18184587-Reich-Letters

Page 316

A M E R I C A N

O D Y S S E Y

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have gained on the emotional plague in my consulting room, it would be impossible to go on, impossible to trust a single soul. The secret techniques of the emotional plague cannot be put into words and therefore are one of its mainstays. The pioneer of truth becomes exhausted because he feels only his powerlessness to make a breakthrough and does not understand why his road is blocked. If he becomes pliant and flexible, his name may well become known but not his cause. Interpersonal communication only transpires peacefully on the levels of superficial social etiquette.* This kind of communication cannot approach the core of a matter because this would require passing through the chaotic strata of the emotional plague which lie between. For this reason all discussion remains confined to a superficial level and, even with the best of intentions, can never penetrate to the heart of the matter in question. Realization of the existence of such intermediate plague strata in the human animal leads without fail to chaotic consequences when one tries to probe the depths and arrive at real insight. Expressed in terms of society this means: Society will have to pass through a phase of chaotic events, including mass murder and killing, before it arrives at a social order based upon the human animal's biological core. Twentieth-century fascism is the organizational expression of the chaos of the middle layer following the removal and elimination of the superficial courtesies of liberalism. These insights have been firmly established; they are necessary, concise, and inexorable. However, it is impossible to make headway in a practical sense because of the little man's fear of life. This is partially a fear of the passage through the hell, the inferno of the middle layer of the emotional plague. Dante's fantasies and Freud's realities of the unconscious are respectively the poetic and scientific expressions of insight into the emotional plague. The discovery of the biological core of the human animal offers us hope, but it also reveals the necessity of passing through this in* Reich's clinical research revealed three layers in the human structure: the periphery or superficial, the middle or secondary layer, and the biological core.


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