The Wilhelm Reich Center 

The Relevance of Wilhelm Reich’s “The Mass Psychology of Fascism”to the Struggle Against Fascism, a Project Shared by Herbert Marcuse 

By DAVID BRAHINSKY, PH.D. 

I

I was deeply moved and influenced when in the early 1960’s I first encountered Herbert Marcuse’s ideas in “Eros and Civilization” (as well as Norman O. Brown’s in “Life Against Death”), even though I could understand only a small amount of what I read at the time.  And as I read through Marcuse’s books these days (and the literature that has grown up around them) I find that I continue to be moved and impressed by his work.  Most moving to me recently was a re-reading of his political preface to the 1966 edition of “Eros and Civilization” where he cries out (or so it seems to me) for a revolution in the name of the life instincts, of deep pleasure and joy, as a healthy response to the deadly prevalence of the consumer, technological society that must war and destroy to exist.  He expresses a hope that people, especially the young, will continue to struggle for this kind of social revolution because, as he says, “it is a biological necessity.”  I argue, in this paper, that if we today who share this hope develop a deeper understanding than Marcuse himself expressed of the work of Wilhelm Reich, the possible avenues to stimulate and promote such a change will be, to put it mildly, greatly enhanced.

Both Marcuse and Reich were vitally involved in trying to understand the roots and functioning of fascism so as to be better able to help in its demise and bring about a more open, democratic society.  (In this paper I am using the term “fascism” in a most general sense, which includes any totalitarian or authoritarian impulses, ideas and regimes.)  But neither Marcuse himself nor Marcuse scholars, as far as I can tell, have shown that they understand or appreciate the full measure of Reich’s contribution to the project.  I think that it is time that this failure is remedied, and I conceive of this paper as a small step in that direction. 

Reich says that he thought out and then wrote the first edition of “The Mass Psychology of Fascism” in the years 1930-33.  The third edition was completed in 1944.  Reich tells us that his own personal displacement within Europe in the 1930’s and early 1940’s, like a lot of other folks (including those associated with the Frankfurt School), left him without copies of his own book for a number of years.  He managed to get hold of it after he had been asked to have it translated into English.   

Reich decided to revise the book because it was in those intervening years that he had come to what he believed was the discovery of fundamental laws, not only of the roots of fascism, but of human social life in general, of biological life in general, and of the cosmos itself.  These were the years that Reich believed he had discovered the fundamental stuff or energy out of which all of nature is made, which he came to call “orgone energy.”  Beginning in 1942, he felt that he had to update his book to include these discoveries. And though many social and political philosophers including Marcuse disregarded this aspect of his work, Reich insisted that the roots of fascism could only be fully understood through an analysis that incorporates his biological and cosmological theories.  In fact, I argue, the social and political side of his theories is grounded in the biological and cosmological ones. 

To go into the requisite depth of detail regarding the evolution of Reich’s theories, no less provide all of the evidence he based them on, would require volumes.  What I can do here today is to outline and summarize them so to offer direction for further study. I will also attempt to indicate why I think that, for those of us who share Marcuse’s and Reich’s goals and hopes, it would be worth the effort to engage is such study.  I am drawing mainly from a number of Reich’s published books including the Mass Psychology of Fascism, Character Analysis, The Function of the Orgasm, The Bion Experiments, The Bioelectrical Investigation of Sexuality and Anxiety, The Cancer Biopathy, The Invasion of Compulsory Sex-Morality, The Sexual Revolution, Ether, God and Devil, Cosmic Superimposition, Selected Writings and Sex-Pol, Essays 1929-1943. 

II

Fascism, for Reich, is an expression on a mass social and political scale of the individual human character structure and how it developed over the past many thousands of years due to environmental and social conditions.  To defeat fascism, on his understanding, requires changing this structure.  Reich said that he believed it could be done, although he also said that if it doesn’t happen, the fall of our civilization is inevitable. A positive transformation, he thought, would require, among other things, a significant alteration in the way we bring up our children, thus in the way we understand what is good and healthy in human life.

