Wilhelm Reich’s Warning of an Emotional Plague

From an article written by psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich, MD titled “Some Mechanisms of the Emotional Plague”: “The term ’emotional plague’ has no defamatory connotation. It does not refer to conscious malice, moral or biological degeneration, immorality, etc…
Where the healthy individual advises and helps, where he, with his experiences, simply lives ahead of others and leaves it to them whether they want to follow his example or not, the plague individual imposes his way of living on others by force. Plague indi­viduals do not tolerate views which threaten their armorings or which disclose their irrational motives. The healthy in­dividual experiences only pleasure when his motives are discussed; the plague individual becomes furious. The healthy individual, where other views of life disturb his life and work, fights in a rational manner for the preservation of his way of living. The plague individual fights against other ways of living even where they do not touch him at all. The motive of his fight is the provocation which other ways of living represent by their mere existence.”

The post Wilhelm Reich’s Warning of an Emotional Plague first appeared on Dissident Voice.