Wilhelm Reich - Listen, little man!

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the authors copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

Contents

You sanctimonious philistines, who scoff at me!

What has your politics fed on

since youve been ruling the world?

On butchery and murder!

Charles de Coster, T ILL U LENSPIEGEL

PREFACE

L ISTEN , L ITTLE M AN ! is a human, not a scientific document. It was written in the summer of 1946 for the Archives of the Orgone Institute. At the time there was no intention of publishing it. It reflects the inner turmoil of a scientist and physician who had observed the little man for many years and seen, first with astonishment, then with horror, what he does to himself; how he suffers, rebels, honors his enemies and murders his friends; how, wherever he acquires power in the name of the people, he misuses it and transforms it into something more cruel than the tyranny he had previously suffered at the hands of upper-class sadists.

This appeal to the little man was a silent response to gossip and slander. When it was written, no one could foresee that a government agency charged with the safeguard of public health, in league with politicians and psychoanalytical careerists, would unleash an attack on orgone research. The decision to publish this appeal as a historical document was made in 1947, when the emotional plague conspired to kill orgone research (n.b., not to prove it unsound but to kill it by defamation). It was felt that the common man must learn what a scientist and psychiatrist actually is and what he, the little man, looks like to his experienced eye. He must be made acquainted with the reality which alone can counteract his ruinous craving for authority and be told very clearly what a grave responsibility he bears in everything he does, whether he is working, loving, hating, or just talking. He must learn how he gets to be a black or red fascist. Anyone who is fighting for the safeguard of life and the protection of our children must necessarily oppose red as well as black fascism. Not because the red fascists, like the black fascists in their day, have a murderous ideology but because they make cripples, puppets, and moral idiots of living healthy children; because they exalt the state over justice, lies over truth, and war over life; because children and the preservation of the life-force that is in them are the only hope we have left. An educator and physician knows only one allegiance: to the life-force in child and patient. If he is true to this allegiance, he will find simple answers to his political problems.

This appeal does not ask to be taken as a guide to life. It describes the emotional storms of a productive individual who loves life. It does not propose to convince or to win adherents. It sets forth experience as a painting sets forth a storm. It makes no plea for the readers sympathy. It formulates no program. The scientist and thinker asks but one thing of the reader: a personal reaction such as poets and philosophers have always been assured of. It is a hard-working scientists protest against the secret, unavowed design of the emotional plague to destroy him with poison arrows shot from a secure hiding place. It shows what the emotional plague is, how it functions and how it obstructs progress. It is also a profession of faith in the vast treasures that lie untapped in the depths of human nature, ready to be utilized for the fulfillment of human hopes.

Those who are truly alive are kindly and unsuspecting in their human relationships and consequently endangered under present conditions. They assume that others think and act generously, kindly, and helpfully, in accordance with the laws of life. This natural attitude, fundamental to healthy children as well as to primitive man, inevitably represents a great danger in the struggle for a rational way of life as long as the emotional plague subsists, because the plague-ridden impute their own manner of thinking and acting to their fellow men. A kindly man believes that all men are kindly, while one infected with the plague believes that all men lie and cheat and are hungry for power. In such a situation the living are at an obvious disadvantage. When they give to the plague-ridden, they are sucked dry, then ridiculed or betrayed.

This has always been true. It is high time for the living to get tough, for toughness is indispensable in the struggle to safeguard and develop the life-force; this will not detract from their goodness, as long as they stand courageously by the truth. There is ground for hope in the fact that among millions of decent, hard-working people there are only a few plague-ridden individuals, who do untold harm by appealing to the dark, dangerous drives of the armored average man and mobilizing him for political murder. There is but one antidote to the average mans predisposition to plague: his own feeling for true life. The life-force does not seek power but demands only to play its full and acknowledged part in human affairs. It manifests itself through love, work, and knowledge.

Anyone who wants to safeguard the life-force from the emotional plague must learn to make at least as much use of the right of free speech that we enjoy in America for good ends as the emotional plague does for evil ones. Granted equal opportunity for expression, rationality is bound to win out in the end. That is our great hope.

Youre a little man, a common man

T HEY CALL YOU Little Man, or Common Man. They say your day has dawned, the Age of the Common Man.

You dont say that, little man. They do, the vice presidents of great nations, the labor leaders, the repentant sons of the bourgeoisie, the statesmen and philosophers. They give you the future, but they ask no questions about your past.

Youve inherited a terrible past. Your heritage is a burning diamond in your hand. Thats what I have to tell you.

A doctor, a shoemaker, mechanic, or educator has to know his shortcomings if he is to do his work and earn his living. For several decades now you have been taking over, throughout the world. The future of the human race will depend on your thoughts and actions. But your teachers and masters dont tell you how you really think and what you really are; no one dares to confront you with the one truth that might make you the unswerving master of your fate. You are free in only one respect: free from the self-criticism that might help you to govern your own life.

Ive never heard you complain: You exalt me as the future master of myself and my world. But you dont tell me how a man becomes master of himself, and you dont tell me whats wrong with me, whats wrong with what I think and do.

You let the powerful demand power for the little man. But you yourself are silent. You provide powerful men with more power or choose weak, malignant men to represent you. And you discover too late that you are always the dupe.

I understand you. Because time and time again Ive seen you naked in body and soul, without your mask, political label, or national pride. Naked as a newborn babe, naked as a field marshal in his underclothes. Ive heard you weep and lament; youve told me your troubles, laid bare your love and yearning. I know you and understand you. Im going to tell you what you are, little man, because I really believe in your great future. Because the future undoubtedly belongs to you, take a look at yourself. See yourself as you really are. Hear what none of your leaders or spokesmen dares to tell you: