tempt.
During the summer and fall of 1955, consumed as he was by legal matters, Reich
also continued his scientific work, devoting considerable time to the DOR-buster. In late
August that year he held a seminar on the subject, at which I was present.
Reich’s mood was serious, but I recall being impressed by how little the injunction
itself was discussed. He was concerned with DOR and its relationship to unimpeded natu-
ral orgone energy, and conducted clinical demonstrations that involved a combination of
psychiatric techniques with the use of the medical DOR-buster (see Chapter 26). In those
days he was especially alert to gray or “dark” coloring in a person’s face or body—for him
an indication of the accumulation of DOR. “You look black,” was one of the descriptions
he would apply to people. There were fewer smiles and jokes than there had been at past
conferences; the mood was grim at times. Reich had some kind of throat problem, so he
wore a scarf at his neck. The scarf, along with his wool shirt and khaki pants, highlighted his
resemblance to a guerrilla chief.
It was at this time that I resigned my part-time position with the Foundation. One
factor was my disagreement with Reich over his emphasis on the Red Fascist role in obtain-
ing the injunction;there were also the personal reasons discussed earlier.
I was never aware of Reich’s loneliness during the summer of 1955, but others saw
it. Gladys Meyer met him inadvertently in the main Rangeley shopping area. When she asked
him how he was, he answered with uncharacteristic self-pity that he was eating out of cans.
(Reich did not like to cook for himself, nor did he particularly enjoy eating out. He felt stared
at in Rangeley restaurants.) Meyer offered to bring dinner to Orgonon. Reich accepted.
When she arrived with a picnic-style meal, she found him dressed rather formally in a suit
and tie, which was not his usual style. By that time the large first-floor room of the
Observatory had been redecorated and included fine furniture and rugs. Reich talked of
how high government officials might visit him. He played the organ and spoke of rereading
The New Testamentand Rousseau’s Confessions. For Meyer, the evening had an elegiac, disturb-
ing quality.She was touched by Reich’s reaching out for contact but worried by his illusions
concerning prominent visitors.
Gladys Meyer saw not only Reich’s loneliness but also his rage. On one occasion
they again met accidentally in Rangeley and Reich asked her to go for a drive with him. In
the course of the conversation, she mentioned a loan Wolfe had made to Reich. After
Wolfe’s death, Gladys Meyer had told Reich to forget about it, but upon further reflection
she now felt that her daughter (ten at the time) might later need the money. Erupting in rage,
Reich took Gladys back to her car. Two hours later he went to her cabin and apologized^3.
Gladys Meyer’s request for the return of her husband’s loan joined other indica-
tions that many of his students were no longer prepared to give him the degree of support
they had once extended. The educator Alexander (“Tajar”) Hamilton, who for years had
studied with Reich and corresponded warmly and admiringly with him, began to rebel in the
post-Oranur period. On June 23, with the trial in the offing, Hamilton wrote Reich that he
29 : Background to the Trial for Contempt of Injunction: 1955-1956 409