Reich tells us that our character structures consist of three layers – he called them “biopsychic” layers -- which function as deposits of social development.  At the center is what we are born with: the “biological core.”  This core consists of the fundamental impulses and emotions of the living animal, akin, in many ways, to Freud’s concept of the Id (also similar to such notions as the Vedic idea that “desire” is at the root of being).  Via his work as a psychiatrist and his later laboratory work (as reported in such texts as The Bion Experiments and The Bioelectric Investigations), he came to believe that this biological core, under favorable conditions, expresses itself as essentially honest, industrious, cooperative, loving, or, under certain conditions, rationally hating.  

Reich came to discriminate five fundamental emotions that emanate from this core layer of the character structure in basically the following order: 1. pleasure (or reaching out to the world for love, for pleasurable contact); 2. longing for that contact; 3. anxiety when the contact is not there; 4. anger or rage when it is not reciprocated; and 5. sadness when it is clearly not available over time. 

Besides the core, there is a layer of the character structure that functions as the persona or mask.  This is the part of us that faces the world, the part that, in the average person is often polite, reserved, responsible, conscientious or even compassionate. On Reich’s analysis, this is the surface (or “third”) layer.  Between the core and the surface is what he called the “secondary layer,” akin to the so-called Freudian unconscious.  This layer contains what Reich called the “secondary drives,” the often destructive emotions of sadism, lasciviousness, rapaciousness, envy, and so on.

Reich’s understanding of how the character structure functions, in a general sense, is that the core’s impulses and emotions, which represent the basic or essential desires of the organism, pass through the secondary layer before reaching the surface, before being expressed in the world, and  become transformed, changed, and, from Reich’s point of view, distorted by this secondary layer.  The core reaches out for contact.  The secondary layer blocks and twists and these feelings, and so when they reach the surface layer of the personality they are not expressive of their original intent.  How the layers are formed is the heart of Reich’s theory.

III

Reich saw fascism as expressing an amalgam of reactionary social ideas and rebellious emotions  (the so-called Tea Party Movement appears to be a current example of this amalgam).  But it is not revolutionary or radical, within Reich’s understanding of these terms, for it does not get to the root of the problem it is rebelling against.  It does not actually improve things the way, as Reich points out (from experience), a physician does who examines the cause of a disease and seeks painstakingly to fight it.  Over time, and not necessarily over a long period of time, fascism makes things worse for the very masses that propagate it, and so is irrational in this sense (since the people themselves think or feel that they are trying to improve their lot).  Political and social totalitarianism is an expression of the irrational aspect of the character structure, which can be observed in its sadistic racial or religious hatred.  (We see it today in the recently renewed mass hatred and fear of Islam, as if every Muslim is a terrorist, as we also see it in the terrorists themselves.)

IV

One can probably trace the initial spark that lead to Reich’s theories regarding the origin of fascism, character structure, armoring and such concepts as sex energy and orgone energy to his work on the two major difficulties that he and his teacher and colleague Freud and the other psychoanalysts had to face.  These were (1) the so-called “negative therapeutic reaction,” in which many patients became worse when correctly analyzed, and (2) the inability of many patients to follow the “basic psychoanalytical rule” -- to practice what was called “free association” of feelings, thoughts and sensations and communicate with their analysts.

As early as 1892 Freud, strongly influenced by Joseph Breuer, had hypothesized that the neuroses stem from a disturbance in sexual functioning.  He had theorized that the neuroses were due to impediments in the free circulation of a sexual substance or energy, which he first called “Sexualstoffe” and later “libido.”  This meant that psychological illness is organic in origin. He also came to the hypothesis that when this substance is not fully released genitally, illness would ensue.  Freud used the analogy of a stream that meets an obstacle, becomes dammed up, and must flow into other, secondary channels.  Illness was produced, he believed, when sexual energy was thus blocked. Reich later adopted the stream analogy, which vividly depicts his own understanding of how core emotions become distorted by the secondary layer of the character structure.

Freud did not let go of this idea easily.  As late as 1924 he expressed hope that what he called the “chemistry of the sexual force” would some day be discovered (he indicated even as late as 1930 that he had not completely abandoned this hope).  Freud, during the first half of his career, thus had developed the theory that neuroses are an expression of misplaced, unreleased libido.  Neurotics were seen as people crippled in their sexual function.  He came to believe that re-establishment of psychological health required restoration of the capacity for healthy genitality and implied that what we think of as “civilized” sexuality is not healthy and leads to neuroses.

