I was startled, on opening Wilhelm Reich’s The Sexual Revolution (1930-), to discover there not only the terms “sex-negative” and “sex-affirmative”, but almost the entire template of the contemporary “sex-positive” critique of authoritarian and patriarchal mores laid out in breadth and developed in detail.

What has dropped out of the discourse during the period between the thirties and the present is essentially Reich’s theory of the orgasm, which forms the basis for his discussion of “sexual economy”, and in particular for his contention that an “objective”, “scientific”, “non-ethical” treatment of sexual economy is possible and desirable. The theory is not itself elaborated in The Sexual Revolution, which rather refers to “orgastic potency”, “body armour” and so on as if the validity of these concepts were already scientifically established (that is, stabilised through systematic association with a physical referent); rather like Freud, he seems to be betting on a future science that will one day retroactively verify its larval “findings”.

At this point in Reich’s thinking, libido (not yet conceived of as an ethereal “orgone energy” flowing through living things) functions hydraulically, building up pressure wherever it is blocked and flowing wherever an outlet may be found. In this he is still decidedly Freudian, at least in his choice of metaphor. The libidinal-economic function of orgasm is to release pressure, expending the force of libido outside of the body. If instead of being released in this way it is dammed up and forced to circulate within the body, it produces neurotic symptoms and authoritarian character traits.

Libidinal energy thus behaves a little like the gift in Mauss: it must cross boundaries, expend itself beyond the closed circuit of the individual nervous system and circulate freely, in order to realize its potency; otherwise it will stagnate and breed monsters. The libido is other-oriented, directed towards the Open: its expenditure in orgasm is the opening-out of the organism.

The authoritarian character is formed through sexual repression: through the denial specifically of orgasm. Reich’s immediate and urgent example here is the National Socialist, an emotionally closed and fearful individual who receives from authority the simultaneous prohibition of orgasm - of incontinent bodily openness - and licence to commit violent and sadistic acts. Violence functions as a kind of obscene double of orgasm: the violent individual (Reich is especially concerned with the case of the “sex murderer”) procures gratification through the expenditure of physical force; but instead of opening the body’s libidinal economy to shared enjoyment, violence serves to reinforce the body’s separateness from the other body it harms.

I don’t think it’s too fanciful to see Reich as telegraphing from 1930s Germany his analysis, in these terms, of what contemporary feminism calls “rape culture”. Certainly the most appealing aspect, for me, of his sex-economic analysis of the authoritarian character is its relentless demonstration that “compulsory sex morality” and sexual depravity (violence, callousness, the entire spectrum of what he calls “mercenary” sexual activity) are organically entwined. That isn’t a new insight, of course: tracing it back as far as William Blake’s observation that “brothels [are built with bricks] of religion”, one might tentatively position Reich as an inheritor of the antinomian tradition in which E. P. Thompson’s Witness Against The Beast placed Blake and his fellow Dissenters. Certainly, Reich would readily have affirmed that “energy is eternal delight”.

Beyond a certain point, however, I have to withdraw my assent from Reich’s revolution. It is not a question of preserving morals, but of feeling dubious about the simplistic vitalism underlying Reich’s model of sexual health. This seems to me to have two immediately bad consequences: the valorisation of “genital sexuality” as the only authentic mode of libidinal expression, and the denigration of homosexuality as a perversion brought about by repression of such authentic expression. Reich really doesn’t do queer: the straight path to orgasm is always the best, and it always leads through “proper” intercourse. (He even contributes, albeit indirectly, to the nasty insinuation that there’s a clandestine affinity, if not an isomorphism, between Nazism and homosexuality). For the same reason, he doesn’t really do asexual, or bored with sex, or just having a bit of a rest: the imperative (for the good of your soul, or at least your “character”) is to keep up that “orgastic potency” from as soon as you’re able to until you drop.

I also suspect him of harbouring a malice towards literature at least as great as that of Plato towards the poets:

For example, any kind of literature which creates sexual anxiety must be prohibited. This includes pornography and mystery stories as well as gruesome fairy tales for children. This literature will have to be replaced by one that, instead of horrors, describes and discusses the genuine feeling for the infinitely manifold sources of natural enjoyment in life.

You’re rather left wondering if Bruno Bettelheim did him some nameless injury at some point. But all of this flows from the conviction that life itself is intrinsically and self-sufficiently good, and that only “repression” produces imbalance, disorder, night-terrors and neuroses. I find that I want to keep much of Reich’s analysis of the neuroticising effects of “compulsory sex morality”, which seems eminently applicable to the sexual authoritarianism of the Christian Right, whilst discarding entirely the model of health and fulfilment which underlies it, as sweetly optimistic and philanthropic as it is. There is no subject without a twist, and subjective torsion is just what Reich wants us to collectively fuck out of existence; the projected outcome, it seems to me, is Houllebecq’s bovine, de-anxietised post-humans, milling about aimlessly in a milieu with no remaining use for thought.