The Battle for a New Humanity by Eva Reich D r. Wilhelm Reich discovered an effective therapy for the dissolution of character armoring. However, he always stressed the importance of the prevention of neurosis rather than subsequent treatment. Society creates conditions which stunt the direct growth and unfolding of the human personality to full potential. Active interference with natural functions is the norm in western civilization. If Wilhelm Reich was correct that the primary life instinct is “good”, that self-regulation is a basic natural law, and that it is only the blocking of the life energy which creates “secondary” impulses¹ then we ought to act above all to protect life in the young as it is growing and functioning from the beginning. I agree with Wilhelm Reich that “politics is a disease of mankind,” and, therefore, it is futile to put our energy into bringing about political revo1ution. I would prefer to bring about the biological revolution, a revolution of a return to the unarmored state, of a change which would allow the “genital character” to survive growing up into adulthood. The biological revolution follows the sexual revolution, Reich said. The biological revolution would produce human beings who could tolerate gentleness and pleasure in life, who would shun violence and to whom war would be anachronistic. I recommend further studies confirming that tribes who allow both body pleasure in infancy and premarital sexual intercourse in youth show no violence, crime or perversion.² Unimpeded growth of the human potential is as yet a dream on earth. It seems to me that a chain of events affects each human being from conception on. The earliest events are most crucial, simply because they happen first on the time-line. Also, the same amount of force has a more damaging impact on a small seedling, whose stem becomes kinked, than the same force exerted upon the twig or a large tree. We must reconcile two viewpoints, the “paradise lost school,” which prefers to mourn over damaging traumas of childhood, and the “growth movement” in which grown-ups are stretching out toward a more expanded creative life of the here and now. I have worked toward the prevention of trauma inEva Reich, 1989 energy & character vol.37 may 2009 15
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