Eventually, of course, Freud abandoned his theory that direct or genital expression of libido is required for restoration of emotional health and developed the theory of sublimation, that health would be restored when libido is re-directed to non-sexual activities.  Sublimation, Freud came to believe, is a positive process that creates psychological health.  Still, an examination of his writings shows that he did not completely abandon the notion that sexual excitation is central, although he admitted that the actual nature or somatic basis of sexual energy (and of the instincts in general) was the least understood aspect of his theory and was, in fact, unknown.  Freud realized that this was a major gap in his overall theory of the neuroses and so in his understanding of why therapy may or may not work. Thus when he (and the other psychoanalysts) ran into the two above-mentioned therapeutic difficulties, the negative therapeutic reaction and the inability of patients to follow the basic psychoanalytical rule, two great impediments to successful therapeutic outcomes, they had no way of explaining them in terms of their own theories as they prevailed at the time.

To try and explain these difficulties, Freud came up with the hypothesis that there is a force in humans (and perhaps in nature in general) that runs counter to libido, or to Eros, as he was now calling the life instinct.  This is the instinct for death or Thanatos.  Towards the end of his life, Freud, admitting he was speculating, claimed that this instinct represents that which in humans is destructive, and that it is due to this instinct that the two difficulties arise.  People, in at least one aspect of their core, to use Reich’s term, really did not want to be healthy.  Freud did hope that Thanatos could be rendered harmless if it were properly sublimated, but never figured out how this would work.  

V

Reich, confronted with the same two difficulties, came up with a different hypothesis.  He says that he found that when his patients were able to form satisfying sexual relationships and engage in periodic gratifying sexual intercourse, 1) no negative therapeutic reaction occurred and 2) the patient’s neurotic symptoms dissipated.  These findings, along with his continued theoretical use of the concept of libido or sex energy, eventually lead him to the theory that neurotic symptoms are manifestations of sexual energy in a state of stasis and that this stasis is the source of the neuroses.  The therapeutic goal then became: get the energy moving, break up the stasis, and help patients find suitable partners for periodic gratifying release of this now moving energy and so remove the source of the symptoms.

Reich published his findings in 1927 but Freud had already adopted his theory that neurotics are those who do not properly sublimate their instincts.  In them, Thanatos triumphed over Eros.  Freud believed the instincts had to be sublimated because they contained impulses and emotions that would lead to the dissolution of society.  When Reich presented Freud with his clinical evidence to the contrary, that these destructive emotions were released via therapeutic intervention, Freud rejected the evidence without investigating it, thereby modeling the typical reaction to Reich’s work that has continued to this day: dismiss without investigation.  

VI

Reich’s theory of character analysis and the therapeutic techniques he developed emerged from such considerations and his need to deal with the second difficulty, the failure of many patients to follow the basic psychoanalytical rule.  (Reich tells us that analysts would get bored and fall asleep while waiting for patients to free associate and often had to drink coffee and smoke cigarettes to remain awake.)  Reich, although trained in Freudian style psychoanalysis, began to face his patients directly, as opposed to sitting out of sight of the patient, and became more direct in his contact, often pointing out patient’s facial and bodily expressions and the way they presented and expressed themselves. Reich came to realize that this – people’s presentations -- are often as or more important than what people say in terms of understanding their character structure.

The basis of what became known as “character analysis” was born and Reich says that the technique enabled him to penetrate what he later termed the “armor” that prevented patients from following the basic psychoanalytical rule and which was at the root of the negative therapeutic reaction and the neuroses in general.  Armoring developed, he came to believe, when our core emotions and impulses are suppressed and we are forced to protect ourselves against those feelings as well as feelings that arise in response to the suppression.

Over time Reich formed the hypothesis that character armor functions biophysically -- that it consists of chronic contractions of the body musculature that develop spontaneously.  The armor is unconscious and it becomes habitual and chronic.  With regard to Freud’s theory of the death instinct, Reich found that the emotions and impulses that supposedly are expressions of this instinct are emotions held in by the armor.  He found in his therapeutic practice that these emotions could be released harmlessly in therapy and would then dissolve, which lead Reich to reject Freud’s idea.  

