Lenny Bruce’s prosecutions were driven by audiences’ repressed fantasies

Evidence

In “The Bruce Conviction: A View from the Couch,” John Tarburton, a Reichian lay analyst with an interest in censorship, argued that Bruce had been “found guilty of ‘crimes’ that exist only in the fantasy lives of repressed people.” — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 605

Categorization

• SHARE: A Reichian reading of the Bruce conviction is a niche nugget for anyone into censorship history.