Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR HIERARCHY "What charism does Reinhold Niebulir (NL, December 12) possess that enables him to know how Cardinal Spellman marked his secret ballot? Worse, what flimsiest bit of...
...2. If Reich was so patently psychotic, why was he incarcerated in Federal prison and not confined instead to a mental institution...
...In the course of his discussion, he suddenly introduces the sentences: "Reich apparently went progressively insane" and, further on, "To the layman, reading the book his delusions seem classical in character...
...3. In impugning the validity of Reich's ideas, the reviewer is not content to blame solely the publishers who do not provide any explanatory material for "the extensively described experiments" but he makes it definite that the irrationality of ideas is rooted in an unbalanced mind...
...To those of us who are not equipped to cope with many of Reich's theories, Davis, as a well-intentioned "middle-man," fails us precisely where we need him most...
...Irresponsible statements of this type make Peter Viereck's aphorism about liberals still ad rem...
...Point Lookout, N. Y. Joseph T. McIntyre DAVIS ON REICH I have read with great interest Robert Gorham Davis' perceptive review of "Wilhelm Reich's Selected Works (NL, December 12...
...There is one point in his discussion, however, which startled me not because I had never heard statements about Reich's "mad pseudoscience" made by others before, but because it is argued so inadequately by a responsible writer like Davis...
...George Kimmelman...
...A few years ago Niebuhr was piously denouncing this type of innuendo as McCarthy ism...
...The politician has so long overshadowed the theologian that he cannot conceive of clergyman acting from moral rather than political motives...
...Worse, what flimsiest bit of evidence does he offer for his vicious charge that the Puerto Rican incident was deliberately engineered in Machiavellian fashion by a member of the American hierarchy...
...1. The first categorical remark does not make clear whether it is based either upon incontrovertible evidence regarding Reich's personal life or upon compelling inferences from his works...
...Only sympathetic appreciation in the rest of the review saves him from employing an ad hominem approach as well...
...The second statement appeals to the unauthoritative judgment of "laymen" in the fields of logic and psychiatric diagnoses, as well as in the highly specialized subjects which Reich deals with...
...Philadelphia, Pa...
...Davis can thus be taxed with having committed the genetic fallacy...
Vol. 44 • January 1961 • No. 3
