The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution

by Carl R. Trueman

What Reich does here is adopt Freud’s basic point about civilization/culture—that it is the product of sexual repression—while refusing to make this a transcendent truth, preferring to relativize it. Sexual codes are part of the ideology of the governing class, designed to maintain the status quo so as to benefit those in power. To be specific: the present shape of this civilization-happiness trade-off involves preventing children from engaging in sexual self-expression, but this particular historical form of moral prescription is not in itself a necessary absolute and could well be configured differently. The question therefore emerges as to how and why the current sexual codes, specifically here relating to children, have come to be the way they are. More generally, why is a culture or civilization built on such specific forms of repression considered necessary, and by whom?