The true liberal cannot see the emotional plague because he lives primarily in his superficial layer and is therefore not in touch with the evilness in his own secondary destructive layer. His state of cluelessness produces the pressure of free-floating guilt that needs to be constantly relieved through mindless acts of forgiveness especially of others who operate from their secondary layer (i.e. criminals, political psychopaths etc.). His acts of “kindness” are not only destructive and highly contagious but they are self-serving because the liberal unconsciously identifies with these criminals. Having no real contact with the existence of evil in anyone, the liberal believes that all social problems can be solved through the good deeds of well-meaning people such as leftist politicians. The liberal who is mystical handles the problem of evil by distorting it and turning it into spirituality – evil spirits. In psychiatric therapy, this mindset of the liberal gives rise to the wealth of alternative therapeutic approaches such as psychic healing, etc.
Because the conservative has more contact with the deeper layers of armor than the true liberal, he believes in the reality of evil but, because of his mysticism, is unable to simultaneously see and believe in the physical existence of the emotional plague in everyday life.
People in general are resistant to getting the concept of the disease, emotional plague, because it is hard for them to feel that the illness lives in everyone including in oneself. The only way that it has been accepted in the past was mystically through the distorted Christian idea of original sinfulness. However, this way is only of limited value because it avoids getting at its source, the underlying emotional (sexual) sickness of armored humans. People are too sick to be in touch with it. This problem goes to the heart of the reason for people’s cluelessness.
The conservative mystic
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Neither Left Nor Right
The Emotional Plague
Charles Konia, M.D. 
There seems to be an unfinished sentence at the end … “The conservative mystic”…
Yes.
So you are adding “the conservative mystic” to the glossary…
The liberal, because of his ocular armor, cannot see the plague; the conservative does see it but, because of his muscular armor, cannot conceptualize it as something tangible real. The liberal cannot touch it because he stumbles through a thick fog and sees nothing (he is CLUELESS), while the conservative has a relatively free view but, due to his severe sexual RESTRAINT, he cannot use his hands to actually touch it. Right?
As to his “spirituality”: the liberal is, according to you (if I understand you correctly), all “spinning wave” and MOVES, so to speak, “through the air” “among the spirits” – he is literally a cosmo-politan. The conservative, on the other hand, is all “pulsation”: a provincial FIXED on the ground (“borders, language, culture”, “blood and soil”, “tradition”, etc.), while world events (the plague!) pass by out of physical reach (“Washington is far away!”). Right?
very good.
Peter, as usual, you come up with formulations that are both interesting and clarifying!
“People in general are resistant to getting the concept of the disease, emotional plague, because it is hard for them to feel that the illness lives in everyone including in oneself. The only way that it has been accepted in the past was mystically through the distorted Christian idea of original sinfulness. This way is only of limited value because it avoids getting at its source, the emotional (sexual) sickness of armored humans.”
I think this analysis is very good, Dr.Konia,
I copied it out for myself.
In my perception it is most imortant, that it is the sexual-emotional sickness of armored humans, that makes them contacless and makes them susceptible to the emotional plague, it is a biological process beyond the words and beyond all analysis with words.
So you can feel the emotional plague just with your body senses.
“So you can feel the emotional plague just with your body senses.“ I agree! I like your unique perspective on things and I agree with what you are saying in your comment.
Thank you, Dr. Holbrook.
I can describe hardly with words my emotional perception of the emotional plague, it goesmostly beyond the words.
Wilhelm Reich once wrote that a person’s emotions and feelings below the diaphragm segment cannot hardly verbalized anymore, orgasm anxiety is overwhelming, can make a man pass out.
Reich was absolutely right.
I perceive the emotional plague somehow as pathological over-excitement on the surface, which is blocked somehow in the middle, it is unquestionable to smell, it has nothing to do with an analysis from the rain, you can feel the sick over- excitation and the blocking, you can really feel , without seeing with your eyes, the sadistic grin on the surface of the emotional lague character.
Where do you see the connection of a morbid DOR over-excitation and the emotional plague, Dr.Holbrrok ?
I am sorry for the typos in my comment above.
It has to be called:
“Dr.Holbrook”
and
“brain”
etc.
Let me add to my comment above, that I naturally know, that the emotional plague character is totally blocked in the pelvis, but somehow you can feel the blocking directly under the surface, it feels like a “chaotic excitation”, that cannot be discharged naturally, and comes mostly with an expression of sadism, maybe sometimes by other feelings covered to the surface.
You can realy feel the criled emotional-sexual impotence of the expression.
I am sorry for another typo in my comment above, thanks to my keyboard,
“You can really feel the crippled emotional sexual impotence of the expression.”
One correction: I think an EP character is not necessarily blocked in the pelvis. For example, I believe it could be a schizophrenic character with an open pelvis.
“Where do you see the connection of a morbid DOR over-excitation and the emotional plague…?”
My perception of this kind of thing was probably influenced by these passages from Reich, W. 1956. The Medical DOR-Buster. CORE V7 N3-5, Pages 97-113. Rangeley, Maine: Orgone Institute Press (also can be found in “Selected Writings”):
“Investigation of a more recent date revealed the fact that people in general are aware not only of their being blocked emotionally, but that, in the form of ‘HIDING,’ they are more or less aware of what they are hiding: DOR energy. Armored people are aware of the potential expressions of the armor: its blocked emotions are felt as ‘shameful,’ ‘intolerable,’ ‘unclean’ or outright ‘dirty.’ This kind of self-awareness seems to be the very essence of the typical withdrawnness, bashfulness, embarrassment of people, especially of the reluctance to understand oneself. They have not only sequestered off the dead, stale bio-energy in their organism; they have not only put up ‘defenses’ (psychologically speaking), armor blocks (bio-energetically speaking) against the DOR-energy and its expressions in their organisms, they are aware of the situation and hide as best they can even in the best of psychiatric treatment. The ‘negative therapeutic reaction,’ in other words, the getting worse upon successful treatment can now be easily understood as a manifestation of a sharpening of the awareness of the organismic ugliness, of the ill smell, as it were, of what threatens to come forth with a final improvement of things. There is no other way to get to health then through the complete revelation and experience of the ill smelling, blocked off, sequestered realm of the self. And to do so, to have to face this humiliation, one gets worse instead of better on the approach of health. This is comparable to the ‘crisis’ in diseases characterized by high temperature, such as sepsis, pneumonia, etc.
