Notes about Sexuality and Religion

First published in 1936 as: Die Sexualität im Kulturkampf (“Sexuality in the Cultural Struggle”).
by Wilhelm Reich.

In matriarchal society, which rests on the social order of primitive communism, children have unrestricted sexual freedom. The ideology of asceticism for the child develops along with the development of patriarchy in the economy and social structure. This turnabout in the attitude toward the child’s sexual life facilitates the producing of authority-oriented character structures in place of the previous unauthoritarian ones

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.507758
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Part One: The Fiasco of Compulsory Sexual Marality

Location 1345
3. THE DEAD END OF SEXUAL ENLIGHTENMENT

The atmosphere of crisis surrounding education in general and sexual education in particular has given emphasis to the question of whether children should be “sexually enlightened” and become accustomed or not to the sight of the naked human body or, more specifically, to the human genitalia. Although there is agreement about the fact-at least in those circles not under the immediate influence of the Church-that sexual secrecy is infinitely more harmful than useful; although there is a decent and energetic will to change the dismal conditions in education, there undoubtedly still exist severe contradictions and obstacles within the group of educational reformers, which can be distinguished on two grounds: those of an individual and those of a social nature. I will confine myself to discussing several basic difficulties which result from establishing the goal of “nude education”
and “sexual enlightenment.”

Among the sexual drives we know particularly well is the drive to look and to exhibit, whose instinctual goal is the observation or exhibition of erogenous zones, especially the sexual organs. Given educational conditions as they exist almost without exception today, this drive is bound to fall prey to repression very early in the child’s life. The child quickly learns that he may neither exhibit his own sexual organs nor look at those of others. As a consequence, he develops two kinds of feelings: first, guilt feelings which develop
when he yields to his desire to do something that is strictly forbidden; and second, with the concealment of the genitals and the taboo about them, mystical feelings in connection with everything sexual.

Therefore, the original natural pleasure in looking is transformed into lascivious curiosity. In order to escape the conflict between looking and its prohibition, the child must repress the impulse. Depending on the scope and degree of repression, either shyness and shame or lasciviousness will become more pronounced. Usually both coexist, producing a new conflict in place of the old one. With further development, there are two extreme possibilities: either the beginning of a damaged love life and neurotic symptoms if the repression
of looking is retained, or the beginning of a perversion, exhibitionism. One can never safely predict which of the two will occur. Given a sex-negating education, the development of a sexual structure that does not disturb either the social existence or the subjective state of the individual is almost always a matter of accident and the interaction of many factors, such as experiences during puberty, liberation from parental authority and, to some extent, the overcoming of social authority, but above all the ability to find the way to a healthy
sexual life.
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Location 1440
Our moral philosopher, who has led us to this point, will now ask triumphantly whether we believe that any of the demands which might result from the first serious beginning of a genuine sexual education will, in the framework of present society, be realized automatically within a few years. And he will ask if we have stopped to consider whether all of them are desirable. Once again he will add, quite rightly, that he merely wants to prove that everything must be left as it has been-the sex-negating education, sexual repression, neuroses, perversions, prostitution, and venereal diseases-if one wants to maintain (as he assumed we did) the high quality of marriage, chastity, family, and authoritarian society. …

Location 1450
The few parents who follow their own convictions in educating their children will be inconspicuous and, more importantly, will have no social influence. They will also have to consider that they will expose their children to grave conflicts with the prevailing social order and its morality even if neurotic conflicts are perhaps avoided. But anyone who is discontented with this society and believes that it can be undermined on a large scale, e.g., in schools, will soon learn, either by the loss of his means of subsistence or by stronger measures (institutionalization or imprisonment), that he will have no opportunity to discuss with us whether his methods of changing society are appropriate or not.
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Part Two: The Struggle for a “New Life” in the Soviet Union

Location 2920
In the development from matriarchy to partriarchy, the family acquires, along with its economic function, another function which is more important: to modify the structure of each individual from that of a free clan member to that of a subjugated member of the family. In today’s large East Indian family, this function is expressed most clearly. By developing as an independent unit in opposition to the clan, the family becomes the original organization not only of class relationships but also of social suppression inside and outside its boundaries. The emerging “family man” begins to reproduce the increasingly patriarchal class organization of society by changing his own structure. The basic mechanism of this reproduction is the shift from sex affirmation to sex suppression; its basis is the dominating economic position of the chieftain.

Let us briefly summarize the nature of this psychic change: in place of the free, voluntary relationship of clan and tribe members, based only on common interests, there is now a conflict between economic and sexual interests. In place of voluntary work accomplishment, there is now a requirement to work, and the rebellion against it; in place of natural sexual sociality, there is moralistic demand; in place of camaraderie among warriors, there are authoritarian-minded followers; in place of clan solidarity, there is the family bond, with the rebellion against it; in place of a sex-economically regulated life, there is the restriction of genitality and with it the first neuroses and sexual perversions. The naturally strong, self-confident biological organism becomes helpless, dependent, and God-fearing.
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Location 2932
The initial phases of the social revolution in the Soviet Union reveal the latest reversal of this process: the restoring of conditions as they existed in primitive communism, but on a higher, civilized plane, and the shift from sex negation to sex affirmation.

According to the findings of Marx, which are developed in the Communist Manifesto, one of the main tasks of the social revolution is the abolition of the family.1 What Marx inferred theoretically from the social process was later confirmed by the development of social organization in the Soviet Union. In place of the family, there begins to appear an organization which shows certain similarities with the clan in primitive communism—the socialist collective in the factory, in the schools, on the farm, etc. The difference between the primitive clan and the modern communist collective is that the former was founded on blood relationships and, as such, also became an economic unit. The latter does not consist of people related by blood and is based on common economic functions; it develops as an economic unit and leads of necessity to the formation of personal relationships which may also be characterized as a sexual collective. Just as the family destroyed the clan in primitive society, the communist economic collective destroys the family, which had already begun to crumble during the crisis of capitalism.
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Location 4235
The situation was less positive in respect to sexual matters. Teachers complained about the nervousness of the children. In many cases, children followed sleeping rituals as a protection against masturbation. Children who masturbated were often removed by their parents. A teacher commented: “Even doctors’ children masturbate.”
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Location 4242
The history of the formation of ideology teaches us that every social system, consciously or unconsciously, uses the influencing of children to anchor itself in man’s structure. If we follow the way in which the social order was transformed from matriarchy to patriarchy, we can establish the sexual education of the child as its central mechanism.

In matriarchal society, which rests on the social order of primitive communism, children have unrestricted sexual freedom. The ideology of asceticism for the child develops along with the development of patriarchy in the economy and social structure. This turnabout in the attitude toward the child’s sexual life facilitates the producing of authority-oriented character structures in place of the previous unauthoritarian ones.

In matriarchal society, the general collective life corresponds to the unrestricted sexuality of children, i.e., there are no norms for the child that would coerce him into specific forms of sexual life. The free sexuality of the child creates a firm structural basis for voluntary integration into the collective and for voluntary work discipline.

Sexual suppression of the child comes about with the development of the patriarchal family, which is in opposition to the clan. Sexual games with companions are forbidden. Masturbation gradually becomes a punishable activity.
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