A Fresh Look at the Preface to The Mass Psychology of Fascism

From Volume 53 Number 1 & 2

Peter A. Crist, M.D.

Recently I looked through The Mass Psychology of Fascism to write an article on the history of social orgonomy. (Crist 2021) I returned to it as I prepared this commentary to accompany the reprinting of its Preface in this issue of The Journal of Orgonomy. Once again, as on every previous reading, Reich’s words grabbed me. In my excitement I called the friend who originally introduced me to Reich and orgonomy at a macrobiotic, wild-goose Christmas dinner in December 1965 when I was sixteen. I read the following to him.

The relationship of an individual to his work, if he enjoys it, is libidinous. Since work and sexuality (in the narrowest and the broadest sense of the word) are closely interwoven, the relationship to work is at the same time a question of the sex- economy of the masses… Work and sexuality derive from the same biological energy.¹ (Reich 1946, pages 250–251)

Before I’d caught my breath, he said, “This takes me back to what drew me to Reich years ago. His language is like an oboe while everyone else is playing castanets.” (Kelley 2021)

What a perfect metaphor. An orchestra tunes to the oboe’s “A” note because its clear, trenchant quality cuts through the sounds of all other instruments. Like an oboe, Reich’s voice penetrates the noise and chatter of so much of human discourse. His writing carries a note of clarity and truth much as a solo oboe carries hauntingly beautiful and moving passages in so many pieces of music.

In this issue of The Journal of Orgonomy dedicated to the history of orgonomy, we give well-deserved public exposure to one of Reich’s great works by reprinting the Preface to The Mass Psychology of Fascism, in the original English translation by Theodore Wolfe. His translations of Reich best capture Reich’s voice, as previously spelled out. (Crist 2020)

Reich packs more substance into the eighteen pages of this Preface than contained in most books twenty times as long. Like the composer of a good prelude to a musical work, Reich picks up old themes, introduces new ones, highlights many that are developed later and weaves them together to create a whole work that can stand on its own.

The piece is best appreciated when experienced in its entirety. Read it in one sitting, if possible.

The Whole and the Parts

Reich’s work is an embodiment of the adage that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Let’s look at the parts and how they relate to the whole in one short passage.

Since the decline of the primitive work-democratic organization, the biological core of man has remained without social representation. That which is “natural” in man, which makes him one with the cosmos, has found its genuine expression only in the arts, particularly in music and painting. Until now, however, it has remained without any essential influence upon the form of human society, if by society is meant not the culture of a small rich upper crust but the community of all people. (Reich 1946, page viii)

Is this about psychology, sociology, cultural anthropology, the demographics of society, biology, or the arts? In it Reich mentions that society is about the whole of the people not just one class and makes an oblique reference to the Trobriand Islanders’ social structure when he brings up the concept of work democracy. He also references cosmic as well as core contact. And with his mention of the core, he brings us back to the key concept of the three layers of the human biopsychic structure and the distinction between primary and secondary impulses. Reich sounds all of these individual notes and chords in this one short passage of 81 words. He has woven all of them together to create a whole picture that shows us a sweeping perspective much deeper than any one part and outside the narrow focus of a particular discipline or single concept.

A Quick Overview of the Preface

Referring to the human condition of thousands of years duration and with a perspective often from outside the usual armored, mechanistic-mystical ways of thinking, Reich’s work, written in the 1930s and 40s, stands the test of time.

The original 1933 German edition of the Massenpsychologie Des Fasichimus “took shape during the years of the German crisis of 1930 to 1933.” (Reich 1946, page xiii) Reich wrote the Preface to the 1946 English edition in August 1945, a mere three months after World War II had ended in Europe and a month before the Japanese surrender in the Pacific. He saw and lived through the ramifications of fascism. He fled from Austria to Germany to Scandinavia where, only a step ahead of the Nazis, he then moved from Denmark to Sweden and finally Norway where he caught the very last passenger ship that sailed for New York in 1939.

To help understand this work, I extract some passages from the whole.

