tributed to neuroses. In keeping with the Freudian tradition, which emphasized the
Oedipal period of development (ages four to about six), Reich began by analyzing social
attitudes toward the child’s genital impulses. Punishment and threats of punishment by
parents and educators toward the child’s masturbation were still common (as, indeed,
they still are in many circles). However, the more progressive attitude, especially among
the psychoanalytically oriented, consisted in ignoring masturbation or gently distracting
the child from it.
Reich opposed both attitudes. In counseling parents, he stressed the need for
affirming childhood masturbation. Throughout his life, Reich put considerable emphasis
on the distinction between affirming childhood sexuality and toleratingit. Toleration was
insufficient to counteract a generally sex-negative culture. Moreover, if sexual behavior
is distracted, the child cannot help but feel that he or she is doing something wrong in
masturbating^15.
Toleration also contributed to the mystification of sex surrounding it with
silence, the mysterious distractions when the child touches its genital. For Reich this was
in some ways more dangerous than direct suppression. Authoritarian education was at
least clear: Sex outside marriage was sinful. In much permissive education, sex simply did
not exist;the child had to deal not with thunderbolts of punishment but with a secretive
fog.
Reich distinguished between two kinds of childhood masturbation. One type
expressed the natural urge for genital pleasure. The second was connected with anxiety
and anger: the child used auto-eroticism not primarily for genital pleasure but as a way of
discharging fear and rage. Reich affirmed the first kind of masturbation; the second
already indicated some degree of emotional disturbance in the child.
Reich took the same basically affirmative stance toward heterosexual play in chil-
dren. Indeed, over the years he came to stress the importance of this activity even more
than he did masturbation.
Reich’s daring in affirming heterosexual play in the 1920s is highlighted if we
compare his position on the subject to that ofDr. Benjamin Spock in the 1950s. Spock
is rightly considered permissive toward the emotional expressions of the infant and child.
However, of sexual play, he wrote:
Ifyou discover your small child in some sort of sex play alone or with others,
you’ll probably be at least a little bit surprised and shocked. In expressing your
disapproval it’s better to be firmly matterof-fact rather than very shocked or
angry. You want him to know that you don’t want him to feel that he’s a crimi-
nal. You can say, for instance, “Mother doesn’t want you to do that again,” or
“That isn’t polite,” and shoo the children off to some other activity. That’s usu-
ally enough to stop sex play for a long time in normal children^16.In discussing masturbation, Spock warns against making threats or dispensing134 Myron SharafFury On Earth