atomic energy, the orgone, to save, as it easily could, hundred thousands
and millions of lives in cancer and other diseases. Thus, I became a bit
allergic to people's way of merely talking and doing very little practically.
The second fact, which is an objective one, and has nothing to do with
me personally, is that when you listen to a UN meeting or when you read
any newspaper whatever, or when you look back into history of 2000
years, you find the same kind of superficial chattering, being busy with
many words and avoiding the main issue to the detriment of the whole
human race. I could feel easygoing in the face of a gossiping person,
would this person's behavior not remind me painfully of one of the main
reasons for the decline of human society. If you compare the behavior
of the single individual before you and that of the huge political, medical
and other organizations which determine the fate of every single human
being, you will find they are identical in motivation, mechanism and
expression. No wonder, since those political bodies are composed of
individuals with the same characterological structure.
I hope you understand, my dear Neill, why I felt that I had to write
this addition to my previous letter. It is not Barakan who is important,
but Barakan as a symbol.
Summerhill School
Leiston, Suffolk
My dear Reich,
•••February 10, 1947Yours yesterday. It suddenly strikes me with alarm that
Barakan is your Little Man plus brains which are rendered almost useless
by his emotions ... his irrationalism, in your own phrase. All through
the war I had a succession of teachers who turned out to be failures
just because of their emotional attitude to life and to me. So that B. is
no new phenomenon to me; I've had him by the dozen. Conspiracies to
chuck me out (of my own school) and put a younger man in my place,
fights about freedom ... that I wasn't allowing freedom, this said by
emotional fools who confused freedom with license, so that one woman
teacher encouraged ten normal kids of 6 or 7 to smash up £ 30 worth
of my furniture, on the theory that all children must live out their
destruction impulses. Most of these people had had nasty fathers who
never gave any praise, and they accused me of never patting them on the
back and telling them how wonderful they were. I have at least half my