ABSTRACT
IDENTITIES AND DESIRES Why do we need to bring therapy and politics into relationship with each other? This is an issue that has been with us in different forms ever since the attempts of Wilhelm Reich and the Frankfurt School to bring together the writings of Marx and Freud. The issue is both theoretical and practical. For Reich in The Sexual Revolution, it emerged out of a recognition that the experience of the Russian Revolution had threatened the orthodox Marxist idea that the socialisation of the means of production would automatically bring about a transformation in the form of moral, sexual and personal relations of power and subordination.1 This called for a fundamental reworking of the basic premises of orthodox Marxism.
