Wilhelm Reich Quotes

Austrian-American psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, sex educator and sociologist (1897–1957)

Wilhelm Reich (24 March 1897 - 3 November 1957) was an Austrian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. He became a controversial social theorist and researcher, who believed that he had discovered a "vital energy" which he called "Orgone energy", though his theories about it are generally considered pseudoscience by most scientific authorities. He died while in a U.S federal prison on a two year sentence for failing to comply with court orders prohibiting some of his activities and research, just days before he would have been eligible for parole.

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Originally and naturally, sexual pleasure was the good, the beautiful, the happy, that which united man with nature in general. When sexual feelings and religious feelings became separated from one another, that which is sexual was forced to become the bad, the internal, the diabolical.

In recent times, more and more human thinking has come to assume that the idea of a universal natural law and the idea of 'God' are pointing to one and the same reality.

You will no longer believe that you "don't count." You will know and advocate your knowledge that you are the bearer of human society. Don't run away. Don't be afraid. It is not so terrible to be the responsible bearer of human society. Inflated leaders would have no soldiers and no arms if you clearly knew, and stood up for your knowledge, that a field has to yield wheat and a factory furniture or shoes, and not arms.

"Ungratified sexuality is readily transformed into rage. "Prison explosions" are outbreaks of sadism resulting from the absence of sexual gratification. Hence, when 33,000 workers leave their employment site all at once precisely in spring, there can be no doubt that the unsatisfying sex-economic conditions in the Soviet Union are the cause. By "sex-economic conditions" we mean more than just the possibility of a regulated and satisfying love life; over and above this we mean everything that is related to pleasure and the joy of life in one's work."

"I came to consider the instinct as nothing more than the "motor aspect of pleasure."
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Open avowal of dictatorship is much less dangerous than sham democracy. The first one can fight; sham democracy is insidious.

The discovery of orgone energy was made through consistent, thorough study of energy functions, first in the realm of the psyche, and later in the realm of biological functioning.

We live in a community of people not so that we can suppress and dominate eachother or make each other miserable but so that we can better and more reliably satisfy all life's healthy needs.

And the truth must finally lie in that which every oppressed individual feels within himself but hasn't the courage to express

'Mysticism' here means, in the literal sense, a change of sensory impressions and organ sensations into something unreal and beyond this world.

The longing for the fusion with another organism in the genital embrace is just as strong in the armored organism as it is in the unarmored one. It will most of the time be even stronger, since the full satisfaction is blocked. Where Life simply loves, armored life “fucks.” Where Life functions freely in its love relations as it does in everything else and lets its functions grow slowly from first beginnings to peaks of joyful accomplishment, no matter whether it is the growth of a plant from a tiny seedling to the blossoming and fruit-bearing stage, or the growth of a liberating thought system; so Life also lets its love relationships grow slowly from a first comprehensive glance to the fullest yielding during the quivering embrace. Life does not rush toward the embrace.

The question of how and why the encrustations and rigidifications of human emotional life are brought about led directly into the realm of vegetative life.

"The "stiff, dead, retracted pelvis" is one of man's most frequent vegetative disturbances. It is responsible for lumbago as well as for hemorrhoidal disturbances. Elsewhere, we shall demonstrate an important connection between these disturbances and genital cancer in women, which is so common.
Thus, the "deadning of the pelvis" has the same function as the deadening of the abdomen, i.e., to avoid feelings, particularly those of pleasure and anxiety."

"Wilhelm Reich identified "armor" as the sum total of typical character attitudes, which an individual develops as a blocking against his emotional excitations, resulting in rigidity of the body, lack of emotional contact, "deadness". Functionally identical to muscular armor (chronic muscular spasms)"

If a dog on a leash does not run off, no one will regard him as a loyal companion on the basis of this fact alone. No reasonable individual will speak of love if a man sleeps with a defenseless woman who is virtually chained hand and feet. No one, unless he is a real scoundrel, will be proud of a woman's love gained by financial support or by power. No decent person will accept love that is not given voluntarily. The compulsory morality of marital obligations and familial authority is a morality of cowards and impotent people who are afraid of life, people who are incapable of experiencing, through the power of natural love, what they try to produce for themselves with the help of marital laws and the police.