Social Sciences | Charles Konia, M.D.

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 The old authoritarian morality has been replaced by a far more destructive morality, political correctness, based on authority which originates from outside the local authority of the family.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

Natural Authority, Compulsive Authority And Anti-authority

The emotional plague thrives on confusion by generating more of the same. The mix-up around the significance of authority is an important example. As a result, there is no general understanding of the distinction between the social function of rational and irrational forms of authority.

This distinction depends on recognizing the three layers of the human bio-psychic structure: the biological core, the secondary destructive layer and the surface or superficial facade. Rare in armored society, natural authority originates from the biological core and is directly expressed without distortion through the surface. It serves to maintain healthy forms of social life.

The transformation of Western society from authoritarian to anti-authoritarian occurred around 1960. The typical form of authority in authoritarian Western society of the past was compulsive authority. Through repression, it was directed against both impulses from the biological core (healthy) and pathological (destructive) impulses of people. Despite its shortcomings, the authoritarian social order largely preserved the authority of individuals. The repressive focus of compulsive authority on healthy versus pathological life depended on the rigidity of the particular authoritarian society.

Anti-authoritarianism is the typical form of authority in today’s liberal, Western societies. It developed as a result of the breakdown of the past authoritarian social order and its necessary replacement with centralized (State/collective) authority. Primarily opposed to any form of individual or local authority and healthy expression from the biological core, anti-authoritianism originated from and is in the service of expressing impulses from the secondary destructive layer of armored human beings. Core contact is completely absent. Today’s anti-authoritarian social order is directly responsible for the qualitative disintegration of every form of social life.

April 12, 2011
Categories: Politics, Social Sciences . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 2 Comments

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

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 Spread Of The Anti-authoritatian Social Order To The Muslim World

The transformation of Western society from authoritarian to anti-authoritarian began around 1960. A manifestation of the emotional plague (see glossary), it was partly the result of the so-called sexual revolution and the decline in the authoritarian form of sexual repression. The promise of the new anti-authoritarian society was hoped to bring about greater sexual freedom and happiness for the younger generation. In reality, because no attempt was made to distinguish between rational authority which requires protection and compulsive or neurotic authority, what it brought about was disastrous. Much of what was of value in the authoritarian order such as the structure of the family was destroyed as well as the breakthrough of every kind of destructive social activity imaginable. To make matters worse, there was no attempt made to look at the reasons that the sexual needs of young people were not fulfilled and why the movement ended in disaster.

Because of the enormous technological advances of Western civilization such as the computer and the Internet it was only a matter of time before the anti-authoritarian movement with its mindless, mechanical emphasis on unconditional freedom for all people would spread from the West and infect the rigidly authoritarian nations of the Muslim world. The revolutions that are currently happening throughout the Islamic world are only the first wave of what is to come. At present, the social, economic and military consequences of these revolutions can only be guessed at because these are the most superficial manifestations of the anti-authoritarian movement. What is certain, however, is that the power of the deposed rulers will be taken over by others but there will be no genuine improvement in social conditions in Islamic nations until people’s underlying biological emotional needs, particularly those of newborns, infants and children are recognized and protected. Until then, these countries will continue to be a potential breeding ground for tyrants and terrorists.

March 12, 2011
Categories: Politics, Social Sciences . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: Leave a comment