Charles Konia, M.D.

In his article, “What Happened to Obama? Absolutely Nothing” (The Wall Street Journal, August 13-14, 2011), Norman Podhoretz describes President Obama as ” a genuine product of the political culture that had its birth among a marginal group of leftists in the early 1960s and that by the end of the decade had spread metastatically to the universities , the mainstream media, the mainline churches and the entertainment industry.  Like their communist ancestors of the 1930s, the leftist radicals of the ’60s were convinced that the United States was so rotten that only a revolution could save it”.   At the tail end of his run for the presidency, Mr. Obama, in a rare moment of candor promised: “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”  Referring again to President Obama, Mr. Podhoretz concludes: ” He is still the same anti-American leftist he was before becoming our president, and it is this rather than inexperience or incompetence or weakness or stupidity that accounts for the richly deserved failure both at home and abroad of the policies stemming from that reprehensible cast of mind.”

Mr. Podhoretz has an intuitive understanding that communism is a social cancer that can metastasize and destroy all social organizations.  If he had knowledge of sociopolitical characterology he would easily recognize Mr. Obama as a pseudo-liberal/communist character.  There can no longer be any doubt about the socio-political agenda of the pseudo-liberal/communist character.  His stated personal agenda is to appear and act like a loyal American.  His unstated political agenda is to bring America to its knees through a process of socialization and, at the same time, to subordinate it under the authority of the United Nations.  This goal is similar to the bygone Soviet Union’s stated goal of international socialism.

Mr. Obama’s day of reckoning is Election Day, 2012 at which time he will have to convince the leftist ideologues that supported him for the presidency in 2008 that he is still committed to transforming America into a socialist state and, at the same time, he must once again successfully deceive millions of well-intentioned but misguided American voters that he is a loyal American.

August 18, 2011
Categories: Politics, Social Sciences . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 5 Comments

Europe’s trouble with Islam is another symptom of social pathology that is impossible to understand without knowledge of sociopolitical characterology (see blog, Can Muslim Societies Be Compatible With Democracy? November 27, 2010).

Muslim society is rigidly authoritarian.  Based on severe sexual repression of children and adolescents, the subjugation of women, a strong mystical tendency and commitment to the Muslim system of law (shariah) over Western law, most Muslim immigrants in Europe belong in varying degrees to the right of the sociopolitical spectrum.  Proceeding from the political center to the extreme right, this group includes conservatives, extreme conservatives, reactionaries and fascists.  Therefore, the political mainstream in Muslim societies is somewhere to the right of center.

By contrast, Western societies today are anti-authoritarian.  Based on the abolition of male authority and the authoritarian family, the widespread disregard for all forms of social tradition and law including the prevalence of sexual license and the use of street drugs, the political mainstream in Western society is shifted far to the left of center. Proceeding from the political center to the extreme left, leftists includes liberals, socialists and pseudo-liberal/communists.  To complicate matters, this leftward shift has necessarily resulted in the polarization of European society with many non-Muslim Europeans gravitating to the political extremes of left and right.  These are the major underlying bio-social forces that are operating in the cultural clash between the Muslim and non-Muslim  Europeans.

Those belonging on the political right have a selective attitude toward social life.  To the degree that Muslims are on the political right, they have difficulty adjusting and are intolerant of a society dominated by leftist norms.  This is why they  segregate themselves and live separately from the rest of the European community in accordance with their Muslim mores.

On the other hand, non- Muslim Europeans belonging on the political right, have difficulty with, and are intolerant of the Muslims’ way of life in Europe.  They expect Muslims to adjust to Western ways overnight.

Europeans belonging on the political left, on the other hand, have a collectivist attitude toward social living.  These leftists go to a great extent to accommodate themselves and tolerate the Muslims’ way of life in Europe, some even supporting shariah law for European Muslims.  Thus, the presence of large numbers of Muslims in Europe exacerbates the divisiveness of an already riven society.  The recent massacre in Oslo is the latest manifestation of this polarization in European society.

