GETTING TO KNOW REICH

Wilhelm Reich and A. S. Neill

Insight into an extraordinary friendship

James E. Strick

The letters between Wilhelm Reich and A. S. Neill, founder and head of England’s
famous Summerhill School, are an extraordinary window into the personalities of
two giants in their fields.

Neill, who had been in therapy with Reich, considered it had done him more good
than years of psychoanalysis. Particularly, he felt that Reich had changed his think-
ing about how to work with problem children to help get their personal conflicts
out of the way of their healthy growth. Reich shared his excitement about new dis-
coveries with Neill, and spoke to him with unique warmth and deep respect. Neill
was no “yes man” and could disagree with Reich, and press the argument in ways
none of Reich’s American students dared. In an era when relationships were sus-
tained by typewritten letters crossing the ocean, their extraordinary lively exchange
on everything from education, healthy childhood, marriage and sex life, and politics
gives us an insight into the personal process of these two fascinating men.

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 it to others, while retaining a critical eye for the
begin with a letter in which Reich responds importance of his own unique contributions. But
to many things: for one, a claim Neill heard in Reich’s tone throughout the letter, we can also
about Reich’s new International Journal of read his respect for Neill, especially the latter’s
Sex-Economy and Orgone Research. A psy- knowledge and practical experience in early child-
hood education. Part of this is reflected in Reich’s
choanalyst, John Flugel, had said to Neill:
willingness to adopt a jocular tone, kidding with
“… I am finding R[eich] most interesting read- Neill in a way he doesn’t do with his American stu-
ing. He is certainly an amazing fellow with an dents – indicating he feels Neill is an equal or peer
astonishingly wide outlook and a most useful in many ways, not only a student.
power of synthesis. Orgone excites my curiosi-
In addition, we see Reich’s early enthusiasm for
ty a good deal. Walter Frank’s article on Veg[e-
the possibilities of the orgone energy accumulator.
to-]Therapy I found particularly useful…,
Yet Reich cautions, “We alone are responsible for
though I think he ought to give some credit to our science” – in other words, we would be totally
[Walter] Cannon who in his book [The Wisdom naïve to expect help from those threatened by it,
of the Body (1932)] said substantially the same e.g., the pharmaceutical industry or monopolized
things but some ten years earlier.” medicine.
Reich’s reply on this point was edited out of the Finally, we hear where Reich’s thinking has arrived
published version for brevity. I restore it here from in 1942 on the question of how armoring originat-
the original in the Reich archives because it con- ed. Could there be a more profound question in our
veys his fair-minded attitude about giving cred- age of steadily growing political reaction?

Reich to Neill, 20 July 42 (RoaF, pp. 72-74)

“I suppose that you have received several copies of my book [The Function of the Or-
gasm] meanwhile. I would appreciate it very much if you would let me know how it was
received and which suggestions have been made as to its elaboration in the second edi-
tion. You will also receive very soon the second edition of the journal which brings some
excerpts from your book The Problem Teacher. I would like to remind you again how
useful it would be to have stories from your school related in our journal. But somehow,
I don’t seem to be able to penetrate your armor concerning such articles.

I did not hear from you in a long time. I hope that everything is all right there as far as
circumstances permit.

Before I left for Maine, I was visited by the vice-director of a New York State Hospital
who has read the book, liked it, and suggested that I begin to apply the Orgone on pa-
tients of different types at the hospital. I don’t know if something will come of it, but if
it does, there will be rapid progress. By the way, did you build an Orgone Accumulator
for yourself according to my description? I want you to have it. It does a really good job
in building up strength and killing bad stuff in the blood. You have only to build a closet
to sit in with inner metal lining and an outer wood lining and cotton or wood shavings
or sawdust or earth in the space between the two linings. Such a closet can be used to
fight colds, sinus troubles, flu, anemia and similar things. It is not dangerous in any
way and it really helps. You may trust me, in spite of the fact that I am the inventor.

By the way, when do you come over to New York? It would be a marvelous idea…

P.S. I was just about to mail this letter when I received yours of July 4th. I was very glad
to have it. Now to every single important point:

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 Wilhelm Reich and A. S. Neill – Insight into an extraordinary friendship

AS Neill and Peter Reich, 1948

“Now to your questions, which are very significant and important.

You are not right that I am afraid of children.
Children like me very much and I like them.
But I do not know enough about children,
not having worked with them and only knowing them through
the reflection of my work with grown-ups.”
—Wilhelm Reich

1. I am happy that you like the book. I only wonder why honesty gives one so much
stomach ache in the process of production. I guess it’s rational cowardice.

