52 Myron SharafFury On Earth
authoritarian father, the irrational condemnation of extramarital sexuality, the victimization
and persecution of those who break society’s sexual laws all these themes would come later.
Second, Reich follows traditional analytic theory in discussing his own childhood
and adolescent sexuality. He focuses on the disruptive aspects of his early sexual experi-
ences, his heightened Oedipal complex, his witnessing the primal scene, his seeing the father
pushed aside by the tutor, which impelled into consciousness his own incestuous fantasies—
all factors seen as contributing to Reich’s conflicts at the time he started his analysis. Indeed,
Reich ends the case history by supporting the necessity of the latency period, which presup-
poses the child’s repressing his incestuous wishes through identification with the father. It
would take time before Reich became fully aware of the positive aspects of his sexual devel-
opment and was able to integrate them within his theoretical formulations.
Indeed—and this is my third point—Reich sees, among other sequels of the moth-
er’s affair, a profound weakening of the father’s authority. Again in the context of the case
report, the consequences for the son were negative, awakening his own incestuous hopes.
But, for the course of Reich’s later development, his not being unduly awed by seemingly
strong authority figures was to have its advantages.
Fourth, whatever interpretations one gives, the crisis must have heightened the
sense ofdiscrepancy between what Freud called the manifest and the latent and what Reich
was later to distinguish as “surface” and “depth.” On the surface, the mother was married
and belonged to Leon. At another level, in many ways she may well have indicated to her
son Willy that she preferred him to his often brutal father. At still another level, she went to
Leon, not Willy, for the intimate, exciting, and frightening act of sexual intercourse. And
then, as the greatest discrepancy of all, she had an affair with the tutor, pushing aside both
the powerful father and the adoring son. These were heavy emotional and cognitive puzzles
for a young boy to ponder.
Finally, I would suggest that the crisis and its tragic aftermath markedly increased
Reich’s sense of guilt and his tendency to look inward, to ponder the deeper meaning of
things, particularly emotional relationships. This introspective tendency was combined with
a very extroverted, vigorous, practical orientation. The combination was to play its part in
some ofReich’s remarkable intellectual achievements.
Reich talked relatively little about his early years. But there are a few childhood
anecdotes he shared with others, and there is the highly illuminating self-analysis. He wrote
or told friends almost nothing about the years between starting at the Czernowitz gymnasi-
um (or secondary school) shortly after Cecilia’s death and his entrance into the Army in
1915.Perhaps he was especially depressed during those years and hence did not like to recall
them.We cannot say for certain.
We do know that he attended the all-male gymnasium in Czernowitz, which had a
Latin and Greek curriculum. He reports that his best subjects were German, Latin, and
Natural Science,and that he graduated in 1915 mit Stimmeneinhelligkeit(with unanimous
approval) on his exams. Later, he spoke with some pride of having had eight years of Latin