The getting worse when one should get better is no more paradoxical than the well-known function of the ‘latent negative transference’ which character analysis has shown to be the most essential behavior to be treated in the beginning of the psychiatric treatment. This well-hidden hatred of anyone who does point out the existence of a deadly, ill-smelling DOR energy; the ‘resistance’ to revealing one’s true being, even in front of the very physician who is to provide the cure; the general attitude of ‘hiding’ anything that has to do with genitality, the system of energy discharge, the general invasiveness of human second nature, the ‘Do-Not-Ever-Touch-It,’ ‘It’ meaning the crucial, the essential, the period in question; the hatred of truth, the killing of truth seekers, the worship of the masters of perfect evasion; the great hatred that persecutes living life…all these are so many varied expressions of one and the same basic fact: the hiding, the sequestering off and keeping off the dead, stale energy in one’s organism.
We should not be surprised to find identical functions or sequences of natural functions wherever we meet with the basic relationship of fully functioning life energy to stalemated, dead and deadly DOR energy.
In the human character structure, the healthy life functions surround and shut off
from activity the DOR functions in the armor.
On the social scene, we experience the three layers of the human armored character structure in the relationship to orgonomy as intense enthusiasm at first, as bitter, murderous hatred following the enthusiasm, second, and finally, after long and bitter struggles with oneself and with the development toward better self-knowledge, slow, carefully executed adaptation to the realities of the natural in man: his love organs; his rational hatreds and their expression; his relation to truth and truthful living; his abandoning of hiding, conniving, circumventing indirectness, evasiveness of the crucial in life.
In atmospheric physics we encounter the Oranur reactions which show three distinct phases. When the normal, natural OR energy in the atmosphere is suddenly attacked by the nuclear explosion or similar noxious happenings, it acts as if prostrated, helpless, submitting to the deadly blow, near perishing. What is left of the OR energy after the paralyzing blow, turns powerfully ‘mad,’ hitting back, raving with a healthy, good, honest rage. The third phase is characterized by a calm superiority, a majestic conquest of DOR by OR energy, as if what is dead should be declared dead and eliminated from the process of living, seething life.
There is much good reason to assume at this basic level of understanding that the hurricane, the tornado, the dust devil in the desert and similar natural upheavals are functionally identical with attempts at self-cure in the catatonic seizure, the epileptic attack, the septic fever, the simplest inflammation of tissue: OR energy surrounding, sequestering, expelling the DOR energy.” (Pages 109-113)
“Reich once wrote that a person’s emotions and feelings below the diaphragm segment cannot hardly verbalized anymore…”.
Yes, he writes about this in Character Analysis, but then he has some interesting things to say about the same thing [Reich, W. (1949). Character Analysis, 3rd ed. Translated by Theodore P. Wolfe, M.D. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux]:
“…in the upper four segments, we understand the emotional expressions immediately and the body language is easily translated into word language. With the diaphragmatic segment, things are more difficult….we are no longer able to translate the expressive language into word language.” (Page 386)
The emotional expression of the orgasm reflex, and sexual superimposition
“…the expression of the orgastic convulsions cannot be translated into word language.” (Page 391)
“The failure of word language here points to a natural function beyond the realm of the living….a functional connection between living and non-living nature.
We must assume that word language can describe only such manifestations of life which can be expressed in terms of organ sensations and the corresponding expressions, such as anger, pleasure, anxiety, annoyance, grief, surrender, etc….While the organ sensations, which correspond specifically to the living, can be translated into word language, those expressive movements of the living, which do not specifically belong to the living but which derive from the realm of the non-living, cannot be put into word language. Since the living derives from the non-living, and since non-living matter derives from cosmic energy, we must conclude that there are cosmic energy functions in the living. The non-translatable expressive movements of the orgasm reflex in the sexual superimposition could, therefore, represent the cosmic orgone function….
It is a clinical fact that orgastic longing, that is, the longing for superimposition, always goes hand-in-hand with cosmic longing and cosmic sensations. The mystical ideas of so many religions, the belief in a hereafter and in a transmigration of souls, all derive from cosmic longing; and cosmic
longing is functionally anchored in the expressive movements of the orgasm reflex. In the orgasm, the living is nothing but a bit of pulsating nature. (Pages 392-393)
So it seems to me that although it might be difficult to put things below the diaphragm into words in terms of describing things, Reich was able to use words to describe THAT! And it seems to me that although it might be difficult to put these things into words, we nonetheless sense them with what Reich called our “orgonotic sense,” which I think you describe in yourself. In every day language, it’s the same thing when we speak of “gut feelings”! These are real sensations.
Reich also describes in numerous places how the therapist in particular and all of us in general are constantly sensing in our own organism and protoplasm the armor of those around us. For example, in Character Analysis:
“The emotional expression of the patient produces in our organism and involuntary imitation. Imitating, we feel and understand the expression in ourselves and with that in the patient. Since every motion has an expression and thus discloses the emotional state of the protoplasm, the language of expression becomes an essential means of communication with the patient’s emotions….By ‘character attitude’ we mean the total expression of an organism. This is literally identical with the total impression which the organism makes on us.” (Pages 362-364, italics in original)
Thank you for your answer, Dr.Holbrrok.