VII

With these notions in mind, Reich opened clinics in Germany and Austria (from the late 1920’s through the early 1930’s) to provide practical sex education for people who came to the clinics.  It was during this period that he also became involved with progressive social and political movements of the time.  He attempted to educate his clients regarding his understanding that sexual health, as it was understood at the time and according to the standards of psychoanalysis, was inadequate.  He tells us that he found that patients who could apparently “perform” adequately, nevertheless suffered from sexual disturbances such as experiencing little or no pleasure during coitus, or experiencing violent emotions or passivity during intercourse.  This, Reich believed, would change when armor dissolved.  These observations lead to the theory of “orgastic potency.”

Orgastic potency, Reich came to hypothesize, is characterized by such traits as pleasurable sensations in the genitals of both men and women who act no differently from one another, and who are spontaneously gentle and considerate of their partners.  The man eventually feels the urge to penetrate, the woman to be penetrated, but it is not a matter of piercing or being pierced.  On penetration excitation in the genitals increases and via mutual slow, spontaneous and effortless movements and friction, excitation continues to increase.  At some point excitation reaches a point where voluntary control becomes no longer possible as acme approaches and a sensation of melting occurs as the excitation radiates from the genitals to the rest of the body.  Acme occurs with involuntary expansion and contraction of the muscles of the genitals and of the rest of the body resulting in what Reich called the “orgasm reflex,” referring to the full body experience of the orgasm. Excitation eventually tapers off and is followed by pleasurable relaxation and a tender loving attitude towards the partner.  (Note that such a genitally organized experience, when gratifying, also includes the entire body as well as the genitals, and is characterized by an emotional attitude of love and consideration.) 

What prevents the depth of gratification that Reich understood is represented by his concept of orgastic potency is the armoring, for when it dissolved, orgastic potency emerged.  His therapeutic technique evolved as he began to add direct contact with the body musculature and a breathing technique to character analysis and says that he observed that the orgasm reflex began to emerge in therapy, not as a sexual experience, but as spontaneous movements of the body apparently stimulated by the therapeutic technique, the combination of conscious breathing, physical contact (often with contracted muscles), expression of suppressed emotions, the right word at the right time, and, as he later came to believe, energetic (orgonotic) contact between patient and therapist.

VIII

Reich’s concept of character armor continued to evolve.  He came to the theory that armoring is the product of a threatening, hostile, authoritarian, repressive world with the innocent, vulnerable human organism.  Chronic muscular and characteralogical rigidity develops because, as infants, children, adolescents and adults, we are forced to suppress core or basic biological impulses and emotions as well as the emotions that are triggered by this suppression which get buried in the secondary layer.  Reich, as mentioned, found that when these secondary emotions were released in therapy and dealt with intelligently, armoring against them was no longer necessary. 

Most of us keep these secondary emotions under control most of the time, as opposed to what Reich called the “impulsive character,” those who we think of as psychopaths or sociopaths, who often become leaders in fascist-style movements. These destructive emotions and impulses, says Reich, should be distinguished from natural aggression, which he sees as the natural, healthy, impulse to “approach” (the literal meaning of the word), to reach out for contact and satisfy core needs.  Suppression of natural aggression, says Reich, leads to the formation of relatively passive adults who become the fodder for those who take the lead in political and social fascism (carriers of what Reich called the “emotional plague”).  I imagine that all of us here are aware that we are witnessing such a phenomenon in our time.  To more or less parrot how Reich put the point decades ago with respect to what was happening then, nowadays we watch as the followers of today’s demagogues have only enough spirit to say, not in so many words, of course, but in their own fashion, “Sieg Heil!”

IX

Reich’s evolving understanding of orgastic potency led him to the remainder of his scientific experimentation and theorizing.  Theories of orgastic potency prevalent at the time – that it is governed by fluid movements – seemed to him inadequate to explain his observations.  He began to investigate whether or not there are other biological functions at the root of what he had seen in therapy.  

