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.
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Eskimo dogs are very territorial and each sled team in a village has a distinct territory with well-defined boundaries. The adult dogs know and respect these boundaries, but the young dogs wander into other pack’s territories and get into fights. Until they mate for the first time. After that, they know where the boundaries are and stay within their own pack’s territory.
This is only one example in nature of the physical act of sex opening the mind to instinctive, biologically-determined information and adult behavior patterns that were previously not available to the individual.
In humans, the customary socially-induced repression of sexuality, which often renders full sexual discharge unobtainable even when the physical act takes place, prevents the basic instinctive behavior pattern of the biological human from manifesting, with the result that infantile or childish behavior persists far into adulthood, possibly permanently.
This is why the churches, which depend on people feeling helpless and in a child-parent relationship to God, promote sexual abstinence for the young, producing the immaturity they need to keep the pews filled. Authoritarian governments and political parties, who need the same personality types for whom the government stands in as a parental figure, do the same. Reich described this in The Sexual Revolution.
Now, since there are not, and never will be, enough orgone therapists to go around, and even if there were, most people would refuse to go into orgone therapy because orgone therapy is not accepted by the mainstream, what practical action could be taken to change this situation? Is there any sexual advice, for example, that could be printed in pamphlet form for teen-agers, as Reich did in Germany, that would give them a better chance to overcome their upbringing in this area? Would a website especially dedicated to sex-advice for teenagers help? Could a group of orgonomically-oriented volunteers work on such a project?
In short, is there anything that can be done besides just waiting for social change to happen by itself?
You are on the right track. Public education by characteroogically qualified people from within the College is the key. More will be said as the College’s preparations are further along.
The earlier onset of puberty is usually ascribed to the increase in hormone-mimicing chemicals in the environment today. Soy, which contains estrogen, is an important ingredient in many diets today, but was rare a few generations ago. Beef cattle and chickens are fed hormoes to fatten them for slaughter, dairy cattle are given bovine somatotrophin, a hormone that stimulates lactation, to increase milk supply, and crops are sprayed with herbicides that contaminate groundwater with residues that affect the human endocrine system.
All of these are well-established facts, confirmed by numerous scientific studies by many laboratories over many years. There is no doubt that psychological factors can play a huge role in psysical functioning, but what is the evidence for the statement that the increase in early-onset puberty is due to lessening of sexual repression in childhood? We are accustomed to the idea that in orgonomy, there are concepts that run counter to those of mainstream science, but most of those orgonomic concepts are based on solid experimental evidence. Is the statement that earlier puberty is caused by social and psychological factors one of them, or is it only a speculation? Are there any laboratory studies, by orgonomists or others, that show the cause of early puberty to be psychosomatic?
I have no doubt that dietary chemicals are a factor and should not be ignored. What is generally overlooked, however, are the importance of psycho-sexual emotional factors resulting from the transformation of society from authoritarian, (sex-negative) to anti-authoritarian, (chaotically sex-permissive.) There are no lab studies that I am aware of.