Exhaustive biography of Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957), the renegade Freudian who championed the therapeutic powers of the orgasm and, for better or worse, helped transform America’s views on sexuality.
At the age of 22, Reich became a member of Freud’s inner circle, and was clearly the leader of the second generation of psychoanalysts. Yet his insistence that sexual repression was the key to all neuroses soon alienated him from Freud and his more orthodox followers. This alienation accelerated when Reich joined the Communist Party and laid out the theory that sexual repression was at the root of social disorder as well. None of this sat well with either Marxists or Freudians, and with the intentions of the Nazis clear, Reich left Europe for the United States in 1939. In America, Reich found a more receptive audience for his unorthodox views, especially among the artistic and political avant-garde of the early post–World War II years, who were alienated from Marxism but hardly aligned with the status quo. Of particular interest was Reich’s invention, the orgone energy accumulator, basically a wooden box lined with steel wool. The box gathered and concentrated a mysterious and sexually charged life force, orgone, and by sitting in the box one could improve his or her orgasm, general health, even be cured of cancer. Notables such as Norman Mailer championed Reich, and among his followers were William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac and Sean Connery. However, Reich’s behavior became increasingly erratic. Turner writes that he was clearly schizophrenic, seeing enemies everywhere including aliens from outer space. Imprisoned for violating an FDA injunction on building or using the orgone box, Reich died in 1957. Yet in death his influence grew, in ways he would have abhorred. He championed sexual liberation, not the promiscuous narcissism that flourished in the 1960s. As Reich had intimated and Marcuse and Foucault confirmed, sexual freedom can become a commodity and blunt radical impulses toward social change. Fair, accessible story of a strange man and strange times.
Pub Date: June 14, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-10094-0
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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