FIGHTING FOR THE GENITAL RIGHTS OF ADOLESCENTS

Wilhelm Reich and the Sexual Struggle of Youth

Jennifer van der Grinten
The sexual misery of modern youth is immeasurable.
But most of it is out of sight, beneath the surface.1
Praised by historians as a lasting contribution to Marxism,2 Wilhelm Reichs
sex politics (Sexpol) is also noteworthy for being one of the few aspects of his
philosophy that enjoys widespread acceptance in the academic community.3 Reich died in
prison on November 3, 1957 while serving a two-year sentence for violating a ban
instituted by the Food and Drug Administration on the interstate sale of orgonomic
devices.4 The cause of death was determined to be sudden heart failure.5 As his later
writings clearly show, Reich died in a state of social and intellectual isolation.6 He looked
forward to a future when academics would examine his theories critically, although he
anticipated it would take fifty to a hundred years before such a situation would occur.
1

Wilhelm Reich. 1983. The Sexual Rights of Youth. Mary Boyd Higgins as Trustee of the Wilhelm Reich
Infant Trust Fund, p. 2. Translated from German Der sexuelle Kampf der Jugend, copyright 1932 by Verlag
fr Sexualpolitic, with previously unpublished revisions by Reich.
2
Anson G. Rabinbach. 1973. The Politicization of Wilhelm Reich: An Introduction to The Sexual Misery
of the Working Masses and the Difficulties of Sexual Reform. New German Critique 1, p. 90.
3
For example, Herbert Marcuses Eros and Civilization (1955) was influenced by and heavily endorses
Reichs sex political agenda. See: Christopher Turner. 2011. Adventures in the Orgasmatron: How the
Sexual Revolution Came to America. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, p. 394. Similarly, Reichs The
Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933) influenced Eric Fromms derivative but far better known Escape From
Freedom (1941). In Mass Psychology, Reich interpreted the basic personality of the German lower-middle
classes as authoritarian characters, people who needed to replicate the domination of the home by means of
the domination of state and politics. See: Norman Levine. 1984. Wilhelm Reich: Culture as Power.
History of European Ideas 5.3, p. 277. In the United States and Europe, many goals of Reichs Sexpol were
achieved sexual politics were the motivating force behind the sexual revolution of 1960s America. See:
David Bennetts Sexual Revolutions: Towards a Brief History, form the Fall of Man to the Present and
Nick Tottens Wilhelm Reichs Theory of Sexuality, published in Gottfried Heuer. 2011. Sexual
Revolutions: Psychoanalysis, History and the Father. New York: Routledge.
4
Philip W. Bennett. 2010. The Persecution of Dr. Wilhelm Reich by the Government of the United
States. International Forum of Psychoanalysis 19, p. 52.
5
Ilse Ollendorf Reich. 1969. Wilhelm Reich: A Personal Biography. New York: St. Martin's Press, p. 197.
6
For example: The Murder of Christ (1953), or the audio recording Alone, released by the Wilhelm
Reich Infant Trust Fund in 1995.

In anticipation, Reich prepared archival material related to his life and work, but
historians have yet to subject orgonomic functionalism to serious analysis. Instead,
Reichs philosophy is interpreted piecemeal; the intellectual story ends wherever the
author feels the theory becomes too difficult to follow. Additionally, the stigma of
paranoid schizophrenia, a result of a rumor purportedly begun by Otto Fenichel, saturates
the historiography.7 Biographers behave as if mental illness and scientific discovery are
diametrically opposed. This stance becomes a convenient excuse for ignoring the
theoretical value of orgonomic functionalism, a scientific discipline applicable to a
variety of intellectual pursuits, including preventative medicine and revolutionary
politics. In Reichs own words:
Sex-economy and orgone biophysics are not medicine or even psychiatry.
They are special, scientific disciplines which reveal new facts in the field
of medicine and psychiatry, but also pedagogy, physics, and biology.8
Much has been written on Reich. In addition to the Sexpol literature, which is
sometimes incorrectly labeled Freudo-Marxist, Reichs early psychoanalytic career has
received adequate attention from historians, psychoanalysts, and biographers.9 This is due
in large part to the influence of Reichs theories of counter-transference and his
contribution of the concept of character types to clinical psychology.10 His 1933 work,

Ollendorf Reich 57.

Wilhelm Reich. 1941. The Attitude of Mechanistic Natural Science to the Life Problem. Republished
in: 1992. Orgonomic Functionalism 4. Rangeley: The Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust Fund, p. 60.
9
Marxist historians have devoted considerable attention to Reichs early attempts to synthesize dialectic
materialism and psychoanalytic theory, and the history of Sexpol has received its due attention in German
language publications. Unfortunately, the English historiography, especially as it exists in monograph form,
focuses primarily on Reichs contributions to psychoanalysis, ignoring the importance of Marxist thought
in Reichs intellectual development. A notable exception is Bertell Ollman. 1972. The Marxism of
Wilhelm Reich. The Unknown Dimension: European Marxism since Lenin. Edited by Dick Howard and
Karl E. Klare. New York: Basic Books. More recently, attempts have been made to revive interest in
Reichs work for the environmental movement. See: Joel Kovel. 2010. Wilhelm Reich: A Harbinger of
Ecosocialism? An Introduction to Bennett. Capitalism Nature Socialisim 21.1, pp. 41-52.
10
Lore Reich Rubin. 2003. Wilhelm Reich and Anna Freud: His Expulsion from Psychoanalysis.
International Forum Psychoanalysis 12, p. 110.
8

