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Exactly 53 years ago this month--on March 8, 1957--the Austrian-born psychiatrist, research physician and scientist Wilhelm Reich signed his Last Will & Testament.

By then, the United States government had already banned and burned what amounted to several tons of his published books, research journals and bulletins in New York City and at Orgonon, his laboratory and research center in Rangeley, Maine.

By then, the government had also destroyed dozens of orgone energy accumulators, Reich's principal scientific and medical tool which the government considered fraudulent.

In the opening paragraph of his Last Will & Testament, Reich wrote:

"I made the consideration of secure transmission to future generations of a vast empire of scientific accomplishments the guide in my last dispositions.

"To my mind, the foremost task to be fulfilled was to safeguard the truth about my life and work against distortion and slander after my death."

And to accomplish this task, in his Will, Reich created a Trust--originally known as the Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust Fund--so named because of his belief that the only real solution to eliminating psychological disturbances and their resulting somatic illnesses is prevention, and that this prevention is possible only by ensuring what he called "the unspoiled protoplasm" and the "unarmored life" of infants who he called "The Children of the Future."

And so on March 8, 1957, Reich's concerns and practical solutions for transmitting his scientific legacy to future generations culminated in the signing of his Last Will & Testament. Four days later--on March 12--Reich was taken to prison. And seven-and-a-half months after that--on November 3, 1957--he died in prison of heart failure.

Among his Will's principal directives was this:

"To operate and maintain the property at Orgonon under the name and style of The Wilhelm Reich Museum.

"I have collected all of the pertinent materials, such as instruments which served the Discovery of the Life Energy, the documents which were witnesses to labors of some 30 years, the library of a few thousand volumes collected painstakingly over the same stretch of time, and amply used in my researches and writings.

"All of these things--and similar things--should remain where they are now to preserve some of the atmosphere in which the Discovery of the Life Energy has taken place over the decades."

Long before his imprisonment, Reich had stored his archives in two separate locations in the Orgone Energy Observatory, the major building on his property:

• in a photographic dark-room on the first floor
  
  
• and on the second floor, in a large closet off of his study and library.

And in his Will, Reich says this about these archives:

"...I hereby direct that under no circumstances and under no pretext whatsoever shall any of the documents, manuscripts or diaries--found in my library among the archives or anywhere else--be altered, omitted, destroyed, added to, or falsified in any other imaginable way.

"The tendency of man--born from fear, to ‘get along with his fellow man' at any price, and to hide unpleasant matters-- is overpoweringly strong.

"To guard against this trend--disastrous to historical truth-- my study, including the library and archives, shall be sealed right after my death by the proper legal authorities and no one shall be permitted to look into my papers until my Trustee, hereinafter-named, is duly-appointed and qualified and takes control and custody thereof.

"These documents are of crucial importance to the future of newborn generations. I therefore direct my Trustee and his successors that nothing whatsoever must be changed in any of the documents, and that they should be put away and stored for 50 years to secure their safety from destruction and falsification by anyone interested in the falsification and destruction of historical truth."

In his Will, Reich had named his daughter, Dr. Eva Reich, as the sole Trustee of the Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust Fund. But understandably, Eva Reich was so emotionally devastated by her father's trial, imprisonment and death that months later she let it be known that she didn't feel she could assume the awesome responsibilities of the Trusteeship, that someone else had to be found to do this.

Yet no one among Reich's doctors, colleagues and students stepped forward to assume the mantle of the Trusteeship and carry out the directives of his Last Will & Testament. No cohesive group ever assembled after Reich's death to ensure the fulfillment of his final wishes. That task ultimately fell to a woman barely 34 years old--a former patient of Dr. Chester Raphael's--a woman who was unwilling to see Reich's historical legacy possibly lost forever and who stepped forward to offer her services.

And that woman was Mary Boyd Higgins who, at the age of 84, is still going strong and with whom I have the pleasure of working at the Trust and the Museum.

In early 1959, during the winter, Mary traveled to Rangeley, Maine to visit Reich's property at Orgonon for the first time. The Student Laboratory and the Orgone Energy Observatory were abandoned, boarded up and vandalized, unattended and unprotected for nearly two years against the harsh New England elements.

Inside the Orgone Energy Observatory, Wilhelm Reich's archives were gone: removed illegally the previous year by Aurora Karrer--the last woman in Reich's life--who transported the archives hundreds of miles away to the house that she shared with her mother in Bethesda, Maryland.

