Biological Sciences | Charles Konia, M.D.

The Mechanistic And Mystical Views On Human Sexuality

Differences in the world views of armored people’s mechanistic and mystical thinking are apparent in every area of human life including human sexuality. When applied to living functions, mechanistic and mystical thinking are distortions and serve as a defense against seeing things as they really are. These views generally correspond to the thinking of the political Left (mechanistic thinking) and the Right (mystical thinking).

When applied to human sexuality, mechanistic thinking seems to be able to investigate every aspect of human sexuality in minute detail from different varieties of pre-genital sexual activity to the hormones, neurotransmitters and brain centers that are involved in sex. After all of the studies, little if anything new has been learned about the sexual functions of emotional life. Mystical thinking, on the other hand, focuses on terms such as “love”, “energy” and so on that have no physical basis.

Both views contain serious distortions. They ignore the existence of the physical biological energy that is capable of providing the basis for understanding every aspect of the human sexual function. Knowledge of this energy, which was discovered by Wilhelm Reich around 1940, continues to remain off limits to those who think mechanistically or mystically through their armored character structures. Through bio-electric experimentation, Reich found that the charge at the skin surface increased during states of pleasure and decreased during states of anxiety. He concluded that there is a real physical energy involved in these differing emotional states. The emotions of pleasure and anxiety correspond to different directions of energy movement; from the center of the organism to the periphery in pleasure, from the periphery to the center in anxiety. From clinical investigation he concluded that the sexual orgasm in the relatively unarmored organism functions like a safety valve to regulate its energy economy and by so doing prevents the build-up of energy that can lead to every form of human pathology, medical, social and psychological. However, in most armored people the regulatory function of the orgasm is disturbed and this is why they cannot recognize it’s functional importance in maintaining emotional and physical health. The current mechanistic-mystical views on human sexuality are the inevitable result of armored thinking.

May 15, 2011
Categories: Biological Sciences, Child Rearing, Medical Sciences, Politics, Social Sciences . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 1 Comment

Symptomatic Versus Curative Approaches To Medical Illness

In almost every case, the approach of the mechanistic physician to illness is to focus on and eliminate the disturbing presenting symptom. This is because the underlying cause of diseases such as cancer, heart disease, schizophrenia and so on is outside his or her scope. To make matters worse, most seek medical help when they develop overt signs and symptoms of illness at a time when the disease process has become irreversible and the only possible treatment is symptomatic. The impressive advances in infectious diseases, surgical techniques and the diagnostic sophistication of specialized branches of medicine only serve to highlight how far medicine has gone in the direction of mechanization. Medical specialties excel exactly because the application of mechanistic principles to medical practice develops in the direction of greater specialization.

One must step outside this mechanistic paradigm in order to find a truly curative approach to medical (including psychiatric) illnesses. Wilhelm Reich’s discovery of the biopathic predisposition of armored organisms to illness provides exactly that. A biopathy is a pulsatory energy disturbance of the plasmatic system (which consists of the autonomic nervous system and the vascular system) resulting from the presence of chronic armor. The approach of the medical orgone therapist is to gradually eliminate the pulsatory disturbance which underlies the biopathic symptom. Successful dissolution of armor results not only in elimination of the disturbing symptom but also in the a permanent improvement in the individual’s functioning and emotional well being. Armor prevention in infants and children would be an important natural, not a mechanically artificial, step toward improving the level of health and longevity in the general population.

May 12, 2011
Categories: Biological Sciences, Child Rearing, Medical Sciences . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 1 Comment

The Rise In The Number Of Children And Adolescents Requiring Psychiatric Care

I started my psychiatric residency in 1960. Compared to today, children and adolescents were a relatively small part of the psychiatric population and treatment consisted almost entirely of some form of psychotherapy. The use of medication for the treatment of children and adolescents was unheard of. In the following decades, more and more young people came to the attention of the psychiatrist and drugs were introduced in their treatment. Today, the treatment of choice for children and adolescents is with medication designed to suppress the disturbing symptom.

The increase in the number of young people needing psychiatric help is one of the many destructive consequences of the transformation of Western society from authoritarian to anti-authoritarian. The authoritarian society of the past was based on the authoritarian family. Based on sexual repression, the father was the enforcer of compulsive authority and the mother, in particular, was the bearer of the authoritarian moral code, of distinguishing right from wrong. From the standpoint of society, when repression was successful there was a general sense of social stability manifested as loyalty and respect for authority and authoritarian social institutions.

