to gather rich empirical data foralater studyonthe authoritarian character
structure. Unlikehis wife,Annie Reich (1902–1971), whose ownwork with chil-
dren convinced her that,“onlythe liberation of the proletariat from its oppres-
sors will bring about the liberation of sexuality,”⁵Reich firmlybelieved thatthe
experience of sexual fulfillment could be enlisted productively in the process of
politicalradicalization. Eventuallyhis more controversial theories ledto the de-
cisive break withFreud, with Reich rejectinghis formermentor’sbelief in repres-
sion asafunction of the reality principle and insisting on full orgiasticgenitality
as the foundation ofatrulyfree society.
RedVienna, the city of Reich’sacademictraining and intellectual formation,
provided the formative experiencesthat made possiblethe discursive couplingof
“proletarian”and“sexuality.”Demonstrations, strikes,and uprisingsplayeda
keyrole in his concomitant politicalradicalization. Chapters1has shown that
the spectacle of the revolutionary masses was frequentlyexperiencedasamo-
ment of libidinal discharge by participants as wellasobservers and described
along these lines in scientific accounts as well as literary treatments.Most psy-
choanalysts at the time would have interpreted these highlysexualized scenarios
as an expression of pre-Oedipal fears about being overwhelmed and losing con-
trol, but for manysocialists, these situations also confirmed the possibilityofal-
ternativestobourgeois individualism in the form of collective agency and, by ex-
tension, orgasmic potency. Like countless fellowViennese,Reich witnessed the
15 July 1927 burningofthe Palace ofJustice. This“practical course in Marxist so-
ciology”profoundlyinfluenced his later views on the psychologyofthe masses–
as it did, withvery different implications, for EliasCanetti and Hermann Broch.
The sight of policemen shooting workers in cold blood triggered what Reich later
called his politicalawakening:“Machine men!This thoughtwas clear and irre-
futable. Since then it has never left me; it became the nucleus for allmylater
investigations of man asapolitical being.”⁶The inhuman treatment of the work-
ers by the policetohim appeared asasymptom of the capitalist assault onLeb-
ensenergie(life energy)–aprocess first examined through the notion of charac-
ter armor asabourgeois defenseagainst overwhelmingemotions and developed
further through the diagnosis ofauthoritariancharacter in his influential analy-
sis of fascism.
Annie Reich,Wenn dein Kind dich fragt. Gespräche, Beispiele und Ratschlägezur Sexualerzie-
hung(Berlin:Verlagfür Sexualpolitik, 1932), 32.
Wilhelm Reich,People in Trouble,trans. Philip Schmitz (NewYork: Farrar ,Straus and Giroux,
1976), 27.
WilhelmReichand the Politics of Proletarian Sexuality 291