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Myron R. Sharaf was an American psychologist, educator, and writer. Although Sharaf wrote many academic books and papers, his most enduring work is “Fury On Earth: A Biography of Wilhem Reich.” Sharaf was born in Miami, Florida, in 1927 but lived and worked primarily in Massachusetts. He attended universities there between 1945 and 1960 and earned degrees in educational psychology from Harvard and Tufts universities. He taught psychology and contributed to some pioneering studies in social psychology that focused on such issues as aging and organizational change. He died in May of 1997 while visiting a colleague in Berlin, Germany, having just attended a conference on Wilhelm Reich in Vienna, Austria.
By Sharaf’s own account, his mother was an extremely eccentric and controlling woman while his father was extremely conventional and unassuming. (There was also a sister, Shelley, who became a noted dancer and dance teacher.) Mrs. Sharaf had a vision of a scientist who draws a vital fluid from people who are having sex and injects this fluid into other people in order to cure their illnesses. She made her family aware of this vision and of her expectation that this scientist would appear in the real world. When Myron was an adolescent, she came into his room one day and handed him a book. “This is the one,” she said, and then left. Sharaf recalled many decades later the apprehension he felt as he looked at the book. It was “The Function of the Orgasm” by Wilhelm Reich.
Sharaf read the book, but doubted that his mother actually did. “She had a way of sniffing a book and knowing what was in it,” he said. Wilhelm Reich had arrived in the United States on the eve of World War II, first living in the New York City area before moving to Maine, so Mrs. Sharaf took her son to meet him. Reich was wary of Mrs. Sharaf but eventually took Myron under his wing, making the young man his student, laboratory assistant, patient, and—eventually—his Boswell.
In the introduction to his biography of Reich, “Fury On Earth,” Sharaf explores his personal relationship with Reich, revealing many painful memories. He felt a complex mix of loyalty and anger toward his subject but took the view that if he stated the full range of his biases at the outset, he could then present a more balanced view of his subject. The biography was several decades in preparation, and the resulting manuscript had to be reduced by about half in order to publish a volume that was nevertheless in the range of 500 pages. In preparation for writing the biography, Sharaf read as many well regarded biographies as he could in order to study how other biographers did it. Also Sharaf’s background of professional research into the psychology of stages of life contributed to the quality of the biography as he applied the insights he had gained from this research to the stages of his subject’s life.
Sharaf loved to collect pithy quotations. The title “Fury On Earth” was taken from a line in James Agee’s “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.” But Sharaf wished that the quote had been “fire on earth” because that was nearer to the way that he saw Reich. I later sent him Saying 10 from the Gospel of Thomas: “Jesus said, ‘I have cast a fire upon the world’.” He sent back an appreciative note of thanks even though his book had long since been published. I imagined him sharing the quote with others anyway, because that was something he loved to do.
By Sharaf’s own account, his mother was an extremely eccentric and controlling woman while his father was extremely conventional and unassuming. (There was also a sister, Shelley, who became a noted dancer and dance teacher.) Mrs. Sharaf had a vision of a scientist who draws a vital fluid from people who are having sex and injects this fluid into other people in order to cure their illnesses. She made her family aware of this vision and of her expectation that this scientist would appear in the real world. When Myron was an adolescent, she came into his room one day and handed him a book. “This is the one,” she said, and then left. Sharaf recalled many decades later the apprehension he felt as he looked at the book. It was “The Function of the Orgasm” by Wilhelm Reich.
Sharaf read the book, but doubted that his mother actually did. “She had a way of sniffing a book and knowing what was in it,” he said. Wilhelm Reich had arrived in the United States on the eve of World War II, first living in the New York City area before moving to Maine, so Mrs. Sharaf took her son to meet him. Reich was wary of Mrs. Sharaf but eventually took Myron under his wing, making the young man his student, laboratory assistant, patient, and—eventually—his Boswell.
In the introduction to his biography of Reich, “Fury On Earth,” Sharaf explores his personal relationship with Reich, revealing many painful memories. He felt a complex mix of loyalty and anger toward his subject but took the view that if he stated the full range of his biases at the outset, he could then present a more balanced view of his subject. The biography was several decades in preparation, and the resulting manuscript had to be reduced by about half in order to publish a volume that was nevertheless in the range of 500 pages. In preparation for writing the biography, Sharaf read as many well regarded biographies as he could in order to study how other biographers did it. Also Sharaf’s background of professional research into the psychology of stages of life contributed to the quality of the biography as he applied the insights he had gained from this research to the stages of his subject’s life.
Sharaf loved to collect pithy quotations. The title “Fury On Earth” was taken from a line in James Agee’s “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.” But Sharaf wished that the quote had been “fire on earth” because that was nearer to the way that he saw Reich. I later sent him Saying 10 from the Gospel of Thomas: “Jesus said, ‘I have cast a fire upon the world’.” He sent back an appreciative note of thanks even though his book had long since been published. I imagined him sharing the quote with others anyway, because that was something he loved to do.
