What is Functional Thinking?

Q. What is functional thinking?
A. Functional thinking is thinking according to the way nature functions.
Q. Who discovered functional thinking?
A. Functional thinking was discovered by Wilhelm Reich M.D.
Q. What is the importance of functional thinking?
A, Functional thinking provides a way to integrate all the natural sciences into a unified body of knowledge.
Q. What is the difference between functional thinking and ordinary thinking?
A. Ordinary thinking is either mechanistic or mystical.
Q. What is mechanistic thinking?
A. Mechanistic thinking is thinking about nature as if it were a machine.
Q. What is mystical thinking?
A. Mystical thinking is thinking as if there was a purpose to nature.
Q. What’s wrong with thinking mechanistically and mystically about nature?
A. Since nature does not operate like a machine and since it has no purpose, mechanistic/mystical thinking cannot provide a satisfactory understanding of how nature operates. Furthermore, erroneous mechanistic/mystical thinking often has destructive consequences.
Q. How does mechanistic/mystical thinking work?
A. When mechanistic thinking fails to provide a satisfactory understanding of nature, mystical thinking enters to provide a purpose to what is left to be understood.
Q. What is an example of mechanistic/mystical thinking?
A. An example is the statement: The heart pumps blood in order to bring oxygen to the tissues of The body. First, the heart is compared to a mechanical pump. Then, a purpose is given to explain why the heart pumps blood.
Q. What is the functional understanding of this example?
A. The function of biological pulsation defines the goal of bringing oxygen to the tissues.
Q. Where can I learn more about functional thinking?
A. The American College of Orgonomy gives a course on functional thinking to qualified students.

September 24, 2015
Categories: Biological Sciences, emotional plague, Medical Sciences, Orgonometry, Physical Sciences, Social Sciences, Uncategorized, Wilhelm Reich . Tags: , , , , , . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 1 Comment

Biological Comprehension Requires Functional Thinking

Mechanistic thinking in biology always makes a secondary or tertiary biological process the primary factor.  Consider the latest “discovery” in biology  that claims that a single molecule, the hormone oxytocin, is at the center of our moral lives. In his new book, “The Moral Molecule” Paul J. Zak asserts that the presence or the absence of this molecule in the blood stream is the reason that some people are caring and generous while others are cruel and greedy.  Typical of the way mechanists think, he goes on in mystical fashion to propose that this new science of morality can be used to create a more virtuous society.  He writes, “If you detect the makings of an endless loop that can feed back onto itself, creating what might be called a virtuous circuit- and ultimately a more virtuous society- you are getting the idea.” (See The Truest Molecule by Paul J. Zak, The Wall Street Journal, April 28-29 2012).

This kind of thinking about biological processes is downright destructive not only because it leads nowhere but also because it generates more mystical distortions and confusion in biology.  It is another manifestation of the emotional plague in natural science.

From a functional-energetic perspective, all living organism’s pulsate.  Their biological  orgone energy expands out to the world with pleasurable stimuli and it contracts away from the world with painful or noxious stimuli.  Pulsation is a primary biological function and it is anchored structurally in the organism’s plasmatic system which includes the autonomic nervous system, the vascular system, endocrine system and the immune system.  These systems are responsible for maintaining all the life functions of the organism.  It is true that the hormone oxytocin is elevated in functions that involve expansive or pleasurable activities of the organism.  However, the expansive function of biological orgone energy is primary and is what determines the blood levels of oxytocin.  Taking a secondary function, oxytocin, and attributing a primary importance to it is an evasion of recognizing the primary orgonotic functions that are the foundation of life.

April 30, 2012
Categories: Biological Sciences, emotional plague, Medical Sciences, Orgonometry, Social Sciences . Tags: , , , , , . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 1 Comment

The Political Right’s Way Of Promising The Impossible

From an orgonometric perspective, both sides of the socio-political spectrum, the left and the right, constitute the symptom of social armor.  The ideology of the political left is the expression of unlimited social freedom while the ideology of the political right is the expression of the defense against it.  With the anti-authoritarian transformation of society and with the shift of the political mainstream to the far left of center, the ideology of the left is the dominant destructive social force in today’s Western society.  The genie is out of the bottle and there is very little that the political right can offer by way of promises that can arrest the process of social decline.

What is needed to stop the decline is an entirely different way of looking and thinking about the way things are, a way that originates neither from the left nor the right but which takes into consideration the biological existence of human armor that gives rise to humanity’s social and political troubles.

April 4, 2012
Categories: emotional plague, Orgonometry, Politics, Social Sciences . Tags: , , . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 6 Comments

Communism Has Lost It’s Evil Connotation

During  the Cold War period, communism was up there along with fascism as one of the great evils in the world.  With the fall of the Soviet Union and  its threat to the Free World gone, communism as an evil social force seems to have lost its meaning to an increasing number of people even though it is still actively at work eroding the freedom in America.  This social paradox can only be understood functionally.  It is the result of people’s increasingly living on the social surface and losing touch  with their core biological needs.  As a result, they are unable to take full advantage of the freedom that life in America still provides.  They do not fully appreciate the blessings of freedom because they literally cannot tolerate the enormous amount of freedom that they actually have.  Signs of this intolerance of freedom are seen everywhere from the mindless carrying on of the Occupy Wall Street protesters, to the increased dependency of all segments of society on the Federal Government for assistance, to the rise in criminality in the business world requiring government control of the economy, to the widespread rise by the public in seeking substitute satisfactions in life such as drugs, passive entertainment and so on.

Because of these signs of social degradation, the evils of communism do not seem as serious to a people for whom freedom is not the precious treasure it becomes as soon as it is taken away.

January 15, 2012
Categories: emotional plague, Orgonometry, Politics, Social Sciences . Tags: . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: Leave a comment

The Republicans Cannot Come Up With A Strong Presidential Candidate In 2012

The problem of finding an effective opposition to President Obama in 2012 requires an understanding of the dynamics of the ideological forces that are currently in operation.  The forces on the left are pro-active.  Always looking for socialistic solutions to social problems, the left constantly agitates for social change.  Any change, regardless of the consequences for the well being of the nation, is better than maintaining things as they are.  By contrast, the forces on the Right are reactive.  Not having any “new solutions” to offer, they mainly function to oppose the destructive social policies of the Left.

In the past authoritarian era, there were equal numbers of people on the Left and Right and the ideological forces were balanced. In today’s anti-authoritarian era there is a marked political shift of the political mainstream to the Left of center.  This shift includes the population at large as well as both political parties.  As a result, political solutions to social problems are the popular rule.  For a candidate on the political Right not to have novel political solutions to social problems puts him or her at a disadvantage.

May 23, 2011
Categories: Biological Sciences, Child Rearing, Medical Sciences, Orgonometry, Physical Sciences, Politics, Social Sciences, Uncategorized . . 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

  • Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

    Join 139 other subscribers

  • Follow Charles Konia, M.D.’s Tweets on Twitter

  • See Charles Konia, M.D. on Amazon

  • See Charles Konia, M.D. on Facebook

  • American College of Orgonomy