62 Myron SharafFury On Earth
tude. Each one of the others expressed in his attitude some role: that of the pro-
fessor, of the great Menschenkenner, or the distinguished scientist. Freud spoke to
me like an ordinary human being. He had piercingly intelligent eyes; they did not
try to penetrate the listener’s eyes in a visionary pose; they simply looked into the
world, straight and honest.... His manner of speaking was quick, to the point and
lively. The movements of his hands were natural. Everything he did and said was
shot through with tints of irony. I had come there in a state of trepidation and left
with a feeling of pleasure and friendliness. That was the starting point of fourteen
years of intensive work in and for psychoanalysis. At the end, I experienced a bit-
ter disappointment in Freud, a disappointment which, I am happy to say, did not
lead to hatred or rejection. On the contrary, today I have a better and higher esti-
mation of Freud’s achievement than in those days when I was his worshipful disci-
ple. I am happy to have been his pupil for such a long time without premature crit-
icism, and with a full devotion to his cause^10.I quote in some detail because Reich’s intense admiration for Freud as a man was
to be an important part of what psychoanalysis as a whole meant to him. When Reich actu-
ally met Freud in 1919, he was quite on his own and proudly so. However, as he expressed
it in 1948, he had never been really close to his own father, and Freud represented the kind
of mentor and father substitute he so badly needed during this period.^11 And what better
exemplar could he have found? Freud’s interests corresponded closely to his own, not only
in terms of science and psychology but also sociologically, for Freud’s work was fraught with
educational and group implications. In addition, the example of Freud’s lonely struggles
must have inspired the young Reich, seeking a heroic destiny, who strove to avoid the “triv-
iality of the everyday.” For though Freud’s work revolved around his office, he had met more
than his due ofhate-filled abuse. Indeed, Freud saw himself primarily as a “conquistador,”
and his letters to his colleagues about outright hostility to analysis on one front,covert resist-
ance on another,and genuine victory on still another often sound like communiqués
between a commander-in-chief and his battlefield generals. As a man and a teacher, then,
Freud had many attributes that could supply for the young Reich the inspiring but steady-
ing, soaring but disciplined “benevolent presence” (to use Erik Erikson’s felicitous phrase
again) he longed for.
On his side, Freud must have been quite impressed by Reich. Freud permitted the
young medical student to start seeing analytic patients in early 1920 (possibly even late in
1919) and referred several cases to him. Reich was not unique in starting psychoanalytic
practice at so young an age (twenty-two or twenty-three) and without formal training, but
there were not many in this category. In the summer of 1920, Reich was admitted as a guest
member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society; in the fall of that year, he presented a paper
on Ibsen’s Peer Gyntto the Society, after which he became a regular member^12.
The speed with which Reich became an analyst was not solely a function of his own
intelligence,energy, and commitment, but also of the milieu. For psychoanalysis did not