Lipton’s Journal/December 31, 1954/140

Sexual psychopathy would be normal sex if the chains of society were broken—that is why society attacks sex so violently. Divorce is the first statement of orgiastic verity—so the church fights it. All churches say, “Be content.” They are always opposed to change for they are the bastardization of the soul in society. Freud went very far, and indeed he started on cocaine I suspect, got his first intimations of the caverns below. He was a very great man, but no great man can do it all, and Freud stopped short for which one can hardly blame him. (Look, what happened to Wilhelm Reich.)^[1] Freud stopped with the idea that society is good rather than that society is necessary until man conquers nature, but the society must in it turn be conquered or man will be destroyed.

Note

↑ An Austrian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who worked with Freud, Reich (1897-1957), and was the author of many clinical works, including The Function of the Orgasm (1942). He fled to the U.S. when the Nazis came to power. His eccentric and controversial theory of orgone energy, and the phone-booth size orgone accumulators he invented, got him into legal trouble and he was sent to federal prison where he died. Mailer was influenced by Reich’s ideas about sexual repression and character armor, and built his own orgone box.

[1] An Austrian psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who worked with Freud, Reich (1897-1957), and was the author of many clinical works, including The Function of the Orgasm (1942). He fled to the U.S. when the Nazis came to power. His eccentric and controversial theory of orgone energy, and the phone-booth size orgone accumulators he invented, got him into legal trouble and he was sent to federal prison where he died. Mailer was influenced by Reich’s ideas about sexual repression and character armor, and built his own orgone box.

[1]