Die Sexualität im Kulturkampf ("sexuality in the culture war"), 1936 (published later in English as The Sexual Revolution), is a work by Wilhelm Reich. The subtitle is "zur sozialistischen Umstrukturierung des Menschen" ("for the socialist restructuring of humans"), the double title reflecting the two-part structure of the work.
The first part "analyzes the crisis of the bourgeois sexual morality" and the failure of the attempts of "sexual reform" that preserved the frame of capitalist society (marriage and family). The second part reconstructs the history of the sexual revolution that took place with the establishment of the Soviet Union since 1922, and which was opposed by Joseph Stalin in the late 1920s.
Significant differences among editions
Starting with the 1945 English edition, the following German, French and Italian editions had an unexplained change in the title: The Sexual Revolution. Such title changed "not only the perspective, but also the methodology", resulting in a misleading presentation of the actual work contained in the book. More instructive is the change of the subtitle: from for the socialist restructuring of humans to toward a self-governing character structure.
The editions since 1945, also had a number of "reshuffles, terminology changes and abuses by editors", some of which were intended to "disguise the communist-revolutionary orientation", to avoid hurting the susceptible American public. There are also crucial omissions and changes to the content; while the original edition (1936), based its theory on the "rejection of the family institution as such", the softened versions reject just the "authoritarian family structure", aiming to replace it with a "better and more natural form of family". Other omissions or changes affected the "terms regarding religion, class society, radical left politics, the 'bourgeois' attribute referred to family, morality or sexuality, proletariat, etc.
In 1992, Italian publisher Erre Emme, published for the first time not only an integral 1936 edition, but also integrations showing the changes of the 1945 edition, in order to allow a scientific confrontation.
Content
In Part I, Reich explains that sexual neuroses derive from the lack of gratification of natural sexuality. Natural sexuality is left unsatisfied and thereby creates neuroses due to suppression of this sexuality by the authoritarian state. For Reich, this state is characterized best by the capitalist state that is based on the unit of the patriarchical family, within which the father mirrors the state as the absolute authority.
According to Reich, the authoritarian state uses a variety of tools in order to suppress its citizens' natural sexualities. These tools comprise Reich's view of "conservative, sex-negative moralism" and include: the ideology of lifelong, monogamous marriage, which Reich calls "compulsive marriage"; the suppression of infantile sexuality, which Reich cites as the primary cause of unnatural sexual desires and perversions later in life; a lack of candid sexual education or sexual freedom for adolescents; the persecution of abnormal sexualities such as homosexuality; the illegality of abortion; marriage as a legalized institution, and the lack of an "incompatibility" reason for divorce. These various means of suppression in turn cause the authoritarian state's citizens to both repress their natural sexual desires and create new, neurotic, unhealthy sexual desires. Reich explains that this relationship between suppression/repression of natural sexuality and the creation or intensification of sexual neuroses is a cyclical relationship that constantly results in more power for the authoritarian state.