Character Analysis, continues to be praised by members of the psychoanalytic

community today.11 It is the latter half of Reichs career that remains unexplored. Often
referred to as the American-phase, or derogatively as his Gnostic period,12 orgonomy
remains a taboo subject because it seems to belong so clearly to the fantastical.
According to one historian, Reich abandoned the last vestiges of normal science after
discovering Orgone Energy.13 Reichs own disciples have been unable to rectify this
situation. The most reliable biography available in English on Reich to date is Myron
Sharafs Fury on Earth (1983), but it does not engage with orgonomic functionalism on a
theoretical level. Sharaf apologizes for this, noting: My interest in Reich was and is
primarily centered upon his work on human beings. I have never made systematic studies
of his natural-scientific work.14
Reichs biography is well documented, but it provides only a curious but shallow
introduction to his intellectual discoveries. 15 Considering the richness of Reichs
personal life, it is perhaps not surprising that it often overshadows his scientific theories.
Unfortunately, this makes the historiography read like a character trial. There is no
attempt to recover orgonomy as a scientific methodology. An analysis that approaches
Reichs work holistically and attempts to understand orgonomic functionalism both
historically and theoretically will make it possible to judge whether Reichs scientific
work deserves further critical analysis.

11

David Shapiro. 2002. Theoretical Reflections on Wilhelm Reichs Character Analysis. American
Journal of Psychotherapy 56.3.
12
Levine
13
Petteri Pietikainen. 2002. Utopianism in Psychology: The Case of Wilhelm Reich. Journal of History
of the Behavioral Sciences, 38(2), 157-175.
14
Myron Sharaf. 1983. Fury on Earth: A Biography of Wilhelm Reich. New York: DeCapo Press, p. 6.
15
Wilhelm Reich. 1953. Biographical Material: History of the Discovery of the Life Energy (European and
American Period, 1920-1952). Rangeley: Orgone Institute Press. Also, About the History and the
Activities of Our Institute in the International Journal of Sex-Economy and Orgone Research 1.1.

A PSYCHOANALYST IS RADICALIZED
one must have experienced a thing completely in order to judge it correctly.16
In order to understand the essence of Reichs work, it is necessary to return to the
moment he identifies as the most important in his intellectual and political development:
when police shot and killed dozens of workers protesting in Schattendorf on July 15,
1927.17 This event is important because it shaped the form that the Reichs political
beliefs would take until the end of his life. To summarize briefly: on January 30, 1927
members of the Christian Socialist paramilitary (the Heimwehr) opened fire on an
unarmed group of Social Democrats. Although there were casualties, the accused were
acquitted on July 14, sparking a riot that culminated in the burning of the Palace of
Justice the following day. The mob activity developed into an armed uprising, but the
Social Democrats ordered their own militia (the Schutzband) to return to the barracks and
avoid confrontation. In the eyes of many spectators, including Reich, the SDAP had
passed up an obvious opportunity for armed insurrection, reneging on their revolutionary
promises. They had also failed to protect the people they purported to represent.
The senseless violence was shocking. In his recollections, Reich describes the
scene as follows:
I saw no capitalists on the street, only thousands and thousands of workers
in and out of uniform, women, children, physicians, and spectators. The
indelible impression remained that people were warring here with their
own kind. Was this class conflict? Within the same class? In a city
administered by Socialists? Here for the first time those misgivings arose
concerning the irrationalism of politics in general18
16

Wilhelm Reich. 1976. People in Trouble. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, p. 47. Originally
published in 1953 as People in Trouble (The Emotional Plague of Mankind, Vol. II).
17
Sharaf 124. He lists eighty-nine people dead and over a thousand wounded. Rabinbach gives eighty-five
dead and hundreds injured, p. 91.
18
People in Trouble 24.

Reich identified oppressive class ideology as the source of the emotional

irrationalism he witnessed in Schattendorf. Despite his skepticism about the effectiveness
of party politics, he joined the Social Democrats shortly after the incident and began
promoting his own sex economic agenda within their ranks. His membership in the party
would prove to be short lived early on he joined a pro-Communist splinter faction
called the Komitee Revolutionrer Sozialdemokraten and began publishing a newspaper
critiquing the party line, leading to his expulsion in January 8, 1930.19 Although he next
aligned himself with the Communist Party, Reich was denounced by Moscow only two
years later after the publication of Der sexuelle Kampf der Jugend; his sex politics were
labeled ideologically incorrect and his writings were banned.20 Although Reichs
negative experience with party politics contributed to the development of a paranoid antiStalinist mentality later in life, he never abandoned his revolutionary Marxist agenda.
This fact becomes self-evident upon reviewing Reichs published research, but the follow
anecdote from 1951 must suffice as an example:
When the INS [Immigration and Naturalization Service] agent showed
Reich photographs of the two aliens under suspicion of being
Communists, Reich replied almost instantly that he didnt know either
of them:
SUBJECT then lost self-control. He paced the floor and pounded
the table. His face reddened and his speech became at times
incoherent. When asked of he had been offended in some way
which caused his excitement, SUBJECT said he had been.
SUBJECT then went on to say that in effect, he had been insulted
inbeing asked to merely identify a suspected Communist, that I did
not realize who he, SUBJECT, was, that I did not understand how
minor was the importance of questioning him concerning
individual Communists as he wanted it plainly understood that his
personal knowledge of Communism extended beyond the
political field of Communism and went deep into the heart of the
19
20

