Biological Sciences | Charles Konia, M.D.

The Role Of Armor In Speech Impediments

Mechanistic neurology incorrectly ascribes the speech function exclusively to certain local areas in the brain, the so-called speech centers on the cerebral cortex. From a functional perspective, however, we understand that these speech centers function only to integrate impulses entering and leaving the brain from and to the tissues and organs contained in the thoracic, cervical and oral segments that are involved with the speech function.

Sigmund Freud, who was a highly skilled and respected neurologist before launching into psychoanalysis, came to the same conclusion as a result of his investigations into brain pathophysiology in patients suffering from aphasia. Contrary to what was popularly believed by neurologists at that time, he demonstrated that individual words were not localized in the brain. In the conclusion to his monograph, On Aphasia written in 1891 he writes, “the significance of the factor of [speech] localization for aphasia has been overrated, and that we should be well advised once again to concern ourselves with the functional states of the apparatus of speech.” Freud had first to scientifically satisfy himself of the inadequacies of the mechanistic approach to the psychology of speech before introducing psychoanalysis and free association to the world. The significance of this important contribution by Freud to the history of science is overlooked by everyone.

The next important step in understanding disturbances in the speech function also came from the realm of pathology. Clinical experience with patients in medical orgone therapy who have certain speech impediments such as spastic dysphonia and stuttering revealed that when muscular armor is removed from the segments involved in speech by expressing the anger in therapy that was being held in those muscles, the speech disturbance was permanently eliminated. Thus, the presence of body armor was found to be an important factor in producing these symptoms.

Therefore, the integration of organ sensations of the speech apparatus from the thoracic (respiration), cervical (vocalization), oral (articulation) and ocular (comprehension) segments by the brain must be the the sources of the speech function. Armor results in a disturbance in the integration of these organ sensations.

One is reminded of the motion picture, The Kings Speech, which accurately depicts a stutterer who is clearly portrayed as having severe oral and cervical armor. When he is provoked to anger, his stuttering temporarily disappears. The discharge of emotional energy accompanying the expression of anger that is bound up in the armored organs of articulation (vocal cords, facial muscles, tongue etc.) momentarily eliminates the speech problem.

April 28, 2012
Categories: Biological Sciences, Medical Sciences . Tags: armor, medical orgone therapy, speech disturbances, speech therapy . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 1 Comment

What’s Wrong With The Teenage Mind?

In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal (Jan. 28-29, 2012) entitled, What’s Wrong With The Teenage Mind?, professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, Alison Gopnik ascribes much of the troubles modern teenagers have in coping with the world to the teenager’s brain. Ms. Gopnik attempts to understand teenage behavior by way of localized pathways in the brain such as “reward centers” and ” control systems” that underlie certain behavioral functions.

That the brain is involved with the teenager’s behavior or that the interaction between the teenager with the environment is important in the kind of behavior that is exhibited goes without saying. These statements about the brain are insufficient to explain the erratic, dysfunctional behavior of many teenagers today.

What is left unsaid is the effect that the dramatic changes that have occurred with the transformation of Western society from authoritarian to anti-authoritarian and the mechanistic-mystical world view that accompanies it has had on the lives of everyone, including and especially teenagers. The breakup of the past authoritarian social order and its underpinning, the authoritarian family based on sexual repression, has been replaced by a social order that is even more inimical to life than its predecessor. To make matters worse, all that was painstakingly gained in psychiatry in the past, including the knowledge of human psycho-sexual development (the disturbances in which account for much of what is troubling teenagers today) has been completely thrown out in the practice of psychiatry.

In fact, the practice of psychiatry today has regressed to where it was over 100 years ago when the subjective workings of the mind was equated in a one-to-one fashion with the objective operation of localized brain functions. Modern psychiatry is as far away from understanding the problems of teenagers as it was then. Meanwhile, thanks to our anti-authoritarian social order, the level of social pathology manifested by everyone including teenagers has escalated to a far greater extent compared to where it was then. These social developments can only be understood as a direct manifestation of higher levels of emotional plague activity in today’s world.

February 12, 2012
Categories: accurate diagnosis, Biological Sciences, character structure, Child Rearing, emotional plague, Politics, Social Sciences, socio-political character . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 1 Comment

The Real Source Of Poverty In America

Unlike many other countries, the freedom and the opportunities to acquire skills and to work is still available in America. This is why people have always flocked to America from all over the world.

According to tradition, healthy Americans are supposed to work and be self-sufficient. Yet, there has been a decline of industriousness in the number of able-bodied men in the work force (see “The New American Divide” by Charles Murray, The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 21-22 2012). Although Mr. Murray is correct in his assessment of the situation, he does not get to the root of the problem. The question, why many people today do not take advantage of the opportunities that are available to learn and work, is never asked. This is because knowledge of the importance of work in regulating social life from a biological point of view is outside the frame of general thinking. What is not understood is that work is a biological function that in an increasing number of Americans is in danger of being completely destroyed. The poverty that exists in America today is the result of the destruction in people’s biological work function. The problem of poverty in America is not the result of economic factors such as class differences which, in general, are actually the result and not the cause of the poverty.