I remember Reich writing about the emotional plague character as a person, totally blocked in the pelvis, that causes a problem to discharge energy, this might be the reason for the discrition of an emtional plague character as a high energetically person, his pelvis is totally moveless.
In my perception not every schizohrenic nust have an open pelvis, there are many atients , that were treated wrong with body therapy, with opening the pelvis violently at first in therapy, but a minority you would diagnose as schizophrenic.
Reich never mentioned the schizoprenic as an emotional plague character, look at Dr.Silvert, he was neraly untreatable, we have such fanatics as Silvert also in germany, the fanatism, as you wrote right, is caused by an energy problem, which is close to the emotional plague character.
There are people who are for twenty years in orgontherapy in germany, which is a sign for me that somtehing had been gone wrong, or they might be untreatable, and you should have never treated them with orgontherapy at all.
Orgontherapy is a very good therapy, but it is not for all patients in my perception, you can do a lot of harm to the classical working class leftsit children with stiff muscles, strong ocular armor, as a sign of a flight int the brain.
It is very difficult to therapy such people, and if they are mistreated, even with real orgontheray, you are getting the same sick results as with some bodytherapys, almost emotional plague characters produced by therapy.
Orgonetherapy is not a oanacea, one has to evaluate very sensitive, which patient can be treated sucessfully, and which not.
Thank you for the very valuabe quotes of Reich, Dr.Holbrook.
But let me ask you a simple, short non-scientific question:
What are your own, personal experiences ? ;
As an illustration: pseudo-liberal socialist (red fascist) „liberators“, some reasonable true (?) liberals, who are completely unknown and peripheral, and the „spiritual“ liberal batshit loony:
Thanks for the Mark Dice video, Peter. I always find him a bit disturbing and annoying, but if not for that video I wouldn’t know about the handful of Democrats who are partially making sense!
Hi Dr. Konia, thanks for your post.
I’ve been thinking lately about the question of perception of the three layers. What has begun to strike me is that I believe to whatever degree one has health, one is actually able to, in essence, perceive the three layers both in oneself and in society. I think all of our discussion about politics on Dr. Konia’s blog has stimulated this thought process in me. One reason in particular is that in pseudo-liberalism people are just entirely lost and out of contact. They have no idea of the difference between something coming from the secondary layer or the core or the superficial layer! It is all “equal“ to them because it is all mixed up in a thicket of armor!
Even the conservative has this problem, although to a far lesser degree, I suppose. But as we say, the conservative does sense the secondary layer better. The conservative also “knows“ “intuitively“ (via his orgonotic sense) that The secondary layer is hidden underneath the superficial layer; and he “knows“ that it is blocking the core. The pseudo-liberal has absolutely no idea about that!
Similar in some ways to the schizophrenic character, the pseudo-liberal actually may perceive many part-truths; but the perception is disorganized due to the ocular armor. As a rake wrote, in the schizophrenic perception and excitation are lively and intact, but split from one another. So there are bits and pieces of truth floating around inside a colossal matrix of mistaken perceptions made up of various bits of superficial and secondary layer contents. The whole pseudo-liberal ideology may be appealing, because there are certain elements of truth and longing for the core, etc., within the ideology. But there is no perception or comprehension of the layers of human existence both individually and societally, and how the secondary layer gets in the way of any kind of practical and beneficial political process.
When an individual has a certain degree of health, they can actually sense within themselves when they are functioning more from their superficial layer (from which it is actually appropriate to function most of the time in every day life); when they are functioning from their secondary layer, so that they are able to restrain impulses that they sense are neurotic or destructive; and when there is something from them that is coming from the core. And because of this “layer-sensing“ capacity, those individuals with a certain degree of health can also perceive these things in society at large.
As a Reich wrote on pages 137-138 in Ether, God and Devil, people are drawn to the core, but in order to get there they have to pass through the secondary layer and they get stuck there! That’s pretty much the definition of all sociopolitics!
Reich, Baker, you and the few others whom have contributed to the treasure chest of knowledge that flows from orgonomic functionalism have made the case that the chronically armored human condition passed down thru generations is the main catalyst for emotional plague activity and emotional plague outbreaks in the greater social realm.
What is not explained or clearly understood (and at this point most likely no longer knowable) is why the chronic armor condition became the “default” position for humans in the first place. It has to be assumed that the process of chronic armoring was a life saving mechanism for homo sapiens. It also appears that the armored condition exacerbates the human propensity to look outward to insure survival to the point where looking inward in a contactful way is ignored or avoided completely. This is the conundrum that humans have hard wired into their biology; the conflict between the life saving function of armor and its life destroying consequences. It seems likely that this conundrum, along with an individual’s specific armor, is at the heart of the human “clueless” condition in the general population..
It is with this conundrum in mind that I have come to the idea of differentiating between micro and macro in the social realm. One purpose that this idea serves is to provide the general public a more palatable way to make contact with the reality of the emotional plague by pointing out its operations in the greater social realm (the macro). It may allow for some to take in the idea without having to make deeper contact with themselves before they are ready or able and follows a similar pattern used by medical orgone therapists in their treatment of individuals where the patient is not forced too deep too quickly.
I agree that staying with the macro makes the ideas contained in social orgonomy more palatable. The biological core of the problem is too deep for most people to grasp. Staying with the more superficial social manifestations makes sense.
Steven, Reich Talks about the origins of armoring in the final chapter of Cosmic Superimpisition. His description of the countertruth in the appendix to The Murder of Christ describes sociology, but can equally be applied to the question of the need for armor. Armor is the countertruth.
thanks for that reference David. I haven’t read Cosmic Superimposition but the appendix of the Murder of Crist contains for me some of Reich’s best writings and insights in his later life.