Rabinbach 95.
Turner 138.

philosophy of present day Communism- dictatorship as compared

with Marxism.21
For those who fail to understand that Reich treated political parties no differently
than he treated lovers, as replaceable, his Americanization might be interpreted as a
retreat from political activism into a realm of fantasy.22 This is incorrect; although it is
true that Reichs sex-economic/work-democratic platform was never structured in a way
that would have allowed for the creation of a governing political party.23 Still, the concept
of work democracy is only fantastical so far as one believes human beings will never
sincerely work for the elimination of their own political function. It is certainly not a
form of anarchism, and I must disagree with the assertion that the elimination of the
State in favor of work communities working in consort is certainly at the heart of Reichs
work democracy.24 In fact, Reichs political ideology necessitates some sort of state
intervention in the early stages of what he later termed the biosexual revolution of
mankind.25
Reich preferred his political message to be transmitted through education
(indoctrination) not party politics (a vestige of socially alienated life). During a sexual
21

Turner 361. The quote is cited as follows: Inspectors report, June 1951. FDA files, National Library of
Medicine.
22
For example, consider the following passage: He maintained that the satisfaction of sexual needs was
in fact a precondition for successful, non-compulsive sublimation and the satisfactory performance of work.
Despite the later degeneration of this notion into the nave work-democracy thesis of the Americanized
Reich, in its earlier framework the concept grew out of Reichs critical assimilation of what he learned in
practice that both labor and sexuality were specifically historical and did not exclude each other as in the
Freudian iron cage. Rabinbach 93.
23
This should not be surprising because in a work democratic relationship individuals have the right to
make decisions affecting work processes only in the realm in which he actually performed his work.
Ollendorf Reich 103. There is no space to enter into a detailed definition of work democracy in this paper.
It must suffice to note that the theory is quite maligned, despite its highly rational nature. Readers are
referred to: einem Laboratoriumsarbeiter. 1937. Die naturliche Organisation der Arbeit in der
Arbeitsdemokratie. Oslo: Sexpol-Verlag.
24
Philip W. Bennett. 2010. Wilhelm Reichs Early Writings on Work Democracy: A Theoretical Basis for
Challenging Fascism Then and Now. Capitalism Nature Socialism 21.1, p. 61.
25
Wilhelm Reich. 1952. The Silent Observer. Republished in: 1990. Orgonomic Functionalism 2.
Rangeley: The Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust Fund, p. 33.

revolution, the content of sexual education would no longer be decided by parents, but
would be carried out according to sex economic principles. Although authoritative
intervention would be necessary at the earliest stage, Reich felt that over-identification
with the nation or with a political ideology was evidence of emotional illness. He hoped
that by developing new educational methods that targeted children, especially infants, it
would be possible to create a society populated with individuals capable of selfgovernment and cooperative work, eventually eliminating the need for political parties or
nation-states. This is the meaning of the constant reference to infants and to the children
of the future in Reichs publications.26
Of course, there are many other meanings behind Reichs attraction to infants and
historiography is necessarily limited. A man who felt at times extremely isolated from his
adult peers, Reich often wrote of his natural attraction to children and babies who seemed
to respond to his presence with happiness and understanding. Reich suffered immensely
for his early endorsement of providing adolescents with sexual education and access to
birth control. Perhaps the most extreme example of this is to be found in the prevalent
accusations of child molestation leveled against Reich, both during his lifetime and after.
While it is clear from his published writing that the theory of orgonomic-functionalism
and his methods of sex-economic childrearing in no way promotes copulation between
adults and children (in fact it explicitly labels such activities as deviant), the contents of
Reichs personal life remain hotly contested.27

26

See, for example: Wilhelm Reich. 1967. Children of the Future: On the Prevention of Sexual Pathology.
New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
27
There appears to have been a sex abuse perpetrated by some of the American Reichian therapists (who
Ilse chastised Reich for trusting so much) and in an interview, Eva Reich insinuates that her father was
sexually abusive. See: Turner.

SEXUAL REPRESSION UNDER CAPITALISM

Anarchists, hippies, womens liberation, black and brown revolutionaries and,
occasionally, Marxists have all sought to radicalize people by helping them draw lessons
from their personal lives. Only Reich, however, has tried to systematize this approach.
Only Reich recognizes that sexual concerns are at the center of most peoples personal
lives. And only Reich bases his strategy on a deep-going socio-psychological analysis of
life in capitalist society.28
Although Reich originally admired the Soviet Union and based his original
Sexpol platform on the Soviet model, in the failure of the October Revolution he found
confirmation of his belief that sexual education must accompany (if not precede) a
communist revolution in order to provide the masses with the psychological character
necessary to enjoy liberation. A sexually oppressive education during adolescence
anchored the negative character traits associated with pleasure anxiety (authoritarianism,
lack of productivity, anxiety) so deeply in the human organism that the ability to take
responsibility for ones actions and the appreciation of freedom became all but
impossible. Thus, in a revolution the material barriers to freedom might be removed but
the emotional bonds remained.29 In other words, the population fails to psychologically
adapt to a new material reality.
In order to ensure the success of a political revolution, it is necessary to prepare
the people psychologically and physiologically. This is only possible by providing them
with the knowledge necessary to make informed sexual choices, supplying prophylactics
and abortion to adults and minors, and creating private spaces in which to copulate. Sex
education becomes an essential aspect of revolution, because the human being will react
in all other life situations just as he has learned or was forced to react in his childhood or

