by Andreas Peglau[1]
What follows is an edited version of a lecture, held on June 30, 2023, for the lecture series “Psychological Anthropology: Militarism and War” at the University of Cologne. The following English text is based on a translation done by DeepL Translate, as corrected and revised by Stephen A. Cooper. Weiterlesen
von Andreas Peglau[1]
Ein organisierter, gewaltsam und mit Waffen ausgetragener Konflikt zwischen Staaten oder größeren Gruppen von Menschen. Krieg zu führen bedeutet in jedem Fall, bereit zu sein, andere Menschen zu töten.
Wären wir „geborene Krieger“, würde die Bereitschaft, andere Menschen ohne Gewissensbisse zu verletzten und zu vernichten, zu unserer seelischen Grundausstattung gehören. Wir würden damit auf die Welt kommen.
Das müsste sich daher auch lebenslang irgendwie zeigen – und zwar im Prinzip schon immer und überall, seit es Menschen gibt. Weiterlesen
Dass in dieser Sendung Jugendliche u.a. erzählten, Ernst Thälmann könne für sie kein Vorbild sein, weil es einen so fehlerlosen Menschen doch gar nicht gegeben haben könne, wurde damals von einer Westberliner Zeitung zustimmend aufgegriffen. Das führte dazu, dass alle Rundfunkabteilungen sich diese Sendung anhören mussten, um sich kritisch mit ihr auseinanderzusetzen und trug dazu bei, dass meine Chefin strafversetzt wurde. Dass mir der Rauswurf aus dem DDR-Rundfunk erspart blieb, lag wohl nur nur an der Prominenz meines damaligen Gesprächspartners Reiner Werner.
Länge: 52 Minuten
In 2013, my dissertation „Unpolitische Wissenschaft? Wilhelm Reich und die Psychoanalyse im Nationalsozialismus“ was first published as a book. In 2015, the second edition followed and in 2017, the Psychosozial-Verlag Gießen brought it out in a third and expanded edition.
In a review, philosopher Werner Abel described it as „one of the most important books on the history of psychoanalysis, making its decline from a socially critical theory and practice to a medicalised, supposedly ‚apolitical‘ science comprehensible in detail for the first time.“.
The psychoanalyst Bernd Nitzschke stated: „The interweaving between the fate of psychoanalysis in the Nazi state and the history of Wilhelm Reich’s exclusion, persecution and emigration, which Peglau meticulously reconstructs, is the lynchpin of the book, which is an indispensable reference point for anyone who wants to deal with the Nazi history of psychoanalysts without blinkers in the future.“
I then compiled some of the most important results of my years of research in 2019 – with the kind permission of Psychosozial Verlag – in an abridged version in the orignal German. It has since been downloaded several thousand times from my website.
In order to make this information even more widely available, I have now supplemented and updated the text and translated it into English with the help of DeepL. Weiterlesen
by Andreas Peglau[1]
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Each and every one of us has – at least unconsciously – an image or concept of Man: Assumptions about what people are like in general, good or bad, capable of learning and changing or not, reliable or unreliable, lazy or industrious, under what circumstances they feel comfortable, how they react in a particular situation, what makes them happy, sad or angry, what drives them, what can influence them, etc.
Depending on what we consider to be true in this respect, we also assess what causes and remedies there are for negative social developments – such as the fascistoid ones. Weiterlesen
Please note the following: My English skills are not very good. Most of the following texts were therefore first translated with DeepL and then corrected by me. I am sure that there are still translation errors in these articles – and ask those who discover such errors to send a message to info@andreas-peglau-psychoanalyse.de
The „English section“ also contains some articles that are not available as pdf.
by Andreas Peglau [0]
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It was already clear that Düsseldorf and the Lower Rhine region played an important role for the sexual reform organization that Wilhelm Reich was involved in founding and leading. It was also known that Reich had a significant influence on the founding conference of the first „Unified Association for Proletarian Sexual Reform and Maternity Protection“ (UA), which took place in Düsseldorf on May 2, 1931 (see here). A number of things can now be added to this. Weiterlesen
by Andreas Peglau[1]
For a better understanding of this text and what Reich called „Sexpol“, it is recommended to read in advance The Unified Associations for Proletarian Sexual Reform and Maternity Protection and Wilhelm Reich’s real role in the German „Sex-pol“
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Already during his lifetime Reich was the victim of intense slanders. They never stopped. Peter Bahnen has the merit of being the first to reconstruct Reich’s sexual reform activities in Berlin. However, this was done on the basis of a clearly negative bias against Reich. Bahnen also doubted Reich’s figures about the „German Sex-pol“. Weiterlesen
by Andreas Peglau[0]
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A „campaign of character assassination that continues to the present day“ (Nitzschke 1997a, p. 91) was and is ongoing against Reich.[1] Already during his Scandinavian exile (1933-1939), former colleagues of Reich, including his former teaching analysts Paul Federn[2] and Sándor Rado, put the claim into the world that Reich had gone mad. Preferably, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia (Cremerius 1997, p. 144). Weiterlesen
by Andreas Peglau
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Wilhelm Reich was friends with the communist and anti-fascist Theodor Neubauer (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodor_Neubauer), who was executed in 1945.
Reich mentions him in reference to dogmatic KPD officials:
„My friend Neugebauer [sic], who was a Reichstag deputy of the Communist faction and a brilliant, scientifically trained sociologist and a decent fellow, once said to me: ‚What should one do?‘ They should be thrown out, but will there be better things to come? We lack the trained intelligence.
For the time being, there is nothing to do but grit our teeth.'“
(Reich 1995, p. 160)
Reich, his wife Annie, and Neubauer also spent a short vacation together at the Baltic Sea in 1932. Weiterlesen