And to make matters worse, when Reich's Last Will & Testament was finally probated, $823 was all that was left for Mary Higgins to carry out Reich's final wishes. Today that would translate into approximately $5,700: less than $6000 to transform Orgonon from the ruin that it was, into the beautiful and vibrant property and Museum that it is today, less than $6000 to retrieve and protect Reich's archives for future generations.

Shortly after that first visit to Orgonon, Mary Higgins traveled to Bethesda, Maryland to meet Aurora Karrer. And during several meetings, Ms. Karrer repeatedly denied that she had Reich's archives. Only when Mary Higgins took legal action against her, did Ms. Karrer and her lawyer produce suitcase after suitcase after suitcase of archival materials, which the Court subsequently turned over to the Trust.

But many archival materials were still missing. And the Trust's legal efforts to retrieve additional materials from Ms. Karrer would stretch across over 40 years.

Today, Reich's Archives--which he named The Archives of the Orgone Institute--are at the Countway Library of Medicine at Harvard University, one of the world's premier medical libraries.

And today, Orgonon--Reich's property in Rangeley, Maine--comprises 175-acres of fields, forests, trails and lakefront which are open to the public. The Orgone Energy Observatory, which had been abandoned and vandalized, is now open to the public as The Wilhelm Reich Museum. The Student Laboratory, which had also been abandoned and vandalized, is now our Office and Conference Building.

And most important, all of Reich's books have been brought back into print. Whenever anyone asks us, "What is the Trust's most significant accomplishment over the past 50 years?" our answer, with no hesitation, is "Wilhelm Reich's books"--starting three years after Reich's death, the gradual re-publishing of materials that had been banned and burned in America, plus many new publications of Reich's own writings.

This includes:

• All ten book titles which were banned and burned in the United States.
  
  
• Four English-language versions of books that Reich had published only in Europe.
  
  
• Three collections of book excerpts and articles by Reich.
  
  
• Three volumes of Reich's letters and journals, compiled from Reich's archives.
  
  
• A published version of Reich's interview with Kurt Eissler of the Freud Archives, taken from Reich's magnetic tape-recording of that 1952 interview.
  
  
• And, finally, a collection of Reich's 20-year correspondence with the English educator A.S. Neill, founder of Summerhill, also compiled from Reich's archives.

A total of 22 books since 1960, comprising thousands of pages, representing over 20 languages, published and distributed world-wide for 50 years by renowned New York publisher Farrar, Straus & Giroux in collaboration with The Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust.

If any of you have read any of these books in any of the languages in which they appear, then your life has been touched by the work of the Trust.

And if you have read these books, and your livelihood or your research or your intellectual life is derived in any way from Reich's work, then you have benefited from the work of the Trust.

And when you apply Reich's work to help others in any way, then the people you help are also benefiting from the efforts of The Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust.

More than any individual or any group in any country, more than The Wilhelm Reich Museum, more than Reich's archives, and certainly more than anything on the Internet, it is these 22 books that have disseminated Reich's legacy in Reich's own words out into the world for half a century. And I emphasize: Reich's legacy in Reich's own words, and not in anyone else's.

The re-publishing of Reich's books began approximately two years after his death.

A young scholar and Harvard graduate named Leo Raditsa--who had co-founded The Cambridge Review, a reputable literary journal--was deeply interested in Reich's work. And in 1959, there was still considerable interest in Reich's work. But it was difficult to find copies of Reich's books since a 1954 Federal Court Injunction had banned Reich from distributing them and because tons of these books had been burned in a New York City municipal garbage incinerator in 1956.

While working at a literary journal in New York, Mr. Raditsa approached Roger Straus of Farrar, Straus & Giroux which, at the time, was a flourishing 13-year old publishing house. Raditsa explained to Straus that there was an audience for Reich's books and wondered if Straus might consider bringing these books back into print.

I remember Mr. Straus telling this story back in 2002 when he was our featured speaker at our Annual Fundraiser in New York where we showed Man's Right to Know for the first time. Mr. Straus explained that after talking with Mr. Raditsa, he contacted a friend of his who was a psychiatrist. And he asked this psychiatrist if he thought that Reich's books were worth publishing. Mr. Straus never mentioned the name of this psychiatrist --nor, I'm sorry to say, did I ever ask him--but whoever he was, he said, "Yes, these books were worth publishing." And the result was a productive 45-year professional relationship between Roger Straus and Mary Higgins as representative of the Trust, as well as a genuine respect and friendship between the two of them.

