Humans as “machines”

The social development of the view of human beings as “machines” preceded the historical development of actual machines. Psychiatrist and sociologist Wilhelm Reich described this process as something that went hand in hand with the suppression of natural sexuality, which he termed “genital love.” Generally speaking, when Reich speaks of sexuality, he is speaking about sexuality which is fully integrated with love instead of split from it. This is what the meaning of “genital love” is.

Reich was clear about this distinction between loveless sex versus sex as an expression of love. Unfortunately, his observations about genital love were distorted in the years after his death and replaced with the “mechanistic“ idea that the sexual act itself, “performed” in a machine-like manner regardless of the presence of loving feeling or not, can somehow lead to psychological, emotional, and societal health.

Over the course of thousands of years, as human beings, more and more function, socially, and interpersonally in a machine-like manner, they became rigid biologically in a manner resembling nonliving machines. This biological, emotional, psychological, and sociological rigidity Reich termed “armor.“

Reich describes the destructive process of equating human life and functioning with the functioning of a machine in his book The Mass Psychology of Fascism, amongst other publications:

"The mechanistic concept of life is not a mere 'idea' or 'attitude.' Character-analytic exploration of average people from every walk of life has shown that the mechanistic concept of life is not merely a 'reflection' of the social processes in psychic life, as Marx had assumed, but far more than that: IN THE COURSE OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS OF MECHANICAL DEVELOPMENT, THE MECHANISTIC CONCEPT HAS ANCHORED ITSELF DEEPLY IN MAN'S BIOLOGICAL SYSTEM. IN SO DOING, IT ACTUALLY HAS ALTERED HUMAN FUNCTIONING IN THE SENSE OF THE MACHINE-LIKE. IN THE PROCESS OF KILLING HIS GENITAL FUNCTION MAN HAS BECOME BIOLOGICALLY RIGID. He has armored himself against that which is natural and spontaneous within him, he has lost contact with the biological function of self-regulation and is filled with a strong fear of that which is alive and free." ((Reich, W. 1946. The Mass Psychology of Fascism. Translated by Theodore Wolfe. Chapter l10, section 2 ("The Biological Miscalculation in the Human Struggle for Freedom"), Part 2 (pages 283-297). Page 293, emphasis in original.)

"What is called civilized man...has developed into an automaton and a 'brain machine.'....He lives, loves, hates and thinks like a machine." (Ibid., page 293.)

"It is not by accident that the Platonic concept of the state was conceived in a slave society. Neither is it an accident that it goes on living to this very day: serfdom has simply been replaced by inner slavery." (Ibid., page 294)

"The problem of the fascist pestilence has led us deeply into that of man's biological functioning. It is a matter of a development stretching over thousands of years and not, as the economists believe, a matter of imperialistic interests of the past 200 or even of the past 20 years....The economistic conception of life--as great as it services have been--is completely inadequate for an understanding of the revolutionary processes of our life." (Ibid., page 294.)

"The biblical legend of man's creation in the image of God, and the legend of his superiority in the animal kingdom, clearly represent the act of repression of man's animal nature....the age-old hatred of any genuine natural science which is not limited to machines stems from this source....Clearly, man prefers being a 'superior being' to being an animal." (Ibid., page 294)

"In order to distinguish himself from the other animals, man, in the process of becoming biologically rigid, denied the existence of his organ sensations and finally ceased to perceive them. To this day, it is a dogma in mechanistic natural science that the autonomic functions are not perceived and that the autonomic nerves are rigid. This in spite of the fact that every child of three can tell you exactly that pleasure, anxiety anger, longing, etc., are perceived in the belly. This in spite of the fact that the perception of the ego is nothing but the totality of the organ perceptions. With the loss of his organ sensations, man not only lost the intelligence of the animal and the capacity for reacting naturally; he also blocked for himself any possibility of mastering his vital problems; he replaced the natural self-regulatory intelligence of the plasm by an imp in the brain which has, at one and the same time, metaphysical and machine-like qualities." (Ibid., pages 294-295.)

"As he [the armored human] denies and suppresses this [his] nature in every possible way, he cannot recognize it rationally and factually. Hence he needs MUST EXPERIENCE IT AS SOMETHING MYSTICAL, SUPERNATURAL, OUT-OF-THE-WORLD." (Ibid., page 295., emohasis in original.)

"Human mysticism...represents the last traces of a feeling for life." (Ibid., pages 295-296.)

"The will to freedom and the capacity for freedom are nothing but the will and the capacity to recognize and further the development of human biological energy." (Ibid., page 296.)

"There is as yet no definition of the word freedom which would be in keeping with natural science. No word is more misused and misunderstood. To define freedom is the same as to define sexual health. BUT NOBODY WILL OPENLY ADMIT THIS.....As if to be free were a sin..." (Ibid., page 297, emphasis in original.)

"Freedom without sexual self-determination is in itself a contradiction." (Ibid., page 297.)

"In films and in books, to be genital and to be criminal are presented as THE SAME THING." (Ibid., page 297, italics in original.)