From the book The Function of the Orgasm by Wilhelm Reich, M.D., Noonday Press, pp. 233-249
There is ample evidence to support the contention that the cultural upheavals of the twentieth century are determined by mankind’s struggle to reclaim the natural laws of sexuality. This struggle for naturalness and the harmony of nature and culture is reflected in the various forms of mystical longing, cosmic fantasies, “oceanic” feelings, religious ecstasies, and, above all, in the advance toward sexual freedom. It is unconscious, imbued with neurotic contradictions and anxiety, and is often manifested in the forms that characterize the secondary perverse drives. A humanity which has been forced for thousands of years to deny its basic biological law and, as a consequence of this denial, has acquired a second nature which is antinature can only work itself up into an irrational frenzy when it wants to restore the basic biological function and, at the same time, is afraid of doing so.
The patriarchal, authoritarian era of human history has attempted to hold the asocial impulses in check by means of compulsive moralistic prohibitions. It is in this way that civilized man, if he can indeed be called civilized, developed a psychic structure consisting of three layers. On the surface, he wears an artificial mask of self-control, compulsive insincere politeness, and pseudo-sociality. This mask conceals the second layer, the Freudian “unconscious,” in which sadism, avarice, lasciviousness, envy, perversions of all kind, etc., are held in check without, however, being deprived of the slightest amount of energy. This second layer is the artificial product of a sex-negating culture and is usually experienced consciously as a gaping inner emptiness and desolation. Beneath it, in the depth, natural sociality and sexuality, spontaneous joy in work, the capacity for love, exist and operate. This third and deepest layer, which represents the biological core of the human structure, is unconscious, and it is feared. It is at variance with every aspect of authoritarian education and control. At the same time, it is the only real hope man has of one day mastering social misery.
All discussions on the question of whether man is good or evil, a social or antisocial being, are philosophic gameplaying. Whether man is a social being or a mass of protoplasm reacting in a peculiar and irrational way depends on whether his basic biological needs are in harmony or at variance with the institutions he has created for himself. In view of this, it is impossible to free the workingman from the responsibility he bears for the regulation or lack of regulation of biological energy, i.e., for the social and individual economy of his biological energy. It has become one of his most essential characteristics that he is only too happy to shift this responsibility from himself to some Fiihrer or politician, since he no longer comprehends and indeed fears himself and his institutions. He is helpless, incapable of freedom, and he craves authority, because he cannot react spontaneously; he is armored and wants to be told what to do, for he is full of contradictions and cannot rely upon himself.
The cultivated European bourgeoisie of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries took over the compulsive moralistic forms of behavior from feudalism and made them the ideal of human conduct. Since the dawn of enlightenment, people have begun to search for truth and to cry out for freedom. As long as the compulsive moralistic institutions governed man externally as coercive law and public opinion, and internally as compulsive conscience, a sham peace prevailed, with occasional outbreaks from the subterranean world of secondary drives. During this period, the secondary drives remained curiosities, of psychiatric interest only. They became manifest as symptom neuroses, neurotic criminal actions, or perversions. When, however, social upheavals began to arouse in the people of Europe a longing for freedom, independence, equality, and self-determination, there was also an inner urge to liberate the living organism itself. Social enlightenment and legislation, pioneer work in the field of social science, and freedom-oriented organizations strove to put “freedom” into this world. After World War I, which had destroyed many compulsive authoritarian institutions, the European democracies wanted “to lead people to freedom.” But this freedom-striving European world committed a major assessment error. It failed to see what thousands of years of the suppression of the vital energies in man had bred beneath the surface. It failed to see the far- reaching, universal defect of character neurosis. The severe catastrophe of the psychic plague, i.e., the catastrophe of the irrational human character structure, swept over large parts of the world in the form of the victory of dictatorships. What the superficial veneer of good breeding and artificial self-control had held in check for such a long time now broke through into action, action implemented by the freedom-striving masses of people themselves—in the concentration camps; in the persecution of the Jews; in the annihilation of all human decency; in the sadistic, playful, mowing-down of entire cities by those who are capable of feeling life only when they goose-step, as in Guernica in 1936; in the stupendous betrayal of the masses by authoritarian governments claiming to represent the interests of the people; in the engulfing of tens of thousands of young people who, naively and helplessly, thought that they were serving an idea; in the destruction of billions of dollars worth of human labor, a fraction of which would have been sufficient to eliminate poverty the world over. In short, in a St. Vitus dance which will return again and again, as long as those who work and have knowledge fail to destroy the mass neurosis in themselves and outside of themselves, the neurosis which calls itself “high politics” and thrives upon the characterological helplessness of the citizens of the earth.