The degradation in the work function in Americans is the direct result of two forces: 1) The breakdown of the authoritarian social order which led to the disintegration of the authoritarian family and 2) The introduction of illegal drugs into American society. In the authoritarian era prior to 1960, many men with a poor work function were obliged to work compulsively because of social pressure placed on them. With the anti-authoritarian transformation of society, the traditional roles of males in the family as husband, father and breadwinner was lost. There was no longer such external expectation placed on them to function in those roles.

The current administration’s promoting all kinds of welfare programs is obviously a self-serving tactic to buy votes from the electorate so that they can have political and economic control over their lives. To make matters worse, welfare programs bring out the worst in the recipients by destroying whatever remains of their self-pride and their capacity to work and also by encouraging a sense of entitlement in those emotionally dependent people who always want something from their government. A manifestation of the emotional plague, these programs function to cover up doing something about the real source of poverty in America (a disturbance in the biological work function), and to secure the power of those who benefit from them.

January 26, 2012
Categories: Biological Sciences, emotional plague, Politics, psychiatric therapies, Social Sciences . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 1 Comment

There Is Now A True, Functional Science Of Sociology

When Auguste Comte first delineated sociology as a natural field of study in 1838, there was no understanding of the biological forces at play in the social interactions between and among people. First there had to be knowledge of the biological forces acting within people before the dynamics of social interactions could be understood. Freud’s discovery of the unconscious was a necessary first step in this endeavor. Wilhelm Reich’s elucidation of the three layers of the bio-psychic structure of armored humans, the superficial layer, the destructive middle layer (the Freudian unconscious) and the core (the repository of primary biological impulses) in The Mass Psychology of Fascism represented the true beginning of a scientific sociology.

Reich saw in the ethical ideals of liberalism the social representation of the superficial layer of the individual’s character. The ethics of the liberal serves to keep down the destructive impulses contained in the middle layer. The liberal can recognize the destructiveness of fascist characters on the political Right (Black Fascists). However, because of similarities in his character structure, the liberal is unable to recognize the social destructiveness of fascist characters on the Left (Red Fascists/pseudo-liberals). In fact, he aids and abets them.

From his clinical experience, Reich found that the ideology of the Black Fascist is the expression of the destructive middle layer. By contrast, the ideology of the Red Fascist is the pretense at defense against expression of the destructive middle layer. This ability to dissemble also makes it more difficult for people to recognize the Red fascist than the black Fascist. Moreover, fascist ideologies did not only exist in those who belonged to fascist political parties. They could appear in any person living in an authoritarian society. Reich discovered the emotional plague of armored humans in the expression of the secondary destructive layer of ordinary individuals toward each other. Communists (today’s pseudo-liberals) and Fascists were simply examples of emotional plague characters operating from the extremes of the political Left and the Right.

Elsworth Baker’s discovery of socio-political characterology (Man in the Trap) finally placed sociology on a functional, biologically based, scientific foundation. In addition to the emotional plague character, Baker identified two other socio-political character types. Belonging on the left and right of the socio-political spectrum, they are, respectively, the liberal and the conservative characters. Living in the social surface, the liberal is in favor of social “improvement” but has no idea of the depth and enormity of people’s emotional sickness that prevent them from improving. In effect, bad social situations are made worse. The conservative, having no solutions to offer for social improvement, can only politically oppose the liberal’s harebrained policies. Baker demonstrated clinically that the differences in the ideologies of people on the left and right originated from differences in the pattern of their armor. Since ideologies are bio-social forces in the form of fixed belief systems, the ideologies of the left and right function as socio-political forces that are in constant opposition.

Understanding socio-political characterology permitted one to make sense of current social events with unfailing accuracy. For example, it allowed one to recognize that beginning around 1960, a social transformation of catastrophic proportions took place from authoritarian to anti-authoritarian, a transformation that is now threatening to destroy Western society as we have known it. Prior to that time, the social order was authoritarian. There were approximately equal numbers of liberals and conservatives in the general population. This balance in social forces permitted a degree of social and political stability. The anti-authoritarian transformation resulted in a shift to the extreme left of political center with the prevalence of leftist ideologues who were placed in high social levels through democratic processes. This resulted in the destabilization of society and the headlong descent of America into a socialist state. In today’s anti-authoritarian Western society, socialist thinking is increasingly becoming accepted by the public as the politically correct norm.