28
29

Ollman 216.
Eustace Chesser. 1972. Reich and Sexual Freedom. London: Vision Press, p. 21.

puberty to his sexual urges.30 If the masses are unaware of their sexual needs they will
waste energy in unproductive work (for example, unrequited love) and enact their
individual sexual struggles in the political realm, leading to reactionary phenomena.31 A
good example of this concept is the political sex scandal.32
Sexpol is based in the conviction that sexuality (libido) itself is productive lifeenergy.33 Authoritative institutions have a vested interest in restricting sexuality because
sexual repression uses up much bioenergy which otherwise would manifest itself
intellectually and emotionally in a rational manner.34 Perhaps less controversial today,
assertions like this helped cement Reichs expulsion from the International
Psychoanalytic Association (IPV) in 1934.35 After all, Freud argued that the sublimation
of instinct was necessary for cultural development: evolution was a civilizing process and
it was the energy generated by repressing the primary drives (the Triebenergetik) that
fueled great achievements.36 Reich identified several problems with this theory, most
notably that human beings do not function mechanically and libidinal energy does not
operate as a type of fuel that if consumed in sexual pursuits is no longer available for
cultural sublimation. He argued that sexual satisfaction and cultural achievement could be
compatible. Libidinal energy oscillates between productive work and sexual release and

30

Wilhelm Reich. 1947. The Evasiveness of Homo Normalis. Republished in: 1991. Orgonomic
Functionalism 3. Rangeley: The Wilhelm Reich Infant Trust Fund, p. 79.
31
Wilhelm Reich. 1971. The Invasion of Compulsory Sex-Morality. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
p. 19.
32
Interestingly, what Reich proposes here is something he would be accused of by later historians: that the
individual makes political choices and develops political ideology based on everyday social life. See:
Siegfried and Johannes Nicolas Zepf. 2010. "Wilhelm Reich ein blinder Seher?; Wilhelm Reich A
Blind Seer? A Late Addendum to his 100 Anniversary." Forum Der Psychoanalyse 26.1, pp. 71-86.
33
Wilhelm Reich. 1936. Die Sexualitat im Kulturkampf: Zur sozialistischen Umstrukturierung des
Menschen. Copenhagen: Sexpol-Verlag, p. ix.
34
People in Trouble 165.
35
Wilhelm Reich. 1935. Der Ausschluss Wilhem Reichs aus der Internationalen Psychoanlytischen
Vereinigung. Zietschrift fur politische Psychologie und Sexualokonomie, 2.
36
Sigmund Freud, Civilization and its Discontents (1930).

the force of libidinal energy increases with sexual satisfaction so that a healthy sex life
will actually increase the speed of oscillation. To Reich, the belief that one had to delay
gratification in order to be successful in life was as scientifically inaccurate as the idea
that masturbation was sinful or resulted in physical and mental decline. The most
productive men could also be the most sexual men if they were able to overcome the
pleasure anxiety ingrained in their character during a sexually repressive upbringing.
More important, the masses could awaken their productive work potential by establishing
healthy sex life. This would enable them to overcome their current alienation.
Adopting heavily from Engels description of the patriarchal family in The Origin
of the Family (1884), Reich understood the nuclear family to be an oppressive ideological
construct. He viewed the family as the primary enforcer of sex negation, and it was
through a repressive sexual upbringing that the ruling classes perpetuated their rule over
society. Irrational attachment to the patriarchal family (the Oedipus complex) and the
idealization of chastity before marriage and lifelong monogamy were particularly
pernicious forms of false consciousness promoted by the dominant class in order to create
anxiety in the masses. This is because, governments can do with populations what they
please only as long as people keep struggling constantly, unconsciously, and hopelessly,
with these most personal [sexual] problems which touch the core of their lives.37
Reich believed that sexual frustration emerged from the ideology of lifelong
monogamy because it places sexuality and economic into direct conflict. Marriage
enables an individual to possess a husband or wife, but the very act of possession ignores
the fact that sex with one partner over an extended duration of time becomes monotonous
and even intolerable. The myth of lifelong monogamy also promoted dependence,
37

The Sexual Revolution 194-5.

10

rendered partners fearful of rejection, and led to a superficial division of women into
those to be fucked and those to be loved. After reading Malinowskis work on the
Trobriand Islanders, Reich identified the emergence of a dowry as the moment when sex
became a commodity and women became forms of private property.38 It is only by
destroying the institution of marriage that sexuality can be liberated from economic
interests, but this necessitates financial independence for both spouses as well as equal
access to childrearing things Reich considered impossible without social revolution.
Reichs position is best explained through his own writing:
The meaning and purpose of all contemporary, i.e., bourgeois and sexually
repressive education, is the preparation for life-long monogamy In
accordance with their importance as cornerstones of the bourgeois order,
marriage and the family are energetically defended both by actual
legislation as well as by active and passive hindrance and proscription of
erring sexual drives. Both institutions are rooted deeply in our social order
economically by the interests of inheritance, socially by the necessity of
protecting the wife and children, and politically by the unique function of
the family as the most important conveyor of the ideological influence of
the ruling classes. However, both presuppose an abnormally high degree
of sexual repression; and precisely this sexual repression is the decisive
factor in the production of neuroses, the mass manufacture of impotence
and frigidity, and, in the final analysis, even perversions.39
From our current perspective, lifelong monogamy may sound nave, but certainly
not sinister. To Reich, such a non-critical attitude is to be interpreted as a sign of how
sick society has become. Sex-negative attitudes have modified the human character
structure to such an extent that negative social phenomenon like adolescent angst,
prostitution, and loveless marriage seem not only tolerable but immutable facts of life
thats just the way things are. Suffering came to be rationalized as part of the human
death drive (Todestrieb). The emphasis on the immutability of human beings self38

Bronislaw Malinowski, Sex and Repression in Savage Society (1927).