From Cosmic Superimposition:
“…man slowly began to reason BEYOND his strong orgonotic contact and harmony with nature, which heretofore had been sufficient to keep him alive and to develop him further, even into a reasoning being.” (p.292, emphasis in the original)
“IN THE PROCESS OF THIS DEVELOPMENT, MAN MUST HAVE BEGUN TO REASON ABOUT HIS OWN SENSATIONS OF CURRENT AND ABOUT HIS ABILITY TO PERCEIVE HIMSELF AND TO PERCEIVE AT ALL.” (p. 293, emphasis in the original)
“IN THINKING ABOUT HIS OWN BEING AND FUNCTIONING, MAN TURNED INVOLUNTARILY AGAINST HIMSELF, not in a destructive fashion, but in a manner that may well have been the point of origin of his armoring, in the following way:
We know well from schizophrenic processes that an overstrained perception of self-perception necessarily induces a split in the unity of the organism. One part of the organism turns against the rest. The split may be slight and easily vanish again. Or it may be strong and persistent. In the process of this ‘depersonalization,’ man perceives his currents as an OBJECT OF ATTENTION and not quite as his own. The sensation of bodily currents then appears, even if only in a passing manner, as alien, as coming somehow from beyond. Can we dare to see in this sharp experience of the self the first step toward mystical, transcendental thinking? We cannot tell exactly, but the thought deserves consideration.
There is much good reason to assume that in such experiences of the self MAN SOMEHOW BECAME FRIGHTENED AND FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THE HISTORY OF HIS SPECIES BEGAN TO ARMOR AGAINST INNER FRIGHT AND AMAZEMENT….it is quite possible that the TURNING OF REASONING TOWARD ITSELF INDUCED THE FIRST EMOTIONAL BLOCKING IN MAN.” (p. 293, emphasis in the original)
“He must have felt right from the beginning that his genital drive made him ‘lose control’ and reduced him to a bit of streaming, convulsing protoplasm. Here, the now well-known human orgasm anxiety may well have originated.” (p. 284)
greatly appreciated. I guess it is not surprising that Reich gave this subject some serious thought
Regarding the origin of human armoring, as usual Reich was ingeniously insightful, and his description of man’s “freezing” at his own perception (the caterpillar doesn’t know which leg to move first) is apt in a psychological sense. I think a better explanation from a historical perspective is outlined in J. DeMeo’s book, “Saharasia.” Using anthropological and geological evidence, human armoring seems to have developed around 4000BC out of trauma.
thanks for the info Ed
Agreed!
Alexander: Hi Alexander, what you say about Reich describing the emotional plague character as having a blocked pelvis is probably right, I don’t have the reference with me right now. On the other hand, I could certainly see a scenario where a plague character could be created from someone with an overly open pelvis. I wonder whether the reason why Reich apparently never did write about plague characters with open pelvises could have a few different exclamations. He did work with patients with open pelvis is when he worked in that clinic. He describes the work with such patients in his book The Impulsive Character. But I wonder whether societal conditions then versus now may have made it harder for someone with an open pelvis in those years to rise to a position of great power, as opposed to now. On the other hand, we have Hitler, who I believe was a schizophrenic character. The other possible reason why Reich apparently didn’t write about Schizophrenic characters with open pelvises could be that rug really had not developed the concept of the schizophrenic character, it seems to me. It seems to me that when Reich wrote about schizophrenics, he was writing about what would conventionally be known as a schizophrenic then and now; the type of patient that Dr. Konia would call a “perceptual schizophrenic.” But I don’t think Reich really had a conceptualization of what Dr. Konia would now call and “excitatory schizophrenic. It seems to me that this broader concept of the schizophrenic character is something that has been developed mostly by Dr. Konia; and I think it is and immensely important set of observations that Dr. Konia has given us.
At the ACO, we usually conceptualize paranoid schizophrenic characters as having an open pelvis. Less so with the catatonic schizophrenic character, who has much more muscular armor.
In regards to what you write about orgone therapy not being right for certain patients, this is what I would say: I believe that almost anyone can benefit from MOT, but the MOT has to be adjusted to the patient rather than the other way around. That’s inherent in the whole concept of contact, and contact is essentially what we offer to patients. So that means we need to have a feel for the nature of each individual’s armor and work slowly and carefully. If we push, and if we were to cause damage, then that is NOT MOT, do you see what I mean? We must understand the countertruth of the armor: that is the essence of contact.
Now, it could be that some orgonomists might attempt to have a pure MOT practice and then do some other kind of conventional psychiatric work on the side in order to support themselves financially. In America currently, it would be extremely difficult to have a psychiatric practice that was pure MOT where one would only take, say, one or two out of every 10 patients that request treatment, based on some kind of stringent criteria of what kind of patient is a candidate for MOT. In America currently, it’s probably not possible to support a psychiatric practice in that manner. The alternative is just to take each patient as a unique individual and work at whatever level is possible and appropriate for that individual patient. This includes medication for certain patients who are actually looking to be GIVEN some armor rather than have some armor TAKEN AWAY. Most patients who see a psychiatrist in America are looking for the former. It is possible to work with such patients in a contactful way and help them a little bit at a time to tolerate their feelings better, even while prescribing medicine for them. They might not have even thought they were coming to you for therapy. They might think that it’s all about medicine. But the medical orgonomist really has something to offer to almost everyone: it just has to be done contactfully. We usually say at the ACO that the only type of patient who is definitely not a candidate for some version of MOT are impulsive characters, plague characters, psychopaths, sociopaths and criminals, drug abusers and other types who do not have sufficient capacity to armor in order to tolerate MOT. But when I say “MOT“ here, I am including working as a conventional psychiatrist but with the knowledge of orgonotic functions that the well-trained medical orgonomist has. Looked at from this perspective, even simply prescribing medicine and doing no obvious therapy can on some level be “MOT”. We cannot afford to be elitists. We are physicians and it’s our job to help whoever we can. The image comes to mind of a surgeon on a battlefield. And that’s really how bad things are.
