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THE TRIAL
I've never known another man in my lifetime of such force and such will and movement and spirit. Reich always thought of himself as a historical figure. It's interesting that, for example, in his trial, his trial was almost like a farce because some judge had handed down an injunction which Reich clearly disobeyed. So the trial was, "Did Reich disobey the injunction or did he not?" Many times over in the course of the trial, Reich admitted he disobeyed the injunction. Then he went on to tell the judge why he disobeyed the injunction. For example, the injunction said that Reich claimed that he cured cancer and it cited his book Cancer Biopathy. Now in every case that was cited in the book Cancer Biopathy the patient dies. Obviously the people who had prepared this case against Reich had done a very poor job because to say that Reich claims a cure and the patient dies in the book is idiotic. That is the case and Reich, instead of answering the injunction, sent the judge all of his books, which was nuts. You don't expect a judge to read all of your books, but that was Reich. Reich was saying read this and see if this is a valid injunction. So it came to the trial and the trial is terrible, because Reich admitted that he disobeyed the injunction, which was all they cared about. One day, at the trial, things had gone on very badly for Reich. I was standing in an aisle and I was thinking, he must be crushed at the way the trial went this morning. It was a time of very great stress, every day of the trial was a great stress. He walked over to me, and I had written an article about a review of one of Reich's books someone had reviewed; a psychiatrist had reviewed one of Reich's books very unfavorably. I wrote a review about that review. He came over to me at the end of this terrible session at court and he said, "You know that article you wrote, he hits us over the head with a club and you slap him on the wrist." I thought, "Oh, my God, on a day like this, when you are about to go to jail, it's clear all you think about is that the article that I wrote was too gentle with the reviewer." That was Reich, like the fact that he was a historical figure who was fighting for the right of a scientist to pursue his work in peace. The fact that the injunction was the issue, to him it was nothing but a piece of paper, an unimportant piece of paper, and he did not want to deal with it. During the trial I was one of those who was in disagreement of the way he was conducting the trial. I thought he should have had a lawyer conducting his case instead of him conducting his own case. I think he should have used the legal arguments instead of the arguments that he used. Which is not the same as saying that he was wrong. Because he viewed himself as a historical
figure, he was making a historical point, and to make that point he had
conducted the trial that way. If I had been in his shoes, I would have
wanted to escape jail, I would have wanted to be free,
etc. I would have conducted the trial on a strictly legal basis because
the lawyers had said, "We can win this case for you. Their case is so weak,
so when you let us do our thing we can get you off." But he wouldn't do
it. It was not what he was after. Since that time, I have been told by
people that teach law that that case was occasionally brought up in their
classrooms, as a case in which the FDA's side was so weak and the case
was judged so purely from the legal standpoint that
it's almost like a classical badly handled case. I never
saw him after he went to jail. There were very few visitors, and
the only people who visited him were those of his immediate
family. So I had no contact with him after he went to jail.
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