Reich’s failure to distinguish repression types led to simplistic sexual liberation advocacy

Evidence

To Marcuse, Reich’s inability to distinguish between different types of repression prevented him from seeing the “historical dynamic of the sex instincts and of their fusion with the destructive impulses.” 103 As a result, Reich was led to a simplistic advocacy of sexual liberation as an end in itself, which finally degenerated into the primitive delusions of his later years. — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 368

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Reich’s critique appearing in later Frankfurt School scholarship; the Reich-vs-Marcuse split prefigures the Freudo-Marxism debates of the 1960s.