In 1928-30, at the time of the controversy with Freud, I knew very little about fascism, about as little as the average Norwegian in 1939 or the average American in 1940. It was not until 1930-33 that I became familiar with it in Germany. I was helplessly perplexed when I rediscovered in it, bit by bit, the subject of the controversy with Freud. Gradually, I understood that this had to be so. At issue in the controversy was the assessment of the human structure, of the respective roles played by human striving for happiness and the irrationalism in social life. In fascism, psychic mass illness was thrust into the open.
The opponents of fascism—liberal democrats, socialists, Communists, Marxist and non-Marxist economists, etc.— sought the solution to the problem in the personality of Hitler or in the formal political errors of the various democratic parties of Germany. One, as well as the other, meant to trace back the deluge of the plague to individual shortsightedness or the brutality of a single man. In reality, Hitler was merely the expression of the tragic contradiction between longing for freedom and actual fear of freedom.
German fascism made it quite clear that it operated not with people’s thinking and knowledge, but with their childish emotional reactions. Neither its political program nor any one of its many confused economic promises carried fascism to power and secured it in the period that followed. In the main, it was the appeal to a dark, mystical feeling, to a vague, nebulous, but extraordinary powerful longing. Those who did not grasp this did not grasp fascism, which is an international phenomenon.
The irrationalism in actions of the masses of the German people can be illustrated by the following contradictions: the masses of the German people wanted “freedom.” Hitler promised them authoritarian, strictly dictatorial leadership with the explict exclusion of any freedom of speech. Seventeen million out of thirty-one million voters jubilantly carried Hitler to power in March 1933. Those who watched the events with open eyes knew that the masses of people felt helpless and incapable of bearing the responsibility for the solution of the chaotic social problems within the old political framework and system of thinking. The Fiihrer should and would do it for them.
Hitler promised to eliminate democratic discussion of opinions. Masses of people flocked to him. They were tired of these discussions, because these discussions had always bypassed their personal everyday needs, that is, what was subjectively important. They did not want discussions about the “budget” and “high politics.” What they wanted was concrete, true knowledge about life. Not getting it, they threw themselves into the hands of authoritarian leadership and the illusionary protection they were now promised.
Hitler promised to do away with individual freedom and to establish “national freedom.” Masses of people enthusiastically exchanged the possibility of individual freedom for illusionary freedom, that is, freedom through identification with an idea. This illusionary freedom relieved them of all individual responsibility. They craved a “freedom” which the Fiihrer was going to conquer and secure for them: the freedom to yell; the freedom to escape from truth into the lies of political principle; the freedom to be sadistic; the freedom to boast, in spite of one’s actual nothingness, that one is a member of a superior race; the freedom to attract girls with uniforms instead of a strong sense of humanity; the freedom to sacrifice oneself for imperialistic aims instead of for the concrete straggle for a better life, etc.
The fact that masses of people had always been taught
to acknowledge traditional political authority instead of authority based on factual knowledge constituted the basis on which the fascistic demand for obedience could operate. Hence, fascism was not a new philosophy of life, as its friends and many of its enemies wanted to make people believe; still less had it anything to do with a rational revolution against intolerable social conditions. Fascism is merely the extreme reactionary consequence of all prior undemocratic forms of leadership within the framework of the social machinery. Even the racial theory was nothing new; it was merely the logical and brutal continuation of the old theories of heredity and degeneration. Hence, it was precisely the hereditary-oriented psychiatrists and eugenicists of the old school who were so accessible to the dictatorship.
What was new in the fascist mass movement was the fact that extreme political reaction succeeded in making use of the deep longings for freedom of the masses of people. Intense longing for freedom on the part of the masses, plus fear of the responsibility which freedom entails, produces fascist mentality, whether this longing and fear are found in a fascist or in a democrat. New in fascism was that the masses of the people affirmed and concretely implemented their own suppression. The need for authority proved to be stronger than the will to independence.