Wilhelm Reich. The Sexual Misery of the Working Masses and the Difficulties of Sexual Reform. New
German Critique 1, (1973), pp. 105-106.
39

11

destructive nature concealed the true nature of social and sexual suffering, creating a
negative feedback loop in which the masses had become deeply entrenched. The
reassuring mantra that thats just the way things are led to lethargy on a mass scale.
Reich saw in the libido theory the possibility of awakening the masses from their
fitful slumber. A Marxist revolution demanded long struggle and intense commitment,
but it promised to eliminate the very sexual misery that made life under capitalism so
oppressive. His attempt to harness psychoanalysis for revolutionary purposes was
upsetting to non-Communist members of the IPV and according to Harris and Brock,
Reich was expelled for claiming that psychoanalysis necessarily led to socialism, for
saying that distortions of Freud accommodated fascism, and for founding a journal and a
movement to promote these ideas.40

SEX POLITICS AND YOUTH STRUGGLES

The interest of the mass individual is not political but sexual.41
Reich was one of several pioneers who advocated free sexuality for Viennese
youth, rejecting the notion that abstinence was necessary for cultural achievement. He
believed that genital rights were human rights; it made little sense to him that certain
individuals in society had access to condoms or abortion and others did not. Although his
focus on adolescent sexuality branded him radical enough to warrant dismissal from the
International Psychoanalytic Society, the Austrian Social Democratic Party (SDAP) and

40

Benjamin Harris and Adrian Brock. 1992. Freudian Psychopolitics: The Rivalry of Wilhelm Reich and
Otto Fenichel, 1930-1935. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 66.4, p. 602.
41
Wilhelm Reich. 1945. The Sexual Revolution: Toward a Self-governing Character Structure. Revised
Edition. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, p.174.

12

the Communist Party, Reichs ideas were firmly situated in his social milieu. Vienna had
long been a major center for sexological research and as Britta McEwen notes:
Whereas fin-de-siecle Viennese sexology had sought to classify and heal
individuals as a medical science, sexual knowledge in the interwar years
was employed to heal the social body: the truncated, diseased, and
impoverished population of the newly-created Republic of Austria. This
shift refocused sexual knowledge away from sexological taxonomies of
aberrant sexual behaviours and towards advising heterosexual,
reproductive couples, whom numerous social reform movements targeted
as central to the regeneration of society.42
This growing recognition of the importance of private everyday life to politics
shaped the policies of the SDAP between 1920 and 1934, allowing sexuality to play a key
role in revolutionary activism. As Helmut Gruber put it in 1987, at the core of the
workers private sphere, lie the emotional resources that have made it possible for them
to express their selfhood at the workplace and to respond to the most oppressive aspects
of wage labor.43 Following this logic, improvements in workers private lives will lead
to an increase in the amount emotional energy available for cultural struggle.
According to Reich, we recognize the root of spiritual mass illness [seelischen
Massenerkrankung] when we re-examine the question of the social organization of sexual
life.44 In an effort to begin to address the sexual problems that plagued the masses, in
1928 Reich founded the society for (Sozialistische Gesselschaft fr Sexualberatung und
Sexualforschung) and in 1929 he opened half a dozen sexual consultation clinics
(Sexualberatungs-Klinik fr Arbeiter und Angestellte) that provided the working class,

42

Britta McEwen. 2009. Purity Redefined: Catholic Attitudes Towards Childrens Sex Education in
Austria, 1920-36. In, Shaping Sexual Knowledge: A Cultural History of Sex Education in Twentieth
Century Europe. Edited by Lutz D.H. Sauerteig and Roger Davidosn. New York: Routledge, p. 161.
43
Helmut Gruber. Sexuality in Red Vienna: Socialist Party Conceptions and Programs and Working
Class Life, 1920-34. International Labor and Working-Class History 31 (1987), p. 37.
44
Wilhelm Reich. 1936. Die Sexualitat im Kulturkampf: Zur sozialistischen Umstrukturierung des
Menschen. Copenhagen: Sexpol-Verlag, p. viii.

