46 Myron SharafFury On Earth
life is further revealed by a story Reich told his second wife, Elsa Lindenberg. As a child he
was not permitted to take part in village dances. But one night, while he was watching the
dance, a peasant boy threw a stone at him. Willy told his father and Leon hit the boy’s father.
So, quite early, Reich was exposed to the brute power not only of the father in the home but
of the property owner in the community, and he experienced both in ways that would mark
him^8.
Given Reich’s later interests, it is not surprising that he paid a good deal of atten-
tion to his own sexual history. In this area he seems to have had a good deal of freedom,
something not uncommon for children who were much in the care of peasant help. He
remembered as a boy of four sleeping in the servants’ room when his parents were away.
On several occasions, he overheard or witnessed intercourse between a maid and her
boyfriend. In the course of these experiences, he asked the maid if he could “play” the lover.
He stressed to one informant that she permitted him to do so in a very helpful way. Without
stimulating him actively, she allowed him to move on top of her.^9 Whether this happened
once or often is uncertain. But Reich clearly attributed great importance to his relationship
with this peasant girl. He once said that by the time he was four there were no secrets for
him about sex, and he related this clarity in part to his sexual play with his nursemaid.
He also related it to his general interest in farm life and to particular experiences he
had with a tutor. Thus, Reich wrote sometime around 1948:
WR’s interest in biology and natural science was created early by his life on the
farm, close to agriculture, cattle-breeding, etc., in which he took part every summer
and during the harvest. Between his eighth and twelfth years, he had his own col-
lection and breeding laboratory of butterflies, insects, plants, etc. under the guid-
ance of a private teacher. The natural life functions, including the sexual function,
were familiar to him as far back as he can remember. That may very well have deter-
mined his later strong inclination,as a biopsychiatrist, toward the biological foun-
dation ofthe emotional life of man, and also his biophysical discoveries in the
fields ofmedicine and biology,as well as education^10.The social status of Reich’s family combined with the isolation of farm life may
have helped Reich educationally, since it permitted him private tutors during his elementary
school years rather than having to attend a more rigid school. Judging from Reich’s recollec-
tion of his “breeding laboratory,” at least one of his tutors was an imaginative teacher. (Just
how many tutors there were is unclear.) Robert remembered particularly a Dr. Sachter as a
remarkable, creative teacher. Ottilie quotes Robert as saying that Dr. Sachter stimulated a
“ferocious hunger for knowledge” in the two brothers.
How long Reich was taught at home is not clear. He has written that he was pri-
vately educated between the ages of six and ten, and that he attended a gymnasium in
Czernowitz between the ages of ten and eighteen. However, since the gymnasium was locat-
ed several hundred miles from Reich’s home, it is possible that he continued to be tutored