The Mass Psychology of Fascism - Anxiety Depression Self-Help

the tremendous changes in thought which have taken place during the past decade. It was also the touchstone for
the correctness of sex-economic sociology and its applicability to the social revolutions of our century. Thus,
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
________
1 The following decrees were published in the Deutsches Reichsgesetzblatt: No. 213 13.April 1935
Auf Grund der VO vom 4.2.33 werden die Druckschriften "Was ist Klassenbewusstsein" von Ernst Parell, "Dialektischer Materialismus und Psychoanalyse"
von Wilhelm Reich, Nr. 1 und 2 der politisch-psychologischen Schriftenreihe des Verlages für Sexualpolitik, Kopenhagen-Prag-Zürich, sowie alle übrigen in
der gleichen Schriftenreihe noch erscheinenden Druckschriften für Preussen polizeilich beschlagnahmt und eingezogen, da sie geeignet sind, die öffentliche
Sicherheit und Ordnung zu gefährden.
41230/35 II 2 B 1. Berlin, 9.4.35
Gestapo
No. 2146 7.Mai 1935
Auf Grund der VO des Reichspräsidenten vom 28.2.33 wurde die Verbreitung aller ausländischen Druckschriften der politisch-psychologischen
Schriftenreihe der Sex.Pol. (Verlag für Sexualpolitik, Kopenhagen, Dänemark, auch Prag. Tschechoslowakei. und Zürich, Schweiz) im Inland bis auf weiteres
verboten.
III P 3952/53 Berlin, 6.5.35
R.M.d.I.
[xv] had taken place since then, and the magnitude of the tasks with which science is confronted in overcoming
fascism.
To begin with, I had good reason to be gratified. The sex-economic analysis of fascist ideology not only stood
the test of time, but, more than that, the past ten years confirmed it in all essential points. It survived the decline
of the economistic concepts with which the German Marxist parties had tried to master fascism. It means
something that, ten years after its publication, there is a new demand for the book. This is more than any Marxist
publication of ten years ago, whose authors had condemned sex-economy, can say for itself.
The revolutions in thinking which had taken place since the publication of the second edition in 1934 expressed
themselves as follows:
Around 1930 I had not even an inkling yet of the natural work-democratic relationships between working
people. The then young sex-economic insights into human structure formation were put into the framework of the
thinking of the Marxist parties. At that time I was working in liberal, Socialist, and Communist cultural
organizations, and in my presentation of sex-economy I was forced to use the current Marxist sociological
slogans. The tremendous gap between sex-economic sociology and vulgar economism made itself felt even then
in many painful disputes with various party officials. But since I still believed in the basically scientific nature of
the Marxist parties, there was one thing I could not understand: why the party people fought the social effects of
my medical work particularly violently just when masses of employees, industrial workers, small businessmen,
students, etc., were coming with a thirst for knowledge about life to the organizations with a sex-economic
orientation. I shall never forget the "Red Professor" who in 1928 was sent from Moscow to one of my addresses
to students, in order to defend the "party line" against me. This man declared, among other things, that "the
Oedipus complex is nonsense," that there isn't any such thing. Fourteen years later, his Russian comrades were
being killed by the hordes of Führer-subservient machine men.
[xvi] Really one would have expected that parties which pretended to be fighting for human freedom would
have welcomed my political-psychological work. As the archives of our Institute prove abundantly, the exact
opposite was the case. The greater the social effects of the mass-psychological work, the more violent were the
counter-measures of the party politicians. As early as 1932, the Socialist as well as the Communist organizations,
over the vigorous protest of their own members, prohibited the distribution of the works published by the Verlag
für Sexualpolitik, then in Berlin. I was threatened with execution as soon as Marxism should gain power in
Germany. In 1932, against the explicit wish of their members, the Communist organizations in Germany banned
sex-economic physicians from their meetings, as the Social Democrats in Austria had done as early as 1929 and
1930. I was expelled from both organizations because I introduced sexology into sociology and pointed out its