Knightmare in Armor: reflections on Wilhelm Reich's contributions to psychoanalysis.

One of the more curious by-products of the political and social unrest of the late 1960s, has been the emergence of and survival of interest in the writings of Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957). In the last few years, new translations of his books have appeared and some of his early work has been translated for the first time. A biography, magazine articles, and various surveys of his work convey the impression that his ideas are timely, or at least that they are historically important. However, I believe that the current enthusiasm for Reich owes more to the problems that interested him than to the light he shed on them. His great appeal for radical youth is based on his advocacy of social and sexual reform, for which he provided ideological support through a Marxist-psychoanalytic synthesis. By the technique of anthropological, economic, and psychological analysis, Reich tried to provide a scientific justification for revolutionary hopes.