Sublime

Reich also noticed that these character structures were held in place by patterns of chronic muscular tension in the body, and he began to look for ways to loosen his patients’ muscular armoring.

He spoke calmly, only occasionally using his hands for emphasis. Always well prepared on contemporary issues, he never discussed his personal life in my presence. Nor did he inquire into my own, though – given the perennial effectiveness of the German bureaucracy – surely he knew my family history and understood the paths onto which fate had placed

Hanslip’s weakness was a somewhat ostentatious self-presentation. He affected an old-fashioned style, and had had his metabolism tweaked so that he stabilised at about ten per cent overweight: enough to give him a more solid look without requiring frequent adjustments to the heart.

the “death instinct,” which he saw as a “compulsion inherent in organic life to restore an earlier state of things.”

Allen said, “Fermi and Oppenheimer walked down this road countless times. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, most of the architects of the first generation of nuclear weapons spent the rest of their lives mired in depression.