May 6, 1936. He finally decided to do so. Reich also published an article entitled “Our
Congratulations to Freud on His Birthday,” which detailed what he believed to be the fruit-
ful parts of Freud’s work, continued in sex-economy, and the more sterile tendencies that
increasingly dominated psychoanalysis. The conclusion of the article stated: “No matter
how difficult or hurtful the conflicts between psychoanalysis and sex-economy may have
been, they will never cause us to forget what we owe to the life work of Freud. For nobody
knows better than we, nobody experiences more painfully than we, why the world used to
damn Freud and today removes him from a fighting reality.”^9
More painful than the break with Fenichel and Reich’s continuing disappointment
in Freud was Reich’s relationship with his children, especially Eva. When Reich moved to
Oslo, Eva and Lore were living in Vienna with Annie’s parents, Malva and Alfred Pink, while
Annie was establishing her practice in Prague. Sometime in 1934 Eva went into child analy-
sis with Berta Bornstein, a well-known Vienna child analyst trained by Anna Freud. Both
Annie and Willy agreed that Eva needed analysis and that Bornstein was a good choice. Eva’s
analysis with Bornstein was one of the reasons the children remained in Vienna. As agreed,
Eva spent summers with her father^10.
Prior to the Reichs’ move to Berlin in 1930, Bornstein had been a good friend of
the family. She had cared for Eva and Lore when the Reichs visited Russia in 1929. (She
never married, but for a period in the 1920s she and Otto Fenichel were lovers.)^11
Following the Reichs’ separation, she sided strongly with Annie. In the 1930s her involve-
ment with the family was not considered a counter-indication to her being Eva’s analyst.
Today, such a practice would be strictly disadvised.
Annie,Bornstein,and Alfred Pink had strongly objected to Reich’s “encouraging”
the precocious Eva to attend his seminars and to read Malinowski’s The Sexual Life ofSavages.
Pink clearly disapproved of his granddaughter’s “premature” sexual interests, a definite atti-
tude Reich preferred to the tolerating stance of Annie and Bornstein, which allowed Eva to
make her own decisions rather than “imposing” a Weltanschauungthe way they claimed Reich
did^12.
Reich countered that he had not encouraged Eva but neither had he discouraged
her spontaneous interest in these activities nor concealed his pleasure over her curiosity. In
his view, to have done so would have contributed to the mystification of sexuality that result-
ed from the vague disapproval or unspoken toleration of sexual curiosity.
The same issue erupted again over an exchange of letters between Eva and Willy.
On January 12, 1935, she wrote Reich about a matter that “I tell Berta only rarely.” Now
almost eleven, Eva had met a thirteen-year-old boy, K. They liked each other, kissed, and
engaged in sex play. But he also liked and went out with other girls. And that for Eva was a
problem:“I thought to myself, I won’t let anyone play around with me, and now I don’t
know what to do. To be mad or to be friends? I am disappointed but am I not right? I think
sometimes:‘Go back, retreat, you have no rights to him.’ But when he takes my hand I think
the opposite.... I am sick of the whole affair. ... It sounds like a love novel... ,”^13
19 : Personal Life and Relations with Colleagues: 1934-1939 235