Hitler promised male supremacy. Women were to be relegated to the kitchen and home, denied the possibility of material independence, and excluded from the process of molding social life. Women, whose personal freedom had been suppressed for centuries, and who had developed an especially strong fear of leading an independent existence, were foremost in hailing him.
Hitler promised the destruction of the socialistic and bourgeois democratic organizations. Socialistic and bourgeois democratic masses of people flocked to him because, though their organizations spoke a great deal about freedom, they never even mentioned the difficult problem of the human craving for authority and the helplessness of the masses in practical politics. The masses of the people had been disappointed by the old democratic institutions.
Disappointment on the part of masses of people in liberal organizations, plus economic crisis, plus an irresistible will to freedom, produces fascist mentality, i.e., the willingness to surrender oneself to an authoritarian father figure.
Hitler promised an all-out fight against birth control and the sexual reform movement. In 1932, Germany comprised some 500,000 people who were members of organizations fighting for rational sexual reform. But these organizations always shied away from the central element of the problem —the longing for sexual happiness. Years of work among the masses of the people taught me that it is precisely this problem they want to have discussed. They were disappointed when they were given learned talks on demography, instead of being told how they should raise their children to be vitally alive, how adolescents should cope with their sexual and economic needs, and how married people should deal with their typical conflicts. The masses of the people seemed to feel that the suggestions on “techniques of love,” such as those given by Van de Velde, though profitable for the publisher, had nothing to do with what they were looking for, nor were they appealing. And so it happened that the disappointed masses of the people flocked to Hitler, who, even if mystically, appealed to their vital forces. Preaching about freedom leads to fascism unless a consistent and determined effort is made to inculcate in the masses of people a willingness to assume responsibility for everyday life, and unless there is an equally consistent and determined fight to establish the social preconditions for this responsibility.
For decades, German science had been fighting for the separation of the concept of sexuality from the concept of procreation. This struggle failed to bear fruit for the working masses, because it was of a purely academic nature and hence without social effect. Now Hitler came along and promised to make the idea of procreation, and not happiness in love, the basic principle of his cultural program. Brought up to be ashamed to call a spade a spade, compelled by all facets of the social system to say “eugenic higher breeding” when one meant “happiness in love/’ the masses flocked to Hitler, for he added a strong, even if irrational, emotion to the old concept. Reactionary concepts plus revolutionary excitement produce fascist feelings.
The Church had preached “happiness in the beyond” and, drawing upon the concept of sin, had planted deep in the human structure a helpless dependency on a supernatural, omnipotent figure. But the economic world crisis between 1929 and 1933 confronted the masses of the people with bitter earthly distress. It was neither socially nor individually possible for them to master this distress by themselves. Hitler appeared and declared himself to be an earthly, omnipotent, and omniscient Fiihrer, ordained by God, who could remove this mundane misery. The stage had been set to drive new masses of people to him, people who were hemmed in between their own individual helplessness and the minimal real gratification which the idea of happiness in the beyond offered them. Hence, an earthly god who let them shout “Heil” with all their might had greater emotional significance than a God whom they could never see and who no longer helped them, even emotionally. Sadistic brutality plus mysticism produces fascist mentality.
For years, Germany had been fighting in its schools and universities for the principle of a liberal school system, for voluntary achievement, and for the self-determination of the students. In the broad sphere of education, the responsible democratic authorities clung to the authoritarian principle, which instilled in the student a fear of authority and, at the same time, incited him to engage in irrational forms of rebellion. The liberal educational organizations did not enjoy any social protection. On the contrary, they were wholly dependent upon private financial aid, in addition to being exposed to the gravest dangers. It was not surprising, therefore, that these inchoate stirrings toward the non-compulsive restructuralization of the masses of the people remained a drop in the bucket. The youth flocked to Hitler by the thousands. He did not impose any responsibility upon them; he merely built upon their structures, which had been previously molded in the authoritarian families. Hitler was victorious in the youth movement because the democratic society had not done everything possible to educate the youth to lead a free and responsible life.
