reich

[Neil McLaughlin]

There. That was not so painful.
We will all agree then that Reich had an influence, as Leo suggests, on Fromm
and Adorno. And some of  us may think that Reich's legacy is worth building on
for contemporary critical theorists. I personally doubt that, but if someone can
point me to a Reichian influenced critical theory that tells us something about
the social psychology of  capitalism that is not obvious, then great.
My sense is that his importance is largely historical -  he had some influence
in the past and was part of  a larger current of  Marxist/Freudian thinkers who
produced interesting work. But let's at least get the history right, and not
create MORE Frankfurt School origin myths. Creating myths about the Frankfurt
School is exactly the kind of  "sect-like" discourse that damaged the
usefullness of   the Reichian tradition and hurts critical theory as a living
tradition.....

Neil McLaughlin


Abbau@aol.com wrote:

> Neil,
>
> as i remember, Reich had no official affiliation with the F-S; although, i
> understand Adorno preferred the manner in which Reich refused to make a
> simple transition between individual and social psychology.  There was no
> doubt some influence from Reich in terms of his study "Character Analysis"
> (on Fromm) and his study of fascism ("Mass Psychology of Fascism") on Adorno
> but i have yet to find anything about an official relationship.
>
> Leo