The first title to appear was in 1960, with the publication of Wilhelm Reich: Selected Writings - An Introduction to Orgonomy. The concept of this book was actually Roger Straus's who felt that an anthology of excerpts from Reich's books might be the best way to introduce his work to a broader, more mainstream audience.

This was followed by the publication of The Function of the Orgasm in 1961; The Sexual Revolution in 1962; Character Analysis, 1963; Listen, Little Man!, 1965; The Murder of Christ, 1966. And in 1967, an entirely new book entitled Reich Speaks of Freud, Reich's interview with Kurt Eissler of the Freud Archives, which was published over the vehement objections of Mr. Eissler.

Our last and 22nd book was published in 1999 and was entitled American Odyssey – Letters and Journals (1940 – 1947). Earlier this year--on January 22nd--the Trust mailed out its recent manuscript to Farrar, Straus & Giroux, the sequel to American Odyssey, which will be the fourth and final volume of Reich's letters and journals. Its working title is: Where's The Truth – Letters and Journals (1948 -1957).

Sadly, Roger Straus passed away six years ago in May of 2004 at the age of 87. At that time he was widely mourned and celebrated throughout the publishing world as the last of the great old-time publishers.

What I find so moving about Mr. Straus's relationship with the Trust is this: he acknowledged that he had no great personal interest nor understanding of Reich's work, and that his decision to publish Reich's books was primarily because of his sense of outrage and his need to take a principled stance against censorship and book-burning in America.

Roger Straus is truly one of the unsung heroes in transmitting Reich's legacy to future generations, first as a publisher, and secondly as the individual who brought Reich's archives to the attention of the Countway Library of Medicine at Harvard University.

For years after Mary Higgins had legally retrieved the bulk of Reich's archives from Aurora Karrer, she kept these materials at her home in New York where she lived up until nine years ago. And during this time, she visited several institutions, looking for a permanent repository for Reich's archives, including the Library of Congress and several university libraries.

Meanwhile, Roger Straus contacted someone that he knew: a man named Richard Wolfe, Chief Librarian of what was then called the "Rare Books and Special Collections" at Harvard's Countway Library.

Mr. Wolfe--who is no relation to Dr. Theodore Wolfe, Reich's colleague and translator --felt that Reich's legacy was an important one, and that these archives would be a welcome addition to the Countway's other collections.

And so, in October 1973, an agreement was signed between the Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust and the Countway Library whereby Reich's archival materials would be periodically given to the library over the years, with the Trust retaining all copyright title and publishing rights.

Today, Reich's archives are kept in a temperature-controlled environment in the library's "Center for the History of Medicine": 282 archive boxes with over 1,700 individual files containing correspondence, diaries and journals, laboratory notebooks and protocols, organizational materials, original manuscripts, unpublished manuscripts, personal papers of all kinds, translations, photographs, charts and diagrams. Plus voice recordings, time-lapse microscopic films, personal films, laboratory films, physical objects, and much more.

98 cubic-feet of materials, making "The Archives of the Orgone Institute" one of the Countway Library's largest collections. And starting in November of 2007--exactly 50 years after Reich's death--these archives have been accessible to scholars and researchers.

So these have been the major responsibilities and accomplishments of The Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust:

• The Wilhelm Reich Museum in Rangeley, Maine.
  
  
• The publishing of Reich's books by one of the world's most reputable publishers.
  
  
• And the preservation and maintenance of Reich's archives at the Countway Library of Medicine at Harvard University, America's first and oldest and most prestigious university.

Yes, Reich's legacy itself is immense. But its foothold in the world is fragile.

53 years after his death, the same distortions, inaccuracies, and slanders about Reich persist, and from voices and platforms louder, larger and far more powerful than any of ours.

53 years after Reich's death, the official public narrative of Wilhelm Reich as a charlatan, and of orgone energy as fantasy and fraud, overwhelms and supercedes every honest effort to disseminate the facts about Reich's life and legacy. And his principal scientific and medical tool--the orgone energy accumulator--continues to be widely misunderstood and ridiculed as either a salacious sexual device or as a worthless medical device that Reich was promoting as a cancer cure. Neither of which is true.

Equally destructive are the legions of so-called "admirers" of Reich proliferating on the Internet whose words reveal little more than their intellectual laziness and ignorance of basic facts, and many of whom are misusing and exploiting the words "orgone" and "Reich" to promote their ideas and their products.

