Today’s degradation of psychiatric practice was another destructive consequence of the emotional plague that first started with Freud’s opposition to Reich’s attempt to extend his psychoanalytic theories of the libido and the neurosis into the social realm. This rift between them ended Reich’s association in the psychoanalytic movement and led to the development of Reich’s work into sociology (“The Mass Psychology of Fascism”) and into biology with the discovery of biological orgone energy.
With no natural scientific foundation to support it, psychoanalysis became vulnerable to attack by the emotional plague. In the 1960s, Freud’s functional understanding of psychiatric disorders was thrown out and the entire specialty of psychiatry became transformed into a mechanistic, drug-oriented system of therapy. Today, all that is required in psychiatric treatment is to arrive at a symptom-based diagnostic – DSM -system for the patient’s condition and the right quantity of the drug needed for each psychiatric disorder.
As a result, psychiatrists have abandoned responsibility for the patient’s health to the lay public. In order to have an understanding of the function that lay people can have in the mental health field, the existence of social orgonomy and the distinction between the individual and social realms of human illness is necessary. Non-physicians can be trained to practice social orgonomy, which deals with the individuals problems in the social realm, but they cannot become qualified to practice psychiatry which is in the biological realm.
According to an article in The Wall Street Journal (October 5, 2020), “more (lay) people are becoming therapists” … as … “more people (are) seeking out mental health help”. Antioch College, for example, has had a 200% increase in applicants in its clinical psychology program.
The qualitative component of psychiatric treatment has been relegated to lay therapists who have little, if any, understanding of the bio-emotional basis underlying psychiatric illnesses. They are simply not equipped with the necessary medical knowledge and experience to to their work. This situation is another consequence of the emotional plague.
Allowing lay people to treat psychiatric problems which are in the medical realm is one more destructive consequence resulting from the anti-authoritarian transformation of society that is destroying all forms of social authority including not just that of the psychiatrist.
The American College of Orgonomy is currently providing interested physicians and non-physicians with training necessary in the practices of medical and social orgonomy to qualified candidates.
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Neither Left Nor Right
The Emotional Plague
Charles Konia, M.D. 
Very clear and the consequences are devastating. Life will continue to be dulled, deadened, snuffed out. People will become even more robotic. It angers me so much.
Mine is good, strong anger. The situation is heartbreaking and “what to weep from” , and I am. Thank you, Dr. Konia. Thank you so very much. Judy
You’re welcome, Judy
W. Reich was already in 1927 against lay analysis. There was a discussion about the case of T. Reik, who had been accused of quackery in Vienna in 1925. There was then a discussion in the Psychoanalytical Association on the subject, in which Reich was one of those who was against the admission of laymen to analysis.
Thank you for that historical perspective.
See also:
Reich speaks Freud, Penguin Books, 1975, pp. 213-217.
Thank you for the reference.
My pleasure.