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Right? The guy never caught a break from persecution.

However wacky he became, Reich was one of the few in psychiatry to focus on prevention over treatment of mental illness. When he investigated the root causes of mental illness in his patients, he saw the conditions of modern life were often the source of the harm. He advocated a radical re-engineering of society so that it meets people's fundamental social, spiritual, and organismic needs.

He saw fascism as a symptom of structural failures to meet these needs. Fascism is not so much an authoritarian political movement as mass mental illness. His model suggests that in such circumstances you'd see disordered thinking across the political spectrum. People's tolerance for ambiguity diminishes, tribalism increases, and we grasp at simple solutions. This flailing fails to address the systemic problems leading to positive feedback that further corrodes the social fabric. That sounds like an accurate description of the present moment.

He also was the first psychotherapist to break the taboo against working phsyically with patients, thus inventing what is now called bodywork or somatic psychotherapy.

"Don't worry about people stealing your ideas. If they're any good you'll have to cram them down people's throats."

You've provided a pretty good synopsis of his book "The Function of the Orgasm". Cheers!

Burning is not an euphemism here, thanks for mentioning it.

From Wikipedia:

>On 23 August, six tons of Reich's books, journals and papers were burned in New York, at the Gansevoort incinerator, a public incinerator on 25th Street. The material included copies of several of his books, including The Sexual Revolution, Character Analysis and The Mass Psychology of Fascism. Although these had been published in German before Reich ever discussed orgone, he had added mention of it to the English editions, so they were caught by the injunction.

Publishing the Mass Psychology of Fascism had him kicked from the German Communist Party before.

Another pretty random bit of information, i recently stumbled about his Sex-Pol movement in another context as the Mitrokhin Archive alleges that Arnold Deutsch (Recruiter of Kim Philby of the Cambridge five) was a follower of said movement. Pretty sure thats a great example or the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baader-Meinhof_effect

>Frequency illusion, also known as the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon or frequency bias, is a cognitive bias referring to the tendency to notice something more often after noticing it for the first time, leading to the belief that it has an increased frequency of occurrence.

One of my favorite radical psychoanalysts.

He has a stellar analysis of fascism in "The Mass-Psychology of Fascism." It's almost frightening how prescient he was not only for it's 1933 publication but for our current day as well. I wish more folks would check him out.

His fascination with orgone adds a lot of color to his work. I hope people don't write off his radical analyses for that. Despite the pseudoscience, he does get to the root of things. Great life-affirming stuff.

thanks for the book rec.

Who are your other favorite radical psychoanalysts?

Definitely Guattari! Anti-Oedipus, which he wrote with Deleuze, is a trip and really wonderful. That's actually how I came across Reich.

Guattari is interesting for pioneering schizoanalysis at the La Borde clinic. He's also one of the most confusing writers I've ever come across, so I recommend the books cowritten with Deleuze over his solo stuff. He's got some whimsy to him just like Reich does.

Not psychoanalysts, but: CG Jung, Fritz Perls?

Jessica Benjamin and her book "The Bonds of Love" really struck a chord with me. I believe that her concept "gender polarity" fundamentally underlies old and modern "gender wars".

Other books and authors I found really interesting:

- Estela Welldon and her Book "Mother, Madonna, Whore"

- Sándor Ferenczi, who was a close associate of Freud and pioneered the concept of "Identification with the Aggressor", which seems to be the driving force behind what we call "transgenerational inheritance" of trauma. His concept of the "confusion of tongues" between child and pathological adult is also very interesting!

- Mathias Hirsch, a german psychoanalyst who wrote a lot about trauma, love, sexual abuse and was not afraid to explore stigmatized topics. For example:

  - the effects of sexual relations between analysts and their patients (he saw parallels to incestous abuse in a parent-child relationship)
  - sexually abusive mothers and the idealization of motherhood
  - the fact that his pyschoanalyst Günther Ammon, who later became his boss at the Deutsche Akademie für Psychoanalyse, controlled the academy in a cult-like fashion

Not to oversimplify, but Reich saw a direct connection between the urge to fascism and the failure to find a state of sexual contentment (for lack of a better word).

While it may not be direct, groups like internet incels blame lack of sexual contentment for basically their entire life situation and there are tinges of fascism in a lot of their ideology. A lack of agency in one aspect of life might increase the desire for control/belonging in another aspect.

The people you describe as incels don't have an ideology.

If they do, then any group of people with a common set of complaints and frustrations has an ideology (such as black people? women? men? our military is an ideology now?). At that point the word ceases to have any useful meaning.

What is it with people nowadays wanting to apply words that are wholly inappropriate?

apparently being frustrated that women won't sleep with you is fascism?

>If they do, then any group of people with a common set of complaints and frustrations has an ideology

I specified "internet incels" as they group together into a community online, rather than incels in the world, silently suffering. If a group of people who form a community because of a common bond remain a community for long enough, it will begin to have an ideology as most people in the group agree with certain ideas. A good example of this is black pill incels -- they believe themselves to be completely undesirable and instead of remaining hopeful, they turn to hate and try to convince other incels to "abandon any hopes of having a relationship with a woman because women are ACTUALLY the problem".

