“Never do it the political way!”

These were Wilhelm Reich’s words regarding past attempts to improve social conditions through politics. He continues:

“People will get very enthusiastic about it. They will glow. They will burn for you. But their structures won’t follow. Their character structures can’t follow. Then you are in trouble… This discrepancy between what a human being wants, what he dreams of, what he intellectually understands as true and good and what he actually can do, i.e., what his structure, the character structure, really permits him to do, is quite a problem…It is also the gap where religion comes in with the idea of paradise.”

Today, in our anti-authoritarian society, people are being deprived of their illusory hopes in religion as it is being replaced by the a secularized, intellectualized version of it in the form of socio-politics. They are losing whatever contact that they had with themselves at the time when their emotions were tied in to their personal and religious beliefs. Today, people are more out of touch with themselves and their world than they were in the past authoritarian era.

Now more than ever, a functional understanding of what is happening to our society is vital to prevent further degradation. This knowledge is being made available through a lecture series on Social Orgonomy open to the public given by the American College of Orgonomy.

The Function of the U.S. Constitution

The following excerpt is from my forthcoming book, “Clueless”

“The U.S. Constitution was written in 1787 by some of the finest minds that the world had to offer. It’s function was to protect the life of the American people against the destructive forces contained within them. Thus, even without knowledge of human armor,the writers were aware of the existence and the destructive consequences of the emotional plague. It was expected that future generations would retain and develop it’s fundamental principles when new understanding of human life became available.

However, the required knowledge of biological functions was not forthcoming until almost 200 years later with the sciences of biological and social orgonomy. Meanwhile, the gap in the Constitution’s understanding of human life functioned as a block. It’s interpretation and the meaning of it’s wisdom were placed in the hands of the general public. Based on differences in their character structure, their perspectives differed. Today, people still continue to be divided about the interpretation of the document when problems of governance arise that need to be settled. On one hand are the Originalists who interpret the Constitution verbatim as stable from the time of it’s enactment. On the other, are those who view it as a flexible document that can be interpreted differently depending on the whims of the individual and on social circumstances.

Now, for the first time in it’s history, the Constitution and the amendments to it in the Bill of Rights can be understood functionally from the perspective of social orgonomy (see chapter 3) Applying this knowledge to the Constitution helps to provide the document with a unified, natural scientific basis for governance.”

The Cornerstones of Social Orgonomy

To make any sense of what is going on in this chaotic world of ours an understanding of the cornerstones of the science of social orgonomy is essential. They are:

1) The three layer of the bio-psychic apparatus.

2) The emotional plague.

3) Socio-political character structure.

4) The anti-authoritatian transformation of our society.

A course in social orgonomy will be given by the American College of Orgonomy in the near future. It will be based, in part, on my forthcoming book, “Clueless.”

What is Emotional Health?

Because people are essentially clueless about what constitutes emotional health, a clarification is necessary. The following characterization of emotions and of emotional health is provided from a medical-psychiatric point of view:

What are emotions?
Emotions are the perception of bio-energy excitation moving radially (in and out) in the organism. There are five basic emotions: Love, Fear, Rage, Sadness and Longing.

What is emotional health?
In an healthy individual, emotional energy moves freely in the organism. The build-up of energy beyond a certain point (the lumination point) gives rise to sexual excitation and a drive for discharge of excess energy in the genital orgasm. This capacity is the criterion of emotional health.

What is emotional sickness?
In an unhealthy individual the movement of bio-energy is impeded by emotional blocks or armor. Since the capacity for complete orgastic discharge is disturbed, the residual, undischarged energy leads to the symptoms of emotional illness.

What are emotional blocks/ armor?
Emotional blocks are the immobilization (stasis) of bio-energy in various organs of the body. It is mostly held in the musculature (muscular armor) and the person’s character (character armor).

How are emotional blocks/armor recognized?
Some common manifestations are disturbances in thinking and emotions and symptoms such as anxiety, depression etc. well-known in psychiatry.

What are the effects of these emotional blocks?
Emotional blocks result in sexual disturbances and other psychiatric symptoms as well as every kind of pathological social behavior and thinking.

Are these emotional blocks responsible for the political conflicts between the political left and the right?
Yes. They are responsible for both individual problems and socially based problems.

What is the origin of these emotional blocks?
Emotional blocks (armor) are formed during the individual’s developmental period from birth to around the age of five or later.

How do these emotional blocks happen?
They are the result of life-negative, socially destructive influences on a young child’s emotional development.

Can people’s emotional blocks be removed?
This can be performed by medical orgonomists who are physicians trained in the practice of medical orgone therapy. It can also be performed by social orgonomists who are social workers trained in the field of social orgonomy.

Can these emotional blocks be removed by anyone?
It takes many years of experience in the training programs given by the American College of Orgonomy for a physician or social worker to become qualified to work responsibly in these disciplines.

How is medical and social orgonomy different from other therapies?
They are based on the three psychiatric discoveries of Wilhelm Reich, M.D.: 1. The biological energy that is at the basis of living functions which he called orgone; 2.The armor that interferes with it’s movement; 3. The orgasm function that regulates it. In addition, therapy is based on the ability of the therapist to think functionally, not mechanistically or mystically.

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.

Are All Arabs The Same?

There is currently widespread confusion regarding how Arabs are to be viewed. The simple answer is that there are two kinds of Arabs, those that have a live and let live attitude and those who identify themselves as political Muslims and have their allegiance to Islam. The former group knows the distinction between religion and the state. The latter group identifies the Muslim religion with the state and believes that it must expand and conquer the world by killing all nonbelievers if necessary.

