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
by Andreas Peglau
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In 1983 Helmut Dahmer reported in the journal Psyche on publications that took a stand on the identity of psychoanalysis in the late 1920s, early 1930s. Key points were, on the one hand, Wilhelm Reich’s pleas for a rapprochement of psychoanalysis and Marxism, on the other hand, the emphasis on the scientific-objective, therefore „non-political“ character of analysis as well as the distancing from „leftist“ psychoanalysis interpretation and Bolshevism.
Dahmer also pointed out that something comparable had already occurred „on the eve of World War I,“ „in the form of a discussion of the relationship between psychoanalysis and ‚philosophy'“ (Dahmer 1983, p. 1133). This earlier controversy is also worthy of consideration. Weiterlesen
by Andreas Peglau[1]
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Johannes Cremerius (1995, p. 47) assess that psychoanalysis only has a future if it undergoes „tidying up“ in concept formation instead of continuing to stumble along „rubble heaps of arbitrary, ambiguous terms or that are understandable only to the initiated.“ Even „in the center of psychoanalytic theorizing“ one encounters „generalizing ideas,“ „private philosophies,“ which have never been clarified and passed on without reflection (see also here).
I share this view. Weiterlesen
by Andreas Peglau[1]
For a better understanding of the following text, it is recommended to read first 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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Even before Reich moved from Norwegian exile to the U.S. in 1939, the final failure of what Reich had called the „Sex-Pol movement“ had occurred. The reasons for this were, on the one hand, harassment by the Norwegian authorities and defamation by various media and academics in the country. In addition, there were internal conflicts within the Norwegian sex-pol group and some elitist ideas of Reich. For example, he wanted only those who had been trained by him in character analysis to be considered „core troops“ of the movement. Already when Reich planned the work program for the following year in the summer of 1937, the „Sex-Pol“ was no longer mentioned.
But does what was disintegrating there really deserve the title „movement“? Weiterlesen
by Andreas Peglau[1]
Im Auftrag der Firma. Geschichte und Folgen einer unerwarteten Liaison zwischen Psychoanalyse und militärisch-nachrichtendienstlichen Netzwerken der USA seit 1940 (On behalf of the company. History and consequences of an unexpected liaison between psychoanalysis and military-intelligence networks of the USA since 1940) by Knuth Müller.
Psychosozial-Verlag Gießen 2017, 2 volumes, together 1,157 pages. With a foreword by Klaus-Jürgen Bruder. € 99.
The psychoanalyst Felix Schottlaender wrote in 1931: „Psychoanalysis is of course ‚apolitical‘. It […] is […] a natural-scientific discipline which, by its very object of research, can enter into the great social questions only as an impartial authority serving the truth.“[2]
Thus Schottlaender was in line with Sigmund Freud who increasingly wanted to see the doctrine he founded as an objective „research method, an instrument without partiality“[3]. „Psychoanalysis is also a natural science. What else should it be?“ asked Freud shortly before his death.[4]
After all, he never wanted his creation to be reduced to a mere treatment technique.
But this is exactly where the journey was headed. Weiterlesen
by Andreas Peglau
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In December 1929, Reich and Freud exchanged blows at one of the discussion evenings organized by the latter in Vienna. The central point was Reich’s conviction that prophylaxis of sexual and neurotic disorders was as necessary as it was possible – a view that Freud had also held, but in earlierer times. Now, however, Freud vehemently opposed Reich’s theses, qualifying them as allegedly „completely unpsychological.“
Children of the Future can be read as a balance sheet of what Reich opposed to Freud in his remaining life span in research and practical activity. Weiterlesen
by Andreas Peglau[1]
Psychoanalysis was far less suppressed under National Socialism than is usually assumed, even by experts. This – and the special position of Wilhelm Reich – is also proven by the files of the Foreign Office, which was responsible for expatriations at that time, evaluated here for the first time. Weiterlesen