In place of voluntary achievement, Hitler promised the principle of compulsive discipline and mandatory work. Several million German workers and employees voted for Hitler. The democratic institutions had not only failed to cope with unemployment, they had shown themselves to be clearly afraid when it came right down to teaching the working masses of people to assume responsibility for their own work accomplishment. Brought up not to understand anything about the work process (indeed prevented from understanding it), accustomed to being excluded from having any part in the control of production and to merely receiving wages, these millions of workers and employees could easily accept the old principle in an intensified form. Now they could identify themselves with “the state” and “the nation,” which were “great and strong.” Hitler openly declared in his writings and speeches that since the masses of the people were childish and feminine, they merely repeated what was funneled into them. Masses of people hailed him, for here was a man who wanted to protect them.
Hitler demanded that all science be subordinated under the concept of “race.” Large segments of German science deferred to this demand, for the theory of race was rooted in the metaphysical theory of heredity. It is this theory, with its concepts of “inherited substances” and “predispositions,” that has repeatedly enabled science to shirk the responsibility for understanding life functions in their state of becoming and for actually comprehending the social origin of human behavior. It used to be customary to believe that when cancer, neurosis, or psychosis were declared to be hereditary, something highly significant had been said. The fascist theory of race merely an extension of the convenient theories of heredity.
There was hardly another dogma of German fascism as capable of inspiring masses of people as that of the “surging of the German blood” and of its “purity.” The purity of German blood meant freedom from “syphilis,” from “Jewish contamination.” In each and every one of us, there is a deep fear of venereal disease; it is a carry-over of childish genital anxiety. Hence, it is understandable that masses of people flocked to Hitler, for he promised them “purity of blood.” Every human being senses in himself what are called “cosmic or oceanic feelings.” Dry academic science felt it was too elevated to concern itself with such mysticism. This cosmic or oceanic longing which people feel is nothing other than the expression of their orgastic longing for life. Hitler appealed to this longing, and it is for this reason that the masses of people followed him and not the dry nationalists, who tried to suffocate these vague feelings of life with economic statistics.
From olden times, the “preservation of the family” has been an abstract slogan in Europe, behind which the most reactionary thoughts and actions were concealed. A person who criticized the compulsive authoritarian family and distinguished it from the natural relationship of love between children and parents was “an enemy of the fatherland,” a “destroyer of the sacred institution of the family,” an anarchist. As Germany became more and more industrialized, familial ties came into sharp conflict with this collective industrialization. There was no official organization that would have dared to single out what was sick in the family and to tackle the problem of parental suppression of children, family hatreds, etc. The typical authoritarian German family, particularly in the country and in small towns, hatched fascist mentality by the millions. These families molded the child according to the pattern of compulsive duty, renunciation, absolute obedience to authority, which Hitler knew how to exploit so brilliantly. By espousing the “preservation of the family,” and at the same time drawing the youth away from the family into its youth groups, fascism made allowances for familial ties as well as rebellion against the family. By stressing the emotional identity of “family,” “nation,” and “state,” fascism made possible a smooth transition from the structure of the family to the structure of the fascist state. True, not a single problem of the family nor the actual needs of the nation were solved by this, but it enabled masses of people to transfer their familial ties from the compulsive family to the larger “family,” the “nation.” The structural groundwork for this transfer had been well prepared over thousands of years. “Mother Germany” and “Father-God Hitler” became the symbols of deeply rooted infantile emotions. Identified with the “strong and unique German nation,” every citizen—no matter how nondescript or miserable he felt himself to be —could mean something, even if in an illusionary way. Finally, the interest in “race” was capable of absorbing and concealing the unleashed sources of sexuality. Adolescents could engage in sexual intercourse now if they alleged that they were propagating children in the interest of racial breeding.
It was not only that man’s natural vital forces remained buried; now they were forced to express themselves in far more disguished forms than ever before. As a result of this “revolution of the irrational,” there were more suicides and socio-hygienic misery in Germany than ever before. The death of tens of thousands in the war in honor of the German race constitutes the apotheosis of this witches’ dance.
The persecution of the Jews was part and parcel of the longings for “purity of blood,” i.e., purity from sins. The Jews tried to explain or to prove that they too had strict moral codes, that they too were nationalistic, that they too were “German.” Anthropologists who were against Hitler used skull measurements in an attempt to prove that the Jews were not an inferior race. Christians and historians attempted to explain that Jesus was of Jewish descent. In the persecution of the Jews, however, rational questions played no part; i.e., it was not a question of whether the Jews too were decent, whether they were racially inferior, or whether they had acceptable cranial indexes. These were not at all a part of the issue. It was something else entirely. Precisely on this point, the consistency and correctness of sex-economic thinking proved valid.
