(^1943)
Forest Hills, New York
February 10, 1943
.My dear Neill:
I have your letter of December 29th. I get the impression that
you are still preoccupied with the idea' that the Freudians and other
psychologists should embrace us. You will be disappointed all the time
if you won't accept your own judgment, which you expressed some
time ago, namely: The ones wh� are losing ground in fact and in theory
cannot be glad about work which just shows them what they are omitting.
Please stop trying so hard to convince psychologists. I personally don't
try to convince anyone, but simply present the facts as accurately and
truthfully as possible.
Some of my students like your books very much. They are distributing
them and many discussions are heid about your viewpoints.
Our work is proceeding slowly, with many difficulties, but surely; and
more and more people take notice of it and like it. But I have reconciled
myself to the idea that in our lifetime the pestilence* will apparently go
on devastating human life. It is, of course, understandable that we would
like to see what we hold true become true also for everyone else, but I
have no illusions about that for the next twenty years at least. It is very
- Also "pest," "emotional pestilence"-i.e., "emotional plague"-which Reich
defines as follows: "'Emotional plague' is a strictly scientific term to denote evil
social action from irrational motives with irrational evil results" (October 7,
195 I). Elsewhere, he calls it "an endemic epidemic of "much larger di�ensions
than cholera and typhoid" (February 9, 19 45).
.