Wilhelm Reich: Pervert or Martyred Genius?

In The Mass Psychology of Fascism, (1933) Reich recognized the traditional patriarchal family as a microcosm of the authoritarian and theorized that sexual suppression within this structure is the root of fascism. Occurring first in the nuclear family (“the authoritarian miniature state”), sexual repression ensures “later subordination to the general authoritarian system,” he wrote.10

In this view, it is an anti-fascist imperative to work towards destroying the traditional, nuclear family at all costs, as well as any and all sexual restraints, even (or even especially) in children. Marx had also called for the “abolition of the family” in The Communist Manifesto, and Reich took this declaration very seriously.11 Reich spoke of the family “as a disease.12

With his perverted mind, Reich found sexual symbolism everywhere in his analysis of fascism. Freud’s theory of the “Oedipal Complex” posits that all children want to have sex with their parents, and Reich wholeheartedly believed this (remember, he himself literally had an incestuous fixation with his mother).

According to Reich, the suppression of the so-called “mother fixation” found its ultimate outlet in the state, exemplified in things such as Goebbels’ “10

Nationalist feeling,” Reich wrote, “is based on the unconscious, deeply anchored mother fixation.”13

Race theory, he further claimed, for reasons which fail to even resemble coherency, comes from a “mortal terror of natural sexuality and its orgasm function.”14

He even went so far as to claim that the swastika represents “intertwined human bodies” having sex. The more sexually unsatisfied an individual is, he argued, the more powerfully they are subconsciously drawn to the symbol, conveniently drawing a direct correlation between one’s sexual repression and inadequacy and their level of dedication to National Socialism.15

After effectively being kicked out of Denmark, and then Sweden, by those governments refusing to extend his visas due to the blatantly subversive nature of his political and theoretical work, Reich settled in Norway in 1934.

In 1936 he published The Sexual Revolution, which in part excoriated the Soviet Union for pulling back on the radical sexual policies they had implemented after the Bolshevik Revolution, and in part laid out Reich’s own ideas for sexual and social reform.

By this time he had been officially kicked out of both the Communist Party, and the International Psychoanalytic Association, and was under vicious assault by the Norwegian press and scientific community, who publicly denounced him as a “quack,” “destructive for the spirit and morals of society,” and the “slimiest kind of pornographer.”16

Reich complained of the almost daily dispute in the newspapers as to whether I was a charlatan or a genius, a Jew, a psychopath or a sexual monomaniac. They asked the police authorities to throw me out of the country; they tried to bring a charge against me concerning the seduction of minors  because I had affirmed infantile masturbation.

Reich’s insistence on the ridiculous notion of child sexuality was as present as ever in The Sexual Revolution.

“[I]n principle,” he wrote, “unless we are charlatans or cowards, we must affirm the sexuality of adolescents, help them wherever we can, and do everything to prepare the final liberation of adolescent sexuality. This is a gigantic and responsible task.”17

Children and adults should be naked in front of each other as much as possible, Reich argued. His reasoning was that first, covering up makes the child develop “guilt feelings,” and second, nakedness being “taboo” leads to “lascivious curiosity.”18

In regard to having children watch their parents have sex, Reich could find “no argument against it,” except that it might disturb the adults’ pleasure.

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Related  -  Spartacus –Detailed Biography of Reich

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