Acknowledgements
This book is the result of research done over the course of a decade. Apologies in advance for failing to name individually the many people who provided myriad forms of support over the years. Please see my failure to name you in particular as due to my faulty memory and not a lack of appreciation.
I want to begin by extending my gratitude to the Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust for granting me access to the Wilhelm Reich Archives, once it was made available to scholars in November 2007. I benefitted from the wise counsel of the late Mary Higgins, who was the executor of the Reich Trust from 1959 until her death in January 2019. We didn’t always agree but remained cordial colleagues to the end; she is missed.
I am also indebted to all the Reich scholars who have shared their research at conferences, in publications, and through personal correspondence. In particular, I especially want to appreciate my colleagues Galina Hristeva, Jonathan Koblenzer, Bernd Laska, Harry Lewis, Andreas Peglau, Marc Rackelmann, Grier Sellers, and James Strick for their intellectual and emotional sustenance.
As someone who has merely a passing level of German, I required the assistance of several people who contributed important translations of Reich’s German-language publications. They include Robert Foulkes, Jennifer van der Grinten, Galina Hristeva, Jonathan Koblenzer, Tobias Kuhne, Fabian Menges, Håvard Friis Nilsen, Erik Pietschmann, Nancy Ries, Sanna Stegmaier, Anna Stolpe, and Claas Van Treeck. Also, Siri Blumenthal, Tore Naess, Jesper Overgaard, and Jack de Zwart translated portions of documents in Danish and Dutch.
As my scholarship developed, I had the opportunity to share my work-in-progress at presentations and conferences in the US, Berlin, Vienna, Oslo, Rome, Mexico City, and Helsinki, where I received useful feedback from attentive audiences.
In addition to these public events, I was fortunate to have several friends and colleagues read draft portions of the manuscript, providing helpful suggestions and corrections. They include Andrew Cohen, Robert Jacoby, the late William Kaplan, John Marciano, and James Strick.
Last, but certainly not least, I want to offer my heartfelt thanks to my spouse, Wendy Kohli, an accomplished scholar in her own right, whose love, intelligence, insight, and editorial skill supported and sustained me through the ebbs and flows inherent in a writing project of this sort.