SOURCE: "Character Structure, Ideology, and the Internalization of Social Relationships," in Ideology and Unconsciousness: Reich, Freud, and Marx, New York University Press, 1982, pp. 137-69.

In the following essay, Cohen outlines the major social and psychological principles in Reich's works.

Freud's great contribution was to develop the concepts and techniques which theorists have applied to try to reveal the influence of social forces on the individual psyche. Yet Freud himself failed to recognize the historical nature of the relationship between, on the one hand, the development of our civilization and, on the other, the repression and distortion of human needs and desires.…[His] social theory was based on the ideological presupposition that manifest behavior reflected certain universals of human nature which have been retained throughout history. Thus Freud could conclude that the conflict between the demands of civilization and the needs of the individual was inevitable and that the...