The Social and Political Context

Wilhelm Reich was born in 1897 in Galicia. With the rise of National Socialism and on account of the direction his later theories took, he gradually faded into obscurity before being discovered once more in the course of the 1968 movement.

Reich came in contact with psychoanalysis during his medical studies in Vienna in the early 1920s and not only became a member of the Viennese Analytic Society within a year but also took over some of Sigmund Freud's patients as a therapist. Moreover, he was working on transforming psychoanalysis into a technique that could be taught.

Citing the origins of psychoanalysis, Reich concentrated less on the analysis of sexual desire and more on combating sexual problems: these were derived from the repression of the ability to achieve genital gratification which was in turn determined by the sexual morals of society. The libido block that arose in this way and which led to orgastic impotence was treated by Reich in a directly somatic manner by trying to relieve muscle tension.

Freudo-Marxism and sexual revolution

For the 1968s movement, however, it was not so much this therapeutic approach that was central but rather the attempt to link psychoanalysis to Marxism – a symbiosis that led to Reich's expulsion not only from the Analytic Society but also from the Communist Party.

His criticism of society and culture suited the attempt of the 1968 movement to fall back on theories that had been discussed before the Nazi period. Moreover, with the help of Reich's theory, it was possible to sharpen one's perception of the social institutions that restricted sexuality and channelled sexual behaviour. It was precisely such repressive social practices that were criticised and fought by the 1968 activists.

For example, as early as 1930, Reich proclaimed in his book The Sexual Revolution (Die Sexuelle Revolution. Zur charakterlichen Selbststeuerung des Menschen), which was circulated and discussed on a massive scale as a pirate edition at the end of the 1960s, that a social revolution must be preceded by a sexual revolution. The connection between sexual repression and obedience to authority, which Adorno cites in The Authoritarian Personality (Studien zum autoritären Charakter), can also be found in the 1930s in Reich when he states in his treatise Mass Psychology of Fascism (Massenpsycholgogie des Faschismus): "The moralistic restraint of the natural sexuality of the child […] makes [him/her] anxious, shy, fearful of authority, obedient, in the authoritarian sense of 'good' and 'trainable'; it has a paralysing effect" and proclaims that a sexually gratified person cannot be sadistic. Hence upbringing is decisive – and this was exactly what was to be changed in the 68 movement.

Anti-authoritarian upbringing

To change the relationship between the generations and the structure of society, new forms of both upbringing and of living were experimented with. Wilhelm Reich's goal of liberalizing sexuality was taken over by the 68 movement because, according to him, free sexuality was the precondition for psychic health and orgastic potency. In the first instance, this change was to be initiated within the family because it is the first institution that influences the child, instilling a conservative view of the world. Such an idea was particularly popular with the anti-authoritarian children's nurseries movement (Kinderläden) and supplied the argumentation for bringing children up collectively as well as for recognising the significance of infant sexuality, which was also mentioned by Reich's friend Alexander Neill in his contemporary bestseller on upbringing at Summerhill.

In addition, connections could be made to the Sex-pol movement that Reich founded in Berlin in 1930 but which had already begun in Austria in the 1920s. The aim of this movement was the sexual education of the working class which was then to have a political effect: the attempt was undertaken to make young members of the proletariat aware of their repressed sexual needs in order to politicise them and to win them over to the fight for a Socialist society.

Orgone energy ("orgonomics")

Once Hitler had taken over power, Reich was forced to emigrate to the USA. Here he dedicated himself to studying so-called orgone energy through which he earned himself the reproach of irrationality. He believed he could isolate life energy in the form of small bubbles and use them in "orgone accumulators" for therapeutic purposes. When Reich resisted a judicial injunction against the circulation of this apparatus, he was put in prison and died there in 1957.

Further reading:

Reich, Wilhelm: Die Sexuelle Revolution. Zur charakterlichen Selbststeuerung des Menschen, Frankfurt am Main 1979, ISBN 3-436-01422-2.

Reich, Wilhelm: Die Massenpsychologie des Faschismus, Frankfurt am Main 1981, ISBN 3-436-01899-6.

Rycroft, Charles: Wilhelm Reich, München 1972, ISBN 3-423-00847-4.

Neill, Alexander S.: Theorie und Praxis der antiautoritären Erziehung. Das Beispiel Summerhill, Reinbeck bei Hamburg 1969, ISBN 3-499-16707-7.

Herzog, Dagmar: Die Politisierung der Lust. Sexualität in der deutschen Geschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts, München 2005, ISBN 3-88680-831-9.

Johler (Hg.), Birgit: Wilhelm Reich Revisited, Wien 2008, S. 125-131, ISBN 978-3-85132-501-0.