reich

[Neil McLaughlin]

In what ways then was Reich "on board" with the Frankfurt School in any sustained
way?  What would it mean for him to "officially" break with them?
This all sounds to me like a socially constructed "origin myth" created after the
fact, by scholars of  the 1960s generation.
But maybe I am wrong.  Is there is historian in the house?

Neil McLaughlin



Christopher Gunn wrote:

> At 10:39 AM 5/5/00 -0400, Ralph Dumain <rdumain@igc.org> wrote:
> >At 12:01 AM 05/05/2000 -0500, Christopher Gunn wrote:
> >>get back to the real Frankfurt stuff, i.e., what Adorno, Horkheimer, Reich,
> >>Marcuse, Fromm had to say prior to about 1950
> >
> >Reich was involved with the Frankfurt School in some way?
>
> Yeah, Reich was on board fairly early and to the best of my recollection
> never 'broke' with the Frankfurters in any kind of official way.  A
> collection of his Frankfurt work is a book called _Sex-Pol_ published by
> Beacon Press, not in print but not that hard to find.  I don't know what
> the others thought about Orgones, Cloud-Busters, etc., but I imagine it's
> on record somewhere....
>
> Even at his nuttiest, Reich never completely lost his Critical Theory edge.
>  The frontispiece of _Listen Little Man_ is a William Steig drawing of a
> man reacting with shock and horror as the ball and chain around his leg is
> cut loose.  It's only slightly romantic to see Reich's insanity as a more
> courageous consequence of holding true to his core beliefs in all their
> pessimistic implications than the loss of nerve of many of the other Franks.
>
> Reich's followers in the '50s re-edited and re-released most of his early
> work in Orgonized form, so that 'revolution of the Proletariat' and such
> were replaced by 'increase in Orgone Energy.'  Thus, the most
> easily-available translations and German versions of _Mass Psychology of
> Fascism_ and other key books are retro-looney.  Pre-Orgone versions fetch
> *big* bucks, I know because I've tried to get them from people like John
> Gach.  Try $400 a volume.  I believe but am not 100% sure that the recent
> run paperback reprints (publisher??) are post-Orgone.  It's tough to find
> the pre-looney stuff even by inter-library loan and that's obviously
> impaired Reich scholarship.  _Sex-Pol_ was translated from original
> material by outsiders and is not Orgonized, I think.
> Christopher W. Gunn
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