Alexander, in regards to your question about my own personal experiences, can you make it clearer to me which of the topics we have been addressing you are asking me for my personal perspective on or experiences with?
Dr.Hobrook, what are your personal feelings about the emotional plague, how do you recognize personally the plague in everyday life – naturally you have not to publish your intimate feelings here – but what are your personal feelings of the emotionall plague and of a DOR excitation ?
Thank you, Dr. Holbrook.
Psychiatry, including psychdrugs, works with the closed structures and reinforces the emotional armor and the split of the brain and the body , most psychaitry patients die from a lethal biopathy caused by the psychodrugs..
Orgone therapy works with the excitation of the biological core, if an orgontherapist does not have contact a biological core contact to his patient, it is a medical mistreatment., you should never start to solve the emotional armor.
So orgontherapy works with the open structures, it solves the emotional armor it works NOT with the emotional armor, this is often misunderstood in my perception, people think often it is about mechanistically solving every segment, which is totally wrong.
So real orgontherapy is physiologically , the exact opposite of psychiatry, the specialist training psychiatry is counterproductive because they learn nothing more , you can only see in psychiatry how it does not work.
People who have hardly a muscle armor, and a strong eye ARMOR, IN MY perception the armor has shifted into the deep tissue structure of the bodl, the flabby muscle cells cannot take any charge and they cannot discharge also , if you are gently opening the eye armor – the energy flows softly into the body, but cannot be absorbed by the musculature and now this process intensifies the process of deepening the contraction, these people are even more likely to get into their heads.after years of therapy.
This problem has not yet been solved – and should be explored, unfortunately, my perception of such patients do not benefit from the MOT, until the problem I have described above has been explored and clinical solved, it is like in body psychotherapy, initially these patients are feeling better, after a few years, the symptoms follow.
Reich perfectly describes in character analysis how he treats a catatonic schizoohren – he advises the patient never to turn back to a psychiatrist after orgonetherapy, and to forget about this period of her life.
The energy flow that the patient feels through her ORAC sessions is what her clinic psychiatrists call “somatic psychosis”, which is nothing but quackery – unfortunately, psychiatrists tend to try to make diagnoses over kilometers without knowing a person personally – which is not rationally scientifically possible, Reich never did such a things.
There is no rational scientific connection between a schizophrenic, whatever type, and emotional plague character, Reichs definition is absolutely right, that an emotional plague character only works with very strong, not solvable pelvis armor..
Reichians told me again and again that Reich would write differently today – unfortunately this is nonsense, he would in the depth exactly the same in our times, and he would be as rovocative, without wanting, as it was in his lifetime.
The problem of the emotional plague did not change at all.
Hi, Alexander.
“…most psychiatry patients die from a lethal biopathy caused by the psychodrugs.” What I would say about that assertion is that most people die not a natural death, but a death caused by their biopathies. What causes biopathies? Most biopathies are not caused by an overall lack of excitation of the organism (cancer is a big exception). Rather, biopathies are caused by an intolerance of the excitation that is already there naturally. So when an orgonomic psychiatrist, if necessary, works with psychiatric medicines, he is working with the armor in such a way as to help a patient who is incapable of functioning to be able to function in the short term, while at the same time with MOT attempting to remove the obstacles that are present in the patient’s character and physiology over the long term with the hope of getting them off of medicines. The whole thing is done with in the context of an orgonomic understanding. If the patient chooses not to use medicines, great. That is preferable, but the majority of patients in America today want medicine because they instinctively recognize that they need more armor, at least in the short term.
A good example of this is working with people who are psychotic. Antipsychotic medicines block the action of dopamine in the body and brain. Because of the blocking of dopamine in the brain, conventional psychiatry used to subscribe to a “dopamine hypothesis“ as the cause for schizophrenia: too much dopamine. Eventually research showed that this dopamine hypothesis had to be abandoned. One perspective we have as orgonomists helps explain the at least partial efficacy of antipsychotic medicines: dopamine is involved in muscular activity. The dopamine-blocking antipsychotic medicine is literally promote muscular armor in, which is almost always lacking in psychotic people. Thus the well-known “parkinsonism” as a “side effect” of antipsychotic medicines. From a functional perspective, we would hypothesize that this suppose it side effect is quite likely actually the active agent in decreasing psychosis with patients on these medicines. People cannot function when they are psychotic. So until we can achieve the difficult task of helping the psychotic patient with some kind of emoji approach, it makes sense to rapidly decrease your symptoms with the use of a medicine, if that is the course that the patient wants to take. On the other hand, I have helped psychotic patients get off of antipsychotic medicine and no longer need it. This can even be done with character analysis alone. I have success stories as a medical orgonomist with patients who at one point had to be on eight different medications simultaneously to hold them together, and then over the process of years of therapeutic work completely lose their need for medicine and function at an extremely high level in their careers.
MOT is not a crusade to have people have less armor. That would be freedom pedaling in the clinical situation, which is extraordinarily dangerous and destructive. MOT is a medical procedure designed to actually help people function in real life. That is the always the goal. The proof of the efficacy of a therapeutic technique is not actually what happens in the therapy room. The proof of the efficacy is what happens outside of the therapy room. A compassionate approach involves the attempt to improve the patient’s life outside the therapy room. Yes, we are better off with less armor if and when we can handle it. But we also have to respect the armor. You cannot help someone live without armor before you understand and respect why the patient needed the armor in the first place. When one practices a craft on a daily basis for decades, one learns things that one cannot learn from books. I believe that my patients instinctively sense that I understand and respect their need for armor. This has the “paradoxical“ effect of making it easier for them to relinquish their armor! One cannot push these things.
