The Mass Psychology of Fascism

'Written in 1942 with the terrible reality of Nazism all around, Reich's book is as relevant now as it was then' New Psychiatry 'Broke new ground' New York Times The only authorised edition of Wilhelm Reich's pivotal text on fascism, translated from the original German. Originally published in 1933, and revised in 1942, Wilhelm Reich's classic study is a unique contribution to the understanding of one of the crucial phenomena of our times - fascism. Reich firmly repudiates the concept that fascism is the ideology or action of a single individual or nationality, or of any ethnic or political group. He also denies a purely socio-economic explanation as advanced by Marxian ideologists. He understands fascism as the expression of irrational character structure of the average human being whose primary biological needs and impulses have been suppressed for thousands of years. The social function of this suppression and the crucial role played in it by the authoritarian family and the church are carefully analysed. Reich shows how every form of organised mysticism, including fascism, relies on the unsatisfied orgastic longing of the masses.