According to Eva, Reich was concerned that she hadn’t told Berta about K. Eva
was impressed with how seriously Reich took her feelings for K. and the clear, simple way
he had advised her. He had said that perhaps she could overcome her jealousy and let K. see
others as well as herself. On the other hand, her desire to have K. for herself might be so
important that she could not share him. He also told her to look at her feelings of vanity.
And even if she did lose K., she should remember she was a fine person and would soon
have another boyfriend.
Bornstein believed that Eva was in part acting out her transference to Bornstein
through her relationship with K. Also, Eva was trying to play her father off against her ther-
apist, a maneuver Reich had fallen for. Bornstein, Annie, and Alfred believed that Reich’s let-
ter illustrated once again how he foisted his own views on her, views Eva parroted in order
to keep his love. Indeed, in their view, her relationship with K. was an effort to impress her
father with her interest in sexuality^14.
Caught between the very different lifestyles and orientations of her quarreling par-
ents, Eva suffered considerable anguish. At the end of her visit to Willy in August 1935, she
very much wanted to spend the following year with him in Oslo. She found the impending
separation extremely hard to bear: it reminded her of the pain she had experienced after the
previous year’s summer visit with Reich.
Initially, Reich agreed to Eva’s wish. However, he wanted to consult with Annie,
since their divorce agreement specified that the children remain with their mother until they
reached the age of fourteen, at which time they could make their own decision. Together
Eva and Willy went to Grundlsee, in Austria, where Annie, her husband Thomas Rubinstein,
and Bornstein were vacationing. Annie adamantly refused to agree to Eva’s wish. Bornstein
and she felt that Eva should complete her analysis, which would not need much more time.
According to Reich, Berta Bornstein stated that in all likelihood Eva could move to Oslo in
the spring of 1936 if she still wished to do so. Mollified, still partly convinced of the impor-
tance of Eva’s analysis, and uncertain of his legal status as a controversial refugee in Oslo,
Reich persuaded a very unhappy Eva to remain in Vienna until the following spring. Later,
Reich believed that the ensuing events were partly due to his not taking a stronger stand in
Eva’s behalfthat fall^15.
After Reich returned to Oslo, Eva grew more fearful with her mother and
Bornstein and became much more distant toward her father. Indeed, she entirely relin-
quished the idea ofliving with him and became very ambivalent even about visits. She chose
not to see him at Christmas 1935 or during the summer of 1936.
When Eva refused to come for the summer visit, Reich became thoroughly con-
vinced that Annie and Bornstein had unfairly alienated his daughter from him. A very angry
Reich visited his former wife and children, quite uninvited, at Marienbad where they were
vacationing during August 1936. There were furious arguments between Reich and Annie
(aided and abetted by Thomas and Berta). Reich repeated a request he had made many times
to Eva:that she come and live with him as she had wished to do a year earlier. Eva quoted
Bornstein as saying Reich was financially unreliable. At one point Annie bitterly declared she
236 Myron SharafFury On Earth