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In my understanding Reich and your comprehending him, everything must rest -- as it did with Reich -- upon what emerges from the interaction between clear and tainted perceptions, upon what emerges from the struggle to see and experience the truth about Reich and about ourselves, free of denigration or idealization.
People often ask why there are so few "objective" studies of Reich and his work by a writer neither strongly for nor against him. They also assume more objectivity on the part of those who did not know him. Although it has merit, this approach contains major oversimplifications. It assumes the possibility of a calm objectivity toward a man whose work is profoundly subversive to much in our usual thinking and feeling about ourselves and the world. Reich and his work touch people with peculiar intensity, whether they knew him or not, whether they are favorably or unfavorably disposed toward the man and his assertions. We can try to overcome the neurotic distortions of even our deep and honest assessments. However, some elements working toward distortion will remain as they remained in Reich. We can only hope to achieve what he achieved: sufficient contact with the core of ourselves so that some of the time at least we can transform our conflicts and permit them to further rather than to impede the quest for truth.
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During the same period Reich was capable of the most profound, objective thought and experimentation and of the most extreme, paranoid ideas. How do these pieces fit together? In part, there is the aforementioned disposition toward pattern-making which, as Ernest Hartmann has suggested, is common to both creativity and paranoia. but one cannot explain everything. In Donald Hall’s words about the dual Ezra Pound -- the great poet and most generous mentor to other poets, and the dispenser of the crudest anti-Semitic, pro-Fascist propaganda: "I do not fit these pieces together; they are together in the mystery of a man’s character and life."
-- Myron Sharaf, Fury on Earth -- A Biography of Wilhelm Reich
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