wanted full custody of the children. She would forbid Eva from living with Reich even if
she wished to do so. Reich became more enraged than ever. Finally, Eva told Willy to leave—
he was upsetting everyone.
Once back in Oslo in September, Reich took retaliatory steps. According to Eva,
Reich now took the position that he would no longer give child support to Annie but would
instead put the money in escrow until the children visited and maintained a decent relation-
ship with him. Around this time, Reich also began preparing an eighty-page document enti-
tled “How I Lost Eva,” in which he detailed his anguish and tumult in letters, reports of
phone calls, and other recollections (plus his own interpretations) of events.
There was no further communication between Eva and Reich until August 1938.
Hitler had annexed Austria that March, and Annie made plans to emigrate from endangered
Prague to America. Reich was angry that he wasnot consulted and that the children did not
visit him before leaving. The move itself he thoroughly approved, being convinced that
Hitler intended to conquer Europe and that the democracies were ill-prepared to meet this
threat.
Annie and the children arrived in the United States on July 21, 1938. Working on a
farm during her first American summer, Eva, now fourteen years old, wrote her father on
August 28:“It is the first time that I do something [writing Reich] which perhaps is not good
for Annie, but I had this feeling, now or never, that I simply write it, throw it in the mail
box, and then will be sorry afterward.”
Eva went on to speak of her love for both her mother and her father. About her
father: “Be proud that your daughter tells you that you have such charm that if one comes
into your vicinity one simply must be fond of you.” However, Eva was worried that she had
“lost” Reich because she had been unwilling to visit him before leaving Europe. She still
found it difficult “for me to be quite honest with you.” Hoping he would reply, she conclud-
ed her letter by imagining Reich’s reaction to it: “You are a little confused and read the let-
ter again and again.”^16
According to Eva,Reich replied with a brief letter. He was concerned that whatev-
er he said might only serve to drive Eva back into her fear of him. He was extremely touched
that for the first time in three years she had reached out to him, but he was worried that in
so doing she felt guilty toward Annie. In fact, she was not harming her mother by writing to
him.
Some years later, Reich told Eva how hurt he was that she had been so concerned
about her mother’s feelings should Eva approach him and so little concerned about his feel-
ings should she not. The whole conflict, Reich said, arose because he represented the great
forbidden.
Today, Eva Reich, who is a physician, travels around the world lecturing on her
father’s work. In interviews with me in the early 19705, she saw Annie, and especially Berta
Bornstein, as essentially responsible for the almost four years of fear-filled separation from
her father.They “brainwashed” her into believing her father was seductive and sick, his
influence on her largely destructive. Eva’s view of what happened received corroboration
19 : Personal Life and Relations with Colleagues: 1934-1939 237