September 22, 2011
Categories: Biological Sciences, Politics, Social Sciences . Tags: anti-authoritarian society, authoritarian, character structure, politically correct, socio-political character . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 2 Comments

What Is Most Difficult To See

The hardest thing for people to see is what is happening right in front of their eyes. Because people’s way of seeing and thinking is distorted by armor, they often cannot see social processes for what they really are. As an example of people’s psychic blindness, consider their inability to recognize the transformation of the order of Western society from authoritarian to anti-authoritarian that began around 1960 and is now threatening to obliterate Western society as we have known it. People cannot see the totality of this historic cataclysm and the resultant destructive social and economic effect that it continues to have on everyone’s life. At most, people are able to recognize what is happening in bits and pieces focusing on this or that particular manifestation of a social decline. The majority are completely oblivious of the fact that anything unusual is going on. Moreover, those who recognize that something destructive is happening think about the transformation strictly from within the context of the social facade. They do not understand that from a functional perspective a social upheaval is erupting on the social surface but that it’s origins are from the depths of the bio-psychic structure of armored humans, from their destructive middle layer and from their biological core.

Unable to recognize why and how a fundamental transformation in social life is taking place leaves everyone completely helpless to do anything genuinely constructive. It can be predicted with absolute certainty that unless the dynamic bio-social forces underlying the transformation are understood and addressed, social, economic and political conditions will continue to deteriorate. The first step to address it would be to recognize that a social transformation of fundamental proportions is, in fact, taking place.

September 5, 2011
Categories: Biological Sciences, Medical Sciences, Politics, Social Sciences . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 8 Comments

The Most Effective Anti-communists Are Ex-communists

Communism/pseudo-liberalism is a highly infectious, socially communicable disease manifested as a ruthless ideology. Identifying itself with different labels such as progressive , new leftist, socialist, it is extremely adaptable to changing social conditions and it functions to wreck havoc on social life. Because of its highly seductive facade of idealism, young people are especially prone to be infected by it. Once the infection takes hold of the individual, it largely determines his or her course of life and thinking.

In rare cases, the individual recovers from the disease. When this happens, exposure to communism confers a kind of immunity and resistance to it. This first-hand personal experience with communism provides a clearer sense of its destructiveness and how the disease operates than is understood by those who have not been infected by it. One has a feeling from the writing of recovered communists that their anti-communism comes from their gut and not only from their intellect as it often does in anti-communists who were not previously infected. The recovered ones seem to have a deeper sense of the true source of the disease. Some current examples of these survivors are David Horowitz and Norman Podhoretz although there are many others.

For example, comparing Obama to communists of the past, Podhoretz writes, “… whereas the communists had in their delusional vision of the Soviet Union a model of the kind of society that would replace the one they were bent on destroying, the new leftists only knew what they were against: America, or Amerika as they spelled it to suggest its kinship to Nazi Germany. Thanks, however, to the unmaking of the Soviet Union as a totalitarian nightmare, they did not know what they were for. Yet once they had pulled off the incredible feat of taking over the Democratic Party … they dropped the vain hope of a revolution, and in the social democratic system most fully developed in Sweden found an alternative to American capitalism that had a realistic possibility of being achieved through gradual political reform… It was only with the advent of Barack Obama that the leftists at long last succeeded in nominating one of their own.” (The Wall Street Journal August 13-14, 2011).

What is the difference in the approach of Obama’s anti-communist critics between those who are recovered anti-communists and those who did not go through the process of “immunization”? Most conservatives who are not recovered anti-communists appear to be stuck in the social facade of rationalism. Their opposition to Obama’s policies are exclusively based on their reasoning powers. However, although Obama’s political agenda is expressed from the superficial layer, it originates almost entirely from the destructive middle layer of his pseudo-liberal character structure. This is why reason cannot touch it. Ex-communist critics of Obama, on the other hand, because of their past exposure to the disease, have a better sense of the destructive source of his political policies and this perspective is more effective in recognizing and exposing who Mr. Obama really is to the public.

August 26, 2011
Categories: Biological Sciences, Politics, Social Sciences . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: Leave a comment

Making Sense Of Politics

In order to make sense of politics one first has to think functionally and have an understanding of the three basic layers of the bio-psychic structure of armored humans: the biological core, the destructive middle layer and the superficial layer or social facade. Otherwise, one is likely to throw one’s hands up in frustration and walk away from what is happening.

All political interactions occur from the social facade. However most political activity originates from the destructive middle layer while the biological core, the source of every constructive social endeavor, is not represented at all in social life. To make matters worse, most people operate in politics as if the destructive middle layer, the source of human evil, did not even exist. It’s as if the emperor has no clothes: all political activity is believed to occur and can be addressed satisfactorily in a rational, parliamentary fashion from the social facade. This charade, expounded mainly by the political Left, continues to have tragic consequences while the political Right, having nothing better to offer, finds itself following in the same path.

This is the unfortunate state of affairs in politics today. It is the reason that American society is falling apart and that the survival of America nationally and internationally is increasingly becoming a matter of chance. People in political power remain ignorant of the underlying dynamics of the biological forces, both healthy as well as destructive, that govern social life. What is more, there is no indication that they are in the least bit interested in learning about them. “Politics as usual” is the rule.

The world is fortunate to have knowledge that can potentially reverse this dangerous decline in social conditions. The subject of politics is discussed extensively in my upcoming book, “Neither Left Nor Right”.

May 21, 2011
Categories: Biological Sciences, Politics, Social Sciences . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 2 Comments