Generally speaking, the ideal MOT patient would be someone who is stable enough that it would be possible to work with them without medicine. That’s the goal. But most medical orgonomists (at at least the ones I know, who as far as I’m concerned are the best and really the only true medical orgonomists on Earth) do not work exclusively with people seeking out MOT. This is because practically no one knows what orgonomy is these days, in contrast to the 1950s and 1960s, when American medical orgonomists had a flood of patients at their door seeking MOT. The vast majority of the patients we see today don’t even know what MOT is, and don’t necessarily know that we are orgonomists. They are just looking for help from a psychiatrist. They are looking for ways to armor themselves, usually. So, often that becomes the first step in the treatment: dealing with excitation that is intolerable to the patient and making it impossible for them to function. This is a phenomenon that is way more prevalent in today’s society than it was during the era when Reich was working. Repression and muscular armor were the most prevalent at that time. But due to the transformation of society from authoritarianism to antiauthoritarianism, the prevalence of certain character biopathies is greater now than it had been in the past. This is consistent with the Reich’s assertion that character is formed by culture. The orgonomic principles at work are the same; but the presentation in the individual patient is largely different.
Another way in which the culture is now different is that even people with relatively minor symptomatic complaints have basically no idea that there are alternatives to medicine. The pharmaceutical industry is the second largest industry on Earth after oil, and they have done a very good job of brainwashing everyone into their paradigm. Thus, when one sees a patient, there is an enculturation process that needs to occur in the treatment. People have been taught, for example, that anxiety is a disease; and there is a slow educational process that has to occur to prepare patients to understand that there is another way besides seeking more armor with medicines. It would not be possible to help the average patient who comes in the door seeking medication if one were entirely rigid and ideological about medication. In order to have a chance of helping people, one must be able to grasp the functional situation and work slowly with the patient to improve their lot in life. The temporary provision of armor with medicine, if that’s what the patient wishes, is not a contradiction to that process.
I am happy when patients tell me that they want to try to improve their lot without medicines. That requires tremendous courage and some degree of contact in the patient. It’s also very expensive. Patients who choose that path are relatively uncommon in our current cultural situation.
“Orgone therapy works with the excitation of the biological core.” I don’t want to misinterpret your meaning in this sentence, but if you are saying that MOT works by exciting the core, that is absolutely incorrect. But again, quite possibly I am misinterpreting your meaning, because you have also criticized the various feral body therapies, which damage people by increasing excitation in a non-contactful manner. So I’m guessing you would agree when I say that MOT (which includes character analysis) works by REMOVING THE OBSTACLES to being able to tolerate the excitation of the core. There are tons of people walking around out there with lots of core excitation but no ability to tolerate it, which then actually just increases armor. But I’m sure you agree.
So, going back to the question of medication. Actually, I would say that most psychiatric medication works by decreasing excitation, which is what armor does. So psychiatric medication is the provision of armor. One of the differences between a conventional psychiatrist and an orgonomic psychiatrist is that the orgonomic psychiatrist knows this, and works with this reality with in the context of orgonomic knowledge and practice.
“The problem of the emotional plague did not change at all.” The deep causes of the plague have not changed at all, but the societal phenomena have changed. This is the whole thesis of Dr. Konia’s two books and his blog, and I think he is correct. The change from the authoritarian to the antiauthoritarian society has changed the pattern of peoples’ armor. The mechanisms of armoring have not changed, but there is a much greater prevalence of ocular armor. Generally speaking, the more ocular armor someone has the less need for muscular armor they have. This changes the whole nature of people. And so it also changes the way that medical orgonomists have to practice. Reich would’ve recognized that if he were living today, and his approach with that type a patient would be different than his approach with, let’s say, a straight phallic or hysteric. But even the presentation of phallics and hysterics is somewhat different now than it was when Reich was practicing. There is more ocular armor in all character types today than there was in the past. That doesn’t make them schizophrenic characters, but it makes them phallics and hysterics with more ocular armor than they had in the past (I would also say there is always some disturbance of the ocular segment in neurotic characters, that has something to do with the disturbance of contact). There is also a lot more intellectualizing in today’s human being. All this ocular armor in a sense creates a “hook“ similar to what one sees in schizophrenics or in people who have had armor stripped away in the lower segments by rogue body therapists. A hook is a situation where there are unarmored segments below armored segments. The lack of armor below intensifies the need for armor above, creating a difficult clinical situation, because as soon as one loosens the armor above, the patient can feel easily overwhelmed because of a lack of ability to bind the energy in armor below, either by tolerating the charge or by having the capacity to armor. In many ways, this is essentially the situation with most people today. That’s why we have to modify the way we work with patients.
You write in your comment about the situation of a patient needing to acquire the capacity overtime to tolerate a charge in the lower segments. You say that this is a difficult question, but actually it isn’t. It is a real life situation that we encounter as a medical orgone therapists. What is the solution? The solution is slow, careful, painstaking work over a long period of time as the patient slowly acquires acquires the ability to hold a charge in the open segments below a blocked higher segment. Sometimes medication is useful in this process and then can be removed later on. Or if the patient wishes, it can be done without medication, although as I describe above, not many people have the courage and tenacity and contact to choose that path. As an orgonomist, of course it is a delight when one encounters a patient with that kind of courage. But all we can do, if we want to help people, is to offer them the options. In my view, the patient needs to choose which options. To me, that is an essential aspect of a contactful relationship between practitioner and patient. The patient uses medicine or no medicine. In my practice, the patient also chooses whether to work somatically on the therapeutic couch, or to work sitting up, character analytically. I do not believe in pushing patients. I think it is counterproductive. We work on the surface, that’s where the defense is.
The situation you described were a patient initially and proves that later gets worse again is what happens when the therapist pushes MOT, one can get spectacular results quickly and it is extremely seductive for both patient and therapist. But as I say, what really matters is: where is this patient going to be five years from now? That is the proof of the efficacy of MOT, not the dramatic and exciting short term results that can be produced. The compassionate and contactful medical orgone therapist knows this, and because of this, he earns the respect and trust of his patients. That’s what it means to be a “doctor“ who respects life, rather than some kind of snake oil salesman or bootleg “orgonomist”.
