Wilhelm Reich - The Sexual Revolution: Toward a Self-Regulating Character Structure

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Contents

Love, work, and knowledge are the wellsprings of our life. They should also govern it.

W ILHELM R EICH

Preface to the Fourth Edition ( 1949 )

Twenty years have passed since the material for the first part of this book was gathered in Austria and, under the title of Geschlechtsreife, Enthaltsamkeit, Ehemoral , was turned over to the Mnster Verlag in Vienna for publication. Twenty years are of little account in the realm of biology, but in that stormy portion of the twentieth century more misery was inflicted on humanity than in preceding centuries. We may say that all concepts formulated by men to explain and shed light on their lives have been brought into question and have remained unresolved for two decades. Among those concepts none has collapsed so completely as that of compulsory sexual morality, which unshakably ruled human existence a mere thirty years ago. We are living through a true revolution of all values regarding sexual life. And among those values most seriously undermined are those relating to infant and adolescent sexuality.

In 1928, when I founded the Socialist Society for Sexual Consultation and Sexual Research in Vienna, the genital rights of children and adolescents were denied. It was unthinkable for parents to tolerate sexual play, let alone to regard such manifestations as part of a natural, healthy development. The mere thought that adolescents would satisfy their need for love in the natural embrace was horrifying. Anyone who even mentioned these rights was slandered. Resistance to the first attempts to guarantee the love life of children and adolescents united groups of people who otherwise were violently opposed to each other: members of all religious denominations, socialists, Communists, psychologists, physicians, psychoanalysts, etc. In my counseling office for sexual hygiene and in our meetings to promote mental hygiene, which many Austrians may still recall, there were moralists and sophists who predicted the downfall of the human race as a result of immorality. Politicians who irresponsibly promised the masses heaven on earth expelled us from their organizations because we fought for the rights of children and adolescents to have a natural love life. Our purely clinical defense of biological needs pointed to necessary changes in the whole social and economic structure of society. It would be necessary to have apartments for adolescents; a secure livelihood for parents, educators, and adolescents; characterological restructuring of educators; criticism of all political trends that base their activities and existence on the characterological helplessness of man; the inner self-sufficiency of human beings and, with it, of the masses of humanity; the development of self-regulation in children which would lead eventually to independent adults. These would be the beginnings of a great revolution in the biological constitution of man.

The pressure exerted from all sides on this social-hygiene work was so strong that I decided to move to Germany. In September 1930 I gave up my flourishing medical practice and my psychoanalytic teaching in Vienna and went to Berlin. Since then I have been back to Austria only once, in April 1933. During that brief sojourn, in an address to a large gathering of Viennese university students, I was able to outline some of my conclusions about Fascism. To me, as a psychiatrist and biologist, the German catastrophe resulted from the biological helplessness of masses of human beings who had come under the spell of a handful of power-hungry bandits. I was grateful for the understanding that Viennas academic youth afforded me at that time; but not a single politician deigned to listen to me.

Since then, the problem of the biology of the human animal has grown infinitely. Today, March 1949, in the United States, we are in the midst of severe struggles for the recognition of a biological revolution which has gripped humanity for several decades. It would lead us too far afield to go into detail at this point. But one fact must be strongly emphasized.

What appeared so alien and dangerous in the Austria of 19201930 is today, in 1949, the subject of lively public debate in America. This change came about circa 1946, shortly after the end of World War II. It became evident in an increasing number of articles in the daily papers which endorsed the naturalness of genital self-gratification for the child. The all-encompassing mental-hygiene movement has penetrated public consciousness in the United States. It is now recognized that the future of the human race depends on resolving the problem of human character structure . Particularly during the last two decades the concept of self-regulation has become popular in child education and is now beginning to appeal to large masses of people. Of course, here as elsewhere, we find the highly placed sexual hypocrite, the government bureaucrat, the political climber of the worst sort, who becomes indignant when he hears of self-regulation. But there can be no doubt that the mental-hygiene movement and the affirmation of the natural biological sexuality of children and adolescents are steadily progressing. They can no longer be stopped. The negation of life is being confronted by the affirmation of life.

I am not saying that victory has already been gained. We still face decades of arduous dispute. But I do say that the basic affirmation of natural love life is advancing inexorably, in spite of numerous and dangerous foes. To my knowledge, America is the only country where life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are anchored in the Constitution. Let me assure the reader that I, too, am fully aware of reactionary trends in the United States. But here, as nowhere else, there is the possibility of striving for happiness and for human rights. Thousands of copies of Alexander Neills book The Problem Family, which fully endorses the principle of sex-economy in education, were sold soon after publication. The present volume, The Sexual Revolution, has also been favorably received. In America, there are powerful and well-established parent-teacher organizations which defend the principle of self-regulation and, with it, of sex-economy for the child. Universities teach the life principle, including its sexual elements. Here and there one encounters hesitation, silence, even hostility, but sexual hygiene for the masses is making strong progress.

It would have pleased me to enlarge this book and bring it up to date with contemporary knowledge, but I had to forgo this. The book forms a comprehensive whole in reflecting the sexual-political conditions of the 1920s; essentially, it is still valid today. The scientific and medical findings made since 1930 in the field of sex-economy have all been published in extenso. Hence, I present The Sexual Revolution in virtually unchanged form. In so doing, I must emphasize once again that for more than seventeen years my work has been independent of all political movements and parties. It has become a piece of work about human life, a work which has often been in sharp conflict with the political threat to human life.