It is impossible to make sense of what is going on between European Muslims and non-Muslim Europeans without first understanding  the socio-political character structure of those involved in what is happening.

August 13, 2011
Categories: Politics, Social Sciences . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: Leave a comment

Today’s state of knowledge of social pathology is not unlike that which existed about medical pathology in the seventeenth century when there was little or no scientific knowledge of the origin of infectious and other diseases. Imagine practicing medicine or surgery without knowledge of anatomy, physiology, pathology and all the other branches of medicine necessary to diagnose and treat medical conditions.  Yet, this is exactly what the sociologists, economists  and politicians of today are trying to do when they attempt to remedy social problems without a proper scientific orientation which requires among other things taking into account a careful history of the biological origin of  social pathology.  Expecting today’s politician to take care of social problems is like giving a barber surgical tools and asking him to perform heart surgery.

Particularly destructive is the lack of understanding of the function played by a politician’s individual and sociopolitical character in determining social and political policy.  A politician’s character structure and not the political party to which he belongs is the primary determining factor in his or her political thinking and behavior.  The public’s ignorance of this important fact is the reason that high ranking politicians with a communist character structure posing as true Democrats and members of the Democratic Party are able to do enormous economic harm by, for example, shoving tax and socialist programs down the public’s throat.   Happening today in front of everyone’s eyes, no one really sees these impersonators for who they are and what they are doing .  This is because the function of the communist’s sociopolitical character structure is not understood:  A communist is an emotional plague character on the extreme left, someone who will do whatever it takes to bring down America and in so doing destroy all forms of healthy social life worldwide.

More generally, the emotional plague has infested every part of social and political life.  Yet, the emotional pathology of the armored masses of people that contributes to each and every one of our social problem is consistently evaded.  Some serious examples are the increase in dependency and sense of entitlement of the armored helpless masses on the productive segment of society; the self-serving ever-present leftist politicians ready to take political advantage of the situation; the politicians from both sides of the sociopolitical spectrum who attempt to solve economic problems by interfering with and controlling market forces and so on. These as well as other social problems will continue to escalate until the emotional plague is recognized, sequestered and treated like every other infectious epidemic disease that infests human life.

August 10, 2011
Categories: Politics, Social Sciences . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: Leave a comment

Today’s state of knowledge of social pathology is not unlike that which existed about medical pathology in the seventeenth century when there was little or no scientific knowledge of the origin of infectious and other diseases. Imagine practicing medicine or surgery without knowledge of anatomy, physiology, pathology and all the other branches of medicine necessary to diagnose and treat medical conditions.  Yet, this is exactly what the sociologists, economists  and politicians of today are trying to do when they attempt to remedy social problems without a proper scientific orientation which requires among other things taking into account a careful history of the biological origin of  social pathology.  Expecting today’s politician to take care of social problems is like giving a barber surgical tools and asking him to perform heart surgery.

Particularly destructive is the lack of understanding of the function played by a politician’s individual and sociopolitical character in determining social and political policy.  A politician’s character structure and not the political party to which he belongs is the primary determining factor in his or her political thinking and behavior.  The public’s ignorance of this important fact is the reason that high ranking politicians with a communist character structure posing as true Democrats and members of the Democratic Party are able to do enormous economic harm by, for example, shoving tax and socialist programs down the public’s throat.   Happening today in front of everyone’s eyes, no one really sees these impersonators for who they are and what they are doing .  This is because the function of the communist’s sociopolitical character structure is not understood:  A communist is an emotional plague character on the extreme left, someone who will do whatever it takes to bring down America and in so doing destroy all forms of healthy social life worldwide.

