Thus, the whole issue of abortion languished in terms of direct political action.
If the masses were unwilling to politicize the personal, the parties were unwilling to per-
sonalize the political.
The liberal position in Europe on contraception in the late 1920s was primarily
to fight for it within the context of marriage. A more radical position was to advocate
the right of unmarried adults to obtain contraceptive devices.
Yet by 1929 Reich was affirming the right of adolescents to learn about and to
obtain contraceptives. His path to this position was somewhat more gradual than his
advocacy of abortion and contraception for adults. For, of course, the issue of contra-
ception for adolescents was inextricably linked to adolescent sexuality.
The question posed itself in practical terms when young people came to the sex
hygiene clinics and asked not only for help with sexual problems per se but for advice
about contraception. Since these young people ranged in age from fourteen to twenty,
Reich found himself wondering: Should one give contraceptives to young people four-
teen or fifteen years old?
Reich was not to answer this question in print with a clear-cut affirmation until
1929, but he was grappling with the answer from at least 1927 on. His advocacy of ado-
lescent sexuality was a more radical and also a lonelier position than,say, his support for
“abortion on demand.” Since it was also extremely controversial, it was not something he
embarked upon lightly.
That he could not evade the issue seemed clear to him, “if one wished to stick
to the problem of the prevention of the neuroses.”^9 Reich began to study adolescents
more closely, in terms of their psychodynamics and in their social milieu. He got to know
those who came to the clinics as well as those he met in various leftist youth meetings his
conclusions about adolescent problems were not based simply on a subsample of youth
who might be termed “disturbed” because they attended the clinics.
Reich noted that some young people had sexual partners, while others wished to
find one.In both instances,problems occurred: internal ones such as premature ejacula-
tion,frigidity,shyness, depression, and nervousness; social ones such as the lack of con-
traception, inadequate space to be with a partner, and parental disapproval. Stressing the
interaction between internal and external factors, Reich would say, for example, that pre-
mature ejaculation was based on Oedipal conflicts but it was also more likely to occur
when genital intercourse was carried out in one’s clothes and hastily^10.
In his counseling work in clinics and youth organizations, Reich felt the need for
a practical position.He had to reject the choice of abstinence, if for no other reason than
that it was totally unrealistic. Most adolescents (especially males) masturbated. Even
among those who did not, sexual daydreaming was common, a form of psychic mastur-
bation that is stimulating though not gratifying. Reich also rejected masturbation, that
“pale substitute of love,” in D. H. Lawrence’s phrase. He held that guilt feelings with
masturbation are much more intense than with sexual intercourse because it is more
heavily burdened with incest fantasies (conscious or unconscious). Incidentally, the
132 Myron SharafFury On Earth