In this classic study, Reich repudiates the concept that fascism is the ideology or action of a single individual or nationality, or of any ethnic or political group. Instead he sees fascism as the expression of the irrational character structure of the average human being whose whose primary biological needs and impulses have been suppressed for thousands of years.

Documenting the Documentary offers clear, serious, and insightful analyses of documentary films, and is a welcome balance between theory and criticism, abstract conceptualization and concrete analysis.

A definitive contribution to scholarship on Adorno, bringing together the foremost experts in the field As one of the leading continental philosophers of the last century, and one of the pioneering members of the Frankfurt School, Theodor W. Adorno is the author of numerous influential—and at times quite radical—works on diverse topics in aesthetics, social theory, moral philosophy, and the history of modern philosophy, all of which concern the contradictions of modern society and its relation to human suffering and the human condition. Having authored substantial contributions to critical theory which contain searching critiques of the ‘culture industry’ and the ‘identity thinking’ of modern Western society, Adorno helped establish an interdisciplinary but philosophically rigorous study of culture and provided some of the most startling and revolutionary critiques of Western society to date. The Blackwell Companion to Adorno is the largest collection of essays by Adorno specialists ever gathered in a single volume. Part of the acclaimed Blackwell Companions to Philosophy series, this important contribution to the field explores Adorno’s lasting impact on many sub-fields of philosophy. Seven sections, encompassing a diverse range of topics and perspectives, explore Adorno’s intellectual foundations, his critiques of culture, his views on ethics and politics, and his analyses of history and domination. Provides new research and fresh perspectives on Adorno’s views and writings Offers an authoritative, single-volume resource for Adorno scholarship Addresses renewed interest in Adorno’s significance to contemporary questions in philosophy Presents over 40 essays written by international-recognized experts in the field A singular advancement in Adorno scholarship, the Companion to Adorno is an indispensable resource for Adorno specialists and anyone working in modern European philosophy, contemporary cultural criticism, social theory, German history, and aesthetics.

First published by Reich in 1953, People in Trouble is an autobiographical work in which Reich describes the development of his sociological thinking from 1927 to 1937. In simple narrative form he recounts his personal experiences with major social and political events and ideas, and reveals how these experiences gradually led him to an awareness of the deep significance of the human character structure in shaping and responding to the social process. The importance of Karl Marx's work and its distortion by communist politicians plays an important role in Reich's account, as does the political activity in the International Psychoanalytic Association which led to his expulsion from that organization in 1934. The Norwegian press campaign against his biological experiments is also discussed. People in Trouble is the story of one man's courageous struggle to understand the political activity of his fellow men.

What is fascism? Is it revolutionary? Or is it reactionary? Can it be both? Fascism is notoriously hard to define. How do we make sense of an ideology that appeals to streetfighters and intellectuals alike? That is overtly macho in style, yet attracts many women? That calls for a return to tradition while maintaining a fascination with technology? And that preaches violence in the name of an ordered society? In the new edition of this Very Short Introduction, Kevin Passmore brilliantly unravels the paradoxes of one of the most important phenomena in the modern world—tracing its origins in the intellectual, political, and social crises of the late nineteenth century, the rise of fascism following World War I, including fascist regimes in Italy and Germany, and the fortunes of 'failed' fascist movements in Eastern Europe, Spain, and the Americas. He also considers fascism in culture, the new interest in transnational research, and the progress of the far right since 2002. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

Adolf Hitler has always been and will continue to be a tempting subject for psychological analysis -- even if, despite Peter Gay's classic Freud for Historians, psychohistory and psychobiography are still considered the black sheep of historical biography. Gonen (a retired professor of psychology at the University of Cincinnati and author of A Psychohistory of Zionism) offers a brief study and analysis of what he claims is a "Nazi psychology". Drawing from an extensive and rigorous reading of Hitler's speeches and published writings (especially Mein Kampf), Freudian theories and social, economic and cultural history, Gonen ponders whether Hitler was an aberration in German society or a "man of the people". (The German masses, he concludes, shared in Hitler's paranoia and delusions.) Chapters cover the role of ideology in shaping mass thinking, as well as anti-Semitism, lebensraum and the idea of the Volkish state -- and contain fascinating passages on the image of the Jew, the role of women and the interrelatedness of kitsch and death in the Nazi mentality. Although Gonen doesn't really say anything new ("Hitler", he tells us, for example, "was a messianic paranoid"), what he offers is compellingly written and blessedly free of social science jargon. What is troubling, however, is that Gonen fails to explore concepts central to his inquiry, such as "utopia" and "barbarism", and that he contends that Nazism had its own "internal (or) inherent logic". Slightly flawed, this is still a good introduction to a difficult subject.

This anthology is not intended to replace any of the works of Wilhelm Reich, but rather to serve as an introduction to them. The chapters include material from The Function of the Orgasm; The Cancer Biopathy; Character Analysis; Ether, God and Devil; Cosmic Superimposition and The Murder of Christ. In addition the volume reprints many important later articles from various journals.

How the breeding of new animals and plants was central to fascist regimes in Italy, Portugal, and Germany and to their imperial expansion. In the fascist regimes of Mussolini's Italy, Salazar's Portugal, and Hitler's Germany, the first mass mobilizations involved wheat engineered to take advantage of chemical fertilizers, potatoes resistant to late blight, and pigs that thrived on national produce. Food independence was an early goal of fascism; indeed, as Tiago Saraiva writes in Fascist Pigs, fascists were obsessed with projects to feed the national body from the national soil. Saraiva shows how such technoscientific organisms as specially bred wheat and pigs became important elements in the institutionalization and expansion of fascist regimes. The pigs, the potatoes, and the wheat embodied fascism. In Nazi Germany, only plants and animals conforming to the new national standards would be allowed to reproduce. Pigs that didn't efficiently convert German-grown potatoes into pork and lard were eliminated. Saraiva describes national campaigns that intertwined the work of geneticists with new state bureaucracies; discusses fascist empires, considering forced labor on coffee, rubber, and cotton in Ethiopia, Mozambique, and Eastern Europe; and explores fascist genocides, following Karakul sheep from a laboratory in Germany to Eastern Europe, Libya, Ethiopia, and Angola. Saraiva's highly original account—the first systematic study of the relation between science and fascism—argues that the “back to the land” aspect of fascism should be understood as a modernist experiment involving geneticists and their organisms, mass propaganda, overgrown bureaucracy, and violent colonialism.