Certain scientific experiments conducted by others had indicated to the experimenters that a form of bio-electricity or bio-energy might be behind sensations of pleasure and anxiety. Reich found such an implication fascinating given his experiences with his patients who had expressed pleasurable feelings and sensations as well as anxiety. He devised a series of experiments to test this hypothesis. He reports that, during the experiments, he observed an increase in bio-electrical charge at the erogenous zones of his human subjects only when they reported pleasurable sensations at the zone being measured bio-electrically.  Concomitant results were found with regard to anxiety.  These results lead him to conduct a number of other experiments that took him to the hypothesis that there really is a form of bio-electricity or bio-energy involved in pleasure and anxiety and that this energy is different from plain electricity.

Reich tells us that he wondered if this energy functioned in all living organisms and began studying single-cell organisms testing them for bio-electric responses.  He says that he obtained results that indicated that such organisms, like humans, show bio-electric or bio-energetic functioning.

During the experiments he says that he observed phenomena that surprised him: living cells of some kind began emerging from non-living material he was using (after the material had swelled with water).  The notion that living cells could emerge from non-living material (“biogenesis”) was considered impossible according to accepted biology at the time.  But, says Reich, proper sterilization techniques did not prevent the phenomenon.  He interpreted this as indicating that the cells were not coming from the air or any other outside source, but that they truly were emerging from the swelled, non-living matter; that, in other words, he was witnessing the creation of life from the nonliving, or biogenesis. He began to think that perhaps this bio-electricity or bio-energy was involved in this process.  Eventually he came to call these cells “bions” which he saw as transitional between non-living matter and protozoa.  

Later experiments with bions that had apparently emerged from ocean sand after swelling seemed to indicate that a kind of radiation was emitted by the cells because they had intense radiation like effects on the experimenters and the environment in which the experiments were being conducted.  Later still he attempted to measure the effects with an electroscope and eventually, in his opinion, obtained positive results.  If the cells emitted a form of radiation, the idea that there may be a form of bio-energy involved in their functioning was gaining credence in his mind.

Reich began to wonder if this bio-energy he had hypothesized to be involved in sexuality and anxiety in humans and now possibly appeared to function in other forms of life was more or less ubiquitous.  He continued to test human subjects bio-electrically and eventually developed a number of devices that he believed could accumulate, measure and utilize what he theorized is this energy.

He developed the hypothesis that there really is a form of energy, the pulsation and movement of which within the body is behind human emotions.  Its expansion is experienced subjectively as pleasure, its contraction as anxiety.  This functioning, he came to hypothesize, is at the root of the phenomena he had observed with respect to sexual excitation, orgasm and gratification, as well as the physiological effects he had observed in therapy such as involuntary trembling, spasms, sensations of current, the orgasm reflex, and so on.

Armoring was now seen as formation of a mechanism that blocks or slows pulsation and movement of the energy and so inhibits subjective sensations and the capacity to become sexually and emotionally charged as well as the ability to release the charged energy fully and obtain gratification.  Neurotic symptoms were now attributed to the conflict between the free pulsation of the energy experienced as the biological core impulses and emotions and the pressure of the armor.  The secondary layer of destructiveness that fascism is so beholding to was seen as a function of this conflict.

Reich tells us that he conducted experiments that indicated that the energy involved is not a form of nuclear radiation, x-ray radiation, ionization in general or electromagnetism, but a form of energy as yet unknown to science, and he named it “orgone energy.”  He came to the hypothesis that when armor disrupts pulsation and movement of the orgone within organisms, a “biopathic” or disease process is triggered.  Emotional illnesses are biopathies as are sexual disturbances.  Reich also conducted experiments that indicated to him that a biopathic process lies behind many physical diseases including cancer.

X

Reich continued his scientific work over the remainder of his life.  He conducted tests with a device he called the Orgone Energy Accumulator, a research tool that evolved from experiments with a Faraday Cage.  He had wondered if he could test for the existence of orgone energy in the atmosphere and this tool was utilized for these experiments (as well as for others).  This was one of a number of instruments that he developed to carry out his experiments, including what he called an “orgone shooter” and a “cloud buster” that he utilized in weather experiments in Maine and Arizona.

He experimented with orgone energy’s relation to nuclear energy and its possible use to drive motors.  He developed his theory of “cosmic superimposition” to explain the origin of galaxies and other celestial phenomena.  (The theory of cosmic superimposition was central to Reich’s understanding of the function of the orgasm and the nature of gratification, for he understood the complete orgasm during copulation as a merger of the two energy systems, the female and the male, which become one energy system at acme.  This merger of energy systems, on Reich’s understanding, is analogous to the merger of cosmic streams that form galaxies.)  Overall, he had come to the conclusion that orgone energy is actually everywhere and that its functioning is the common functioning principle of life.

