“Gradually it became clear that it is a fundamental error to try to give the sexual act a psychological interpretation, to attribute to it a psychic meaning as if it were a neurotic symptom. But this is what the psychoanalysts did. On the contrary: any idea occurring in the course of the sexual act only has the effect of hindering one's absorption in the excitation. Furthermore, such psychological interpretations of genitality constitute a denial of genitality as a biological function. By composing it of non-genital excitations, one denies the existence of genitality. The function of the orgasm, however, had revealed the qualitative difference between genitality and pregenitality. Only the genital apparatus can provide orgasm and can discharge sexual energy completely. Pregenitality, on the other hand, can only increase vegetative tensions. One readily sees the deep rift which formed here in psychoanalytic concepts.”
― The Function of the Orgasm; Sex-economic Problems of Biological Energy
― The Function of the Orgasm; Sex-economic Problems of Biological Energy
“It is high time for the living to get tough, for toughness is indispensable in the struggle to safeguard and develop the life-force; this will not detract from their goodness, as long as they stand courageously by the truth. There is ground for hope in the fact that among millions of decent, hard-working people there are only a few plague-ridden individuals, who do untold harm by appealing to the dark, dangerous drives of the armored average man and mobilizing him for political murder. There is but one antidote to the average man's predisposition to plague: his own feelings for true life. The life force does not seek power but demands only to play its full and acknowledged part in human affairs. It manifests itself through love, work and knowledge.”
― Listen, Little Man!
― Listen, Little Man!
“Only the liberation of the natural capacity for love in human beings can master their sadistic destructiveness.”
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“And the truth must finally lie in that which every oppressed individual feels within himself but hasn't the courage to express”
― Beyond Psychology: Letters and Journals 1934-1939
― Beyond Psychology: Letters and Journals 1934-1939
“The question of how and why the encrustations and rigidifications of human emotional life are brought about led directly into the realm of vegetative life.”
― The Function of the Orgasm
― The Function of the Orgasm
Anarchist & Radical Book Club
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This is a group to read and discuss anarchist practice and theory, by gathering a large body of anarchist literature, non-fiction, and theory, as well ...more
Javier’s 2025 Year in Books
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