severe punishment. He goes on to say that even if we magically could rid ourselves of
our discomfort at masturbation, he doubts that it would be in the best interests of the
child: “There is lots of evidence that all children feel guilty about masturbation whether
or not their parents have found out about it or said anything about it”^17
I do not know the evidence that Spock is drawing upon. But one line of theo-
rizing, forcefully advanced by Anna Freud, posits that “there is in human nature a dispo-
sition to repudiate certain instincts, in particular the sexual instincts, indiscriminately and
independently of individual experience. This disposition appears to be a phylogenetic
inheritance, a kind of deposit accumulated from acts of repression practiced by many
generations, and merely continued, not initiated, by individuals.”^18
This kind of genetic speculation concerning an “archaic unconscious” stands in
sharp contrast to Reich’s emphasis on social factors determining the anxiety and guilt that
so often surround genital impulses.
Reich emphasized that one benefit of masturbation and particularly of hetero-
sexual play was to mitigate the intensity of the Oedipal configuration the child’s passion-
ate love for the parent of the opposite sex and his equally strong hatred and fear of the
parent of the same sex. He argued that the complex would be less charged if the child
had a sensual outlet with peers.
It would also be less intense if there were considerable communal involvement
in the care and education of children. And it would be less intense if the parents, partic-
ularly the father, were generally less authoritarian, if they interacted with their children in
a more human, fallible way.
All of these conditions Reich found in Bronislaw Malinowski’s report on the
sexual life ofthe Trobriand Islanders^19 ,which he first read in 1930.Indeed,Malinowski
argued that the presumed “universal” Oedipus complex was absent among this people,
an absence he attributed to the matrilineal organization of the family. Yet the findings
permitted Reich to make somewhat different emphases, namely, on the affirmation of
both childhood and adolescent sexuality among the Trobrianders. It further fitted Reich’s
theoretical framework that Malinowski found the Trobrianders to be a warm, open peo-
ple,relatively free of the neuroses, perversions, and sadism so common in the “civilized”
world. Malinowski became one of the few authors Reich would cite frequently.
Further stressing the demystification of sexuality during childhood, Reich
argued that nakedness among children and between adults and children should be accept-
ed as matter-of-fact. His rationale was as follows:
Among the infantile sexual impulses, those aiming at the observation and the
display of the genitals are particularly well known. Under present educational
conditions,these impulses are usually repressed at a very early time. As a result
of this repression, children develop two different feelings: first, they develop
guilt feelings because they know that they are doing something strictly forbidden
ifthey give in to their impulses. Second, the fact that the genitals are covered up11 : The Application of Sex-economic Concepts on the Social Scene The Sex-pol: 1927-1930 135