The Opening Theme of the Three Layers

Reich starts off in the first sentence of the opening paragraph of the Preface with the concept of the three layers of the human biopsychic structure. Introduced in Character Analysis, here he develops this groundbreaking theory explicitly. It is significant that he begins this book, his major sociological work, with this idea, for without understanding this concept, it is not possible to orient oneself in the social realm. In fact, everything that follows in the Preface and the book itself relates to the concept of the three layers.

Acknowledging and Correcting Errors in Thinking

In the Preface to the revised, 1946 English translation, Reich puts the newer edition in the historical context of its original 1933 edition. In doing so, he openly acknowledges and corrects errors in thinking that were in the first two editions.²

…when I started out to correct and expand the book which I had not looked at for years, I experienced vividly the errors in thinking of fifteen years ago, the revolutions in thinking which had taken place since then, and the magnitude of the tasks with which science is confronted in overcoming fascism.. (ibid., pages xiv–xv)

Such open, unapologetic acknowledgment of previous errors in thinking was characteristic of Reich. He simply stated the errors and moved on to correct them without false humility or hubris. He was a consummate observer, learned from his errors, and changed his views when faced with new information.³

I do not regret my many years’ work as a physician in Marxist organizations. I owe my sociological knowledge not to books, but primarily to the practical experience of the struggles on the part of the masses for a decent, free existence. The best sex- economic insights, in fact, were gained as a result of the errors in thinking on the part of the masses, the errors which brought them the fascist pestilence. (ibid., page xvii)

A Primer on Social Orgonomy

Seventy-six years ago, Reich wrote this Preface, yet it now reads like a primer on 21st century social orgonomy. Its range is astounding as he introduces, touches on, summarizes and/or develops key themes that cover all of the central principles we now teach about social orgonomy. I am once again struck by what Reich called “the too-muchness” of his work. It is too much in this context to comment on all the themes shown in the Preface, but here are some key ones and commentary follows.

• The three layers of the human biopsychic structure

• Health vs. sickness

• Sociopolitical character types

• The essence of fascism

• A functional understanding of race hatred

• The biological miscalculation in the human struggle for freedom

• The little man parallel

• Work democracy

The Origin of Health vs. Sickness

Reich recognized a healthy core, in contrast to Freud who had subsumed all unconscious impulses under the id.

Orgone biophysics has shown that the Freudian unconscious, the antisocial element in the human structure, is a secondary result of the repression of primary biological impulses.” (ibid., page vii)

With that conceptual distinction, Reich clarified centuries of confusion by distinguishing primary, healthy impulses from secondary, pathological impulses. He goes on to differentiate the origin of healthy and pathological impulses and how each emerges from the three layers of the human biopsychic structure.

As a result of this unfortunate structure, every natural social or libidinous impulse from the biological core must, on its way to action, pass the layer of the perverse secondary impulses where it becomes deflected. This deflection changes the originally social character of the natural impulse into a perverse impulse and thus inhibits any natural life manifestation. (ibid., pages vii–viii)

The Emotional Plague

In the early 1940s, Reich developed the concept of the emotional plague defined as the tendency of humans to act out their neurotic problems in destructive ways on the social scene. In 1945, the same year he wrote this Preface, he published an article about the emotional plague. (Reich 1945) Although he does not refer to the emotional plague by name in the Preface, he mentions it numerous times in the rest of the book.

Sociopolitical Characterology

In 1945, Reich foreshadowed the later development of sociopolitical characterology.

We can now apply our insights into human structure to the social and political field. It is not difficult to see that the diverse political and ideological groups in human society correspond to the various layers of human character structure. (Reich 1946, page viii)

In another passage, Reich makes a distinction between true liberal attitudes and a façade of liberalism that disguises the fascism of the secondary layer, suggesting our current concept of the true liberal vs. the pseudo-liberal character.

In the rebellion of the masses of abused people against the empty niceties of a false liberalism (I do not mean genuine liberalism and genuine tolerance) the character layer of the secondary impulses was expressed. (ibid., pages xi and xii)

He goes on to talk about “…a fascist character of whatever hue…” (ibid., page xii) And with that single word “hue” he foreshadows the crucial understanding that he develops at length in later work. (Reich 1953) Reich made clear fascism includes “red fascism,” communism on the far left of the political spectrum, as well as “black fascism,” which refers to the common meaning of fascism on the far right such as Hitler’s fascism, and more recently, Islamic fascism.

