gorski
customised free radical
How to read his early edited [and latter] books:
OK, the terminology and the categorical apparatus in the latter Reich's opus have changed, so instead of [as found in the German and Scandinavian] early editions "......." -> he uses ".......", in allegedly freedom-loving America:
-revolutionary sexual science -> rationally directed sexual economy
-a class of private owners interested in sexual repression -> authoritarian society interested in sexual repression
-contact with the SSSR -> contact with the Universe
-class struggle -> responsibility and consideration
-economy based in psychoanalysis and historical-materialism -> biological and sexual revolution
-changing the family relationships as a consequence of industrial destruction of capitalism -> changes as a consequence of changes in the mode of production
-socialist consciousness was forced into the background -> consciousness of freedom is now pushed into the background
-Marxism -> a killer ideology or red Fascists
etc. etc. etc.
His early research was focused on enabling us to understand why certain changes in production and societal relationships did not coincide with various socio-psychological facts; he needed to understand various factors of mediation which would explain such discrepancies or absence of adequate responses to such changes. In other words, we need to understand the mechanisms of mediation of such phenomena in relation to Marx's thesis of inference of Human Consciousness from the mode of production.
Modern societies have established various mechanisms which are able to effectively disable and emaciate various tendencies towards undermining those societies and even bring such tendencies, carefully ideologically disinfected, to the level of fashion, even, and hence they become utterly benign to the "health of a nation" or the position of "powers that be". Reich, too, fell victim to some of those. Indeed, they destroyed him.
The whole revision of his early work neither helped him with McCarthy - New York Times -anti-communist lot, nor with Deborin-Pavlov quasi-Communist - Stalinist lot.
However, this [early] Reich's attempt to speak of biological and psychological, social and emotional "givens" in a context which is encroaching and shaping the most sensitive pre-assumptions of our being, from a Marxist and Psychoanalytical ground, thereby opening a new area of research, trying to replace Super-Ego with Ego [as opposed to Freud trying to replace Ego with Id], broke a new ground for research and action towards anti-authoritarian relations, which would remove the very possibility of sexual repression.
Our very socialisation and social-ness being ever more authoritarian make this tendency in early Reich's research very modern and contemporary, since its presumptions are very much "alive and well", unfortunately...
At the end of 60's we saw the anti-psychiatry and critically minded opposition to prevailing "[psycho]therapy" - turning its back to the mainstream intentions and the prevailing values and hence the drive to "well adjusted individuals", whatever the "merely existing" - which owes this Reich's pioneering attempt a great debt of gratitude...
====================================
I actually helped/mediated in translating his "The Function of Orgasm" into Serbo-Croat... My small role in all this, fuelling my not very big vanity, heheheee...
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9063077/Wilhelm-Reich#182306.hook
or
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9063077/Wilhelm-Reich
OK, the terminology and the categorical apparatus in the latter Reich's opus have changed, so instead of [as found in the German and Scandinavian] early editions "......." -> he uses ".......", in allegedly freedom-loving America:
-revolutionary sexual science -> rationally directed sexual economy
-a class of private owners interested in sexual repression -> authoritarian society interested in sexual repression
-contact with the SSSR -> contact with the Universe
-class struggle -> responsibility and consideration
-economy based in psychoanalysis and historical-materialism -> biological and sexual revolution
-changing the family relationships as a consequence of industrial destruction of capitalism -> changes as a consequence of changes in the mode of production
-socialist consciousness was forced into the background -> consciousness of freedom is now pushed into the background
-Marxism -> a killer ideology or red Fascists
etc. etc. etc.
His early research was focused on enabling us to understand why certain changes in production and societal relationships did not coincide with various socio-psychological facts; he needed to understand various factors of mediation which would explain such discrepancies or absence of adequate responses to such changes. In other words, we need to understand the mechanisms of mediation of such phenomena in relation to Marx's thesis of inference of Human Consciousness from the mode of production.
Modern societies have established various mechanisms which are able to effectively disable and emaciate various tendencies towards undermining those societies and even bring such tendencies, carefully ideologically disinfected, to the level of fashion, even, and hence they become utterly benign to the "health of a nation" or the position of "powers that be". Reich, too, fell victim to some of those. Indeed, they destroyed him.
The whole revision of his early work neither helped him with McCarthy - New York Times -anti-communist lot, nor with Deborin-Pavlov quasi-Communist - Stalinist lot.
However, this [early] Reich's attempt to speak of biological and psychological, social and emotional "givens" in a context which is encroaching and shaping the most sensitive pre-assumptions of our being, from a Marxist and Psychoanalytical ground, thereby opening a new area of research, trying to replace Super-Ego with Ego [as opposed to Freud trying to replace Ego with Id], broke a new ground for research and action towards anti-authoritarian relations, which would remove the very possibility of sexual repression.
Our very socialisation and social-ness being ever more authoritarian make this tendency in early Reich's research very modern and contemporary, since its presumptions are very much "alive and well", unfortunately...
At the end of 60's we saw the anti-psychiatry and critically minded opposition to prevailing "[psycho]therapy" - turning its back to the mainstream intentions and the prevailing values and hence the drive to "well adjusted individuals", whatever the "merely existing" - which owes this Reich's pioneering attempt a great debt of gratitude...
====================================
I actually helped/mediated in translating his "The Function of Orgasm" into Serbo-Croat... My small role in all this, fuelling my not very big vanity, heheheee...
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9063077/Wilhelm-Reich#182306.hook
or
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9063077/Wilhelm-Reich
haven't managed to finish the essay though 
Comforting, isn't it? 
he also devotes a whole chapter to saying that the swastika is a sexual symbol, without any evidence at all - i was quite literally going WTF at 90% of what he was saying ... he goes on and on about the "sex economy" economy as well, not meaning prostitution, but like, the economy as a metaphor for sex, or something ... seriously reading some bits, i could literally not stop laughing...