More generally, the emotional plague has infested every part of social and political life.  Yet, the emotional pathology of the armored masses of people that contributes to each and every one of our social problem is consistently evaded.  Some serious examples are the increase in dependency and sense of entitlement of the armored helpless masses on the productive segment of society; the self-serving ever-present leftist politicians ready to take political advantage of the situation; the politicians from both sides of the sociopolitical spectrum who attempt to solve economic problems by interfering with and controlling market forces and so on. These as well as other social problems will continue to escalate until the emotional plague is recognized, sequestered and treated like every other infectious epidemic disease that infests human life.

August 10, 2011
Categories: Politics, Social Sciences . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: Leave a comment

On July 22, 2011, a 32-year-old Norwegian male, set off a bomb in a compound of government office buildings in Oslo,  and later in the day gunned down dozens of  young people at a Labor Party youth camp leaving a total of 76 people killed.

According to news reports, he was motivated by an antipathy to multicultural policies that, in his view, are leading his country down the path to Islamization.  In his 1500-page manifesto “2083: A European Declaration of Independence,” he speaks of his pride in his “Viking heritage” and insists that he will not “accept an Islamic presence in Europe”.  He describes himself as “Justiclar Knight Commander for the Knight Templar of Europe,” a group he claims has some 80 members.  His grandiose, mystical  worldview seems somehow to be defined by medieval history.

He seems to have designed a military dress uniform and wants to wear it to his trial and also said that it was necessary to have the media present to generate more public interest.  Apparently, the purpose of the massacre was not simply to kill off the Labor Party leaders but more so to create a spectacle thereby energizing his crusade.  He calls this the propaganda phase of his campaign in which he imagines he will be given “a stage to the world”.  Through mobilizing rebellious youths, he can win over “tens of millions of European sympathizers…who support us fully and are willing to fight beside us.”  Two weeks prior the rampage, a neighbor almost called the police when he noticed that the windows of the assailant’s house had been blackened.  On the morning before the massacre he wrote that “today you will become immortal.” At his arrest, he called his actions “atrocious but necessary”.

In terms of arriving at a diagnosis of this individual, it is important to make the distinction between a person’s individual and his socio-political character structure.  From the standpoint of the individual, this person is a paranoid schizophrenic character.  He has delusions of persecution and grandiosity.  From the socio-political perspective, he is a fascist character.

Socio-political characterology is the study of how individuals insist on inflicting the effects of their emotional illness on others in their environment.  Primarily expressed in social and political life by restricting and regimenting it, the symptoms of the individual’s socio-political behavior are not felt as ego-alien and so they are defended strongly and emotionally.  Since it is expressed in the socio-political arena, the behavior can be categorized according to that which falls to the Left or the Right of the political spectrum.  Those who belong on the extreme right of the socio-political spectrum are called fascist characters. Fascists are active in fighting the Left since they see them as a rival for the hegemony they both seek.  In this case, Muslims were the scapegoat necessary to justify the murderous cause.

As an example of a fascist character, the  killer represents the ultimate of rebelliousness with reactionary ideas.  He is the quintessential little man who stands for absolute authoritarianism.  He must have been so completely beaten down by his father that he needed the fantasied authority of the father figure (the Knight Templar or the fatherland) to dictate his life and give him permission to carry out the brutality and hate that was no longer able to be controlled.  Hatred of Muslims, racial purity, mysticism, and automatism are all symptoms stemming from the fascist’s orgastic impotence.  From a social perspective, using Muslims as scapegoats aggravated an already tense social situation between Muslims and non-Muslims which generated even more public interest in his case.

Despite being heavily armored, the fascist still has a sense of life within himself but experiences it only in a mystical, distorted fashion.  Excited by intolerable feelings of longing that can never be satisfied, he strikes out brutally and murderously against those who he senses are lively and free.  He then rationalizes his actions as a mystical cause that is just and necessary to safeguard the purity of his race and to maintain dominance over other less pure races.  To achieve his objective, he will let nothing stop him from destroying those who threaten him or stand in his way.