2. … As to Flugel, I think his attitude is fair. I shall find out whether he is right in saying
that [physiologist Walter] Cannon said, ‘the same things ten years ago.’ I don’t know
when Cannon’s book [The Wisdom of the Body] appeared. I had it in my hands for the
first time about two years ago and reading it I was struck by the fact that neither was sex
mentioned at all in connection with the autonomic nervous system, that it impresses
us by absence and not being mentioned in the title of the book. And that the sex-eco-
nomic concept of the unitary function of antithesis and unity at the same time from the
highest mental to the deepest biological function was not touched upon. Otherwise, I
would have mentioned the book in The Function of the Orgasm as I have given credit to
every single researcher whom I knew to have helped my own theory along. Besides,
Flugel does not seem to realize that the “Urgegensatz” [“Basic Antithesis of Vegetative
Life”] was published 1934 and written 1933, that means about 9 years ago. Besides, the
sex-economic biology can by no means be compared in its functional concept with any
existing physiology. In any case Müller’s Lebensnerven does not contain an inkling of

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James E. Strick

our concept of biological pulsation. I studied the second edition of this book 1933 and it
would have struck me if Cannon or someone else would have been in the neighborhood
of our concept even slightly. So please, convince Flugel of my deep sincerity concerning
quoting from others.

3. It is a pity that the Orgasm book should be reprinted in England when 3000 copies
have been printed here. It would be too nice to have a second edition published soon.

4. You are completely correct in saying that we can rely on no one but ourselves, that we
alone are responsible for what happens to our science. Edison would have been a fool to
expect the acknowledgement of the electric bulb by the manufacturers of the gas lamps.

5. Please settle all business questions with Wolfe directly, because I have nothing to do
with it. You have, of course, my consent, to have published in England whatever you
wish, so long as no publisher succeeds in censoring what I have to say.

Please, dear Neill, don’t fail to inform me of whatever you happen to hear from Scandi-
navia. Would you mind to take care of keeping up the connection with our Scandinavian
friends through Elsa Backer and the address which I mentioned in the first page of this
letter. Send all the books and journals you can also to Switzerland. Further on, they will
find their way by themselves.

Now to your questions, which are very significant and important. You are not right that
I am afraid of children. Children like me very much and I like them. But I do not know
enough about children, not having worked with them and only knowing them through
the reflection of my work with grown-ups. Why should I go to child biology if there are
such marvelous educators as A. S. Neill, etc. who can apply orgone biophysics to chil-
dren much better than I could. And b) ‘Why Is Man A Moralist?’ is being dictated just in
these days after many sleepless nights [‘The Biological Miscalculation’] and stomach
convulsions which filled my wife with fear for my future and the outcome of my brain
development. I have once tried to answer this question in my book Der Einbruch der Sex-
ualmoral on the basis of the influence which is taken upon the human organism by so-
cio-economic processes. Still, the answer why the human being is a moralist, i.e., afraid
of the nature within himself, was unanswered. In The Function of the Orgasm some an-
swer is given by working out the function of the pleasure-anxiety which is created by
muscular spasms in the pelvis, on the background of historical economic processes.
But still the answer is not complete. Maybe man held his breath for the first time in
order to choke his orgastic feelings when the first mother, subjugated for the first time
by her husband, who had been subjugated for the first time by his economic chief, in
turn for the first time subjugated her child when this child masturbated. That leads up
to your question, whether training alone is enough to explain sex repression. I would
think yes. No wild stallion needs the assistance of any keeper. The domesticity of ani-
mals is entirely a moral training, because the natural sex function is not lived any more
according to natural rules, but according to the opinion of man as to when a young
horse or a young calf should be born. All things you mention, wrong food, clothing, etc.
are in their last meaning nothing but evasion of nature, and of course, there can be no
universal orgastic life if the rest is unnatural. And as to the value of culture ‘that makes
bombs, poison gas, prisons and politicians,’ I believe it is destroying itself and the level
of the life of the Trobriands will be back soon – and happily.

Write again, Neill, you are not only the only important European connection, but more
than that, you are an honest good friend, and I am proud that you are a member of the
Institute.”

◼ ◼ ◼

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 Wilhelm Reich and A. S. Neill – Insight into an extraordinary friendship

In another exchange, Neill complains that Reich less interested in attracting followers if they don’t
uses too much technical terminology, and thus have the wherewithal to do a bit of digging and ed-
puts off many interested people who might actual- ucate themselves in the science that is needed to
ly become supporters. Reich’s reply shows that by fully understand the importance of his discoveries.
the time he’s established in the U.S., he has become Here is some of that conversation.