Dear Dr. Holbrrok, thank you very much for your answer.
I agree with many of your words.
I wrote that an orgonetherapist must build up a biological core contact to the patient, and then the armor is delicately and gently released or solved from the outside, one should never push emotional core contact, neither the process of solving the armor, this would do harm to the patient.
If there is no biological contact to the patient, you should not even start therapy, it is a medical mistreatment.
The higher charge potential of the therapist attracts the lower one of patient – in dilettantish body psychotherapy, many therapists are totally overoaded in the outer layers and are compulsively trying to dissipate their energy to the patients – which can be seen as a rape.
It is right, if it just clicks between you and the patient, the patient will start to cry when he looks into your eyes, without any words – if you are not as sensitive to hold a butterfly in your hands. Please do not work as an orgonetherapist.
An orgone therapist should have been treated close to genitality in his own therapy, otherwise it is dangerous for the patient.
You have work with the open structures of the patient, and not with the armor, you should never confront the armor violently, I mean the open structures of the patients, that are there – I meant NOT to open him up violently with pushing him.
The character structure of the patient must be analyzed, but I would never tell the patient, because it brings him back into the head, it is a work diagnosis for physician.
Likewise, you must know the longings of the patient, and where they have their origin, their roots in the body of the patient, and what these longings are exressing.
Giving up the goal of genitality in therapy is a de-construction of orgonetherapy, it does not matter if every patient reaches it – and of course this process should NEVER be pushed.
In my perception, the therapy is not there to somehow feel better in life.
In Germany, I have seen patients who have been in orgontherapy for years and are no better off than patients of psychoanalysis.
A patient must have a goal, it might be even unconscious to him, the orgone therapist must recognize it, he cannot, it if he does not establish biological core contact to the patient – the therapy must take place two or three years once or twice a week, without any longer interruption.
The orgontherapist must never lose sight of the goal of therapy, but should NEVER push the p
Everything that Reich has written is correct, orgonetheray is biopsychiatric surgery, one can not open the situs a bit, but one must open it gently, that is something different.
As far as psychiatry is concerned, in Germany, psychiatrists have no idea of pharmacology, pathophysiology, biology, psychology or psychoanalysis.
It’s not a profession, it’s esoteric, dangerous irrational esoteric, they are quacks.
The dopamine hypothesis is nonsensical, and has long been scientifically refuted, psychiatrists still believe it, because they have no idea of anything.
Psychodrugs are very harmful from a medication of two weeks on, they immediately trigger a biopathy, even on an epigenetic level – your answer is too undifferentiated concerning the topic –
Psychodrugs trigger a biopathy that is already built into the patient’s body and reinforce this process, which let patients die ten to twenty years earlier.
I would be happy to send you a dozen scientific articles on your professionel email address that prove this scientifically.
Patients who suffer from excitation that they can not endure, like even in psychosis, do not need new armoring at all – this is not an orgonetherapy , this is mechanism – I repeat it once again, you have to work with the open structures that are already there within the patient, NOT opening irrational new ones, as body therapists do –
Also the functionally use of psychodrugs is deconsructing orgonethrapy, to understand this you have to have dee knowledge of biology, physiology, pharmacology and logically orgonebiophysics.
I always perceive that I am even more conservative than the ACO – of course, all the descriptions of Dr. Konia are absolutely correct, regarding the change in the character structure in anti-authoritain society- I wrote that some things still have to be evaluated clinically.
Please read Reich’s treatment of a catatonic schizophrenic in character analysis, he is a genius of medicine.
Reich would write the same words in depth today, in our times.
If you leave the postulate of genitality, and only use therapy, so that the patients get along better in life, this is no longer orgone therapy, the patient should not live „better“ with his neurosis, as in psychoanalysis, but without them – this has nothing to do with forcing or pushing – I hope you understand me, – the goal is genitality.
If you might not understand , what makes a tender butterfly fly , you will not understand what I mean, if you will not understand the tender moves of a newborn infant and his natural longings, you wil not understand, what I mean.
I am sorry for a lots of typos in my comment above,
either my fingers are too fast or the keyborard is to slow…;
I hope you can read it anyway.
Dear Dr.Holbrook, I would like to give you an example:
Dr.Herskowitz once brought a patient in the emergency room with the use of a pillow away from psychosis – back to reality – without psychodrugs without reinforcement of the armor – do they understand that neurophysiologically, orgone biophysically?
(It was in the time Herskowitz was still a member of the ACO, I think)
Working with the open body structures that are already there, within the patient,.
Please forgive me for mentioning Herskowitz on Dr. Konia’s website, I do not put Herskowitz “over ” Dr.Konia at all – it’s an example I just remembered.
with a pillow using “the sense of touch” of the patient …
Hi Alexander, I think that on some of the issues we are discussing, we will have to agree to disagree. I think that contactful discussion means discerning the difference between a dialogue and an argument, and once something starts to be an argument, it is no longer contactful; I’m sure you agree. I don’t think we’ve reached the point of an argument yet, but I will veer away from that possibility.
These are the things I would say that I think will fall short of an argument:
I think it’s probably accurate to say that all human communication is an effort of one core to make contact with another core. We succeed or fail to varying degrees, depending on the amount of armor we each have, along with other secondary factors such as age, cultural background, education, experience, etc.
I believe it may also be accurate to say that relating “core to core“ is probably pretty much the same thing as relating to the genitality in one other.
I also think it may be accurate to say that every human being has some degree of genitality, otherwise they would be dead.
I would also say that basically “genitality” is the same thing as “functionality“, since functional thinking and living depends entirely on one’s degree of genitality, which in turn depends entirely on one’s degree of core functioning, which in turn depends on one’s degree of freedom from armor.
