reich

Tue, 16 May 2000 22:41:08 +0200

Three notes on the topic of Reich and the FS:

1)  Adorno to Horkheimer on the topic of Reich:

"As far as my own work for the Zeitschrift is concerned, I
would like, for once, to say something in principle about the
whole complex of psychoanalysis, with which I'm constantly
involved. I would like to take the themes of Reich as my point
of departure, which have a lot to recommend them (e.g., in my
view, that he's right in his arguments against Fromm, in as
much as he rejects the seamless transference of individual
psychology to social theory) but at the same time make most
instructive errors, invoking the dangers of Feuerbachianism,
("healthy sensuality") fake immediacy - in short: romantic
anarchy - from an entirely new angle. For the reason namely,
and that's most interesting, of a failure in the psychological
theory itself. (Since he absolutises as it were genital libido
and sets this up as a measure of all else, on the basis of a
most dubious biology.) At the political level his nonsense
becomes obvious. My own reflections keep returning to the
problem of the mediation of society and psychology, which is
no doubt at the centre of it all. And it seems to me not
possible simply to take the lack of genital satisfaction as
the point of departure (just as it is not possible, as a
Marxist, to take one's point of departure, statically, from
poverty) but instead of this invariant libido one would have
to try to understand it in its societal phases - meaning,
above all, probing the problem of psychic reification, if one
does'nt want to sink back into an undialectical anthropology.
(The Nazi who tortures prisoners isn't acting out of
suppressed genital libido, which often enough doesn't need to
be repressed at all, but out of repressed sadism; the partial
drives also could be repressed, and are not themselves to be
characterised as repressed in any immediate sense, but as,
rather, historical stages, of - in itself a very murky
notion - libido in the class society.) You will see from this,
I think, in which direction I'm going, and wherein I distin-
guish myself from Reich, but also from Fromm. (Who, in a
different way, namely by choosing the individual as model,
does not sufficiently take commodification [Warencharakter]
into account.) I would like to try, on occasion, to formulate
these things as 'Ideas regarding a dialectical psychology';
here I can of course be tentative only."

(T.W. Adorno to Max Horkheimer: extract from a letter from
Oxford, 21.11.34. Horkheimer *Gesammelte Schriften* 15,
275/6.) [own translation fvg]

2) Footnote on p. 197 from *Studies in the Authoritarian 
Personality*: [Adorno *Gesammelte Schriften*]

"Erich Fromm (Escape from Freedom [New York: Farrar & 
Rinehart,  Inc., 1941]), Erick H. Erikson ("Hitler's Imagery and 
German Youth,"  Psychiatry 5 [1942], pp. 475-493), Arthur H. 
Maslow ("The Authoritarian Character Structure," The Journal of 
Social Psychology 18 [1943], pp. 401-41 1), George B. Chisholm 
("The Reestablishment of Peacetime Society,"  Psychiatry 9 
[1946], pp. 3-21), and Wilhelm Reich (The Mass Psychology of       
Fascism, trans. Theodore P. Wolfe [New York: Orgone Institute 
Press, 1946])  are among the writers whose thinking about 
authoritarianism has influenced our own."                           

3) Reich's *Charakteranalyse* was reviewed by Landauer (who 
was, amongst other things, Horkheimer's psychoanalyst) in vol. III of 
the *Zeitschrift fuer Sozialforschung*; his *Einbruch der 
Sexualmoral* by Fromm in vol. II, his *Massenpsychologie des 
Faschismus* by Landauer in vol. III.

fvg

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> >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
> >
> >
> 
> 
> Reich had, as far as I know, neither a formal connection to the 
> Frankfurters nor a knowledge of their works, apart from his
> acquaintance with Erich Fromm. In general, Fromm and Reich were part
> of the same generation of marxist psychoanalysts in Berlin, a group
> that also included Otto Fenichel, Edith Jacobsson and others. Fromm
> did probably attend Reichs seminar at the Berlin institute for
> psychoanalysis. Reich and Anna Freud had their respective seminars at
> the same time, so you had to choose the one or the other. Karen Horney
> chose Reich, and I would be very much surprised if not Fromm did the
> same. It is not hard to see that Reichs two books from 1934,
> Characteranalyse and Massenpsychologie des fascismus inspired Fromm a
> lot. I did not know, however, that Adorno was sympathetically inclined
> towards Reich, and that came as a bit of a surprise. If anyone knows
> of an excact reference on this point, or in general on Frankfurters
> comments on Reich, it would be interesting to see.
> 
> 
> Hvard Nilsen
> 
> 
> ____________________________________
> 
> Hvard Nilsen
> Research Fellow
> Dept.of History
> University of Oslo
> 
> P.O.Box 1008 Blindern
> N-0315 Norway
> Phone: + 47 22 85 49 87
> Fax:   + 47 22 85 52 78

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Dr. Frederik van Gelder
Institut fuer Sozialforschung
Frankfurt University
Senckenberganlage 26
60325 Frankfurt am Main

texts under http://www.rz.uni-frankfurt.de/ifs/ifstexte.html
Gelder@em.uni-frankfurt.de

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