The Characterological Basis of Fascism

Reich points out that in 1933 at the time of the first edition of this book, people generally thought of fascism as merely a political party organized around a political idea and that fascism was imposed by force or political maneuver. But Reich understood the crux of this destructive phenomenon.

Contrary to this concept, my medical experience with individuals from all kinds of social strata, races, nationalities and religions showed me that “fascism” is only the politically organized expression of the average human character structure, a character structure which has nothing to do with this or that race, nation or party but which is general and international. In this characterological sense, “fascism” is the basic emotional attitude of man in authoritarian society, with its machine civilization and its mechanistic-mystical view of life.

It is the mechanistic-mystical character of man in our times which creates fascist parties, and not vice versa. (Reich 1946, page ix)

The Essence of Fascism

In a couple of sentences, Reich captures the emotional and psychological essence of fascism.

In its pure form, fascism is the sum total of all irrational reactions of the average human character. (ibid., page x)

And

Fascist mentality is the mentality of the subjugated “little man” who craves authority and rebels against it at the same time. (ibid., page xi)

To the detriment of genuine endeavors for freedom, fascism is still regarded as the dictatorship of a small reactionary clique. My character-analytic experience, however, shows that there is today not a single individual who does not have the elements of fascist feeling and thinking in his structure. Fascism as a political movement differs from other reactionary parties in that it is supported and championed by masses of people. (ibid., page ix)

Reich tells us that fascism grows from the seeds within that infect each of us and uses fascism synonymously with his concept of the emotional plague. But these groundbreaking views are difficult to stomach. Who has the courage to look into their own hearts to identify and address the destructiveness within?

Today it has become absolutely clear that fascism is not the deed of a Hitler or Mussolini, but the expression of the irrational structure of the mass individual. (ibid., pages xvi–xvii)

Fascism and the emotional plague could not exist without the active or passive support of the masses of people. These views of fascism are as revolutionary today as they were the day he first wrote this piece. Reich takes our understanding of fascism out of the political realm and places it squarely where it belongs in the scientific realms of character, mass psychology, medicine, and sociology.

Toward a Functional Understanding of Race Hatred

As early as the 1930s and 40s, decades ahead of his time, Reich challenged the prevailing views about the explosive subject of racism. He attempted to look at the problem from a deeper perspective of the irrational, destructive impulses in society. He took steps toward a scientific approach to this thorny problem. Such a functional understanding of sociology and mass psychology is still sorely lacking in current race-relation debates that often penetrate no deeper than prejudice and economic demographics.

To the narrow-minded sociologist who lacks the courage to recognize the enormous role played by the irrational in human history, the fascist race theory appears as nothing but an imperialistic interest or even a mere “prejudice.” The violence and the ubiquity of these “race prejudices” show their origin from the irrational part of the human character. The race theory is not a creation of fascism. Fascism is a creation of race hatred and its politically organized expression. Correspondingly, there is a German, Italian, Spanish, Anglo-Saxon, Jewish and Arabian fascism. The race ideology is a true biopathic character symptom of the orgastically impotent individual. (ibid., page x)

The Answer to Fascism and the Emotional Plague

In the Preface, Reich tells us in one sentence what is needed to overcome human destructiveness.

Clearly, international fascism will never be vanquished by political manoeuvre. It can only be vanquished by the natural organization of work, love and knowledge on an international scale. (ibid. page xii)

Later in the book Reich emphasizes the value of an individual’s work in overcoming fascism and the emotional plague when he raises and answers the question of whether the emotional plague can be mastered.

The answer is, Yes. No matter how sadistic, mystical, gossiping, unscrupulous, armored and superficial people may be, in their work function they are, of nature, forced to be rational. (ibid., page 328)

And in his inimitable way, Reich challenges the commonly held view of the antithesis between productive work and sexuality and talks about their natural healthy integration.