The word/concept of “contact“ follows a similar pattern. Orgonometrically, it is defined as the full integration of excitation and perception. In the presence of full integration of excitation and perception (contact), orgonotic streaming occurs. The degree of armoring is proportional to the degree of intolerance for orgonotic streaming (orgasm anxiety). A corollary is, of course, that in order to fully tolerate streaming, one has to be orgastically potent, which of course requires the absence of armoring.
So when I advocate contact between therapist and patient—and this means contact of any kind, no matter how “superficial“—I am advocating making contact between core and core; between genitality and genitality; between functionality and functionality. So basically I think one could say is that the only difference between deep contact and superficial contact is one of degree, not of kind.
Now, I use the word “degree“ a lot here because there are few of any examples of unarmored human beings in history. This is because armor is part of nature! Armor occurs in the natural world. In a sense, it is part of the cycle of nature.
Parenthetically, I would say that in order to be a genital character, I don’t think it’s necessary to be 100% free of armor. I think it’s only necessary to be free enough of armor in order to function with full genitality, as a genital character. This means that genitality is the organizing principle of one’s functioning, as opposed to hysteria or phallicism or schizophrenia or whatever.
I am not free enough to be a genital character. I’m not sure I know anyone who is. But as I say, we all have varying degrees of genitality, and thus varying degrees of contactfulness. Being a medical orgonomist in the training program of the ACO requires a medical degree and completion of a residency in psychiatry, along with continuing characterological restructuring in therapy with an approved medical orgonomist. It also requires a character structure deemed by the training committee to be healthy enough for training. I think it’s safe to say that if being a genital character was a requirement, there would be no such thing as an orgonomist. There may be some orgonomists who are genital characters, I don’t know. But if there are, I doubt they were functioning as genital characters when they were first accepted to the training program.
Being a genital character means having full orgastic potency. This enables the genital character to realize their full potential as a human being. It’s not necessarily a measure of the value of a given human being. After all, if one were to make a list of the 1000 or so most important human beings in history, the people that made the greatest contributions to the advancement of the human race, I don’t know how many of those people would be genital characters. Being a genital character, for example, doesn’t necessarily impart genius. A genital character could lead a simple life, let’s say as a farmer. Every human is unique, and certainly not every genital character would be the same. In fact, I think the opposite is true: genitality would allow each person to fully differentiate themselves and be unique. They would share certain traits, as Reich described. One of the most important of those traits that Reich described is the capacity to give.
So in light of what I have written here, let’s examine some of your statements/concerns:
“Giving up the goal of genitality in therapy is a de-construction of orgonetherapy”.
Agreed. Do you think someone is giving up on the goal of genitality in therapy?
“In my perception, the therapy is not there to somehow feel better in life.”
The more genitality one has, the better one feels. What is the pathway to genitality? Contact.
“Everything that Reich has written is correct, orgonetherapy is biopsychiatric surgery.”
Agreed. Did you think that somebody was saying anything different than that?
Reich, W. (1953/1956). The Murder of Christ. New York: Pocket Books:
The Bio-Energetic Meaning of Truth
“Truth is full, immediate contact between the Living that perceives and Life that is perceived. The truthful experience is the fuller the better the contact. Truth is the more comprehensive the better coordinated are the functions of living perception. And the living perception is coordinated exactly to the extent of the coordination of the motion of the living protoplasm. THUS TRUTH IS A NATURAL FUNCTION…” Ibid., “The Bio-Energetic Meaning of Truth,” page 217, emphasis in original.
“To touch the truth is the same as to touch the genitals.” (Reich, 1953/1956, page 250)
These passages from Reich demonstrate that contact is a biological phenomenon that leads towards genitality.
Regarding the example you gave from Dr. Herskowitz: such things are possible. But they are not typical.
Alexander, your comment on Dr. Konia’s “elephant“ post essentially says the same thing I am saying:
“You should start, setting yourself small personal goals, that you can reach realistically, just start with the feeling of your own fears and the perception that nothing bad will happen if you do not run away from them.
Starting with these “small” goals, you will begin a biological process over years – that will lead you to “bigger” goals bit by bit, this means to a fully self-responsible, free life, taking responsibility for your health, that means stopping to destroy yourself, your body with your masochism, responsibility for a personal happy life, finding a partner that you can make happy, and you might have emotional healthier children with in the future, who are even more emotional healthier than you were in childhood.
This is how you will change society with your personal biological happiness, this is all you can do, it undermines biologically a big part of the emotional plague (also the plague within yourself) that knows no emotional depth at all, and you might stop being part of selfdestructive and society destructive anti-social behaviours.”
I agree with you, I did not mean, that every Orgonetherapist has to be a full genital character, but he must have been treated in his own therapy as far as it is possible, and must know his weaknesses exactly, and must have an perception, of not getting his weaknesses getting mixed up with the process of his patients, therefore in my perception an orgonetherapist has to be regulary in supervision therapy, to refresh his own therapy an his own biological core contact.
I agree with you that feeling better is an expression of getting more contact on the way to genitality, what I meant is, that the therapist should never lose out of his sight the goal of genitaly, that means the deep healing function from the biological core with the genital function –
I know very well that you will not get every patient to genitality at all, you NEVER should force such a process – I hope you understand, that I mean this functionally.
So I agree almost with all your words of your answer –
You elegantlly left out or did not mention the topics you disagree, or we disagree 😉
“Not typical” does not mean not possible, not typical means often not usual,
I love challenges or may I say, I am not afraid of challenges
Concerning your second comment, Dr.Holbrook, I just read it, as my browser somehow shows me not always all new comments –
I agree with you.
I am sorry for the typos again, it´s my keyboard, let me just correct one sentence, I hope you can read the rest of my comment above:
“Reichians told me again and again that Reich would write differently today – unfortunately this is nonsense, he would in the depth write exactly the same in our times, and he would be as provocative, without wanting, as it was in his lifetime.
The problem of the emotional plague did not change at all.”