Let me try to help a bit, if I can...
It's all too easy to take things out of context and not realise what Reich's contribution to Humanity's self-discovery is.
What his critics had was many years of subsequent developments where his insights were incorporated into the wider society and forgotten who challenged it all before them. Some of them actually stole it from him and never acknowledged it. Criticised him but never stated what they learned from him.
Why?
Because he has 2 phases. The second one is the "nutter" phase, somewhat mentioned but not explained.
Here's a few things I already wrote here, not to have to redo it from scratch:
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Reich is a very badly misunderstood writer, sometimes on purpose, who started as Freud's assistant but then went on to do much more than simply follow the old man... His work on Super-Ego - Ego dynamics is paradigmatic and opens up the whole of
social psychology - he indebted us all...
But he erred badly after he fled to US [McCarthy era] and doesn't do himself justice as he changed essential concepts and so forth - and goes on to mystify the lot with his "orgone" shite... Whatever we learnt from him was quickly [by and large] forgotten and even Marcuse doesn't want to acknowledge his contribution - moreover, even though he's using Reich's ideas he only mentions him in a negative context [
Eros and civilisation, for instance]. A long story...
Anyway, his "idealism" one might actually call his "materialism", as he investigates how social structures affect our psyche etc. Much more exciting than a whole load of the latter day French Nietzsche via Heidegger "prepisivachi" etc. etc.
Read the
Mass Psychology of Fascism and you'll know why many are warning about him, especially if you manage to put it all into the proper context...
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But when it comes to sexual emancipation it is frequently downgraded to sexual practices [petty-bourgeois in nature, centred to techniques of copulation, temporary shocking value, demi-truthful information - thereby simply perpetuating the merely existing repressive societal structures causing all sorts of neurosis etc.], rather than revolutionising our sexual life as such [see early Wilhelm Reich!!!]... Reich claims it is not possible without revolutionising the society at large!
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Here is something of great importance, I think:
http://www.marxist.com/scienceandtech/psychoanalysis_reich.htm
A small bit:
Reich agreed with Freud that sexual development was the fundamental origin of mental disorder. Together, they advocated the following positions: that most psychological activity was ruled by subconscious processes; that children quickly develop an active sexuality; that children’s sexual energy is the cause of most psychological developments; that infant sexuality is subsequently repressed and that this has major consequences for mental health; that morality does not derive from any supernatural being or set of rules, but that it is the product of imposed repressions against the sexuality of individuals as they progress in age from a child, to a teenager and finally to an adult.
Reich went on, seeking to develop these ideas and to cohere them with concrete findings. He explored and exposed the relationships between sexual life and bourgeois morality, then proceeded to address in the same fashion the connection between bourgeois morality itself and the social and economic structures that produced and influenced it. Reich wrote that bourgeois sexual repression and its subconscious influences were the main causes of neuroses. He advanced the idea that a sexual life that was free from feelings of guilt would be the best therapy to treat those neuroses. He concluded by stating that such a liberation from shame and repression could only be realized through a non-authoritarian morality, which in turn would only come from an economic system that had been able to overcome and abolish repression.
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Reich, however, is interested in Superego replacement by Ego. I.e. he investigates how societal structures affect our psychological structures. The Life drive is the only natural drive, for Reich, who claims that the Death drive is the product of the capitalist system [the Freudian ideas of
Thanatos and other in-depth discoveries and latter developments Reich rejected]. He puts Marx and Freud together and opens up Social Psychology. His fruitful early phase is frequently missed for his latter phase, which is why Marcuse and Fromm are not even mentioning him, except in negative contexts, even though they owe him a lot.
Reich came up with an idea of "character as an armour which shields one from the conflicts between urges and social reality", rather than biologically inevitable conflict arising from essentially [i.e. in all epochs] ungratifiable urges, as Freud thought.
Malinowski helped him there. "Psycho-social conditions of happiness" was the next step in his research, leading to "social conditioning of sexuality and psychological life generally". A "mass phenomenon of orgiastic impotence" takes him to the critique of society and its organization, upbringing being the main culprit here, as
the "cause of neurosis and other psychological problems".
Repercussions?
Revolution of sexuality is not possible without the societal revolution, the revolution of exploitative society, where repression stems right from the interests of domination and exploitation. Moreover, sexual repression, now internalized and taken as an essential part of one's character, then reinforces precisely those interests which enslaved one, to begin with.
[
Marcuse comes later to distinguish between repressive and non-repressive sublimation etc. Sexuality liberated can not be equated with liberation as such. Marcuse had the benefit of 30 years of subsequent developments, mind...]
Mimicking of authority, two-faced petty-bourgeois morality, which grounds the authoritarian regimes by hiding the "dirty individual nature" while defending the "honour of the Whole" [society] and its prevailing mores and values, need the most radical change of societal life as a whole. A radically different moral upbringing of children, and family life as such, is needed. The barring of child sexuality outright [especially masturbation] is a kind of repression which leads to all sorts of difficulties, from hidden hatred to
obedience and
submissiveness, therefore stemming an
independent spirit of the child - and onwards: all of that mediates one's upbringing by fear. Father's authority in the bourgeois family represents the state and he is literally preparing the youth to accept such irrational authority, based, thinks Reich, on repression of legitimate Human needs/urges. Reich found the social substratum to Fascism right here! Hence, the
revolution of sexuality is necessary, as opposed to a modern, petty-bourgeois, shallow "sexual revolution", aimed at techniques of copulation, worthless shock effects, half-truths etc., which "revolution" only perpetuates the merely existing.
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9063077/Wilhelm-Reich
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...
