Adolescentism — a White, Middle-class Fad

Much of what Reich says is Consciousness III is really adolescentism, behaviour that functions both to define the group involved as separate from the rest of society and to provide a means of negotiating the obstacle-course to adulthood for the individual. It is not at all 'transcendent' — it is by definition and function exclusive. It is not necessarily embracing or warm either — there is deliberate alienation of everyone else implicit in such behaviour and its energy can be a nervous and undirected energy arising from the stresses that go with being an adolescent — stresses which idealised theories like Reichism tend to ignore. What's more, adolescentism is most marked as a phenomenon in white, affluent, advanced countries, the ones who can afford it. Not only does adolescentism exclude children and adults it also excludes those who don't happen to live in the blessed countries. Reichism is not merely false in its claims about Consciousness III in America, nor merely false in its picture of adolescent life, but more importantly, dangerously unrealistic on the global scale.

I wonder too just what Reich's concept of consciousness 'lag' does to his stated view that there are three types of consciousness. I suggest this it leads imm-ediately to the existence of six types of consciousness — the up-to-date and the laggers from each of the three. And if age, class, role (and sex) and geography, and schooling (and religion?) each operate to form different types of consciousness the implication is that we'd better forget all this easy waffle about there being just three types. If this is true there must be scores of different types of consciousnesses, and most pertinently, a working-class youth just can't have the same type as a middle-class youth. And if it isn't true, Reich's theory of consciousness is in limbo.