of your books he would read them himself with a view to publication. I
suggested to him that it would be best to bring out Clulrakteranalyse
first with an appendix of the O. reflex, but said I would like to hear
his opinion. I told him that I approached his firm two years ago trying
to get them to take your Fascismus* book, but had no success because
then their advisers on publication were the Freudians. It is fine to have a
man of Read's importance taking an interest anyway.
I feel guilty about not writing you earlier. Perhaps it is because the
war has changed my occupation, for I am no longer a child psycholo
gist: I teach maths and dig in the garden. Today I have dug for seven
hours and my back aches. I still have a few "cases," but my difficulty is
that through the therapy they lose their cramps and complexes without
my seeing what is happening. That is, they breathe and fight and bite
me etc., but no memories seem to come out as they did with me. That
is very disappointing, and I feel that it must be something wrong with
my technique.
Constance is alive and happy. She telephoned me tonight in great
distress about our friends in Oslo. It is unbearable to think about.
Judith wrote me at the time of the Finland crisis asking if I would
invite Philipsont to England. Then the Russo-Finnish peace came and
I did not write the letter. I feel bad about it now that Norway has been
invaded, so much so that in my dream last night P. was at Summerhill.
I thought the danger to Scandinavia was over, and as I say, I don't
know how I could have got him over with wife and child. I feel guilty
about it because if it had been Elsa L[indenberg] or someone I liked
better than I did him I would have tried all ways.
Where is it all to end? Holland will be next I fear.
I sent you my book. t Several people have written me wanting to know
where your books can be got. I have great hopes of launching the
Reich ship on the English public.
I won't be so long in writing next time. I feel well and good, and any
- Die Massenpsychologie des Faschismus, 1933 (The Mass Psychology of
Fascism, 1946, 19 70). Discusses fascism as an expression of the unsatisfied orgastic
longings of the masses, which for millennia have been suppressed and distorted
by authoritarian social structures. Reich argues further that people whose char
acters were formed by an authoritarian society would be incapable of creating a
free society. This contention led to his expulsion from the Communist Party in
19 34·
t Tage Philipson, Swedish psychiatrist, student of Reich, who became the leader
of the Reich group in Scandinavia after Reich left Norway.
- The Problem Teacher.