wished. In Reich’s view, orgone energy and the orgone accumulator were nothing to be
ashamed of—on the contrary. Yet his parole statement made it clear that he would not act
“in concert” with anyone or any organization distributing accumulators. Still, from his pride
in his discovery, from his insistence that he would go on thinking and talking about and
doing research on orgone energy, one can understand, not condone, what Maguire, Mills,
and the probation officer may well have earlier told the judge and now the parole board. My
own construction of then- thinking goes: “This tricky customer is unrepentant. He says he
is going to teach and in the process he’ll talk about the worthless orgone energy. Then his
doctors, for whom he is the big boss, will go ahead and rent the boxes and then give him
the money. He says he can get $100 an hour. Keep him in jail.”
From the prison material, the deepest part of Reich emerged in extremely touch-
ing letters to his son. On March 24, 1957, shortly after his arrival at Lewisburg, Reich wrote
Peter:
... I am in Lewisburg. I am calm, certain in my thoughts, and doing math-
ematics most of the time. I am kind of “above things,” fully aware of what is up.
Do not worry too much about me, though anything might happen. I know, Pete,
that you are strong and decent.At first I thought you should not visit me here. I do
not know. With the world in turmoil I now feel that a boy your age should experi-
ence what is coming his way—fully digest it without getting a “belly ache,” so to
speak, nor getting off the right track of truth, fact, honesty, fair play, and being
above board—never a sneak...Reich wrote this on his sixtieth birthday. We know how much he liked to note the
decades. He had parties a rare event for him on the occasion of his fortieth and fiftieth
birthdays. He had looked forward to publishing the documentary material on his life and
work by his sixtieth birthday. Now he was experiencing that birthday alone in jail.
On several occasions Peter visited Reich in prison. One of Peter’s most haunting
memories is ofReich waving from the distance as he walked down the prison corridor away
from the visitor’s room. He also recalls Reich’s telling him that when he was Peter’s age (thir-
teen),he had lost his mother;his father was about to die from grief over his mother’s death
and he himselfwas about to move into the turmoil of war. Still, he had accomplished much.
Even his jail sentence was, in a way, an honor since he was held on the basis of an uncon-
stitutional court order.
He also told Peter that he cried a good deal and he wanted Peter to let himself cry
fully,too.
So Reich, who for decades had said that “crying is the great softener,” was practic-
ing the same faith to the end. It says a great deal for Reich’s integrity that, true to himself,
his comments to Peter emphasize crying not in a self-pitying way, but in terms of its deep
emotional value.Where Reich found the solitude within prison to cry “with sound,” as he
used to say in therapy—for sound was important if the sobbing was to be healing—I do not
32 : Prison and Death: 1957 441