Review - Wilhelm Reich - Sexuality & Sexual Problems -
[Cached Version]
Published on: 11/26/2003
Last Visited: 7/29/2008
by Robert S. Corrington
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Corrington's book combines a psychoanalytical rendering of Reich's troubled life (which consisted largely of a search for sexual gratification) with a tribute to Reich's prolific writings, most of which were published at his own expense According to Corrington, the writings, though brilliant, are expressions of the life, which was marred by psychopathology.
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Corrington, who shares Reich's view that he was a martyr to science, is simply too enthralled by his subject to notice the difficulty.In fact, so enamored is he of Reich that Professor Corrington is not content merely to declare that Reich made advances on Freud and Marx.A professor of "philosophical theology" at Drew University, Corrington also declares that Reich made advances on Einstein and Darwin.
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The first three chapters of Professor Corrington's book deal with Reich's advances on Freud, for whom Corrington also has great enthusiasm.
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Yet Professor Corrington, who likes Freud's metaphors but likes Reich's even better, believes that Reich stands to Freud as Einstein stands to Newton.
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Apparently oblivious to the work of such critics as the philosopher of science Adolph Grunbaum, Professor Corrington, shows no awareness that scientifically minded persons regard views like Freud's and Reich's as more poetry than science.
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Corrington's fourth chapter exposes Reich's psychoanalytic version of Marxism.
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Corrington's last three chapters tell the rest of the story.
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Despite this, Professor Corrington persists to the end in denying that there was evidence to support the court psychiatrist who judged Reich to be a paranoid schizophrenic.