…the more satisfactory the sex life, the fuller and more pleasurable is the work achievement…The safeguarding of a fully gratifying sexual life of the working masses is the most important prerequisite for joyful work. (ibid., page 253)

The Biological Miscalculation in the Human Struggle for Freedom ⁴

Freedom requires responsibility as Reich shows from the experience of communist Russia.

Because the structure and the incapacity for freedom of the working people made them unable to adapt to the tremendous development of the social organizations, it came to pass that the “state” exercised functions which properly would have been those of the “society” of the working people. (ibid., page xxi)

If people don’t have to take responsibility for their life, eliminating external oppression is not sufficient for improvement. The problem of assuring individual freedom runs much deeper than external factors.⁵

Sex-economic structural psychology adds the characterological and biological to the purely economic comprehension of society. The elimination of individual capitalists and the replacement of private capitalism by state capitalism in Russia has not in the least altered the typical helpless and authoritarian character structure of the masses of people. (ibid., page xxiii)

Once again, Reich kept his eye on the essential. Replacing oppressive private capitalism with oppressive state capitalism did not advance the cause of human freedom. Who other than Reich observed the situation in Soviet Russia in that way at that time?

Orgonomic Functionalism

In this short Preface, Reich also introduces a revolution in thinking.

Dialectic materialism as outlined by Engels in his Anti-Dühring developed into biophysical functionalism. This development was made possible by the discovery of the biological energy, the orgone (1936-1939). Sociology and psychology were put on a solid biological foundation. Such a development cannot remain without influence on thought. As thinking develops, old concepts change and new concepts take the place of obsolete ones. (ibid., page xx)

From exploring the biological basis of the incapacity for freedom, he delves into the biological roots of psychology and sociology and explicitly introduces what we now know as orgonomic functionalism and functional thinking.

The Little Man Parallel

So many threads of Reich’s work come together in this Preface including his identification of the “little man” as the basis of fascism, which he introduced here two years before he published Listen, Little Man! (Reich 1948) and seven years before his 1953 The Murder of Christ. In the latter, he created an extensive table listing more than seventy “Creative Thoughts” that he matches with their “... Little Man Parallel.” (Reich 1953, pages 180–183)⁶

In this preface, Reich begins to warm up to the pull-no-punches tone he used throughout Listen, Little Man! Here he creates a hypothetical scene in which he confronts a fascist character about what he is doing as physician, educator, social worker, or builder, to genuinely help. “‘Give us a concrete, practical answer or shut up!’” (Reich 1946, page xii)

Work Democracy

Work democracy is a major theme in The Mass Psychology of Fascism. Reich mentions this revolutionary new sociological concept in the Preface but it runs throughout the body of the work and there is a seventy-seven-page chapter devoted entirely to it. ⁷ A few quotes extracted from the later body of the book clarify the definition of this key concept.

The essence of work democracy, in contradistinction to the authoritarian order of the state, is social self-regulation. (ibid., page 206)

It is a primary task of work democracy to harmonize the conditions and forms of work with the need of and enjoyment in work, in other words, to eliminate the contradiction between joy in life on the one hand and work on the other. (ibid., page 246)

Work democracy is the natural process of love, work and knowledge which has always governed economy and the social and cultural life of man and always will, as long as there is a human society.” (ibid., page 265)⁸

Love, Work and Knowledge

For the first time, Reich puts together, in this Preface, the three notes of love, work and knowledge to play a chord that rings true through the entirety of this and all his subsequent works.

Many such individual notes, phrases and motifs about love, work and knowledge emerge throughout the Preface and are developed in the body of the rest of the book.

…all politics which is not based on love, work and knowledge, and therefore is irrational, belongs in the field of the emotional plague…Love, work and knowledge are not “ideas,” not “political programs,” not “sentiments” or “creeds.” They are tangible realities without which human society could not exist for a single day. (ibid., page 325)

Reverberations about these core life functions first put together in this work later became incorporated into the well-known epigraph that the Orgone Institute Press adopted in the late 1940s to represent all of Reich’s books: “Love, work and knowledge are the well-springs of our life. They should also govern it.”

