11 : The Application of Sex-economic Concepts
on the Social Scene The Sex-pol: 1927-1930In addition to joining political demonstrations, Reich felt he could serve a spe-
cific function within the revolutionary social movement—a function determined by his
psychoanalytic orientation.
From the early 1920s, Reich had given talks on psychoanalytic subjects to vari-
ous lay groups. By 1927, however, he felt dissatisfied with this effort. People did not
understand complex psychological issues, such as the castration complex.
If working people did not respond to psychoanalysis as usually presented, they
were also turned off by the purely economic analyses presented by the leftist political
parties.To capture their interest, Reich sought a perspective that would stimulate them
to look at what was relevant to their own emotional needs.
One way he did this was to shift the subject matter of his talks from the more
theoretical aspects of psychoanalysis to the concrete problems of people’s sex lives. Here
Reich began what he was to call the “sex-pol” movement: a complex theoretical and prac-
tical effort—first, to help the masses with their sexual problems; and second, to render
the sexual needs of normal love life relevant political issues within the framework of the
larger revolutionary movement^1. Questions of sexual life and child upbringing aroused
burning interest among the public.
Reich wished to take other steps, besides public speaking, to reach the public. He
drew considerable support from his friendship with working men, especially a man
named Zadniker.On the basis of his experiences with Zadniker and others like him,
Reich evolved the idea, later to be abandoned, that industrial workers were sexually
healthier than middle-class persons. Clearly Reich felt Zadniker to be an open, genuine
person, with an objective, natural attitude toward sexuality. Indeed, Zadniker must have
struck Reich as more like himself than many of his professional colleagues, with their
emotional reserve and subtle moralisms.
Parenthetically, we should note Reich’s gift for finding the kinds of intellectual
and emotional support that he most needed.In the early 1920s there had been Freud, the
youth movement, and his analytic colleagues, who gave direction to his burgeoning inter-
est in psychology, especially the psychology of sex. In the late 1920s, when Reich’s eluci-
dation of the orgasm function, combined with the general political unrest, was leading
him toward a wider social orientation,he discovered the social sweep and revolutionary
hopes of Marxism. Emotionally and socially, he found in many working people an open-