Paul Goodman on Reich

More than any other figure of our times, Reich has had things to say—and do—essential for the chief revolutionary actions of the young, whether their politics or their hippie life style; indeed, he is the connecting link between these contrasting tendencies. The most trenchant political ideas of Marcuse and Fromm, about the fear of freedom and the co-opting of spontaneity and sexuality by modern corporate institutions, were stated first and more powerfully by Reich. And he was able to demonstrate the material and efficient causes involved e.g. in incomplete gratification, anxiety, and introjection, whereas the others are rather abstract. Conversely, Reich would not have been surprised, as Marcuse has been, at the theoretically “impossible” youth revolt, for it was on the cards for the children of affluence, brought up without toilet training, freely masturbating, and with casual clothing, to be daring, disobedient, and simple-minded. Human nature is very malleable, but there are material facts that cannot be altogether co-opted.

Self-regulation, and the cosmic streaming that relaxes and transcends ego, are axioms of the hippie way. Here again, in vegetotherapy, Reich invented a practical yoga in familiar Western terms and without drugs, so that it is possible to tune in without dropping out, without having to lose one’s wits, although of course not without conflict and suffering. And these exercises are a fundamental part of the sensitivity training and Artaudian theatre which are prevalent. Similarly, Reich is an existential psychologist, but unlike the others he does not have to rely on extreme situations and peak experiences. but can make something out of the everyday.

Reich‘s work ethic, the human need for absorption in productive work that is one’s own and gets one beyond oneself, does not sit so well with the radical young, for it is true that the majority of professions and economic jobs are corrupted and often useless or worse. Yet this Lutheran doctrine of justification by vocation is probably true, and Reich’s work democracy is the decentralized “participatory democracy” that the radical young hanker after. though they have not thought through the meaning of work. Doing one’s thing is not a whimsical way of being in the world. Reich here went back to the young-Marxian conception of actual alienation in the work process, which the later Marx tended to forget, as he became a more formal sociologist and politician. (My guess is that Reich’s glancing references to anarchist thinkers as a source for these ideas stem solely from a single conversation with myself.) In his own life and work, to be sure, Reich was obsessional
and Calvinistic about work; he was driven by his furies. I think he over-estimated the power of the paraphernalia of the laboratory and methodical science to solve humanistic problems. And he was a very autocratic democrat.

—from Paul Goodman's Introduction to Wilheim Reich: A Personal Biography by Ilse Ollendorff Reich (Elek 1969)