13

especially youth, with sexual counseling and psychoanalysis. 45 Although Reichs clinics
became an important source of information on working class culture and appear to have
been relatively popular, they were not endorsed by the SDAP. As historians have noted,
socialist parties throughout Europe tended to be far less radical than is often assumed.
Even though the topic of sexual enlightenment became the focus of a second Kulturkampf
against the Catholic Church, the SDAP programs targeting children and youth that
became the main focus countercultural activities were ideologically quite similar to those
held by the opposition.46
Neuman sums up the socialist position best in his description of the German
SDAP:
in spite of their attacks on traditional sexual morality and marriage they
[the SDAP] in fact shared many of the most widespread and repressive
sexual misconceptions of their time and they helped to spread these
misconceptions through their writings, thereby encouraging their
supporters to find an answer to the sexual question in the sublimation of
the sexual drive and in that eminently bourgeois institution, monogamous
marriage.47
Encouraging premarital chastity and the sublimation of adolescent sexuality were
key goals of SDAP youth initiatives, and it was a widely accepted fact that the proletariat
was lacking in sexual repression.48 Indeed, the party preferred the theories of the sexually
conservative Julius Tandler (1839-1936) to the sexual politics of Reich, who argued that
the workingman was in desperate need of sexual liberation. Tandler published on the
prevention of moral and sexual decay, and he opened his own Marriage Consultation
45

Karl Fallend. 1988. Wilhelm Reich in Wien: Psychoanlyse und Politik. Wein: Salzburg, p. 115.
Gruber 48.
47
R.P. Neuman. 1974. The Sexual Question and Social Democracy in Imperial Germany. Journal of
Social History 7.3, p. 272.
48
J. Robert Wegs. 1989. Youth Culture, Sex, and Marriage. In, Growing Up Working Class: Continuity
and Change Among Vienesse Youth, 1890-1938. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, pp.
117-138.
46

14

Clinic in 1922. Unlike Reich, Tandler did not favor freedom of sexual expression, nor did
he believe in providing contraceptives to the working class. He emphasized a top-down,
controlled reform of sexuality that would take place through the manipulation of living
conditions. His clinic closed in 1927 due to lack of clients.49
Just as the party refused to support the clinics Reich founded shortly after Tandlers
failed experiment (and most likely modeled on the more successful clinics operating in
Berlin at that time), so too did the party refuse to endorse his views on Sexpol. While
Reichs ultimate goal was the destruction of the patriarchic family and the sexual
liberation of youth through education and access to prophylactics, Sexpols official
platform explicitly targeted heterosexual couples and not unlike other European sex
reform movements such as the World League for Sexual Reform (of which Reich was a
member and lecturer), making it rather difficult to comprehend the SDAPs vehement
opposition.
The primary tasks of Sexpol were enumerated as follows:
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
(7)
(8)

Better housing for the masses.

Abolition of laws against abortion and homosexuality.
Reform of marriage and divorce laws.
Free birth control advice and contraception.
Health protection for mothers and children.
Nurseries in factories and other working centres.
Abolition of laws prohibiting sex education.
Home leave for prisoners.50
After his expulsion from the SDAP and his migration to Berlin, Reich abandoned

these more or less acceptable goals and focused even more intensely on the issue of
adolescent sexuality. He argued: Young people have more than a simple right to

49
50

Gruber 41.
Chesser 11.

15

information, they have a full right to their sexuality.51 The publication of Der sexuelle
Kampf der Jugend by Reichs own press in 1932 was an attempt to make questions of
sexuality accessible to the masses, providing them with the necessary information to
come to their own conclusions and make their own steps towards revolution. The
publication received scathing reviews from organs of the Communist press, and the book
was removed from party bookstores. Although ostensibly Reichs work was criticized for
suggesting that an idealized proletariat suffered from sexual stasis, Reich shares the
opinion of later historians that like the SDAP the primary reason the Communists
avoided the youth crisis was because it feared the emotionally charged atmosphere
surrounding sexuality as a public issue.52

THE SEXUAL ECONOMY: A THEORETICAL BASIS FOR ORGONOMY

The difference between the experience of a schizophrenic and the insight of a strong
creative mind lies in the fact that revolutionary insight develops, in practice, over long
periods of time.53
It was primarily through his work at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Polyclinic
(Ambulatorium) that Reich became aware of the role of sexual repression in the
formation of neurosis.54 It was during his service as deputy medical director (1924 to
1930) that Reich realized became aware of the remarkably low success rate of
psychoanalytic treatment. Not only is access to psychoanalytic help historically and
economically contingent, but even if the existing social structure allowed the majority of

51

Wilhelm Reich. 1972. The Sexual Struggle of Youth. London: Socialist Reproduction, p. 10.
Gruber 44.
53
People in Trouble 7.
54
Christine Diercks. 2002. The Vienna Psychoanalytic Polyclinic (Ambulatorium): Wilhelm Reich and
the Technical Seminar. Psychoanalysis and History 4.1, pp. 66-84.
52

16

its members to engage in individual therapy the expected success rate would not likely
rise above thirty percent.
Reich emphasizes his belief that in psychoanalysis and Marxism are two of the most
profound intellectual theories in existence in his essay Dialectical Materialism and
Psychoanalysis (1929). Indeed, it was the addition of Marxism to psychoanalytic theory
enabled Reich to find a more effective way of modifying the unhealthy character
structure of his psychoanalytic patients by allowing for the discovery of the sexual
economy, which he defines as, the way in which society regulates, promotes, or hinders
gratification of the sexual needs.55 The discovery and diagrammatic mapping of the
relationship between psychoanalysis and Marxism provided the conceptual basis for the
discovery of more than sex economics, it also paved the way for Reichs theory of
orgonomic functionalism.

Figure 1: Mapping the sexual economy and its influence on the character structure of
human beings. (Diagram created by author).
55

People in Trouble 153.

