60 Myron SharafFury On Earth
time, was unsatisfactory There was no denying the principle of a creative power
governing life; only it was not satisfactory as long as it was not tangible, as long as
it could not be described or practically handled. For, rightly, this was considered the
supreme goal of natural science^5.The vitalists, men like Henri Bergson, who postulated a special force, an élan vital
governing living things, greatly appealed to Reich, for “they seemed to come closer to an
understanding of the life principle than the mechanists who dissected life before trying to
understand it.”^6 But as always, he was fascinated by the concrete in neurology the complex-
ity of the nerve tracts, for example, and the ingenious arrangement of the ganglia.
Reich did very well in his courses. By his second year he was tutoring first-year stu-
dents, which eliminated the need for any help from his brother, and afforded him consider-
able pride in his early and complete financial independence.
The most important event during Reich’s years at medical school was his encounter
with psychoanalysis. How this came about is an interesting story in itself. Grete Bibring (née
Lehner), a woman in her seventies when I interviewed her, with a distinguished career in psy-
choanalysis, recalled the setting in which Reich first heard in detail about psychoanalysis. A
first-year medical student in 1919, she was sitting next to Reich and to Edward Bibring, her
future husband, at an anatomy lecture. The room was ill-heated because of the fuel short-
age, and Willy and Edward wore their Army overcoats, both being too poor to purchase
civilian winter clothes. During the lecture, Otto Fenichel, a fellow student (later to become
an analyst of renown), passed around a note urging an extracurricular seminar on subjects
not covered by the regular medical curriculum, to be run by the students themselves. Willy,
Grete, Edward, and several others who have not been identified responded and joined
Fenichel in initiating and planning the seminar^7.
In his published account (1942) of the start of this seminar, Reich omitted to cite
Fenichel as the originator,which is not surprising since the two men were to quarrel bitter-
ly in 1934 and so break off a close friendship that had lasted for sixteen years. Further, Reich
described the seminar as being specifically devoted to sexology, whereas Grete Bibring stat-
ed that it was devoted to “new” topics. However that may be, there is no doubt that sex was
one of the main topics not covered by the regular medical curriculum.
Early in the new seminar,the students invited a psychoanalyst to give several talks.
Later Reich recalled that while he learned a great deal from these lectures, he objected to the
way the analyst, as well as other guest lecturers, discussed sexuality. “Sexuality, in my experi-
ence, was something different from the thing they discussed. Those first lectures [by the ana-
lyst and others] I attended made sexuality seem bizarre and strange.”^8
Reich had already arrived at his own views about the importance of sexuality. A
diary entry for March 1, 1919, reads: “Perhaps my own morality objects to it. However, from
my own experience, and from observation of myself and others, I have become convinced
that sexuality is the center around which revolves the whole of social life as well as the inner
life ofthe individual.”^9