We know from the treatment of individual patients that people go to enormous lengths to not face the problems that first bring them into therapy. The same situation exists in our treatment of society’s social problems. The contents of newspapers are full of articles that are considered “newsworthy” as covering important social and political issues. But from a functional perspective these articles actually are evasions and distractions. Analysis of the problems contained in them whether they are economic, social , political or whatever come down to the same source: they are the result of the emotionally based sickness of the human race. In fact, the more people seem to be addressing the so-called key issues as, for example, when scientists look for the secrets of life in the genetic code, the more they are actually running away from this central problem.
Why is this so? It is emotionally too painful for individuals both singly and collectively to look and feel what is going on within themselves and so they focus exclusively on and blame the external manifestations. This is why whenever there is a massacre such as a school shooting people are up in arms for gun control. But it’s not guns that kill people. Murderous impulses in people are responsible for killing people. Until people are first capable of looking inwardly at what is happening within themselves they are not emotionally healthy enough to be in a position to really understand anything constructive about the world they are living in. They are unable to recognize that the same murderous impulses that resulted in the massacre are there hidden in everyone. Looking inwardly (introspectively) indicates a certain capacity to be in contact with what all people have in common, their own personal armored structures. Therefore, a deep appreciation of the universality and function of armor in people is a prerequisite for any constructive understanding of what is going on in the world.
The therapy of individuals consists in starting on the bio-physical surface before attempting to proceed to deeper layers of their armored structure. The same principle holds true for the therapy of social groups. The social orgonomist starts his intervention at the social surface by addressing people’s resistances which are expressed in their evasiveness and distractibility. Until this defensive layer of ocular armor is successfully eliminated and people are able to feel the emotions that they they defending against there can be no progress expected in getting at the deeper impulses contained in the social armor.
This formulation is given as a preliminary attempt to begin addressing some of the social problems that society is faced with.
Charles Konia, M.D. 