This idealization of motherhood is essentially a means of keeping women from developing a sexual consciousness and from breaking through the barriers… - Wilhelm Reich

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This idealization of motherhood is essentially a means of keeping women from developing a sexual consciousness and from breaking through the barriers of sexual repression, of keeping alive their sexual anxieties and guilt feelings. The very existence of woman as a sexual being would threaten authoritarian ideology; her recognition and social affirmation would mean its collapse.

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About Wilhelm Reich

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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Additional quotes by Wilhelm Reich

That the idea of God represents the conscience, the internalized admonitions and threats from parents and educators, is a well-known fact. What is less well known is the fact that, from an energy point of view, the belief in and the fear of God are sexual excitations which have changed their content and goal. The religious feeling, then, is the same as sexual feeling, except that it is attached to mystical, psychic contents. This explains the return of the sexual element in so many ascetic experiences, such as the nun's delusion that she is the bride of Christ. Such experiences rarely reach the stage of genital consciousness and thus are apt to take place in other sexual channels, such as masochistic martyrdom.

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Revolutionary practice in any field of human existence develops by itself if one comprehends the contradictions in every new process; it consists in siding with those forces which act in the direction of progressive development. To be radical, according to Marx, means "going to the root of things." If one goes to the root of things, if one understands their contradictory character, the means of mastering the reaction become plain.

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