In today’s anti-authoritarian social order there has been a weakening in the authoritarian family. From a behavioral standpoint parents are not able to be emotionally responsible for raising and taking care of their children. Society is being torn apart. The old authoritarian morality has been replaced by a far more destructive morality, political correctness, based on authority which originates from outside the local authority of the family. The new authority is qualitatively very different from the old authoritarian authority since it consists of people’s opposition to traditional forms of authority. This has necessarily resulted in centralized or collective authority. Full of disrespect for all forms of traditional authority, children and adolescents are increasingly out of touch with their biological core and with traditional values and practices that once held society together. There has been a sharp rise in anxiety levels manifested in severe attention deficits (disturbances in contact), hyperactivity and various forms of impulsive behavior requiring psychiatric attention. Many of these conditions did not exist 50 years ago. Unfortunately the only form of treatment at the traditional psychiatrist’s disposal is with symptom suppressing medications. The underlying source of the emotional problems of young people are consistently evaded.

By contrast, those trained by the American College of Orgonomy in medical and social orgonomy understand and are prepared to deal with the destructive changes in people’s structure resulting from the anti-authoritarian transformation of our society (see ” The Practice of Medical Orgone Therapy in Anti-authoritarian Society” in The Journal of Orgonomy, volume 43 number 2).

April 23, 2011
Categories: Biological Sciences, Child Rearing, Medical Sciences, Social Sciences . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: Leave a comment

The Brain Is Not The Mind: What Can And Cannot Be Expected From The New Brain Atlas

Mechanistic scientists believe that the brain and the mind are one and the same. A 55 million $ computerized atlas of the human brain has recently been built for purposes of studying not only organic diseases involving the brain such as Alzheimer’s disease and autism but also psychiatric illnesses such as depression that are supposedly believed to originate in the brain (“Atlas Gives Scientists New View of the Brain,” Wall Street Journal April 13, 2011.)

The atlas may have value in pinpointing organic brain diseases; however, equating the mind (psyche) exclusively with the brain and not with the whole body which includes the brain has been downright destructive because it has set the stage for mechanizing the practice of psychiatry. Through a better understanding of brain physiology, psychiatrists hope that they somehow will have a pharmacological cure for mental illnesses by altering brain functioning.

This view of mental illness has brought about the current deplorable state of psychiatric practice where the diagnosis and treatment of every patient is exclusively determined by the symptom that is exhibited. From the symptom, a drug has to be manufactured that is hoped to be “tailor made” to treat in cook book fashion the “brain disorder” that is responsible for it.

Since, however, psychic illness is the result of a disorder of the whole body and not just the brain, this pharmacological goal can never be reached no matter how well brain physiology is understood. Sooner or later the psychiatric profession will have to realize the futility of this mechanistic-mystical approach. They will have to come to grips with the enormous destructive consequences of their erroneous ways of thinking and start thinking functionally. What they must attain in order to effectively treat psychiatric disorders is not a better psychiatric drug but a functional understanding of the simultaneous identity and antitheses of psyche (mind) and soma (body) that underlies health and disease.

April 17, 2011
Categories: Biological Sciences, Medical Sciences, Orgonometry . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 1 Comment

The Demise Of Modern Psychiatry

More than any other discipline, psychiatry has lost its autonomy as an independent branch of the medical sciences and, as a result, it is now more or less under the complete influence of the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. No longer is the psychiatrist the one who is in complete charge of the patient. Today, the psychiatrist treats the psychiatric symptom such as anxiety, depression etc with medication. while the psychologist or social worker treats the “whole patient.”

How did this tragic degradation in this once highly respected profession come about? The decline in the quality of psychiatric care is directly related to the psychiatrist’s failure to understand the origin and functions of emotions that underlie psychiatric illness. This necessarily led to a mechanistic, brain-centered distortion of psychiatric illness and a symptom based system of diagnosis and treatment. The elimination of the troublesome symptom, not the establishment of emotional health, became the goal of psychiatric treatment. The mechanistically oriented psycho-pharmacologist gradually replaced the function of the psychotherapist as the primary caretaker. With the use of medication, the energy behind the patient’s psychiatric problematic symptom is blocked from being experienced but this occurs at the expense of his emotional well-being.

The mechanistic distortions of human emotional life that we see today in the practice of psychiatry did not occur because of a lack of knowledge. They could have been prevented if the medical discoveries of Wilhelm Reich such as the existence of biological energy, the function of armor and the orgasm function were understood and incorporated into the existing body of psychiatric knowledge. Tragically, the overwhelming majority of psychiatrists were and still are unable to think functionally and grasp the crucial importance of these discoveries. They are left with a sterile approach to human illness, one that cannot be sustained for long before the public at large and the psychiatric profession itself become disillusioned with the current state of affairs and look for a better alternative to what they have.

April 2, 2011
Categories: Biological Sciences, Medical Sciences, Social Sciences . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 4 Comments

The Biological Origin Of Political Correctness

In his article “The Origins of Political Correctness” which appeared in volume 43, number 2 issue of The Journal of Orgonomy, Bill Lind describes political correctness as “the disease of the century,” the distorted expression of Marxist ideas translated from economics into cultural terms. Although correct from an historical standpoint, his understanding of the origins of political correctness are limited to the more superficial socio-economic realm. It does not take into account the powerful biological forces residing in people’s depths that have rapidly made political correctness the dominant form of morality in twenty-first century America.

