40 Myron SharafFury On Earth
about what my parents had meant to me. I was able to complete my dissertation and involve
myself more actively in the “non-Reichian” world.
However, whereas my analyst had a keen eye for all of Reich’s problems with me
and mine with him, he seemed blind to Reich’s unique contributions and my appreciation of
them. He behaved as though I were temporarily hallucinating when I talked about “the
streamings” of “orgone energy.” His lack of understanding in these matters added to my
sense of disloyalty to Reich in being in analysis at all: analysts almost to a person believed
the “late Reich” was insane. My guilt was enhanced when in 1957 Reich died in prison while
I was on the couch analyzing my conflicts with him. But in another sense I did feel “loyal”
to Reich (it has remained a continuous problem to be fundamentally loyal to myself) because
I intended to make use of the analysis to fulfill my aim of understanding him and our rela-
tionship.
Between 1964 and 1975, 1 was on the faculty of Tufts Medical School, and engaged
in research and education at Boston State Hospital, where Greenblatt was now superintend-
ent. Here I had the opportunity to study closely different styles of leadership, a subject rel-
evant to my later examination of Reich as a leader^2. I also had the opportunity to learn
more about the practice of psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy, the verbal side of
therapy, which Reich underemphasized.
The movement toward healing my split between “Reich” and “the world” was fur-
ther accelerated by social and therapeutic developments of the 1960s. The cultural revolu-
tion of those years more affirmative attitudes toward sexuality, the “new left,” and the rise
of “body therapies’ led to a more positive appraisal of Reich. True, many of the essentials
of his thought were still ignored, but he was no longer so readily dismissed as psychotic.
Universities and hospitals as well as “counter-cultural” groups now invited me to give talks
on his work.
I did not identify myself as a “Reichian” therapist because I had never been trained
to be one, though it was clear that my therapeutic work was heavily influenced by Reich.
Thus,with the growing interest in Reich, my practice evolved and became deeply satisfying
to me as a way ofmaking “real” at least some of what I had learned from Reich and as a
way of integrating into his concepts more insight-oriented techniques I had learned since
leaving Reich.By 1975, I was in full-time private practice.
Full-time except for one major commitment: in 1971, a publisher had asked me to
write a biography of Reich. I accepted with enthusiasm. I had no idea at the time that the
task would take me ten years. Part of that period was devoted to the actual task of research
and writing. A more considerable part was devoted to sifting out once again my own atti-
tudes toward Reich’s work and person. Not only did I have to struggle to evaluate the sci-
entific evidence, I had also to deal with what I had noted so often in myself and others, the
tendency Reich described as “running” from deep emotions. Just as in treatment with him,
the “streamings” could be the clearest reality one day and a distant memory the next, so in
writing about his work,periods ofappreciating the significance of his efforts alternated with
their appearing as “unreal” as my mother’s “dream” of sex and immortality.