I know that this is a truth that is difficult to hear and even harder to acknowledge, but this contraction of serious interest in Reich's legacy is a fact that is easily quantifiable by merely looking at the numbers.

For example: the existence and accessibility of Wilhelm Reich's archives at one of the world's finest medical libraries is either completely unknown or of no interest to the medical and scientific communities. These archives have generated no inquiries outside of the usual small community of those interested in Reich.

No one from any traditional medical or scientific organization, no biologists, no oncologists, no physicists, no one involved in cellular research or in clinical trials of any kind, no one from any research laboratory or hospital, no one from any medical school or university science curriculum has contacted the Trust or the Countway about these archives.

More surprising, however, no one involved in any kind of alternative medicine has shown any interest whatsoever in Wilhelm Reich's archives. And from this informal community around the world of those committed to Reich's work: surprisingly little interest in Reich's archives.

Today, two years and four months after Reich's archives became accessible to scholars and researchers, 15 people have visited the Countway Library to look at these materials. Only one of them was a medical doctor--Dr. Zotou--and five of them were members of Reich's family.

But this lack of interest in the archives is not the chief indicator of this contraction of authentic interest in Reich's legacy. The critical indicators of this contraction are the dwindling sales of Reich's books.

There are currently over 7,000 pages of Reich's books, research bulletins and journals that are publicly available to anyone. For the past few decades, there has never been any shortage of available primary materials about Reich. The real issues are: "How many people today are reading Reich's books? And who are these people? And what, if anything, can these people do in real, practical ways on behalf of Reich's legacy?"

I hope that all of us can agree that Reich's books are the most important and necessary first-step for anyone to truly understand his remarkable achievements in psychiatry, sociology, biology, medicine and physics. After all, primary materials in any subject anywhere are essential for comprehending any subject.

And today, we know factually--from book royalties that we receive from our publisher, and from sales in our Museum bookstore and our Online Bookstore--that the sales of Reich's books have diminished drastically over the years. Although these books have never been big moneymakers for Farrar Straus & Giroux, during the 1960s, 70s--and even into the 80s--sales of Reich's books were healthy. And royalties from these books provided essential and substantial income for the survival of the Trust.

At that time Reich's books could easily be found on the shelves of American bookstores, and, even more important, on the shelves of foreign bookstores. It's been customary since the 1960s for foreign publishers to take an interest in particular titles by Reich and then to contact our publisher or the Trust. The sales of Reich's books have always been stronger overseas than in America, so that Reich's writings have appeared in Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Serbo-Croatian, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish.

But something significant and alarming happened 11 years ago in 1999, the year that our last book was published, American Odyssey.

In my opinion American Odyssey is one of the most valuable primary resources about Reich: a compelling, contemporaneous account by Reich himself of some of the most important and dramatic events in his life and work from 1940 to 1947 at his homes and laboratories in New York and Rangeley Maine. For example:

• His development in 1940 of the first orgone energy accumulators which were originally small enclosures to isolate and observe orgone radiation from bion cultures, and which he later used for experiments with cancer mice.
  
  
• His discovery that same year of atmospheric orgone energy in Maine.
  
  
• His two meetings with Albert Einstein in 1941 in Princeton...
  
  
• ...and a few weeks later, the beginning of his experimental treatment of terminal cancer patients, using large orgone accumulators.
  
  
• In 1942, his purchase of an abandoned farm in Rangeley, Maine which he named Orgonon, and his development over the years of a laboratory and research center at Orgonon.
  
  
• In 1947, the infamous Mildred Brady magazine article which was brought to the attention of the Food & Drug Administration.
  
  
• And two-and-a half-months later, Reich's discovery of a motor force in orgone energy, using Geiger counters that had been exposed for weeks to high concentrations of orgone.
  
  
• And a couple of weeks after that, the arrival at Orgonon of an agent from the Food & Drug Administration, marking the beginning of their 10-year effort to discredit Reich.

Eight years of valuable biographical information from Reich's diaries and letters in a single 445-page book, eight years of some of Reich's most important medical and scientific research and discoveries. Yet not one foreign publisher expressed interest in translating and publishing American Odyssey in any foreign country.

In Austria, Germany, Denmark and Norway--the four countries where Reich had lived and worked for two-thirds of his life--no interest in American Odyssey from publishers in those countries. Or from any of the other nationalities that I mentioned.

