3 : Reich’s Childhood and Youth: 1897-1917 55
My emphasis at this point, however, is on Reich’s capacity to stand on his own after
his father’s death. From the age of seventeen, he essentially had to manage for himself. The
capacity to be independent an ability Reich was to see as an important attribute of psycho-
logical health was something that he himself gained at a relatively early age. Later in his life,
he had the marked characteristic of having to do things himself, of not wanting to be
dependent on others. How much this had to do with his identification with his father’s mode
of functioning, how much with his fear of being dependent after the losses in his life, is an
open question.
Even with scant knowledge of the school years, we do know that Reich did other
things besides work. In the part of the self-analytic article that deals with his sexual history,
Reich mentions that “between fourteen and eighteen, masturbation alternated with sexual
intercourse.” Incidentally, this sentence immediately follows his description of his first sex-
ual intercourse, supposedly at eleven and a half. The gap in the sexual history between the
ages of eleven and a half and fourteen suggests that Reich used the semi-literary form of
the article to lower the age for the start of his sexual life. Indeed, he told others that his first
intercourse occurred at thirteen. That he should have made this eleven and a half in the self-
analysis may be due to several factors. It makes a more dramatic story that he should have
had his first sexual relationship at the same time his mother had an affair with his tutor.
Then, too, Reich took some pride in the fact that his sex life started early, and the tempta-
tion to make it even earlier may have been irresistible. According to Ottilie, Willy in his twen-
ties used to tease Robert for his late start sexually at fourteen.
Aside from the brothel visits, we know next to nothing of Reich’s adolescent het-
erosexual relationships. One girl almost makes it into reality, but we cannot be sure. Ottilie
has a somewhat hazy recollection that when Reich took his sick father away for treatment,
he became involved with a cousin, the daughter of Leon’s brother, who lived in Vienna.
Apparently, the father took with him some jewelry that had belonged to Cecilia. After Leon’s
death Reich inherited the jewelry and, again according to Ottilie, he disbursed these posses-
sions in a capricious way, giving some of them to his cousin in a vain attempt to win her.
True or not,the story is consistent with the impulsive way Reich in later years could
give gifts. There is also a kind of justice that there should have been no lasting material lega-
cy from the tragedy-haunted home. First no insurance, then no jewelry. And, in 1915, the
Russian invasion of Bukovina devastated the family estate. If after the mother’s affair with
the tutor circa 1909 Reich was caught up in one personal tragedy after another, from 1915
on he was caught up in social ones.He had lost his parents; now he lost the estate of which,
briefly, he had been the ruler. From being a rich young man, he had become poor. Moreover,
before the war’s end the whole Austro-Hungarian Empire was to collapse, and the entire way
of life that he had known in his formative years—the large farm, the many servants—
became a thing of the past.
Reich once told his daughter Eva how war enveloped the family farm^24. Suddenly
in the summer of1915 the Russians were all around them and the fields were aflame. Reich
dashed into the house and saw one of the servants calmly combing her hair. “The Russians