When the fascist says “Jew,” he means a definite irrational sensation. Irrationally, the “Jew” represents the
“money-maker,” the “usurer,” the “capitalist.” This is borne out by the depth-psychological treatment of Jews and non-Jews alike. At a deeper level, the concept “Jew” means “dirty,” “sensual,” “bestially sexual,” but also “Shylock,” “castrator,” “murderer.” Since the fear of natural sexuality is a deeply rooted as the horror of perverse sexuality, it is easily understood that the skillfully executed persecution of the Jews stirred the deepest sexual defense functions of people brought up in a sexually aberrant way. Drawing upon the concept “Jew,” it was possible to fully incorporate the anticapitalistic and antisexual attitude of the masses of people into the machinery of the fascist deluge. Unconscious longing for sexual joy in life and sexual purity coupled with fear of natural sexuality and horror of perverse sexuality produces fascist, sadistic anti-Semitism. “Frenchman” has the same meaning for the German as “Jew” and “black man” have for the unconsciously fascistic Englishman. “Jew,” “Frenchman,” and “black man” are terms for “sexually sensual.”
These were the unconscious factors which enabled the modem sex-propagandist of the twentieth century, the sexual psychopath and criminal pervert Julius Streicher, to put Der Stiirmer into the hands of millions of German adolescents and adults. In the pages of Der Stiirmer more than anywhere else, it became clear that sexual hygiene had ceased to be a problem of medical societies; it had, rather, become a question of decisive social significance. The following samples of Streicher’s fantasy will suffice to elucidate. We quote from issues of Stiirmer published in 1934:
Helmut Daube, 20, had just completed his first year at college. Toward two o’clock in the morning, he went home. At five in the morning, his parents found him lying dead on the street in front of their apartment building. His throat had been cut through to the spine, penis had been removed. There was no blood. The hands of the unfortunate boy were cut. He had been stabbed a number of times in the abdomen.
One day the old Jew fell upon the unsuspecting non-Jewish girl in the attic, raped and abused her. As time went on, he would sneak into her room, which could not be locked.
A young couple went for a walk outside of Paderbom and found a piece of flesh on the path. Upon closer examination, they discovered to their horror that it was the skillfully re- moved genital part of a female body.
The Jew had cut up [the body] into one pound pieces. Together with his father, he had scattered the pieces throughout the entire area. They were found in a small wood, in fields, in brooks, in a pond, in a creek, in a drainpipe and in the cesspool. The cut-off breasts were found in the hayloft.
While Moses strangled the child with a handkerchief, Samuel cut off a piece of his cheek with a knife. The others collected the blood in a basin, at the same time pricking the naked victim with needles. . . :
The woman’s resistance was not capable of cooling off his lust. On the contrary. He tried to close the window to prevent the neighbors from looking in. But then he again touched the woman in a vile, typically Jewish way. … He urgently persuaded the woman not to be so prudish. He locked all the windows and doors. His words and actions became more and more shameless. More and more he pushed his victim into the comer. All protestations were to no avail. He even laughed at her threats to cry out for help. He pushed the woman closer and closer to the couch. Verbally, he hurled the meanest and most obscene words at her. But then he pounced upon the woman*s body like a tiger and completed his diabolic work.
Until this point, many readers of this newspaper undoubtedly believed that I was exaggerating when 1 spoke of the psychic plague. I can only assure them that I am not introducing this concept frivolously, nor merely as a subtle figure of speech. I am quite serious about it. During the past seven years, the Stiirmer has not merely effectively confirmed the genital castration anxiety a million times
over in the German and other masses of people who read it. Over and above this, it has stirred and nourished the perverse fantasies that slumber in every one of us. After the downfall of the chief perpetuators of the psychic plague in Europe, it will remain to be seen how this problem will be dealt with. It is not a German but an international problem, for the longing for love and the fear of genitality are international facts. In Scandinavia, I was sought out by fascist adolescents who had managed to preserve a trace of natural feeling for life, and asked what attitude they should take toward Streicher, the racial theory, and the other “niceties.” Something was not quite right, they said. I summarized the necessary measures in a short resume, which I want to append here:
What Is to Be Done?