And in America--where audiences for any of Reich's books have always been smaller--no substantial sales or interest in this book beyond the usual readership.

And so, it's in 1999 where we begin to really see the serious contraction in the sales of books written by Wilhelm Reich--a contraction that rapidly accelerates over the next decade, a contraction that is exacerbated but not originally caused by the explosion of Internet technologies.

The rapid evolution of the Internet in the past decade has changed forever people's research habits and reading habits. It has changed forever the nature and the quality of information that people can now absorb at any time.

The Internet itself is a vital communications tool and a robust engine of growth for any enterprise, including the Trust, with opportunities for thousands of honest and innovative applications for conducting business, providing content and disseminating new ideas.

However, we all need to recognize the far-reaching consequences when Internet content of any kind is factually incorrect or distorted or malicious.

And so the gravest threat to Reich's legacy today is this: today anyone can create any written or visual content about Wilhelm Reich and post it on the Internet where it can be seen and shared by anyone. And by "anyone," we mean thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of Internet users.

This creation, posting, availability and perpetuity of unreliable and factually incorrect content--by Reich's detractors and so-called "admirers"--trivializes Reich's legacy and renders it unrecognizable.

I urge all of you, at some point, to Google-search "orgone energy" or "Wilhelm Reich" on your computers, and then to spend a few hours viewing some of the hundreds of references that come up: written content, video content, photography. You will be shocked, saddened and sickened by what is out there.

Distortions about Reich on the Internet are like the stars: countless and in plain sight for anyone to see. And yet every day people read and view Internet content about Reich with no idea of what is factual and what is not.

Throughout the 1960s, 70s, 80s, and into the 90s, those who were genuinely curious about Reich bought Reich's books in bookstores. And readers who read one book by Reich and were sufficiently compelled, usually went on to buy and read other books written by Reich.

But today these 22 books written by Reich must compete with vast amounts of Internet content which is a mere click away.

Those who are intellectually rigorous in any subject will always be drawn to primary resources. But for most people, it is far easier and more instantly gratifying to simply navigate across the Internet to fulfill one's immediate need for any information on any topic, regardless of its quality.

As a result, this is the world we live in:

• A world in where Reich's books can no longer be found on the shelves of major bookstores.
  
  
• A world in which Reich's own books as an authoritative, necessary starting point for understanding his legacy have been eclipsed by an infinitude of unreliable and distorted Internet content.
  
  
• A world in which people can and will spend hours grazing for content about Reich by navigating from one website to another, sincerely thinking they're absorbing accurate facts even while never actually reading a single chapter, paragraph or sentence written by Wilhelm Reich himself.

We can also quantify this contraction of authentic interest in Reich's legacy by looking at the small number of new people and young people who regularly attend conferences, workshops, lectures, training sessions and other events about Reich. There is what I call "a graying of interest in Reich": an older generation quickly vanishing and the aging of the generation of "baby-boomers" to which I belong.

And unless we are replenished by a significant number of people from a younger generation with the intellectual integrity to read Reich's books as a necessary starting-point, then what hope is there for Reich's legacy? What hope is there for honest, practical applications of Reich's work in medicine and science beyond our lifetime?

And it's not simply about the number of younger people reading Reich's books. It's about the education and professional skills and personal integrity of younger people reading Reich's books. What are their specific disciplines and credentials? Are there any biologists among them? Any microscopists, medical students, physicians or physicists? Anyone involved in cellular research or cancer research? Any professional historians of medicine or science?

And who among these young people has taken the time to read and re-read such essential primary materials as:

• The Bion Experiments on the Origins of Life
  
  
• Bion Experiments on the Cancer Problem
  
  
• The Cancer Biopathy
  
  
• Orgonomic Diagnosis of Cancer Biopathy
  
  
• The Oranur Experiment
  
  
• Reich's journal entries about his scientific and medical work in Beyond Psychology and American Odyssey
  
  
• The medical case-studies in the Orgone Energy Bulletins by Reich and his colleagues
  
  
• And Reich's articles about weather engineering in the Cosmic Orgone Engineering bulletins.

In terms of any broad public consciousness of Reich throughout the world, for decades Reich's name has been kept alive in three principal ways:

• By the publication and worldwide distribution of his books.
  
  
• By the small number of psychiatrists trained in orgone therapy.
  
  
• And by various historians--most of them in Europe--who have focused on Reich's early social, political and psychiatric work.

