Child Rearing | Charles Konia, M.D.

The Young and the Clueless

In “The Young and the Economically Clueless,” (Wall Street Journal February 20-21, 2016) regarding the overwhelming political support of young people for Bernie Sanders, Daniel Arbess asks: “Why are young people voting against their own interests?”

The writer cannot answer the contradiction posed by his question because it is outside the economic realm. He is unfamiliar with two important sociological facts that are discussed in my last book, “Neither Left Nor Right”:
1. The primary determinant of an individual’s social and political thinking and behavior is his socio-political character structure.
2. The anti-authoritarian transformation of Western civilization that occurred around 1960.

This transformation, the result of the so-called ‘sexual revolution,’ was accompanied by the almost complete destruction of the authoritarian family and, with this, a dramatic shift to the left in the political thinking of mainstream Americans. This culminated, in 2008, with the presidential election of a full-fledged, pseudo/liberal communist, Barack Obama.

The clueless young were not in a position to have learned anything about the destructiveness of Obama’s or Bernie Sander’s socialism because, as the writer notes, the eldest of these young people were in elementary school when the Soviet Union collapsed. Moreover, they are generally clueless about the significance of historical events.

More importantly, these children are the product of the baby boomer generation that were growing up during the 60’s. Many of these were the product of broken homes and therefore had little or no parental, authoritative guidance in their development. What many of these offspring experienced was just the opposite, brattiness and rebelliousness in their parents.

Bernie Sanders, a self-claimed socialist, is the ideal role model as a leader for these helpless, clueless young people. Incapable of caring for themselves, Sanders becomes the all giving,”free lunch” father that, in their clueless eyes, will take care of them. The economic stresses that these young people face in today’s times merely intensifies their anxieties about the future, justifies their anger at the world and increases Sander’s attractiveness to them.

February 22, 2016
Categories: accurate diagnosis, character structure, Child Rearing, emotional plague, Social Sciences, socio-political character . Tags: Bernie Sanders, Daniel Arbess, socialism . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 2 Comments

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 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

What Is Required For The Democratization Of Islamic Countries

In his article “Confronting Gadhafi Is Not Enough” (Wall Street Journal, March 19-20, 2011), Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair writes that the reason why Islamic countries have not achieved democratic status is “because cultural and social modernization has not taken place in these countries and proper religion has been perverted to breed fanatics, not democrats.” This answer although correct does not go far enough and it underestimates the enormous depth of social problems confronting Islamic countries.

My book “The Emotional Plague, The Root Of Human Evil” identifies the steps that must be taken before any legitimate form of democracy can develop in Muslim countries. These steps which must originate from within the people themselves are the following:

1) Identifying and social sequestering of emotional plague characters on the political Left and Right.

2) Discouraging tribalism.

3) Emancipating women.

4) Separating the Islamic religion from the State.

5) Eliminating sex-negative practices in child rearing and the hateful mystical indoctrination of young people in principles of Islamic Fundamentalism.

These are monumental tasks that will take generations to accomplish even under the best of circumstances. Despite the revolutions that are currently taking place throughout the Muslim world, it is illusory to think that any legitimate form of democracy can ever be established in Muslim countries. Having lived under severe authoritarian repression for centuries, Muslims have no experience in democratic self-governance. The present tyrants will be replaced by others who are likely to be more repressive that the current ones. Iran is an example. Following Iran, Turkey, one of the few secular Islamic countries, is rapidly moving toward re-Islamization.

It must be generally recognized that the energy source of the emotional plague – human destructiveness toward others- and the formation of every kind of totalitarian state ultimately resides in the helplessness of the masses, their mystical longing to be cared for by those in power and their thwarted sexual frustration that can quickly turn into social rebellion through Western-style political causes.

April 5, 2011
Categories: Child Rearing, Medical Sciences, Politics, Social Sciences . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 1 Comment

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