Research On Reich's Character Theory

In the early 20th century,after experiencing the economic prosperity brought by the rapid development of science and technology,the Western capitalist world suffered a sernous capitalist economic crisis,and then the rise of fascism,"vulgar Marxists" could not explain these phenomena from the view of pure economies.As a result,in the various schools of Western Marxism,many scholars have launched criticisms of post-industrial civilization and its consequences from the perspectives of Marxism.Among them,the Freudian Marxism in the humanism trend is relatively prominent.They pay attention to the internal problems of human psychology,criticize and reflect on the current social situation from the point of view of people themselves.As Marxists emphasis,man is the subject of history.Therefore,the study of the development and problems of social history must ultimately return to the human beings themselves.Freudian Marxism has been founded in the 1920s.It is the combination of Freudian and Marxism,and is the product of the development of Psychoanalysis to Social psychology.The character theory proposed by Freudian Marxists is based on people themselves and defines people from two aspects:biological instinct and social relations;It uses the character structure as a link between the economic foundation and social.consciousness to explain the root cause of the economic development to the left and the people turning to the right.It advocates the combination of social criticism and psychological criticism to launch criticism of modern capitalism and fascism;It argues that society needs change,not only political revolution,but also a psychological revolution.With regard to the study of character issues,Western society has a long history.Philosophy,sociology,religion,law,and psychiatry all use character or individuality as their research objects.Each discipline has put forward different theories because of the different footing of research,and scholars of each discipline have further refined the theoretical system in practice.On the basis of the Western personality research and the German-centered characterology,modern Western individuality psychology has been fully developed.The application of character theory gradually shifted from the field of psychopathology to the field of sociology.This shift was the result of Reich's integration of Freudian and Marxism.As a clinical psychoanalyst,Reich was deeply influenced by Freud,especially Freud's Libido theory and personality theory.With more and more people suffering from mental illness in the 20th century,Reich expanded the clinical response of individual mental illness to the perspective of the social environment to analyze and study.Why can't the proletariat launch a political revolution to overthrow capitalism in the face of a severe economic crisis?Why do the masses choose to support the Fascist regime instead of resisting it?In his opinion,these social phenomena are the result of the "cleavage" between productive forces and productive relations,social existence and social consciousness.He proposed to carry out physio-psychological analysis of people by using of character analysis technology,to explore the internal response mechanism of the conflict between instinct and the outside world,and pointed out the important influence of repression,especially sexual repression,in character formation.He used the character structure to frame the bridge between social existence and social consciousness,pointing out that the ruling class secures its position by anchoring its ruling ideologies in people's mind with the help of character structure,thus advocating that the proletariat cultivate its own class consciousness.He suggested launching a sexual revolution to liberate people from sexual alienation,and made a vision for the future society.This article tries to comb Reich' character theory,tracing back the origin of theory,clarifies the development context,expounds the connotation of thought,explores its unique perspective in analyzing social phenomena and solving social problems,and points out its important contribution to psychoanalysis and Marxism.Reich's character theory solves not only the problem of the "cleavage"between social existence and social consciousness in Marxist ideology,but also takes this as an opportunity to integrate Freudian and Marxism,thus completing the transition from the clinical diagnosis and treatment of mental illness to the criticism of capitalist society.Although Reich has some misunderstandings and distortions of Marxism in this synthesis,and the proposed sexual revolution also has a tendency of "sexualism".However,his character theory provides new ideas for the development of Marxist theory of human nature and ideology under the new situation of contemporary society.