Reich’s theories are all based on scientific experiments and clinical observations that he carried out over a number of decades and whether or not the results he obtained, the evidence he accumulated or the theories that evolved from them is valid can only be determined by scientific means.  One cannot say anything about this work from one’s armchair, so to speak.  Marcuse was one among many who chose to ignore this simple scientific principle when he referred to Reich’s later scientific work as “wild and fantastic hobbies,” while offering no evidence or reason to believe that he attempted to study it.

XI

As for the mass psychology of fascism, one of the great puzzles that has mystified social and political theorists (and continues to) is why the suffering masses generally did not (and do not) fight harder for what appears to be their own interests (or at least vote in this direction when given the opportunity).  Reich, Marcuse, and the other members of the Frankfurt School puzzled over this phenomenon in their day as progressive movements tottered and died and masses of people turned to fascism.  We see this passivity, as Marcuse called it, happening today as hard working and underemployed and unemployed Americans stand up for reactionary social and political ideals.

For Reich, the armor that imprisons the masses is a root function of this phenomenon.  Reich, like Marcuse, saw himself as developing Freud’s key discoveries and merging them with those of Marx and Engels.  Reich, like Marcuse, came to believe that, although both Freudian theory and Marxist analysis provide necessary ingredients to an overall understanding of fascism, neither of these lines of inquiry alone can lead to a solution of the puzzle. Both came to believe that traditional Marxism had failed because it had relied on economics as the motivating force and so did not take into account other factors.  They also came to believe that psychoanalysis had recoiled from Freud’s most progressive ideas and that Freud himself had failed to understand the role of Thanatos in this process.  Reich came to believe Thanatos, or the death instinct, does not prevail as an instinct at all and that the feelings connected with it can be overcome, not by sublimation, but via melting of the armoring so that humans can satisfy core needs and that such feelings could be avoided altogether by proper child rearing in a healthy social climate.  And Reich, like Marcuse, identified core needs as the need for gratifying work and relationships (as well as a gratifying sexual life).  For Reich, the kind of conservative morality that psychoanalysis had regressed to is a function of the armoring of the psychoanalysts that was rooted in their experiences with their own authoritarian families and all the other repressive social forces they were brought up with.

Reich did not believe that sexual liberation is a panacea for individual and social ills.  He believed that he had discovered the fundamental energy, the pulsation and movement of which is the basis for life.  He believed that when it is blocked in its natural functioning, it creates individuals that not only cannot obtain gratification in their sexual lives -- they also lack satisfaction in every other aspect of their lives and cannot even struggle rationally against totalitarians who only want to strip them of their health, wealth and dignity.  This personal-scale problem thus bleeds into social relations and politics. 

Reich’s theories did begin with his work in trying to help human beings overcome neuroses and his theories were grounded in his teacher’s hypothesis of a sexual energy.  He followed what he called the “red thread” of his discoveries and came to the conclusion that there really is such an energy and that it is blocked in humans and that one very big reason for this is that our culture has become deeply sex negative, deeply terrified by the sexual function in its natural functioning.  Thus, when armor melts, the sexual function improves.  That was an observation.  And when the sexual function improves, the symptoms dissolve.  That was an observation.  And when the impulses and emotions that Freud associated with the death instinct are released harmlessly in therapy, they disappear.  That was an observation.

On Reich’s understanding, when a child’s natural sexuality and aggression becomes impaired, it creates masses of acquiescent subjects (and a few emotional plague characters) who learn to adjust to the distress and humiliation while believing that their interests lie in perpetuating the very morality that suppresses their deepest longings.  Children brought up in contactful, non-repressive environments (in terms of emotions and sexuality) will not be so easily manipulated.  The solution to the mass psychology of fascism, if Reich is correct, lies in this direction.

Reich believed that when armor melts people become naturally cooperative, that democratic values emerge, in the words of Lao Tzu, ”without strain or constraint.”  Reich thought of this kind of society as a “work democracy,” a concept that he elaborates in The Mass Psychology of Fascism. As a study of this book will show, the kind of society envisioned has much in common with Marcuse’s concept of a democratic socialist utopia.  