General: This reactionary filth has to be opposed with a well-organized and objectively correct elucidation of the difference between sick and healthy sexuality. Every average person will understand this difference because he feels it instinctively. Every average person is ashamed of his perverse, pathological ideas of sex and desires clarity, help, and natural sexual gratification.
We have to clarify and help!
- Collect all material which makes the pornographic character of Streicherism readily clear to every reasonable person. Circulate this material in leaflets! The healthy sexual interest of the masses has to be awakened, made conscious, and championed.
- Collect and circulate all material which will show the population that Streicher and his accomplices are psychopaths and are committing grave crimes against the health of the nation! There are Streichers everywhere in this world.
- Expose the secret of Streicher’s effect upon the masses: he provokes pathological fantasies. The people will gladly purchase and read good educational material.
- The pathological sexuality which forms the soil of Hitler’s racial theory and Stretcher’s crimes can be opposed most effectively by showing the people the natural and healthy
process and modes of behavior in sexual life. The people will immediately grasp this difference and demonstrate a burning interest for it, once they have understood what they really want and are afraid to articulate; among other things:
- Healthy and gratifying sexuality unconditionally presupposes the possibility of being alone and undisturbed with the loved partner. Thus, it is necessary to provide apartments for everyone who needs them, also for the youth.
- Sexual gratification is not identical with procreation. The healthy person has sexual intercourse about three to four thousand times during his life, but an average of only two or three children. Contraceptives are absolutely necessary for sexual health.
- Owing to their sexually suppressed upbringing, the vast majority of men and women are sexually disturbed, i.e., they remain ungratified by sexual intercourse. Thus, it is necessary to set up a sufficient number of clinics to treat sexual disturbances. A rational, sexually affirmative sex education is imperative.
- Youth is made sick by its masturbation conflicts. Only self-gratification which is free of guilt feelings is not detrimental to one’s health. Youth has a right to a happy life under the best conditions. Prolonged sexual abstinence is definitely harmful. Pathological fantasies disappear only with gratifying sexuality.
Fight for this right!
I know that leaflets and clarifications alone are not enough. What is needed is general, socially protected work on the human structure which produces the psychic plague and makes it possible for psychopaths to function as dictators and modem sexual propagandists who poison the life of everyone. In short, what is needed is the liberation and social protection of natural sexuality in the masses of the people.
In 1930, human sexuality was a social Cinderella, a subject discussed by questionable reform groups. Now, in 1940, it has become a pivotal social problem. If it is correct that fascism has been successful in irrationally exploiting the sexual longing for life on the part of masses of people and, in having done so, has created chaos, then it must also be correct that the perversions which it allowed to break lose can be mastered through the universal rational solution of the sexual problem.
In their profusion of mental hygiene problems, the events in Europe between 1930 and 1940 confirmed the position I had taken in my discussions with Freud. What was painful in this confirmation was the powerlessness I felt and the conviction I had that natural science was still a long way off from really comprehending what, in this book, I call the “biological core” of the character structure.
On the whole, both as individuals and as physicians and teachers, our position with respect to the biological deviations of life is just as helpless as was the position of the individual in the Middle Ages with respect to infectious diseases. At the same time, we feel certain that the experience of the fascist plague will mobilize the forces in the world which are needed to come to terms with this problem of civilization.
The fascists claim they are going to carry out the “biological revolution.” The truth is that fascism completely exposes the fact that the life function in man has become neurotic. From the point of view of the masses who follow it, an inflexible will to life is undoubtedly at work in fascism. But the forms in which this will to life has manifested itself reveal all too clearly the consequences of an ancient psychic enslavement. In fascism, only the perverse impulses have broken through. The post-fascist world will carry out the biological revolution which fascism did not produce but made necessary.
The following chapters of this book deal with the functions of the “biological core.” Its scientific comprehension and social mastery will be an achievement of rational work, militant science, and the natural function of love, an achievement of genuine democratic and collective efforts. The goal of these collective efforts is the earthly, material, and sexual happiness of masses of people.
