The Mass Psychology of Fascism - Anxiety Depression Self-Help

him from the infantile submission to the authority of the father and those who take his place. The strengthening of
the personality dissolves the God-fixation which is a continuation of the father-fixation. When, finally, characteranalytic
vegetotherapy enables the patient to establish a satisfactory love life, mysticism loses its last foothold. In
this case, clerics get into great difficulties, because they can no longer, with conviction, continue in a profession
which has affected their health in ways they know from experience. They have no other choice than to change
their profession and to become teachers or social workers.
These changes in the mystical individual will remain hidden only to those analysts who either do not understand
their patients' genital disturbance or who agree with a well-known psychoanalyst and minister who stated that
"the probe of psychoanalysis should not be allowed to go into the unconscious any more deeply than is permitted
by ethics." With this kind of "unpolitical," "objective" science we do not want anything to do, any more than with
that kind of science which, assiduously fighting the revolutionary consequences of sex-economy as "politics," at
the same time advises mothers to fight the erections of their little boys with exercises in holding their breath. The
problem in such cases is what goes on in the physician who can reconcile such measures with his conscience, who
becomes a cleric in a vain attempt to rehabilitate himself in the eyes of the reaction.
[156] We do not discuss the existence or non-existence of God; all we do is to eliminate the sexual repressions
and the infantile fixation on the parents. The destruction of mysticism is not a goal in itself. The therapist treats
mysticism like any other psychic fact which aids sexual repression and absorbs the natural energies. The sexeconomic
process, then, does not consist in opposing the mystical ideology with a "materialistic, anti-religious"
ideology. Such ideological manipulation is explicitly avoided, since it would not alter the biopathy. The process
is, rather, that of unmasking the mystical attitude as an antisexual force and of liberating the energies which
nourish it, of making them available for rational use. The patient, previously moralistic in his ideology and
perverse, lascivious and neurotic in reality, becomes free of this contradiction in himself; with his moralism he
also loses his sexual anti-sociality and acquires a natural morality in the sex-economic sense. The inadequate
moralistic and mystical inhibitions are replaced by sex-economic regulation of the sexual needs.
From its own standpoint, then, mysticism is entirely correct if, in order to maintain itself and in order to
reproduce itself in people, it takes such a strong stand against sexuality. It is wrong only in one of its premises
and in its most important justification: Its "morals" create the very perverted sexual life which it presumes to
regulate moralistically; and the elimination of these "morals" is the prerequisite for an elimination of that
immorality which it tries in vain to fight. This is the inexorable tragedy of any kind of moralism and mysticism.
The uncovering of the sex-economic processes which nourish religious mysticism means its end, sooner or later,
no matter what the mystics do.
Sexual consciousness and mystical feeling are mutually exclusive. From the point of view of energy, natural
sexuality and mystical feeling are identical, as long as natural sexuality is repressed and its energies are
transformed into mystical excitation.
These sex-economic facts have inevitable consequences for a mass mental hygiene. These we shall present after
discussing some frequent objections.
[157]
5. OBJECTIONS TO SEX-ECONOMIC PRACTICE
Sex-economic practice shows that economists argue against sex-economy because of its "exaggeration of the
sexual problem," and that they use the least difficulties, many of which are inevitable in such a new field, as
grounds to throw out the whole field. To begin with, these opponents of sex-economy have no reason for any
jealousy. Sex-economic cultural work does not mean any encroachment on their domain, or a restriction of their
field of work; its goal is the comprehension of a hitherto completely neglected but extremely important part of the
cultural process. The sex-economic fight is part of the total fight of the suppressed and exploited against the
suppressors and exploiters. To try to make an armchair decision on what will be the place of this fight in the
struggle of the working people would mean indulgence in scholastic discussion. Up to now, in the discussions of