Reich's Search for Freedom

...To be sure, the overvaluation of patriarchy, compulsive monogamy and dutiful sex is destructive, but so is the unconscious denial of the biological father's relation to his child A society that acnes the authority and responsibility of paternity to a maternal uncle (who because of a fervently held sibling incest taboo rarely visits his sister) does not resolve familial problems, it evades them...

...I raise these questions because "revolutionary" rhetoric is today in high fashion and this book, if read outside the context of Reich's subsequent political writings specially The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933), The Sexual Revolution (1936), People in Trouble (1936-37, published 1953) and The Murder of Chest (1951, published 1953) encourages the notion that he endorsed violent revolution Except for a footnote in 1934 and a few remarks added in 1951 signifying Reich's recognition of reactionary trends in the Soviet Upon, The Invasion of Compulsory Sex-Morality is enthusiastic about the Russian Revolution...

...These customs functioned because they had the unanimous and ungrudging consent of the whole society The Trobrianders, like many primitive peoples, had no idea comparable to what we call economics As classically described in M Mass' "Seem saw le Don" (1923-24), they regulated their "economic relations" by a tacit system of reciprocity native was expected to match any gift received with one of equal value, but there was no trading and no resentment of "economic" obligations Indeed, sting tribal sentiment against greed or change of rank inhibited excessive accumulation of personal wealth...

...by adults themselves frightened of pleasure The original and natural movement of the individual was toward pleasure, Reich perceived, but this had been distorted by the prohibitions forced upon it Thus he differentiated genitality from perversion, regarding the latter as a secondary manifestation indulged in out of terror of full genital gratification The crucial period was adolescence If youths could live in societies which spontaneously affirmed pleasure, much neurosis including Oedipus fixation old be limited, since irrational thoughts and actions, the Freudian unconscious, were in large part created by society It was at the time of these discoveries that Reich started reading Malinowski, particularly Crime and Custom in Savage Society (1926), Sex and Repression in Savage Society (1927) and The Sexual Life of Savages (1929) Carried out in complete independence of Reich's wok, these monographs gave decisive support to his view of the relation between neurosis and social attitudes regarding pleasure...

...Lewis Morgan, Johann J Bach fen, Frederic Engels and, primarily, Bronislaw Malinowski...

...To an extent, Reich's explanation of Trobriand tensions in economic terms reflects the Communist readiness to ignore law and custom (In the USSR similar contempt fostered the illusion of confidence, making possible the seizure of power and emergence of a rigid insecure state that must constantly prove the "truth" of its ideology by threatening the sovereignty of other counties ) But on a deeper level, I suspect Reich simply could not accept that a society encouraging free sexuality among its young was unable to create marriages entirely free of rigidity, embarrassment and contrived feeling...

...All of The Murder of Christ is heavy with sorrow, the sorrow of one who has met severe disappointment The problems of freeing men were far deeper than Reich had previously imagined The closer he came to freedom the more the almost primordial servility around him and even in him became obvious, nearly tangible At his freest, in the midst of his most important discoveries, he could say that above all one must nod oneself of any desire to impress He hated pity He grew to despise politicians whose power derived from teams people's aspirations to freedom, with withering contempt, he called them "freedom peddlers ". Such attitudes marked Reich's isolation from the world (but not from nature) To A S Neill, who knew how not to indulge his great-nests and whom he loved, he once made the heartbreaking remark that on these shores he had no friends, only patients Among the most disastrous consequences of this isolation was his refusal to contest a civil action brought against him m 1954 by the U S government for violation of the Federal Food and Drug Act When Reich violated the ensuing injunction, he was cited for criminal contempt Though he finally attempted to defend himself, he could not go into the real issues, for at that point the court was empowered to decide only whether he had actually defied the injunction...

...The central political wisdom of Reich's later years, probably best expressed in The Murder of Chest and Listen, Little Manly (1948), centered around his realization of the abyss between the aspirations and capabilities of the average man In one passage which I feel bears the full misery of that realization he observed??or prophesied??that if people were permitted the "freedom" they yearned for, murder and chaos would reign everywhere and the atrocities in human suffering would be unspeakable...

