I don't think that you have difficulties in understanding my books.
You only seem to grope too deeply into the maze of human relations,
thus proving that you are as good a thinker as a doer. Your questions are
entirely logical. The one for instance regarding the WHY of the replace
ment of natural matriarchy by the unnatural patriarchy is one of the
most complicated questions of human history. I have tried to find some
of the answer in my book Der Einbruch der Sexualmoral* (1 932 ). It
hasn't been translated yet. It is one of the most tragic events in the
history of the human race: The core of all the misery seems to have
developed when the first mother forbade the first child to experience love
naturally. The reasons were of a social nature, most probably the meeting
of strange hordes of human beings. It is too much to be expounded here.
I feel that we did not reach bottom yet in understanding the full
amount of mental misery in the human masses. It is constantly obfus
cated by the talk of the politicians about the "Common Man" and "his
age." The human sickness is deep-rooted not only in social institutions
but also in the stiffnesses of the bodies. I wrote my Speech to the Little
Man mainly for my own clarity, in a desperate attempt to free myself
from my sympathy and my loyalty to the little man, from my dis
appointment in him, and for the sake of becoming more objective in
evaluating fully the chances of a future true self-governing society. I
hesitate to publish because it puts even to my own mind the little man
into clear focus in regard to his sickness of the character. And ... there
are also many little men, including myself, in my surroundings.
This funny world of ours has promoted me "overnight" from the
status of a schizophrenic charlatan to that of a "big Man," a "Genius."
They change opinions like shirts, don't they? To be affiliated with me,
being a disgrace up to a short time ago, is now not only regarded as a
great honor, but more than that : IT GIVES MY STUDENTS A
TREMENDOUS AUTHORITY in the eyes of this public. The respon
sibilities become more involved and bigger each passing day, and only
a very few can accept them. The problem of organisation has become
a burning one. We cannot let everything run its own course because of
the abysmal lack of knowledge and often responsibility in the workers
who were trained by me. When I try hard to make an educator APPLY
WHAT HE LEARNED WITH ME IN HIS OWN FIELD, he mistakes
it for license to open an office, receive patients and ask for 10 or 15
dollars per treatment like a physician on Park Avenue. I am a bad
* The Invasion of Compulsory Sex-Morality.