1954.Reading some of his publications in the 1950s, she had become worried about his
emotional state.With some psychoanalytic colleagues from New York she went up to
Orgonon. Reich would not see them, but he did agree
to see Lia, who went up to the Observatory by herself She said to him: “Willy, in
the name ofour old friendship and love, get help for yourself!” At first Reich was angry, but
then he said: “Whom could I go to?” as if he were just barely considering the idea. Lia
replied:“I wouldn’t even have mentioned it if I hadn’t someone in mind who I think is
good.” She suggested Harry Guntrip, a teacher of hers and a highly respected therapist^34.
Nothing came of her suggestion. Reich could not see anyone unless he felt that per-
son knew where he was right as well as wrong. There was no such person, though Reich did
yearn for someone to whom he could speak with full candor. He once said: “People can
come to me with their problems but I have no one to talk to.”
376 Myron SharafFury On Earth