from Edith Jacobson, no friend of Reich’s by 1935-36 and certainly not by 1971, when I
interviewed her. Jacobson entirely agreed with Bornstein’s diagnosis of Reich as very sick,
but felt that Berta’s insistence on convincing Eva of this truth boomeranged, eventually
driving Eva closer to her father.
For all her commitment to Reich’s work today and for all her indignation toward
Bornstein and Annie for their role during her early adolescence, Eva still harbors resentment
that Reich left the family. She also feels she was always
undertaking things before she was ready—a sentiment that surely includes her fol-
lowing some of Reich’s passions that he endeavored so hard to get others to share. In later
years, Reich recognized his contribution to Eva’s childhood tragedy. He said he would not
try to influence his son Peter, born in America in 1944, to enter his work the way he had
tried to influence Eva^17.
If the situation was never black and white, neither was there equal responsibility for
the events. Reich’s central commitments were at stake in the battle over Eva. He believed in
the affirmation of genitality in a world that condemned it, and he was not prepared to sur-
render this affirmation toward Eva in order “to keep peace in the family.” Only when his
gentle, understanding approach, as in his letter to Eva about her relationship with K., met
condemnation from Annie and Bornstein did he become harsher, more insistent in his deal-
ings with Eva and her Viennese world, thereby exacerbating the parental division rather than
attempting to heal it.
Moreover, Reich was open about his convictions. When he had questions about
Eva’s analysis, particularly her inability to speak freely to her therapist, he wanted Bornstein
as well as Eva to be fully informed of his concern. For her part, Annie prior to 1936 and
Bornstein throughout never fully revealed the extent of their radical disagreement with
Reich and their intense dislike of Eva’s relationship with him. They only kept repeating the
partial truth that they wanted Eva “to make up her own mind.”
Finally, whatever his mistakes (and he made many with Eva), in his affirmation of
Eva’s childhood genitality Reich was on the side of the future, whereas Annie Reich and
Berta Bornstein represented the past, even if they belonged to the most enlightened wing
of a dying world.
Hearing Eva discuss the extent ofReich’s concern about her between 1935 and the
fall of 1936, it is easy to forget that at the same time he was doing an immense amount of
work completing his bio-electrical experiments, discovering the bions, and developing his
psychiatric therapy.
In his relations with Oslo colleagues, students, and assistants, Reich was becoming
very much the leader. His Journalprovided ready publication of his own papers and those of
his colleagues on a wide variety of subjects—his theoretical and experimental papers and
clinical articles, reports by colleagues on therapy, education, and political psychology. Reich
retained a generally leftist orientation and still considered himself a dialectical materialist.
Indeed,he used dialectical concepts in his research, stressing the role of antithetical forces,
the emergence of living substances from “material” conditions, quantitative shifts yielding
238 Myron SharafFury On Earth