This case illustrates that two forces were required, one originating from his individual (paranoid schizophrenic) character and the other from his socio-political (fascist) character.  These forces conspired to bring about this tragic occurrence.

July 29, 2011
Categories: Politics, Social Sciences . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 6 Comments

On July 22, 2011, a 32-year-old Norwegian male, set off a bomb in a compound of government office buildings in Oslo,  and later in the day gunned down dozens of  young people at a Labor Party youth camp leaving a total of 76 people killed.

According to news reports, he was motivated by an antipathy to multicultural policies that, in his view, are leading his country down the path to Islamization.  In his 1500-page manifesto “2083: A European Declaration of Independence,” he speaks of his pride in his “Viking heritage” and insists that he will not “accept an Islamic presence in Europe”.  He describes himself as “Justiclar Knight Commander for the Knight Templar of Europe,” a group he claims has some 80 members.  His grandiose, mystical  worldview seems somehow to be defined by medieval history.

He seems to have designed a military dress uniform and wants to wear it to his trial and also said that it was necessary to have the media present to generate more public interest.  Apparently, the purpose of the massacre was not simply to kill off the Labor Party leaders but more so to create a spectacle thereby energizing his crusade.  He calls this the propaganda phase of his campaign in which he imagines he will be given “a stage to the world”.  Through mobilizing rebellious youths, he can win over “tens of millions of European sympathizers…who support us fully and are willing to fight beside us.”  Two weeks prior the rampage, a neighbor almost called the police when he noticed that the windows of the assailant’s house had been blackened.  On the morning before the massacre he wrote that “today you will become immortal.” At his arrest, he called his actions “atrocious but necessary”.

In terms of arriving at a diagnosis of this individual, it is important to make the distinction between a person’s individual and his socio-political character structure.  From the standpoint of the individual, this person is a paranoid schizophrenic character.  He has delusions of persecution and grandiosity.  From the socio-political perspective, he is a fascist character.

Socio-political characterology is the study of how individuals insist on inflicting the effects of their emotional illness on others in their environment.  Primarily expressed in social and political life by restricting and regimenting it, the symptoms of the individual’s socio-political behavior are not felt as ego-alien and so they are defended strongly and emotionally.  Since it is expressed in the socio-political arena, the behavior can be categorized according to that which falls to the Left or the Right of the political spectrum.  Those who belong on the extreme right of the socio-political spectrum are called fascist characters. Fascists are active in fighting the Left since they see them as a rival for the hegemony they both seek.  In this case, Muslims were the scapegoat necessary to justify the murderous cause.

As an example of a fascist character, the  killer represents the ultimate of rebelliousness with reactionary ideas.  He is the quintessential little man who stands for absolute authoritarianism.  He must have been so completely beaten down by his father that he needed the fantasied authority of the father figure (the Knight Templar or the fatherland) to dictate his life and give him permission to carry out the brutality and hate that was no longer able to be controlled.  Hatred of Muslims, racial purity, mysticism, and automatism are all symptoms stemming from the fascist’s orgastic impotence.  From a social perspective, using Muslims as scapegoats aggravated an already tense social situation between Muslims and non-Muslims which generated even more public interest in his case.

Despite being heavily armored, the fascist still has a sense of life within himself but experiences it only in a mystical, distorted fashion.  Excited by intolerable feelings of longing that can never be satisfied, he strikes out brutally and murderously against those who he senses are lively and free.  He then rationalizes his actions as a mystical cause that is just and necessary to safeguard the purity of his race and to maintain dominance over other less pure races.  To achieve his objective, he will let nothing stop him from destroying those who threaten him or stand in his way.

This case illustrates that two forces were required, one originating from his individual (paranoid schizophrenic) character and the other from his socio-political (fascist) character.  These forces conspired to bring about this tragic occurrence.

July 29, 2011
Categories: Politics, Social Sciences . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 6 Comments