Adolescent sexuality is one of the most anxiety-producing and confusing situations confronting parents today. The combination of unexpressed misery, neurotic anger and rebelliousness resulting from the adolescent’s intense sexual frustrations makes this a particularly difficult time for adolescent and parent alike. The problem becomes compounded because of the following complicating factors:
1. Unrecognized and unresolved sexual and other problems in parents themselves.
2. The breakthrough of enormous quantities of anxiety in the younger generation resulting from the breakdown of the authoritarian family.
3. The sexual over-stimulation and unbridled economic exploitation of an already over-stimulated younger population by the media including, in particular, the entertainment industry.
4. The abundance of sexual misinformation that is being circulated as gospel: The general acceptance of every kind of neurotic (pre-genital) sexual activity and the evasion of any discussion of healthy, genital, heterosexual activity.
The confusion generated by this highly charged and volatile social state of affairs easily triggers the expression of all forms of the emotional plague. In the case of adolescent homosexuality, the line becomes drawn between those who favor a laissez faire attitude and are willing to permit it and those who see it as a sign of emotional sickness and discourage it.
Unfortunately, both groups see the problem from a superficial, symptomatic perspective. Even in our age of sexual enlightenment, neither group fully recognizes the particular importance of the role that the sexual function plays in regulating the healthy adolescent’s emotional life and this widespread ignorance and evasion of the essential directly gives rise to these contradictory and irreconcilable points of view.
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Neither Left Nor Right
The Emotional Plague
Charles Konia, M.D. 
Dr. Konia, I have read through your editorials, and I must say that you are one of the few psychiatrists who effectively fights and disproves at least one arm of the emotional plague– political correctness. As any one can see, adolescents are “bursting at the seams” with sexual tension, but do not have the approval of parents nor society to enjoy themselves. As Reich mentioned in his lifetime, the youth were miserable due to sexual repression. Of course, a lot has been painfully learnt in the meantime about the false sexual liberation of the 1960’s as your book “The Emotional Plague” has elucidated. The youth, as well as adults are exceptionally confused about healthy sexuality and are brainwashed into thinking that any type of pre-genital activity is on par with heterosexual love. I have had clients who due to Life’s sexual difficulties, simply pondered about switching gender preferences instead of struggling for fulfillment ( Elsworth Baker has stated such in his “Man in the Trap). The emotional plague which influences many areas of society simply equalizes all sexuality, producing confusion and guilt. In a strange effect, it makes it “easier” for the youth to have sex, but on a very superficial level.
Dear Mr. Malek,
Thank you for your comments…you get my point exactly.