Myron Sharaf: Fury on Earth: A Biography of Wilhelm Reich (1983)

In this book, Myron Sharaf explodes the myths that have collected around the name “Wilhelm Reich”–the psychoanalytic myth of the early brilliant Reich, and the later insane Reich of orgone energy; the Marxist myth of the radical Reich, and the conservative myth of the Republican Reich. Sharaf’s Reich is profoundly human: complex and contradictory, a generous, loving person capable of extraordinary bursts of bizarre ideas and impassioned cruelty. Of particular interest are the illuminations of the relationship between Reich’s childhood traumas and his major concepts; and the pivotal personal and scientific significance of Freud for Wilhelm Reich.

In 1944, Sharaf met Reich and for the next decade, as student, patient, and coworker, kept careful notes toward the eventual preparation of this biography. He has interviewed Reich’s colleagues, family, friends and enemies, and gathered important papers. From these many sources he has discovered significant unpublished connections between Reich’s personality, his social-intellectual milieu, and his work.

Publisher St Martin’s Press, New York, 1983.
ISBN 0312313705
550 pages

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Painful But Fabulous: The Lives & Art of Genesis P-Orridge (2002)

Genesis P-Oridge, the legendary musician and artist from Manchester, opens his files to show the world never before seen texts, photos, artwork and magic. P-Orridge, whose Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV set the stage for modern industrial, punk and alternative music, comes clean on many of the issues surrounding his life, work and mystique. From the 1960s, when his art group the COUM Transmission set England on its ear, to his long career in music to the creation of his religion-as-a-joke-as-a-religion, Thee Temple Ov Psychic Youth, this book covers it all.

With Foreword by Douglas Rushkoff
With an Introduction by Carl Abrahamsson
Publisher Soft Skull Shortwave, a division of Soft Skull Press, New York, 2002
ISBN 1887128883, 9781887128889
200 pages

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Pierre Klossowski: Sade My Neighbor (1947/1991)

Enlightenment ideals of a society rooted in liberationist reason and morality were trampled in the wake of the savagery of the Second World War. That era’s union of cold technology and ancient hatreds gave rise to a dark, alternative reason–an ethic that was value-free and indifferent with regard to virtue and vice, freedom, and slavery. In a world where “”the unthinkable”” had become reality, it is small wonder that theorists would turn to the writings of a man whose eighteenth-century imagination preceded twentieth-century history in its unbridled exploration of viciousness, perversion, and monstrosity: the Marquis de Sade. Klossowski was one of the first philosophers in postwar Europe to ask whether Sade’s reason, although aberrant and perverted to evil passions, could be taken seriously. Klossowski’s seminal work inspired virtually all subsequent study of Sadean thought, including that of de Beauvoir, Deleuze, Derrida, Bataille, Blanchot, Paulhan, and Lacan.

First published in French as Sade mon prochain, Editions du Seuil, Paris, 1947
Translated and with an Introduction by Alphonso Lingis
Publisher Northwestern University Press, 1991
Northwestern University Studies in Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy series
ISBN 0810109581, 9780810109582
144 pages

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