mater familias.
Metaphorically, Reich had described his scientific origins when he wrote:
“Psychoanalysis is the father and sociology [Marxism] the mother of sex-economy.”^32 On
a more personal level, as we have seen, Reich sought the paternal in Freud and Freud
brought out the paternal in Reich, for learning analytic skills involved a master-apprentice
relationship.
Marxism, too, was scientific and systematic, but its practical application was far
more fluid than the translation of analytic theory into practice. The most expert theoreti-
cians could prove to be the biggest fools in actual events, while the poor and untrained could
have the keenest sense of what was really happening. And while Marxism claimed to be
unsentimental, simply clarifying the class struggle, there could be no doubt that it stimulat-
ed infinite hopes for a better life. And not simply a better life, but a fulfilled and “unalien-
ated” one. For Reich, this kind of yearning may well have represented his mother’s influ-
ence.
Reich was deeply hurt by his exclusion from the Communist Party. It meant not just
the end of three years’ work with the German Party, but the end of his formal affiliation
with the political left,an affiliation he had maintained in one form or another ever since he
joined the youth movement in Vienna after World War I. One way Reich softened the blow
ofhis exclusion was to permit the full implications of leaving radical politics to sink in only
little by little. In 1934, he was still “loyal” to the Communist movement but critical of the
party apparatus. In his optimism, he was searching for a new revolutionary social organiza-
tion that would be willing to learn from the lessons ofthe catastrophe. But the one such
possible party available to him, Trotsky’s Fourth International, proved unsatisfactory. Several
leading Trotskyites visited him around this time. In the course of the discussion Reich real-
ized that his visitors, while sympathetic, did not take sex-politics seriously^33.
The year 1934, then, was one of political uncertainty for Reich as he struggled to
reorient himself. He wrote a pamphlet,Was ist Klassenbewusstsein?(What Is Class Consciousness?),
in which he clarified the progressive and conservative aspects of “class consciousness” in
women,working-class men, adolescents, and children. Again, his social endeavors paralleled
his clinical concepts: in both realms he sought to dissolve the defenses, anxieties, guilts, and
to strengthen the genuine, progressive, vital forces.
In the same pamphlet, Reich clearly stated his organizational position as of late
- The sex-political movement, he wrote, had the choice of starting its own organization
and recruiting members based on its declared program; or it could be allowed more time to
develop informally. Reich concluded that the second alternative would avoid premature
bureaucracy and the dangers of sectarianism; it would also permit greater influence within
other organizations.
The decision was an important one since it anticipated much of Reich’s later social
thought and practice. It was still a political decision, in that he believed his ideology would
in time permeate the masses to such an extent that the organization of a political party
would be feasible. Basically, Reich was to maintain this model, with one significant alter-
13 : The Sex-political Furor: 1930-1934 167