The Need to Protect the Living and the Truth

The need to protect the living—the healthy core—runs as a counterpoint through many passages of the Preface. Reich brings the theme alive with vivid personal descriptions.

As a physician, I have to treat diseases, as a researcher I have to disclose unknown facts in nature. If, now, a political wind-bag were to try to force me to leave my patients and my microscope, I would not let myself be disturbed but would, if necessary, throw him out. Whether or not I have to use force in order to protect my work on the living function against intruders does not depend on me or my work but on the intruders’ degree of impertinence. Let us assume that all those who do work on the living function were able to recognize the political wind- bag in time. They would act in the same way. Perhaps this over-simplified example gives a partial answer to the question as to how the living function, sooner or later, will defend itself against its intruders and destroyers. (ibid., page xiii)

Reich’s prescience is chilling. When he wrote this Preface in August 1945, two years before the first investigation of his work by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1947, he could not have known the disaster that awaited and would ultimately befall him.

Eventually, in February 1954, the FDA filed an injunction against Reich to prohibit interstate shipment of orgone accumulators, claiming that orgone energy did not exist. The FDA also called for a ban of Reich’s published literature characterizing it as “labelling for a fraudulent device.” The court granted the injunction in March. While Reich was on a research trip in Arizona, a student of his, without Reich’s knowledge, shipped accumulators from Maine to New York City. In 1956 Reich and the student were arrested for contempt of court for violating the injunction. In May they were convicted. Reich was sentenced to two years in prison, the student a year and a half. While Reich appealed, FDA agents supervised the destruction of accumulators and literature in Rangeley, Maine. In June six tons of Reich’s publications including hardcover books, journals and pamphlets were incinerated, burned, in New York City—a U.S. government act unprecedented in American history.⁹ Having exhausted all opportunity to appeal the case, Reich was imprisoned in the Lewisburg, Pennsylvania federal penitentiary in March 1957 where, in November of that year, he died of heart failure.

The “political wind-bags” did intrude on his work. If only he could have successfully thrown them out in time.

A Note for the History of Orgonomy Buffs

Reich’s Preface contains many gems of and about orgonomic history not easily found elsewhere including:

• A history of this new Third enlarged Edition of The Mass Psychology of Fascism.

• A history of the origin of the concept of work democracy.

• A description of the Communist Party’s antipathy toward Reich’s works, especially the original 1933 edition of The Mass Psychology of Fascism.

• Details of the specific Nazi decrees that banned the early editions of The Mass Psychology of Fascism.

• A historical perspective about past attacks on Reich and the destruction of his books by communists and fascists alike, foreshadowing the later 1954 banning and burning of his books, including this Third Edition of The Mass Psychology of Fascism, by the U.S. government.¹⁰

A Final Sweeping Chord and Note of Hope

With his characteristic excitement about his newest discoveries in orgonomy, Reich concludes the Preface with a perspective that encompasses millennia.

From all this it is obvious that the fascist mass pestilence, with its background of thousands of years, cannot be mastered with social measures corresponding to the past three hundred years.

The discovery of the natural biological work democracy in international human intercourse is the answer to fascism. This will be no less true even if not one of the living sex-economists, orgone biophysicists or work democrats should live to see its general functioning and its victory over the irrationalism in social life. (ibid., pages xxiii–xxiv)

Reich’s Preface with its unique, clear, oboe-like notes cuts through thousands of years of human history to reveal a vision of a future for the world far beyond one single lifetime.

References

Crist, P. 2020. Quotes from Wilhelm Reich. The Journal of Orgonomy 52(2): 3–10.

___.2021. A Brief History of Wilhelm Reich’s Development of Social Orgonomy. The Journal of Orgonomy 53(1&2): 101–124.

___.2021a. Commentary on Dr. Lore Reich Rubin’s Memoir Excerpts. The Journal of Orgonomy 53(1&2): 165–168.

Kelley, M. 2021. Personal communication, May 17, 2021.