The fact that since Reich's death hundreds and hundreds of patients have been helped through applications of psychiatric orgone therapy is something we can all celebrate and be grateful for. And that there is substantial interest in scholarship about Reich's pioneering social, political and psychiatric work in Austria and Germany only enriches our understanding of that part of his life and legacy.

But there is far more to Reich's legacy than his social, political and psychiatric work: there are two decades of Reich's orgone energy research from the 1930s to the 1950s involving his discovery and investigations of a specific biological and atmospheric energy that he called "orgone". And it is to this part of his legacy where more attention needs to be paid.

Two decades of Reich's orgone energy research--starting in 1936 with the bion experiments in his laboratory in Oslo--are either completely unknown or dismissed by the traditional academic, scientific and medical communities, despite decades of credible replications of this research since Reich's death. And despite honest efforts by a small number of people to bring these replications to the attention of scientists and physicians:

• Replications of bion experiments and of the crucial role of T-bacilli in the development of the cancer cell.
  
  
• Replications of the Reich Blood Tests as a diagnostic tool for the early detection of disease processes.
  
  
• Scientific experiments using orgone accumulators.
  
  
• Medical applications of the orgone energy accumulator and the Medical DOR-buster.
  
  
• And responsible applications of weather engineering.

Whenever I think of Reich's scientific and medical legacy--about where it is today and where we would all like it to be--I think of the 19th century English poem "Ulysses" written by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

In the poem Ulysses is now an old king--comfortable, idle and restless--reflecting on his adventures and travels long ago. And in comparing his younger life as a soldier and voyager to his current life as an old king, he says:

"How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!
As though to breathe were life..."

And today, sadly, most of Reich's medical and scientific legacy rusts unburnished and does not shine in use. And this becomes perfectly obvious when we read the following description of Reich's legacy in Reich's own words, and not in someone else's:

• "Changing basically the care of infants and children to prevent armoring and its concomitant diseases."
  
  
• "Utilizing the orgone energy accumulator as a tool of scientific and medical efficacy."
  
  
• "Utilizing the technology of the medical DOR-buster and the cloudbuster to shift and change energy potentials in the living organism and the atmosphere, creating a new kind of medicine and weather modification."
  
  
• "Developing a noiseless, smokeless motor."
  
  
• "Making deserts green and fruitful."

And except for the efforts of a handful of people, this is a legacy that rusts unburnished and does not shine in use.

And so we all have to continually ask ourselves, in the words of the American poet Langston Hughes:

"What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?"

And we have to continually ask each other, "Who will be with us? Who will be with us to ensure that Reich's legacy--his dream and our dream deferred--does not dry up like a raisin in the sun?"

In September 1949, in a letter to all of the physicians who worked and studied with him, Reich announced his intention to move permanently from his home in New York to Orgonon, his laboratory and research center in Rangeley, Maine. He wrote:

"My work during the past few years has shifted more and more toward biophysics and physics, away from individual psychiatry. Also, the training of physicians and educators had to shift more and more in the same direction.

"We realized, and could not fail to realize, that we had entered new, basic physical territory. Orgone physics is the new basis of our whole, including our psychiatric, existence. Man to us today is an energy system, and not merely mind. You all know this."

And later, in this same letter, Reich said:

"As I told many of you so often, making money alone is important, but it is not the real issue. I am very proud that my discovery can provide a good income, and I like it that so many could improve their economic situation so easily and swiftly by means of this work. However, not to look beyond this point would be disastrous."

I'll finish now--as we sometimes do at some of our events--with Reich's closing comments from a half century ago, at the Second Orgonomic International Convention at Orgonon in August, 1950:

"Now you will go home to your offices, as educators and physicians, and I hope you got one thing from here. And that is a bit of courage and conviction. We are not alone. We have a good thing in our hands. We can do a lot of good.

"What we need is a bit more fist, hardness, rational hardness in our approach to our problems. A bit less fear of what somebody says. The best thing you have got is your conviction that you are right. That's the best thing you have got. And as you go out, then try to maintain it...

"...The responsibilities are tremendous, quite tremendous. But it can be done! Every one of you can acquire the abilities to administer, not to govern, but to administer. To administer education, to administer medicine, to administer natural science, to administer honesty, decency, truth, and maintain it against whatever might happen there."

Thank you all for coming and thank you for listening.

Kevin Hinchey
The Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust