[maxbendick]

One of my favorite radical psychoanalysts.

He has a stellar analysis of fascism in "The Mass-Psychology of Fascism." It's almost frightening how prescient he was not only for it's 1933 publication but for our current day as well. I wish more folks would check him out.

His fascination with orgone adds a lot of color to his work. I hope people don't write off his radical analyses for that. Despite the pseudoscience, he does get to the root of things. Great life-affirming stuff.

[dredmorbius]

Internet Archive: <https://archive.org/details/wilhelm-reich-the-mass-psycholog...> (full text)

Wikipedia: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mass_Psychology_of_Fascism>

[euroderf]

Not to oversimplify, but Reich saw a direct connection between the urge to fascism and the failure to find a state of sexual contentment (for lack of a better word).

[I_Am_Nous]

While it may not be direct, groups like internet incels blame lack of sexual contentment for basically their entire life situation and there are tinges of fascism in a lot of their ideology. A lack of agency in one aspect of life might increase the desire for control/belonging in another aspect.

[PH95VuimJjqBqy]

The people you describe as incels don't have an ideology.

If they do, then any group of people with a common set of complaints and frustrations has an ideology (such as black people? women? men? our military is an ideology now?). At that point the word ceases to have any useful meaning.

What is it with people nowadays wanting to apply words that are wholly inappropriate?

apparently being frustrated that women won't sleep with you is fascism?

[I_Am_Nous]

>If they do, then any group of people with a common set of complaints and frustrations has an ideology

I specified "internet incels" as they group together into a community online, rather than incels in the world, silently suffering. If a group of people who form a community because of a common bond remain a community for long enough, it will begin to have an ideology as most people in the group agree with certain ideas. A good example of this is black pill incels -- they believe themselves to be completely undesirable and instead of remaining hopeful, they turn to hate and try to convince other incels to "abandon any hopes of having a relationship with a woman because women are ACTUALLY the problem".

Sure, some people can come to this opinion without the help of peers egging them on, but if a group is trying to convince themselves and others of a certain idea, then that is an ideology after it remains in the community for long enough.

>apparently being frustrated that women won't sleep with you is fascism?

Reich (who the original article is about) believed the tendency toward fascism was related to the tendency to not being sexually satisfied. So in this respect, no, frustration does not equal fascism. What Reich might argue for is frustration leading one on a path to fascism, much like how hunger might lead a man on a path to highway robbery.

It's not like it's a cause so much as an observation that people who aren't satisfied in some way are more likely to seek that satisfaction somewhere else, and replacing one satisfaction for another is powerful.

[PH95VuimJjqBqy]

When in doubt, put the word "online" in front of it, that way your bologna seems more palatable.

Personally, I think if you're going to rail against an "online ideology" it should be the hackernews ideology, where people come together online and agree that software is interesting.

[I_Am_Nous]

Sure, because people following the HN ideology have been involved in shootings because they swallowed the black pill so hard they used their death as a manifesto of why interesting software is interesting.

Oh wait, no, that was an internet incel[1]. Hacker News doesn't seem to intentionally choose hate and push others to choose hate. Internet incels do.

1.https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-43892189

[dbtc]

thanks for the book rec.

Who are your other favorite radical psychoanalysts?

[erdii]

Jessica Benjamin and her book "The Bonds of Love" really struck a chord with me. I believe that her concept "gender polarity" fundamentally underlies old and modern "gender wars".

Other books and authors I found really interesting:

- Estela Welldon and her Book "Mother, Madonna, Whore"

- Sándor Ferenczi, who was a close associate of Freud and pioneered the concept of "Identification with the Aggressor", which seems to be the driving force behind what we call "transgenerational inheritance" of trauma. His concept of the "confusion of tongues" between child and pathological adult is also very interesting!

- Mathias Hirsch, a german psychoanalyst who wrote a lot about trauma, love, sexual abuse and was not afraid to explore stigmatized topics. For example:

  - the effects of sexual relations between analysts and their patients (he saw parallels to incestous abuse in a parent-child relationship)
  - sexually abusive mothers and the idealization of motherhood
  - the fact that his pyschoanalyst Günther Ammon, who later became his boss at the Deutsche Akademie für Psychoanalyse, controlled the academy in a cult-like fashion

[maxbendick]

Definitely Guattari! Anti-Oedipus, which he wrote with Deleuze, is a trip and really wonderful. That's actually how I came across Reich.

Guattari is interesting for pioneering schizoanalysis at the La Borde clinic. He's also one of the most confusing writers I've ever come across, so I recommend the books cowritten with Deleuze over his solo stuff. He's got some whimsy to him just like Reich does.

[rendx]

Not psychoanalysts, but: CG Jung, Fritz Perls?