The transformation of social armor from authoritarian to anti-authoritarian that began around 1960 was accompanied by a corresponding change in the structure of individual armor. Prior to that time, in most adults armor was contained in the skeletal muscles. With the transformation of social armor, a shift occurred in the pattern of armor of young people from the musculature to the brain. Ocular armor increased at the expense of muscular armor in a large segment of the adult population. This shift resulted in a dramatic change in the way morality was experienced and expressed.

The authoritarian morality of the past originated to a great extent from muscular armor. Its function was to preserve the authoritarian way of life. With the shift of individual armor from the musculature to the brain in a large number of young people there occurred a qualitative change in morals. Authoritarian morality with its absolute distinction between right and wrong based on emotional feelings became replaced by political correctness, an expression of a qualitatively different kind of morality originating exclusively from the brain.

Functioning to establish the anti-authoritarian social order over authoritarianism, the morality of political correctness is a highly infectious and pernicious manifestation of the emotional plague because it appeals to people’s intellect and it is well rationalized as being for the common good of everyone.

February 17, 2011
Categories: Biological Sciences, Politics, Social Sciences . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 4 Comments

The Political Strategy Of Leftist Ideologues

In order to make sense of the political behavior of leftist ideologues in America, an understanding of the three functional layers of every individual’s bio-physical structure is necessary. These are the superficial layer or facade, the deeper, socially destructive middle layer and the deepest layer, the biological core.

Having no contact with their core and depending on whether or not they are in political power, ideologues on the political Left shift back and forth from their superficial layer (by impersonating true liberals) to their destructive, middle layer and back again. When not in political power (prior to 2008), they operated from their superficial layer and pretended that they were genuine liberals. Once they gained power in 2008, these falsely named (pseudo) liberals revealed their true identity. In full view of a surprised public, they abandoned their liberal facade and blatantly operated entirely from their destructive middle layer. They packaged their socialist agenda as social progress and shoved it down the public’s throat, proving that their objective is to weaken and ultimately destroy America both domestically and internationally and that therefore, they are, in fact no different than old-fashioned communists. Now that they are again not politically dominant (in 2011), they have returned to assuming their seemingly benign liberal facade. And this is the way that the Left will appear until they next take control of government. This is called the salami method of government, takeover of a country slice by slice

The Left’s temporary retreat is designed to give the appearance that they are currently relenting on some of their destructive political rhetoric and goals. Because the public recognizes only what is on the political surface, this will be viewed by some on the Right as a victory but this is wishful thinking. The facile changes in the pseudo-liberal/communist’s facade are entirely calculated.Their tactics are always in the service of maintaining and increasing political control over people.

January 19, 2011
Categories: Biological Sciences, Politics, Social Sciences . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 3 Comments

Massacre In Tuscon

The following is an excerpt of an article that will be included in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Orgonomy. It is being published here with kind permission of the author, Edward Chaska M.D.

Referring to the January 8th shooting of 20 people by accused gunman Jared Lee Loughner, Dr. Chaska writes:

“Overlooked in the media’s debate over the tragic shootings of Congresswoman Giffords and nineteen others is the deadly interaction between marijuana and mental illness. As a psychiatric consultant in a drug and rehabilitation facility I see dozens of young men and women who present in psychotic and violent states from the use of marijuana and other drugs. Often, after three or four months of treatment and abstinence from marijuana, they are entirely changed human beings. Marijuana users are three times as likely to develop a psychotic episode and twice as likely to develop overt symptoms of schizophrenia as are people who do not smoke marijuana. They also suffer higher rates of anxiety and depression. Marijuana inhibits brain development and interferes with natural empathic feelings for other human beings.

“In Pennsylvania, thanks to ‘children’s rights’ advocates, children over 14 can refuse psychiatric or drug and alcohol treatment, even if their parents insist they need it. If the media wants someone to blame for this tragedy they need look no further than the marijuana lobby and the ‘children’s rights’ advocates who interfere with a parent’s right to get treatment for their children with psychiatric and drug problems.”

With his knowledge of characterology, the trained medical orgonomist can accurately identify and effectively treat youngsters who are at risk for developing psychotic symptoms and are prone to destructive behavior long before they become violent. Mr. Loughner, who had a past history of drug use, may not have been suffering from classic schizophrenic symptoms prior to the attack but nevertheless his behavior indicated that he had a character diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia with impulsive and homicidal tendencies. His history of marijuana use put him at greater risk to have a violent psychotic reaction. The ability of the medical orgonomist to make an early therapeutic intervention based on an accurate character diagnosis can help to prevent future tragedies.

January 13, 2011
Categories: Biological Sciences, Child Rearing, Medical Sciences, Politics, Social Sciences . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 2 Comments