Reich, W. 1943, trans. Wolfe, T.P. The Biological Miscalculation in the Human Struggle for Freedom. International Journal of Sex-Economy and Orgone Research 2: 122-140. (Later incorporated as a section in The Mass Psychology of Fascism (Reich 1946))

___.1943a, trans. Wolfe, T.P. Work democracy versus politics. The natural social forces for the mastery of the emotional plague. International Journal of Sex- Economy and Orgone Research 2: 97–121.

___.1945, trans. Wolfe, T.P. Some mechanisms of the emotional plague. International Journal of Sex-Economy and Orgone Research 4(1): 34–53. (Later incorporated as a chapter in the Third Edition of Character Analysis (Reich 1949)).

___.1946. trans. Wolfe, T.P. The Mass Psychology of Fascism. New York: Orgone Institute Press. (Retranslated, Higgins, M. and Raphael, C. M., eds. 1970 New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.)

___.1948, trans. Wolfe, T.P. Listen, Little Man! New York: Orgone Institute Press. (Reprinted, 1969, New York: Noonday Press.)

___.1953. The Murder of Christ: The Emotional Plague of Mankind, Vol. I. Rangeley. ME: Orgone Institute Press. (Reprinted, 1966, New York: Noonday Press.)

___.1966. The Murder of Christ: The Emotional Plague of Mankind. New York: Noonday Press.

___.1969. Listen, Little Man! New York: Noonday Press.

___. 1975. The Biological Miscalculation in the Human Struggle for Freedom. The Journal of Orgonomy 9(1): 4–26. (Originally published in Reich 1943 and incorporated in Reich 1946.)

___. 1975a. The Biological Miscalculation in the Human Struggle for Freedom, Part II. The Journal of Orgonomy 9(2): 134–144. (Originally published in Reich 1943 and incorporated in Reich 1946.)

Rubin, L. 2021. Memories of a Chaotic World: Growing Up as the Daughter of Annie Reich and Wilhelm Reich, Excerpts. The Journal of Orgonomy 53(1&2): 158–164.

Sharaf, Myron. 1983. Fury on Earth. New York: St. Martin’s Press/Marek.

1. The italics in all the quotes of Reich’s work used in this article are in Reich’s original text.

2. For further thoughts on the change in Reich’s views regarding Marxism see in this Journal issue “A Brief History of Wilhelm Reich’s Development of Social Orgonomy” (Crist 2021) and Dr. Crist’s commentary on Dr. Lore Reich Rubin’s excerpts from her memoir of life as Wilhelm Reich’s daughter. (Crist 2021a; Rubin 2021a)

3. For further commentary on Reich’s ability and willingness to change his views see “Commentary on Lore Reich Rubin’s Memoir Excerpts” in this Journal issue. (Crist 2021a)

4. This is the title of an article originally published by Reich (1943) that he subsequently incorporated into the 1946 Third Edition of The Mass Psychology of Fascism. (Reich 1946)Reich addressed one of the key questions that the Founders of America struggled with. Are rights granted by the state or is their source from within? The Founders ended up declaring that men “are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights,” clearly indicating their view that human rights are inherent as opposed to being granted by the government.

5. Reich addressed one of the key questions that the Founders of America struggled with. Are rights granted by the state or is their source from within? The Founders ended up declaring that men “are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights,” clearly indicating their view that human rights are inherent as opposed to being granted by the government.

6. Reich was writing Listen, Little Man! in 1946 as he prepared The Mass Psychology of Fascism for publication.

7. The title of Chapter X is entitled, “Work Democracy.” Elsewhere in this issue of The Journal of Orgonomy the concept of work democracy is addressed in the context of Reich’s other works. (Crist 2021)

8. Elsewhere in this issue of The Journal of Orgonomy the concept of work democracy is addressed in the context of Reich’s other works. (Crist 2021)

9. See information presented in the biography of Reich on the Wilhelm Reich Museum website: https://wilhelmreichmuseum.org/about/biography-of- wilhelm-reich/ Also, see Myron Sharaf’s Fury on Earth.

10. As noted elsewhere, The Mass Psychology of Fascism has the distinction of having been banned and burned by the Nazis, the Communists, and the U.S. government. (Crist 2021)