17

According to the figure 1, material conditions determine the ability of an individual to

satisfy his needs and also dictate the form these needs will take. Social institutions
determine the sort of education children receive, and this plays a no less important role
than material conditions in determining character structure. Asking humans to suppress of
modify their needs in order to accommodate an unfair economic system is defeatist, but
modification of this system required a revolution that would seize the means of
production from the dominant class and redistribute it among the people. The toppling of
oppressive regimes is difficult but not impossible. However, what Reich observed from
his addition of psychoanalysis was that modifying the material conditions provides only
part of the solution. If the mental life of the masses remains stuck in a pre-revolutionary
morass the liberated classes will be unable to appreciate the change in material conditions
and will continue to perpetuate the old order. It is clear from the diagram above that
education is the most amenable area for practical change.
Through a sex affirmative education, Reich believed it was possible to prepare the
character structure of the masses for revolution. With this new insight, Reich began to
focus on children. The publication of Der sexuelle Kampf der Jugend marks an important
beginning to Reichs revolutionary agenda, and the vehement reaction to its proliferation
(including expulsion from five European countries) suggests that Reich may have zoned
in on a powerful force. Continuing to view adolescent sexuality as the best promise of
revolutionary change, during his time in the United States, Reich developed a program of
sex economic childrearing and established an Orgonomic Infant Research Center (OIRC).
Unfortunately, a troubling incident with a young child who was presented at a lecture
series alongside her mother for didactic purposes put a quick end to Reichs experiments,

18

although he did envision one day establishing another infant research and treatment
facility at his property in Organon, Rangley, Maine. It is also notable that Reichs most
lasting friendship was with A.S. Neill, the founder of the Sumerhill School.
As is clear from the structure of figure 1, which clearly resembles the shape of the
symbol displayed below (figure 2), it is unlikely that Reichs work would have evolved in
the direction of orgonomic functionalism if not for the addition of dialectical materialism.
It is rather remarkable that despite the
proliferation of diagrams in Reichs publications
there has been no attempt to subject these figures
to analysis. The most ubiquitous symbol in
Reichs work is surely what might be called the
orgone symbol a representation of structural
functionalist thought. Space does not permit a full
analysis, but I would like to draw attention to a
few points of merit.
The symbol of orgonomic functionalism is
the thread that unites Reichs various theories.
Although at its inception the identity of root a
Figure 2: Orgone symbol

was unknown, Reichs first applications of a

Marxist dialectic to psychoanalytic concepts yielded a number of potential identities for

b1 and b2. These are included but not limited to: expansion/contraction,
repulsion/attraction, soma/psyche. The discovery of orgone energy provided an answer to

19

the identity of root a, although as a theoretical construct orgonomic functionalism allows

for the existence of more than one root a.
An important element of the symbol of orgonomic functionalism that is often
overlooked is the concept of oscillation between poles b1 and b2. This oscillation is
exemplified by the relationship between sex and productive work, which was already
explained briefly and will be described in more detail shortly. It is my opinion that the
diagram can be best explained to a contemporary audience in the following terms: energy
(a); mania (b1); depression (b2). Although depressive and manic states are physiological
opposites, in a clinical setting symptoms of extreme depression can mimic symptoms of
extreme mania, and vice-versa. Furthermore, fluctuations between mania and depression
occur rapidly in mental illnesses like manic depression or bipolar disorder with an
intensity that seems to correlate to the amount of physiological energy available. That is
to say, extremely manic individuals crash into extreme depression, while more
psychologically stable individuals may fluctuate between relatively undifferentiated
periods of excitability and depression.
Reichs orgone symbol is better understood when we imagine that a ring that
hangs on the b1, b2 axis. According to the amount of energy applied (a) the ring will
move with more or less speed. Extremely provocative events provoke a feeling of
catharsis by providing the requisite impulse for an extremely fast state change. To
employ Engelss metaphor of the transformation of water into steam, what appears to be
a transformation of opposites (mania into depression or water into steam) looks
instantaneous to the outside observer, but as Reichs orgone symbol so brilliantly
captures, in reality the two opposites exist on a spectrum and there is an unseen

20

progression of events that must take place in order for the state change to occur. The
transformation of water into steam occurs more or less rapidly depending on the amount
of heat applied, just as the manic patients spiral into depression may take more or less
time depending on the amount of energy available to complete the progression.
If we understand this in terms of revolution, a certain degree of energy is required
from the masses in order to change from one social order to its opposite. As previously
mentioned, Reich believed sexual energy was energy as such. This explains why sexual
repression would be useful for maintaining the status quo: it prevented the accumulation
of the strong libidinal energy necessary for rapid state change. A true radical, Reichs
orgonomic functionalism is an attempt to locate the root of all dialectical phenomenon.
This constant search for the root would lead to the discovery of life energy between 1936
and 1940.
Although the concept of pulsation would only explicitly enter into Reichs theory
at a later date, it is crucial for understanding the immediate importance of orgonomicfunctionalism and sex economics. The dialectic of expansion and contraction generates
the very pulsations associated with organic matter; the oscillation between opposites is
very literally the vibration of life. If we label libido a, productive work (b1), and
pleasure (b2), we discover that in an organism there is constant oscillation between work
and pleasure. To put it simply, using one of Reichs most well known phrases: Love,
work and knowledge are the wellsprings of your life. They should also govern it. In
other words, the oscillation between pleasure and work is the very essence of human
biological life. Seen in natural phenomenon like the formation of new galaxies, the

