grown-up human being and the newborn little baby-I repeat, the only
and sole difference-is that the little kitten and the newborn baby has
its genital function in proper coordination with the organism and the
later human being has not. In other words, the exclusion of the genital
and its function from the rest of biological functioning distinguishes
man in a disastrous manner from the rest of living nature. It is specifi
cally this exclusion of genitality which causes the later armoring and
all the other differences which justify the claim of homo normalis that
he is "different from the animals. " Genitality, therefore, involves not
only the local function, but its whole impact on the whole organism,
and in this sense genitality equals life-ality.
I wish that people would have more trust in some of my statements.
I have tried to make clear on several occasions that the war of classes
is over and that a new war is on, on an international scale: that be
tween life and work on the one side and politics and emotional plague
on the other side. Seen from this angle, you will understand better why
your school is in danger of being closed by a socialist government. Your
school represents life and work and those socialist state governments
represent politics and plague far worse than anything we knew before.
That is not exaggerated.
Please write more often, since you are one of the very few to whom I
can talk.
Summerhill School
Leiston, Suffolk
My dear Reich,
- I •
February 5, 1949Yours today. See your point about genitality/life-ality. Will
use it in two days when I lecture to Sex Education Society in London.
My subject is "Sex and Self-Regulation. " Am rereading Function 0/
the Orgasm, getting confused as usual in distinctions between real
neurosis and psycho-neurosis, etc. just as I never can distinguish be
tween conversion hysteria and, well, all the terms used. Seems to me
the whole literature of psychoanalysis and psychiatry got lost in words
just as ordinary medicine did. So in psychology. David here aged 4 who
can't talk and is just beginning to notice people after being here 3
months was sent to a clinic which gave a long verdict of "spiritually
rather than mentally defective" which doesn't mean a thing to me. To