 The sexual allegations apart , several people discussed how the vegetotherapy had hurt them physically as children , as therapists pressed hard on the body to loosen muscular armour . Reich 's son , Peter , wrote in his autobiography , Book of Dreams ( 1973 ) about the pain this had caused him . Susanna Steig , the daughter of William Steig , the New Yorker cartoonist , wrote about being pressed so hard during Reichian therapy that she had difficulty breathing , and said that a woman therapist had sexually assaulted her . According to Turner , a nurse complained in 1952 to the New York Medical Society that an OIRC therapist had taught her five @-@ year @-@ old son how to masturbate . The therapist was arrested , but the case was dropped when Reich agreed to close the OIRC . 