21

pulsation of life (orgonomic streaming) can also be observed in animals, especially

worms and jellyfish.56
Sexually repressive education and guilt feelings induced pleasure anxiety, which
inhibit orgonomic streamings and lead to the development of stasis points on the workpleasure axis. These blockages in their totality formed a character armor that required a
specific amount of libidinal energy to break. Reich developed psychoanalytic methods for
dissolving these blockages in individuals. Despite his widespread disrepute as an
individual, Reichs therapy was incredibly influential. Although clearly exaggerating,
Boadella captures the immensity of Reichs theories when he boasts: All modern
therapies that work with the emotional life of the body can be traced back to him.57
The goal of what he called vegetotherapy is not to improve sexual potency, but
rather to gain total energetic motility on the work-pleasure access. Reich saw human
organisms as functional systems that fluctuated between set potentials. In other words, it
was not possible to increase ones energy limitlessly by having frequent sex. Nor was sex
and energy in a reciprocal relationship. Quality meant more than quantity, and the
correlation between orgasm and productive energy was definitive but incalculable. What
could be accepted as a positive fact was that sexual misery tended to decrease
productivity, if not immediately then at a later date.
Confident in the futility of treating neurosis on an individual scale, Reich hoped to
devise a method for the mass prophylaxis of neurosis by eliminating the source of this
sexual misery. Dissolving the character armor in therapy took a great deal of time, but the
invention of a device that could concentrate energy a could hasten the therapeutic
56

I have personally observed and recorded orgonomic streaming in the transparent body of a common
garden snail. Whether this phenomenon is the same as the one Reich describes warrants further inquiry.
57
David Boadella. 1973. Wilhelm Reich: The Evolution of His Work. Boston: Arkana, p. vii.

22

process by increasing the energy available for the elimination of stasis points (character
armor). The devices Reich created at the end of his life (cloudbusters, orgone shooter
guns, and the infamous orgone box) were attempts to expedite the radical transformation
of society from sex negative to sex positive by increasing the amount of energy available
for dialectical progression.

IMPLICATIONS
Reich began his career focusing upon sexual physiology and ended his career seeking for
a sexual cosmology.58
Continued research based on Freuds discovery [of the libido] will one day decide the
fate of this world.59
In his introduction to a collection of Sexpol essays translated into English, Bertell
Ollman writes, Reich emigrated to America in 1939. Each year added to his spiritual
distance from Marx and Freud.60 This statement is inherently false, as Reich publicly
declared his break with Freud as early as 1936, declaring sexual economics never
functioned as a continuation of Freudian theory, but was rather a new scientific discipline
that provided a critique of Freud and the bourgeois culture represented by his particular
brand of psychoanalysis.61 As for Marx, Reich never abandoned his commitment to
revolution but rather spent his entire life developing tools and medical techniques that
would expedite the establishment of a communist society.

58

Levine 274.
The Attitude of Mechanistic Natural Science 60.
60
Bertell Ollman. Introduction. In, Wilhelm Reich, 1966. Sex-Pol: Essays 1929-1934. New York:
Random House, p. xiv.
61
Wilhelm Reich. 1936. Irrationalismus in Politik and Gesellschaft: Dialektisch-materialistische
Facharbeiter contra geistige Irrlichter der sozialistischen Bewegung. Sex-Pol I, p. 27.
59

23

It is important to note that, although Reich is frequently described as a utopian

dreamer, his life work began with a critique of society that valued both the power of the
inner-life (psychology) and the role of material forces (Marxism) in history. Although
Reich was embittered by his numerous expulsions from European political and academic
societies, his departure from Europe does not, in my opinion, represent a weakening of
his political stance. Nor does it represent an escape into utopian idealism. Reich began his
professional career as a physician with an interest in public health and he continued to
seek the most reliable method for the mass prophylaxis of neurosis until his death.
Orgonomic functionalism should be understood as the culmination of Reichs political
career as a revolutionary Marxist.
Reich described himself as a natural philosopher, and he held a deep conviction
that the task of philosophy was not merely to interpret the world but to change it.62
After witnessing Hitlers rise to power and the destruction wrought by World War II,
Reich was no longer content to wait for a savior to arrive in the form of an organized
political party, and he came to believe that revolution could only be achieved through
direct manipulation of the external environment. The devices Reich was creating at the
end of his life were intended to affect a larger segment of the population by purifying the
environment and freeing atmospheric orgone energy for human psychic and social
development. By removing the negative energy (DOR-energy) that was accumulating in
the earths atmosphere and replacing it with the life-energy orgone Reich hoped to boost
the libido of the local population.
The social revolution that Reich envisioned was never intended to take place in
his lifetime. Although a strong opponent of the genetic basis of neuroses, Reich believed
62

Chesser 10.

24

that early education caused permanent modifications to the human character structure that
could only be eliminated after several generations of sexually permissive living. Reich
never called for libertinism, indeed he believed homosexuality was a form of sexual
perversion, and tended to look negatively upon casual sex. He frequently spoke out
against pornography and orgies. Reich sought nothing more than the demise of
compulsory life-long monogamy and the establishment of a sexual culture free of
economic considerations. Although he experimented with a number of different
ideologies and methodologies, Reich committed his entire life to developing a solution to
a problem he believed few people beside him were emotionally willing to acknowledge.
He fought and died for a reorientation of life based on a belief in the power of pulsation.
As current problems in American society demand solutions that appropriate both
economic and psychoanalytic perspectives, it seems necessary that someone take the
baton and carry on Reichs work.

25

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