Die Sexualität im Kulturkampf

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Die Sexualität im Kulturkampf (1936) [Sexuality in the Culture Struggle], is a fundamental work by Wilhelm Reich.[1][2] The subtitle is zur sozialistischen Umstrukturierung des Menschen [for the socialist restructuring of humans]. The double title reflects the two-part structure of the work; the first part "analyzes the crisis of the bourgeois sexual morality" and the failure of the attempts of "sexual reform" that preserved the frame of the capitalist society (marriage and family ideologies); the second part (linked with the subtitle), reconstructs the history of the sexual revolution that happened with the establishment of the state of soviets since 1922, and which was opposed by Stalin in the late 20s.[2]

Contents

[edit] Significant differences among editions

Starting with the 1945 English edition, the following German, French and Italian editions had an unexplained change in the title: The Sexual Revolution. Such title changed "not only the perspective, but also the methodology", resulting in a misleading presentation of the actual work contained in the book.[3]

The editions since 1945, also had a number of "reshuffles, terminology changes and abuses by editors", some of which were intended to "disguise the communist-revolutionary orientation", to avoid hurting the susceptible American public.[4] There are also crucial omissions and changes to the content; while the original edition (1936), based its theory on the "rejection of the family institution as such", the softened versions reject just the "authoritarian family structure", aiming to replace it with a "better and more natural form of family".[5] Other omissions or changes affected the "terms regarding religion, class society, radical left politics, the 'bourgeois' attribute referred to family, morality or sexuality, proletariat, etc.[6]

In 1992, publisher Erre emme, published for the first time not only an integral 1936 edition, but also integrations showing the changes of the 1945 edition, in order to allow a scientific confrontation.[6]

[edit] Content

In the preface of the 1945 edition, Reich says that "our" (the West) family structure is inherited from old patriarchy.

Fraenkel (1992) notes that the supposed "sexual revolution" claimed for the West since the late 60s, is indeed a misconception. Sex is not actually enjoyed freely, it is just observed in all the fields of culture (that's a repressive desublimation [7] ). In order to move from that to an actual sexual liberation, it is necessary a change in our mental structures and our moral inhibitions. Instead, the repressive Judeo-Christian morals still basically hold, and the small social changes are exaggerated because seen in that light. And even many supposed atheists, have just secularized and internalized the same old morals.[8]

The bourgeois ideology has a strong demand that the adolescents, the young that reached sexual maturity (since about 15), be repressed in sexual abstinence. To justifies this sad privation, which is at the basis of the unhappiness of the adolescents, all sorts of unscientific and ridiculous justifications have been made up.[9] Instead, anthropological cross-cultural studies, have shown that this doesn't happen in many present societies which have not a marked patriarchal ideology (an ideology pushed by the bias of technologies like intensive agricoulture and mechanization,[10] and which the lacking of is controversally termed "primitive" by westerns); among those anthropologist that studied such people there are Bronisław Malinowski, with is 1929 work The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia, Ploss-Bartels[11], Havelock Ellis, [12] Hans Meyer on the Wahehe and Wossangu.[13]

There is an active effort to obstruct the pubescents from starting to engage in sexual activity. This includes impeding that a pubescent receives adequate informations for her sexual issues. The so called "sex education" is practically always a work of deception, which focuses on biology while concealing 0excitement-arousal, which is what interests her the most, and hides the fact that all her worries and difficulties originate from the unsatisfied sexual impulses.[14]

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Fraenkel 92, p.9
  2. ^ a b Fraenkel 92, p.11
  3. ^ Fraenkel 92, pp.12-14
  4. ^ Fraenkel 92, p.15
  5. ^ Fraenkel 92, p.17
  6. ^ a b Fraenkel 92, p.18
  7. ^ Herbert Marcuse (1964) One-Dimensional Man, pp.59, 75-82 [1] [2] [3] [4]
  8. ^ Fraenkel 92, p.19
  9. ^ Reich 1936, Part one "the failure.." 6. The puberty problem - (1°) "The puberal conflict" (pp.158-9 of Italian edition)
  10. ^ Eagly and Wood (2002)
  11. ^ Ploss-Bartels (1902) Das Weib [5]
  12. ^ Havelock Ellis Sex in Relation to Society
  13. ^ Mayer. "Das Sexualleben bei den Wahehe und Wossangu (Geschlecht und GeseUschaft, XIV Jahig., H. 10, S. 455
  14. ^ Reich 1936, Part one "the failure.." 6. The puberty problem - (3°) "A reflection.." - c. sexual relationships of pubescents - paragraph 4.a (pp.198-9 of Italian edition)

[edit] References