13 : The Sex-political Furor: 1930-1934The years between 1930 and 1934 witnessed Reich’s continuing involvement with
psychoanalysis and politics. Initially, Berlin met his expectation that it would provide a more
hospitable environment for his work than Vienna had. Many of the younger Berlin ana-
lysts—Otto Fenichel (who had moved to Berlin several years before), Erich Fromm, Edith
Jacobson, and Karen Homey —were sympathetic to Reich’s efforts to link psychoanalysis
and Marxism, though none was as actively engaged in politics as he was^1. The younger ana-
lysts were also interested in Reich’s contributions to character analysis. So, shortly after his
arrival in the German capital, Reich established a technical seminar similar to the one he had
conducted in Vienna.
Reich also joined the Communist Party, then the third largest party in Germany. As
in Vienna, he worked within a variety of political organizations and concentrated on sex-
political themes. One of his first talks in Berlin, given before the Association for Socialist
Physicians, concerned the prevention of emotional disturbances; and early in 1931, he
addressed a student group on “The Fiasco of Bourgeois Morality.”
The ensuing discussion among the youth went on until five A.M.^2 For Reich, such
meetings held an air of excitement that arose again when he reminisced about this period.
He loved contact with people, especially the young. After 1934, when he was devoting him-
selfmore to research, he kept recalling this period. I remember the note of sadness in his
voice when in 1948 I told him I was going to speak before an anarchist group. He replied,
“I envy you. I used to love to give talks but I can’t any more.”^3 Even as late as 1952, when
Reich had long since detached himselffrom politics, he told Dr. Kurt Eissler about the
Berlin period and the tremendous excitement generated at the sex-political meetings. “I still
thrive on that experience.”
Along with his public speaking,Reich soon developed sex-counseling clinics simi-
lar to those he had organized in Vienna. The work included sex education discussions, con-
traceptive information, and individual short-term counseling. Annie Reich who, with the
children, joined Reich in Berlin in the late autumn of 1930—Fenichel, Jacobson, and Kathe
Misch, all at the time members of the Berlin Psychoanalytic Society, were among those who
worked with Reich in the clinics. Yet, as in Vienna, Reich was the driving force behind the
enterprise intellectually,emotionally, and financially.
If Reich anticipated today’s emphasis on dealing directly with sexual problems, he
was also ahead ofhis time in going directly to people rather than waiting for them to come
to his clinics.In this respect,he anticipated current community mental health practice, which