The question brings up the importance of understanding socio-political characterology without which it is not possible to make any sense of what is happening with Arabs in the Middle East and in America. Because of their strong tribal roots and their strict authoritarian upbringing, most Arabs belong in varying degrees on the right of the socio-political spectrum. Beginning with the conservative Arab to the immediate right of center,there is the extreme conservative followed by the reactionary and finally the Islamo-fascist on the extreme right.

As we proceed from the right of center to the extreme right, the Arab’s social functioning becomes rigidified and cut off from all contact with corrupting Western influences. The separation between secular and religious law becomes increasingly blurred and the individual’s work and sexual functioning becomes more restricted. His ability to assimilate into Western ways becomes more difficult as his need to have Allah be responsible for his life reveals his underlying emotional and economic helplessness. The Islamo-fascist who says ” I love death more than life” is his way of expressing his total emotional intolerance of the freedom that there is to be had in Western democratic societies.  Seeing it as degenerate, he is sympathetic to other Arabs who want to destroy it. For him, secular ideology and religious moral law are one and the same.

The Islamo-fascist is an emotional plague character on the political extreme right. Here are some of the favorite slogans used by these ideologues to disarm America: “Islam has always been a part of America,” “Islam is not part of the problem  in combating extremism – it is an important part in promoting peace,” “Throughout history, Islam has demonstrated through words and deeds the possibilities of religious tolerance and racial equality.” These statements are effective because they all have a grain of truth in them and that is all it takes for liberal-minded Americans to give them the benefit of doubt.

However, the Islamo-fascist has no contact with his biological core. Cut off from his natural sexual feelings, he operates entirely from his secondary destructive layer and his ideology originates from it. The following are some examples: “All people are born Muslim and start off as pure but they become corrupted by living in a world of infidels. It is the duty of all good Muslims to bring them back to the ways of the Prophet.” “The world including most Muslim societies are in a state of racial impurity and it is our holy duty to cleanse it.”

According to Reich, “The ideology …of purity is the ideology of asexuality, of ‘sexual purity.’  it is, basically, a result of patriarchal authoritarian sexual suppression and sexual anxiety… the core of fascist race theory is a mortal terror of natural sexuality and its orgasm function.”

We can add that, in the case of Islamic race ideology and in contrast to the purity of Muslims, infidels including all Westerners are equated with racially impure, unchaste people.  Reich continues: “With the development of distorted, lascivious, sexual structures, patriarchal man became enmeshed in an ideology in which ‘sexual’ becomes inextricably associated with ‘filthy,’ ‘low,’demoniacal’.”

As the level of  emotional zeal of Islamists becomes more revolutionary, their ideology becomes more reactionary. There is a new wave of extremists who believe that a pure State of Islam must be instituted not gradually through social consensus but swiftly by military force. With the social turmoil in the Middle East there is a flood of sexually frustrated, displaced and disillusioned youth who are ready and willing to embrace Allah’s cause.

The American people’s general state of complacency and confusion regarding Arabs is exacerbated because the political mainstream is far to  the left of center. Liberals and other political leftists are strongly defended against perceiving their own destructive secondary layer. Therefore, for them, evil does not exist in others even when it is staring them in the face.

There Has To Be Something More To Life

Orgonomy attracts two kinds of people, those who are attracted to it and stick with it and those who are first attracted to it and then are repelled by it. Those who come to orgonomy and stick with it share one important trait. They have a deep sense that there must be something more to life than what is generally available. They see this something in the science of orgonomy, a science that allows one to have knowledge of the life energy, a science that provides a unified and satisfactory understanding of both the inner and the outer worlds. By contrast, those who come to orgonomy and leave also have one thing in common. They feel that there is something else that the science of orgonomy has not provided them with. For them, orgonomy is just one of many disciplines that are available to the public. They stay in touch with orgonomy for varying periods but sooner or later they are off to engage in other pursuits often taking little parts of orgonomy with them.
The difference between the two groups is that the first has retained a largely undistorted sense of the importance of their work and sexual functions in their daily lives. They are able to achieve pleasure in work and in their personal lives that their experience with orgonomy has given to them and they have a sense of gratitude to the orgonomists who have given them this appreciation. The second group has a distorted often mystical sense of their core functions of life and therefore they are unable to practically utilize what orgonomy has given them. Having no genuine appreciation for what they have been given, they often lose themselves in mystical teachings and practices of one sort or another.

Understanding The Works Of Wilhelm Reich Requires An Understanding Of The Emotional Plague

Orgonomy is the science of life energy and the emotional plague’s sole function is to destroy all manifestations of  natural life.  This is why only those who have an understanding of the operation of the emotional plague in today’s world can truly appreciate the importance of Wilhelm Reich’s scientific contributions and work in the orgonomic sciences.  This rule applies not only to people in  the general population who have a smattering of knowledge about Reich’s work but also to those who ostensibly are confirmed advocates of his work.

At one of  Dr. Baker’s technical seminars for medical orgonomists in the mid-60s, a seminar member spoke of a contact that he had at a local radio station and that it was an opportunity for us to speak about Reich’s work on the air.  The subjects that should be included in the talk were brought up .  Many topics were raised as possibilities and there was a lot of excitement in the room.  At some point, I suggested the emotional plague as a subject for discussion.   Suddenly, all the excitement was gone. There was dead silence.  It was as if I had said something terrible and the entire matter was dropped.  Since then, many physicians practicing medical orgonomy have come and gone.  Except for myself, every living person who was present at that seminar no longer functions as a medical orgonomist.

It was around that time that Dr. Baker began talking to me about the need for a book to be written about the history of the emotional plague.

  • 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