Neill to Reich, 28 Apr. 42 (RoaF, p. 65-7)

“My dear Reich, Number 1 of the journal [International Journal of Sex-Economy and Or-
gone Research] has arrived. I must congratulate Wolfe; it is splendid. Some of it is above
my head… no layman can grasp words like parasympatheticotonia, but I feel strong-
ly that one need not know anatomy and physiology to grasp the essentials of Vege-
to-Therapy. To see them in English when I am unconscious of the language is truly
delightful. Reich, the magazine is full of dynamite; it impresses more and more on me
what I have long felt – that you are the only successor to Freud. You alone among them
all have something new and great… makes me feel quite conceited to have ‘discovered’
you! …

If I have any criticism of the journal it is that it is too scientific for the layman, too much
written for the specialist. Clever members of my staff read it and fail to grasp the essen-
tials, but when I try to explain, as one who went through the treatment (partly, alas)
they begin to understand the words. Your method will succeed only when it by-passes
the doctors and gets understood by the ordinary people who will feel its truth without
needing a professional knowledge. One psychoanalyst here when I told him about V. T.
[vegeto-therapy] said airily: ‘There is nothing new about it; it is all in Freud, and the
Freudian analysis automatically frees all tensions.’ That is the type you want to by-
pass, the man with a set system.”

Reich to Neill, 19 May 42 (RoaF, pp. 67-69)

“I just received your good letter of April 28th. Wolfe and I know to begin with that the
first number of the Journal will not be too easy to be grasped by the layman. But I do not
think that we can avoid or that we should avoid the scientific physiological terms. You
cannot do without them for they mean definite facts. I also believe that in a true demo-
cratic way we should not try to free the layman – a teacher is not quite a layman – from
the responsibility to acquire a general knowledge of physiology and biology. For many
years I have been trying to see how a better world could set up microscopes and charts
about the body functions in public parks, instead of the foolish and useless lotteries
they have now. The vegetative function of vagotonia and sympatheticotonia appears
very simple if you present it in the form of an opening and closing hand. The opening is
the vagotonia and the closing the sympatheticotonia.”

One can hear in Reich’s thought: This is real sci- practical experiences with children in the way
ence! How can they want it to be easily digestible? that only you can write. We shall gladly print
Those too lazy to educate themselves a bit about it. We would appreciate practical instances of
the science, we don’t need!
how children behave, especially when they
Reich respected Neill’s experience, and encouraged come to the school from unfree environments
him to write articles for the Journal. Here he con- and how they adjust themselves to self-regu-
tinued: lating behavior. This problem is, I believe, the
“I wrote you already to ask you to write an ar- most important of education and will be so in a
ticle for the third number of the journal, about truly free society.

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James E. Strick

My book [The Function of the Orgasm] is being This is a truly remarkable aspect of Reich, the man.
sent this week to you in many copies. I think At times when excited about his work, new discov-
that the people who have not gone through the eries, or talented students, Reich could be effu-
mill will understand the journal better if they
sively optimistic. At other times, he foresaw pos-
have read my book, which, according to people
sibly being destroyed by the emotional plague, and
who read it, is very easy to understand in spite
of its scientific subject. could express profound pessimism. Rather than
seeing this as a contradiction, it makes more sense
I was glad to learn that you changed from pes-
as an indicator of what a remarkably mobile energy
simism to optimism. You remember that you
looked upon me as a kind of utopist when I system Reich was. He could “swing very widely” (as
said that the irrational in society cannot last he put it) in both directions, without involuntarily
for ever.” clamping down on the mobility.

◼ ◼ ◼

James E. Strick is Professor in the Department of Earth and Environment, and Chair of the Pro-
gram in Science, Technology and Society at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsyl-
vania, USA. Originally trained in microbiology, and later in the history of science, Dr. Strick has
published extensively on the history of ideas and experiments about the origin of life, including Sparks of Life: Darwinism
and the Victorian Debates over Spontaneous Generation (Harvard, 2000), Wilhelm Reich, Biologist (Harvard, 2015)
and, with Steven Dick, The Living Universe: NASA and the Development of Astrobiology (Rutgers, 2004). He is also the
editor of two six-volume collections of primary sources: Evolution and the Spontaneous Generation Debate (Thoemmes,
2001) and The Origin of Life Debate: Molecules, Cells, and Generation (Thoemmes, 2004). Strick is currently at work
on a scientific biography of Wilhelm Reich.

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