...Perhaps Trobriand marital strain developed because in some dim way the couples realized that they did not fully comprehend their reasons for marriage Further, Trobriand society appeared to lack the positive aspects of patriarchy??and for all its now too obvious distortions, it is dangerous to deny its positive core ??what Reich and Malinowski often splendidly embodied (a readiness to face reality, a recognition of the necessity for self-defense, love of know-ledge, courage, sties on the independence and greatness of man) Strong village disapproval of individual behavior would frequently lead to suicide...

...Reich, however, sensed irrationality in some features of Trobriand life as well, features Malinowski had descanted but not judged He noted the stiffening in manners that followed Trobrianders' marriages They were reluctant, for instance, to show affection in public, and men took insult if someone complimented their wives There was also evidence of anxiety and a lack of interest m lovemaking All this Reich interpreted in economic terms The marriages were in part an economic arrangement, and the consequent element of exploitation dulled them...

...It is very strange that the man who in this century first recognized the inability of many men to defend themselves when their lives were threatened, and who worked for many years to strengthen them, did not fight back when attacked About 20 years earlier he had explained part of this dilemma...

...From 1927 to 1932 Reich was, as he put it, "formally" a member of Socialist and Communist cultural and medical organizations, first m Vienna, then in Berlin At that time, in the public clinics run under Party auspices and in his private practice, he began to discover a widespread incapacity on the part of his adult patients to experience deep and meaningful pleasure when they made love Many of his male patients, though capable of erection, suffered what he understood to be disturbances of potency, such as premature ejaculation or hostile thoughts toward their partners Very few felt tenderness or love during intercourse, and the degree of gratification varied considerably Reich recognized the sharp distinction between frequency of sexual activity and quality of pleasure or amount of affect discharge...

...The problem today is how to have mothers and fathers, men and women, adults and children to children who believe that they are adults, adults who know they are children, women who think they wish to be men, etc We must be able to distinguish the pursuit of pleasure from degradation, softness from servility, strength from arrogance, boldness from brutality, love from hate, health from disease, and finally—for if the other distinctions are not drawn, it will come to that if from death Pleasure and authority must be able to look each other in the face It is a question not of one or the other, of "matriarchy" or "anarchy," but of both otherwise each will be distorted because separated In these "liberated" times, I fear this book will be misread as advocating hedonism and social upheaval...

...From Reich's death m prison m 1957 until nearly 1967, when Ellsworth Baker brought out Man in the Trap restatement of Reich's contribution to therapy with important new work by Baker public silence surrounded Reich's books (which Roger W Straus Jar had courageously started to reissue in 1960) Since then it has been the subject to increasing discussion, some of it on a professional level m The Journal of Oigonomy founded by Baker and several other physicians in 1967, some of it m the media Circulation of Reich's writings has increased markedly both heir and in Western Europe, especially m West Germany, Italy, Scandinavia, and Fianc...

...The tone of The Invasion of Compulsory Sex-Morality is Combust and revolutionary, blatantly so in its two German editions (the first in 1931, and the second issued in Copenhagen four years later with slight revisions) In this English-language text, many student Leftist pronouncements have been modified oil omitted altogether (Without making a page-by-page comparison, I have run across 11 such alterations or deletions ) Yet Reich's essential tenor remains, if laundered less distinct...

...In attempting to enlarge his patients' capacity for satisfaction, Reich found that although fear of pleasure was so ingrained in their characters as to appear organic, at some point early in their lives they had been frightened it repeated threats of castration, for example...

...Reich's Search for Freedom The Invasion of Compulsory Sex-Morality By Wilhelm Reich Fai ray, Straus & Gnu ox 215 pp $10 00 Reviewed by L. Ferrari Radios Assistant Professor of Classics, New York University It is not entirely clear why, 40 years after its initial German-language publication, this book should now be issued in English translation Of all Wilhelm Reich's works, it is the only one based not on direct clinical experience and research but on the observations of others...

