Has anyone read this?

[Katherine Brengle]

The Mass Psychology of Fasism by Wilhelm Reich?

I have only read the preface so far (it's pretty heavy reading and the translation from the original German makes it a little harder to wade through) but it is the most fascinating thing I have read in my life so far.

Just curious if anyone else has read it, or heard of it? I stumbled across it looking for research materials on facsism in general.

[laheina]

1. Put it on my wish list.

Thanks for bringing it to my attention.

I've been wading through Max Weber's "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism." It has a very similar situation with heavy reading and the translation from German. :)

[Katherine Brengle]

2. I'll add that to my list as well--I have just started some serious

research into fascism, what causes it, how it becomes a controlling force in society, and I ordered this book as well as America, Fascism, and God by Davidson Loehr and The Anatomy of Fascism by Robert Paxton.

Yikes, I have bought 7 books for this project so far (not counting the ones I already have in my personal library)--add someone else's house by Tamar Jacoby, The 9/11 Commission Report, and The Big Chill (which discusses the lack of media coverage of the inaugural protests in 2001).

I'm exhausted, lol. Please feel free to pass along any book or film recs anytime--I am always on the hunt for more knowledge and a greater spectrum of perspectives.

[laheina]

3. My Poli Sci section is somewhat lacking.

But someone did post a book regarding the 9/11 report that I'm going to check into. I haven't read it yet, but it's called "The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions A Critique of the Kean-Zelikow Report."

Here's a link: http://www.interlinkbooks.com/Books_/911CommRep.html

I look forward to hearing about your research. :hi:

[Katherine Brengle]

6. Another addition...

That sounds very interesting, I'm adding it to my list.

Thank you!

:)

[file83]

4. Don't you mean "The Mass Psychology of the Neo-Cons"? Oh wait...

You've got the original version. (wink wink)

[Dogmudgeon]

5. I read it in the middle 1970s

Right after Farrar, Strauss and Giroux released it in paperback. An excellent book, indeed!

Alice Miller's books are also excellent psychoanalytically-oriented studies. What Reich called The Emotional Plague, Miller calls Poisonous Pedagogy. She's written about eight or nine books and some dozens of papers on the subject. They are easier books to find than Reich's.

Lloyd DeMause is the main voice of Psychohistory and has written in this field for some time, as well. He has occasionally gone to absurd lengths to make a point (his long essay on Bill Clinton, for instance), but it's all well worth reading. Robert Jay Lifton was one of the co-founders of Psychohistory as an academic discipline.

A few Google searches will turn up a large amount of treasures of this sort -- if you can call them "treasures", since some of them are difficult to read, especially Miller's books.

--p!

[Katherine Brengle]

7. Thanks for the suggestions--

I found Reich's book 100% by accident--or maybe it was divine intervention, lol.

I haven't had a lot of exposure to this kind of analysis--I never studied psychology in college, but I am starting to wish I had. The ideas I have seen so far in Reich's book, once I have read them, seem completely common sensical, except I never would have thought of them on my own without being exposed to his conclusions. It ticks me off that this book has been around since the 1930s and I never knew about it, lol.

I'll definitely look for Miller and the rest you have mentioned.