According to a recent study published on-line in the October 20, 2012 journal Pediatrics, boys are beginning puberty six months to two years earlier than in previous decades, mirroring a similar trend in girls. To mechanistic medicine this finding makes no sense at all but according to bio-social functional thinking, it is full of significance.
Contrary to popular belief, childhood is not an asexual period but the product of sexual repression. The containment of sexual energy during the so-called sexual latency period is the result of the armoring of children by social forces. The necessity for this armoring process was that it maintained the social structure of the past authoritarian social order. When around 1960 the authoritarian order of Western society began to break down, it was transformed into anti-authoritarianism. This transformation was accompanied by the breakdown of the repressive forces contained in armor throughout the population which also included children. The breakdown of sexual repression which was the foundation of the authoritarian social order is directly responsible for the earlier onset of puberty that we now are seeing.
However, the lifting of sexual repression which resulted in the earlier appearance of puberty did nothing to prepare children to function naturally with the full force of sexual energy. Since today’s anti-authoritarian form of social armor does not distinguish between healthy and perverse forms of sexual expression it’s effect on child development has been more sex-negative than the sexual attitudes of the past authoritarian social order. As a result, children and adolescents are left floundering not knowing how to deal with the intensity of their sexual feelings. Almost all suspect traditional forms of authority while others turn to homosexuality, drugs, food (the rise in obesity in girls is correlated with earlier onset of puberty) or every other form of rebellious sexual acting out simply to relieve themselves of their sexual anxiety and suffering.
However, these substitute measures have successfully masked the social problem of the sexual misery of children and adolescents. The number of children requiring psychiatric help, which is another one of the destructive consequences of the anti-authoritarian transformation of society, has dramatically increased. Compared to the past authoritarian era when the use of medication for the treatment of children and adolescents was almost unheard of, more and more children today are being brought to the attention of the psychiatrist and drugs are mindlessly being given as the treatment of choice to suppress the disturbing symptom.
Conventional wisdom cannot provide answers to biologically rooted social phenomena. Recognizing the bio-social basis for the early onset puberty and making a distinction between healthy sexual expression and the armored sexual expression that is rampant in today’s anti-authoritarian society are not possible within the narrow framework of current mechano-mystical thinking.
Charles Konia, M.D. 