Sure, some people can come to this opinion without the help of peers egging them on, but if a group is trying to convince themselves and others of a certain idea, then that is an ideology after it remains in the community for long enough.

>apparently being frustrated that women won't sleep with you is fascism?

Reich (who the original article is about) believed the tendency toward fascism was related to the tendency to not being sexually satisfied. So in this respect, no, frustration does not equal fascism. What Reich might argue for is frustration leading one on a path to fascism, much like how hunger might lead a man on a path to highway robbery.

It's not like it's a cause so much as an observation that people who aren't satisfied in some way are more likely to seek that satisfaction somewhere else, and replacing one satisfaction for another is powerful.

When in doubt, put the word "online" in front of it, that way your bologna seems more palatable.

Personally, I think if you're going to rail against an "online ideology" it should be the hackernews ideology, where people come together online and agree that software is interesting.

Sure, because people following the HN ideology have been involved in shootings because they swallowed the black pill so hard they used their death as a manifesto of why interesting software is interesting.

Oh wait, no, that was an internet incel[1]. Hacker News doesn't seem to intentionally choose hate and push others to choose hate. Internet incels do.

1.https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43892189

In the 80's these things were blamed on D&D, in the 90's on video games, I guess nowadays it's "ideology".

regardless, you just moved the goalpost. HN meets your definition of ideology. It does so because your definition is flawed. You recognize this, which is why you've now added the requirement of murderousness.

I haven't moved any goalposts. I never said an ideology has to be murderous to be an ideology. Something being an ideology is not automatically a negative. I also never said that ideologies must be "railed against."

Regardless of what you think, or how I present my argument, the fact is that hateful incel communities tend to produce hateful, antisocial people. They do not attempt to raise each other up because they aren't there to be raised up -- they are there to feel one with a community that understands their pain. That pain is real, and it causes people to lash out. When these people DO lash out, the incel community often considers them a martyr.

If you can't recognize that as an ideology adopted because the people in pain gather together, it seems like it's either because you don't want to, or you aren't arguing in good faith in the first place. I recognize their pain. I recognize the human connection they crave and partially sate by being part of an online community of fellow lonely men. I recognize the powerlessness they feel when faced with society belittling them and their pain. Desperate, powerless people tend to make the most unhinged decisions because that's all they feel is left for them.

This is called post hoc rationalization.

You don't like the community or its opinions and are stretching for any reason to blame them for things, this is why you call them having a common interest as an ideology but would not present a community of soccer enthusiasts the same way.

This is _why_ you moved the goalpost to needing some sort of hatefulness (note your switch to using exactly that word) because you discovered you needed to split that hair even finer than you already were.

just stop it.

>this is why you call them having a common interest as an ideology but would not present a community of soccer enthusiasts the same way.

You keep trying to hammer this point when the fruit of what comes out of a community matters when discussing what that community believes. However, instead of belaboring this further I'll just point to something[1] that carries more weight than my anonymous words, where they discuss the incel ideology because it actually exists:

"Across our quantitative analysis of the distribution and associations made with identity terms, we see evidence of an ideology where physical appearance determines human value, as has been found with prior work on incels (Maxwell et al., 2020; Baele et al., 2021; Pruden, 2021). This ideology essentializes social constructs, such as race and gender, as biological physical features impacting desirability, with controversy over the role of race."

1. https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.15745

oh snap, humans who think physical appearance matters!?!?! I'm shocked ... shocked I tell you.

>"Particularly pernicious is a black-pilled ideology that physical appearance determines human value, a reinforcement and extension of essentialized gender and racial hierarchies"

Firstly, are we done arguing whether incels have an ideology then? And secondly, no, physical appearance doesn't just matter, it's ESSENTIAL for them. Your value is pegged to your attractiveness. Nothing you do or change matters. Give up, lay down and rot, and hate.

>"An increasing politicization is reflected in this example post: “we don’t need society to completely accept the incel ideology, we just need to masquerade as normies and keep bashing women, jews and gays.”

The fact that you are minimizing all of the negativity that comes from the incel communities with snarky replies just underlines that you don't seem to be arguing in good faith.

you can't win here.

Some Blacks commit murder, some blacks spout hate, therefore anyone who defends blacks as a group is trying to minimize the negativity that comes out of black communities.

The issue is that you dislike a _group_ of people and have tried to justify that dislike after the fact. That's what post hoc rationalization IS.

>you can't win here.

I wasn't aware there was a win condition to a conversation online.

>The issue is that you dislike a _group_ of people

I dislike a self-selecting group of people because of the things that self-selecting group believes and does. What other reason does anyone have for disliking anyone else? This entire time I have been talking about a specific, self-selecting group of people online, and you keep arguing as though I am talking about the entirety of every incel on the planet, whether they get online and take part in incel communities or not. That is clearly not what I am arguing for.

