Symptomatic Versus Curative Approaches To Medical Illness

In almost every case, the approach of the mechanistic physician to illness is to focus on and eliminate the disturbing presenting symptom. This is because the underlying cause of diseases such as cancer, heart disease, schizophrenia and so on is outside his or her scope. To make matters worse, most seek medical help when they develop overt signs and symptoms of illness at a time when the disease process has become irreversible and the only possible treatment is symptomatic. The impressive advances in infectious diseases, surgical techniques and the diagnostic sophistication of specialized branches of medicine only serve to highlight how far medicine has gone in the direction of mechanization. Medical specialties excel exactly because the application of mechanistic principles to medical practice develops in the direction of greater specialization.

One must step outside this mechanistic paradigm in order to find a truly curative approach to medical (including psychiatric) illnesses. Wilhelm Reich’s discovery of the biopathic predisposition of armored organisms to illness provides exactly that. A biopathy is a pulsatory energy disturbance of the plasmatic system (which consists of the autonomic nervous system and the vascular system) resulting from the presence of chronic armor. The approach of the medical orgone therapist is to gradually eliminate the pulsatory disturbance which underlies the biopathic symptom. Successful dissolution of armor results not only in elimination of the disturbing symptom but also in the a permanent improvement in the individual’s functioning and emotional well being. Armor prevention in infants and children would be an important natural, not a mechanically artificial, step toward improving the level of health and longevity in the general population.