Reich, however, did not think that we could get there via political, social, economic or aesthetic means alone, although he understood that each of these aspects of life plays a significant part.  At bottom, what is needed, he came to believe, is a radical re-structuring of the way orgone energy pulsates and flows within our organisms.  This involves a change of that which puts us in chains in the first place and then keeps us there, the very structure of our characters by which the mass psychology of fascism is perpetrated. For Reich, this ultimately can only be accomplished by prophylaxis, by preventing our children from becoming armored in the first place, so that they can have the energetic power and strong life force that enables them to create and sustain the social and political institutions and processes that support the values that both Marcuse and Reich believed in.

Endnotes

I have gotten my understanding of Marcuse’s work from Eros and Civilization, Beacon Press, Boston, 1955, 1966; One Dimensional Man, Beacon press, Boston, 1964; and The Essential Marcuse, ed. by Andrew Feenberg and Willaim Leiss, Beacon press, Boston, 2007.

 I have gotten my understanding of the work of Marcuse scholars mainly from Herbert Marcuse, A Critical Reader, ed. by John Abromeit and W. Mark Cobb, Routledge, New York, 2004.

 Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 1970, p. xvii.

 See, e.g., Eros and Civilization, p. 239.

 Reich’s books, unless otherwise indicated, have been published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux or one of their divisions.  Most of his writings, including journal articles, are available through the Wilhelm Reich Museum Bookstore, Orgonon, P.O. Box 687, Rangeley ME., 04970.  

One of the texts mentioned is not:  Sex-Pol: Essays, 1929-1943 Wilhelm Reich, ed. by Lee Baxandall, New York, Vintage, 1972.

 These ideas are focused on and developed in The Mass Psychology of Fascism and The Sexual Revolution.

 These ideas are developed in Character Analysis and The Function of the Orgasm, and are summarized in my book, Reich and Gurdjieff, Sexuality and the Evolution of Consciousness, Xlibris, U.S.A., 2011.

 Rig Veda, 10.129, 4.

 Wilhelm Reich, Ether, God and Devil, p. 53.

 Ibid, p. 65 and passim.

 Wilhelm Reich, Character Analysis, pp. 215-298, 400-401.

 The Mass Psychology of Fascism, passim.

 All references to Freud’s writings are taken from The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud, The Standard Edition, ed. by James Strachey, 24 vols, Vintage, 1999.

 See especially, The Function of the Orgasm and Character Analysis, passim.

 See Reich Speaks of Freud, ed. by Mary Higgens and Chester M. Raphael, M.D., New York, Noonday Press, 1967 for Reich’s report of Freud’s reaction to his theories.

The report is summarized as well in Reich and Gurdjieff, op. cit., p. 114.

 Ibid.

 These ideas are developed in Character Analysis and The Function of the Orgasm especially.

 See especially, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, Sex-Pol essays, and The Sexual Revolution.

 See The Function of the Orgasm, p. 77 and passim for a detailed description of orgastic potency and the varieties of orgastic impotence. 

 See especially The Mass Psychology of Fascism, The Sexual Revolution, Ether, God and Devil, People in Trouble and Listen, Little Man for more on Reich’s concept of the emotional plague.

 This section is based on Reich’s reports of his experiments in The Cancer Biopathy, The Bion Experiments on the Origin of Life, and The Bio-Electrical Investigation of Sexuality and Anxiety.

 See especially Selected Writings, pp 198 ff, as well as The Function of the Orgasm and The Cancer Biopathy, passim.

 See especially The Cancer Biopathy, pp. 112-113.

 See Cosmic Superimposition, passim.

 See especially Ether, God and Devil and Cosmic Superimposition.

 Herbert Marcuse, op. cit, p. 239.

 It is my contention -- and I know that I am not alone is this for I heard it straight from the lips of Chester M. Raphael, M.D., one of Reich’s students and an editor of his writings – that if anyone wishes to comprehend the work of Wilhelm Reich one absolutely must, to begin with, read and study every book that he wrote – and carefully!  One cannot gain the requisite understanding to be able to even begin to evaluate it via a piecemeal approach.  It’s not that kind of thing.