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Sex Boys in a Balloon: V. F. Calverton and the Abortive Sexual Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Leonard Wilcox
Leonard Wilcox
Affiliation:
American Studies in the Department of American Studies, University of Canterbury, Christchurch 1, New Zealand.
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Extract

During the American sixties, the resurgent interest in Wilhelm Reich and the widespread impact of Marcuse's Eros and Civilisation encouraged the idea of coupling psychoanalysis and Marxism. Reich's works reminded radicals once again of the integral connection between political revolution and sexual freedom, while Marcuse's critique, a bold attempt of the mid-fifties to read Freud as a revolutionary utopian, suggested the desirability of a marriage between Marx and Freud, a marriage that would have seemed unnatural to many of the Old Left generation. Certainly, too, the writings of Norman O. Brown and Paul Goodman gave credence to the idea that sex, psychology, and radical politics were necessarily interrelated.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , April 1989 , pp. 7 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

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3 Horkheimer and Adorno's interest in Freud extended back into the late twenties, but Horkheimer's first article on the merger of psychoanalysis and Marxism, “Geschichte und Psychologie,” was published in 1932. Similarly, Fromm's work on this topic dates from 1932. See Jay, Martin, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research 1923–1950 (London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1973), 100, 317.Google Scholar

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