You didn't like me saying that online incels have an ideology. You argued I used that word wrong because you didn't agree with the scope as I described it, and instead expanded the scope yourself to try to point out how you think it's a ridiculous claim. Then we've been arguing about your expanded scope while you tell me I moved the goalposts because you didn't like where I "put" the goalposts in the first place. I get it, I'm never going to convince you. So have a nice day :)

Internet Archive: <https://archive.org/details/wilhelm-reich-the-mass-psycholog...> (full text)

Wikipedia: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mass_Psychology_of_Fascism>

> Kate Bush's lovely "Cloudbusting" is about Reich

If you fancy something a little more lively, Utah Saints 'Something Good' samples it heavily

The video is also amusing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m97WlpsuU74

Speaking of Cloudbusting samples, how about Orgonon Gurlz?

Goddamn youngster. That's the modern remix which is somehow now 15 years old itself. By the way, The Utah Saints are the pool players in that video.

This is the original. I prefer it personally - just tidier and showcases Kate Bush better but then I am old and loved it back in '92. The video is... well I guess it shows every penny of it's £5 budget. Maybe some 90s pop/rave nostalgia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixMWhpg0iXU

Good tune - it was used for the Royal Wedding back in whenever ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1h_FcW2pIM

PS 'London Records' puts up a lot of video clips from that original era that have been cleaned up and restored, eg:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xg9Wqs4vjZM

is a cleaner looking version of the original video you linked to.

Hah, never seen that before. If Rowan Williams had been a bit more subtle it would have convinced me for much longer than it did!

> By the way, The Utah Saints are the pool players in that video.

Well that's something I didn't know. Thanks for that.

I still like New Gold Dream a lot

"The Cosmic Pulse of Life" by Trevor James Constable has a decent section on Wilhelm Reich with particular emphasis on Orgone Accumulators and Cloudbusters (including diagrams and photos of the author's own devices).

An interesting book which also includes details of Ruth B Drown and her Radionics devices, plus attracting and then photographing plasma lifeforms in infrared.

I'm not recommending it as a serious scientific treatise (I've no expertise in the relevant fields to allow me to either endorse or debunk [though the latter is the usual assumption]), but rather as an interesting read.

I love Cloudbusting but have to admit that some of the stories of his treatment of his son in A Book of Dreams were quite harrowing to me. He also is quite admirable to me in many ways so I guess, as always, it's complicated!

I haven't read the book - is it worth it? I'm fine with harrowing stories. (The memoir by Alice Miller's son, for example.)

Since you're interested in Reich, I'd say yes. There is an undercurrent of sexual energy throughout the story that I find uncomfortable given that it is a son telling his father's story. I just skimmed through and early on there is a scene when Peter is about 9 years old and Wilhelm is asking Peter about his love life, talking about why Peter isn't circumcised and then explains that a waitress is nice to Peter because she wants to have sex with Wilhelm. It may be the prude American in me, but I'm not sure that Peter was ready to be having those conversations at that age.

"but I'm not sure that Peter was ready to be having those conversations at that age."

If he was raised in a open manner like this before(I don't know that), then I don't think this would have been a problem. Children understand way more, than most people usually asume. Sexuality is something natural. Only when it is taboo, talking about it directly can create psychological pressure that could indeed cause harm, as then they don't know how to deal with the situation. So having those conversations with someone who was raised in a monastery before could indeed be troublesome - or liberating, if the boy is glad he finally found someone who he can speak openly about things, no one else would dare to explain.

My reaction is based on the tone of the book as much as cultural expectations.

> explains that a waitress is nice to Peter because she wants to have sex with Wilhelm

Or just wanted a tip. 10/10 for optimism though

Just the tip?

Also Patti Smith's Birdland!

This I didn't know! But Patti as a Reich fan makes sense.

> Kate Bush's lovely "Cloudbusting" is about Reich, based on the book his son wrote about driving around the Maine countryside with WR and his cloudbusting machine.

If memory serves, I saw an interview with KB where she said the book was written by Reich's son when he was in a Swiss hospital recovering from a motorcycle accident.

I got the idea that the book was a product of withdrawal from painkillers. Making it rather like Naked Lunch.

I can't imagine that being true. The Nazi's learned a lot from the US's eugenics and segregation programs and the Soviets, while progressive on women's issues, were just as homophobic, ableist, and racist. I imagine there was quite a bit of overlap between these three nations in terms of censorship, bannings, and burnings.

And now it has been China's turn too. A superpower affliction perhaps.

> Soviets, while progressive on women's issues

We’re they ever actually, in the sense that they wanted to improve women‘s lives for simply moral reasons? It always seemed to me to be merely for 1. the purpose of increasing their workforce and economical productivity, and 2. the weakening of family ties for easier indoctrination of the youth.

Women already worked in low level factories and such when feasible. Because of need to eat. What was new was limiting the workday for women (or moms) to shorter then men had.