...Malinowski described the existence of tension between a father's affection for his sons??since Trobriand matrilineal beliefs did not recognize the father's role in procreation, he had no biological or legal relation to them??and his duty to his legal heirs, the sons of his sisters Reich interpreted this as a struggle between a hereditary matriarchal principle and a nosing patriarchal principle that would permit the accumulation of wealth by smile families Yet in one of Malinowski's important incidents, a chief was compelled by unanimous village sentiment to relinquish claims for his son as heir m favor of his nephew...

...In Bern, my work at once became connected with the great social freedom movement When one has the heavy burden of an answer to a decisive social question on one's mind, the possibility of quickly finding one's right place means a great deal, it means, above all, protection of a psychic apparatus which because of particular experiences, has grasped, formulated and answered the problem The deeper the problem lies and the more comprehensive it is, the more intimately it is interwoven with the history of him who represents it And so, all the greater is his responsibility not to permit his structure to commit too great irrational blunders The most important barometer of the reality content of an idea is the reaction of the surrounding world, be it positive or negative If the right idea does not find suitable form of expression, it is a sign of or leads to insanity I mean here insane m the correct sense The awareness of a basic problem of living life, without the capacity to withdraw from it, solve it factually or at least to anchor it rationally " (Reich's italics...

...Reich also interpreted the customary polygamy of the chiefs as a means of accumulating a personal torture Actually multiple marriages wee a source to substantial wealth, for in the Trobriand Islands families received as much as one half of the food from the maternal uncle, the legal father of his sister's children But the arrangement served as something analogous to a "tax," contributed not by the immediate family of each chiefs wife but by all the males of her sub clan, which she "represented" m the chief's family...

...In genial, the difficulty with the reception of Reich's wok is that people tend either to accept or reject it totally Even if it were all true, such attitudes impede advances on Reich's thought??or even the understanding, as opposed to mere repetition, of what he meant...

...In fact, the Trobrianders' anxieties are m my opinion largely attributable to their ignorance of paternity This is due to repression, I feel, though not??as Ernest Jones argued when Malinowski first presented his observations in 1925??to repression of the Oedipus complex Common sense suggests that a failure by people who live close to nature to connect mite course and procreation must be unconsciously willed Several Trobriand customs, like the taboo on intercourse for as much as a year after birth, point to some distorted sense of that connection The islanders' combination of a positive attitude toward pleasure and un-awareness of biological paternity had a profound impact on Reich's thought in the late '20s and early '30s, when he was attempting to understand how Europe's excessively patriarchal culture, by defining marriage and intercourse solely m terms of procreation (and, therefore forbidding contraception), had obscured the natural place of pleasure m making love...

...In the Trobriand Islands, Reich learned from Malinowski, adults encouraged the sexual activities of children and adolescents Each village had separate houses where adolescent couples could be alone at will, marriage, while clearly distinguished from previous, less stable relationships, grew gradually from them, and was announced and celebrated simply by the lovers taking a meal in public, divorce involved no social stigma and came about when the wife left the house of the husband Accompany this affirmation of pleasure was a seeming absence of neurosis Couples lived together m peace, fathers looked upon their children with obvious love, children were able to stand up to adults and blaze angrily at them without reprint-sale, sons grew gradually independent of their mothers, for whom they appeared to harbor no suppressed or depressed ancestral desires, Mali-now ski??s mention of homosexuality and adult sexual overtures to children struck the natives as absurd and occasioned spontaneous scorn In contrast Malinowski pointed to the natives m the Pamphlet Islands, who, though matrilineal like the Trobrianders, had strict prohibitions against premarital sex among adolescents They betrayed the unmistakable scars of neurosis arrogance and submissiveness, inability to distinguish the important from the trivial, evasiveness, suspicion, exaggerated fear...

...A bibliography brought out under Reich's auspices m 1953, 14 years after his flight from the Nazis had led him to the Muted States, indicates the existence of an unpublished English translation In any further rewritings of the current edition, the editor should identify himself and state whether the textual changes were authorized by Reich And if Reich left any instructions regarding the eventual publication of this book m English, they too should be included...