Obesity

Charles Konia, M.D.
Reprinted from the Journal of Orgonomy, Vol. 38 No. 1
The American College of Orgonomy

The incidence of obesity in the general population is rising. The number of obese adults today is 74% higher than it was in 1991 (1). In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, the following statement was made:

“Epidemic obesity is arguably the greatest public health threat in the United States today. Current trends, should they continue, will see heart disease in adolescence; more deaths related to diet than tobacco, drugs and alcohol combined; and a generation of adults with a shorter life expectancy than their parents.”(2)

Recent findings indicate that obesity is associated with increased death rates for cancer (3).

As with other biopathic illnesses, the underlying basis for obesity remains unknown to contemporary medical science, this despite the many pathophysiological details that have been discovered. Dew, however, provides a functional understanding of the origin of this biopathy. He states that obesity results from the frustration of infantile oral satisfaction, giving rise to a lasting oral unsatisfied block that drives the individual to overeat (4). In these individuals, the oral indulgence (overeating) and its result, obesity, function to relieve inner tension that cannot be eliminated in any other way because of an underlying disturbance in the regulatory function of the orgasm.

Still to be answered is why there has been an increase in the incidence of obesity in the general population. Traditional medicine proposes as one explanation the increase in sedentary life style in recent decades—reduced physical activity results in decreased caloric expenditure with a resultant increase in fat deposition. While partially accounting for the rise, this explanation is, at best, limited because the underlying, primary cause of obesity is not understood.

The answer lies outside the framework of current medical thinking. It relates to the enormous sociological changes that have occurred in America during the last half of the twentieth century and that continue today. The aborted sexual revolution of the 1960s was accompanied by the transformation of society from authoritarian to antiauthoritarian. The breakdown of the authoritarian social order brought about a fundamental shift in the pattern of armor formation in the younger generation. In the authoritarian era, it was muscular armor that largely served the function of containing energy that the individual was not capable of discharging sexually. In the antiauthoritarian society of today, overall muscular armor has become secondary to ocular armor and a weakening of pelvic armor. Because of the presence of ocular armor, a decrease in pelvic armor does not allow for greater sexual satisfaction. In fact, this shift in the distribution of armor has produced increased anxiety and, with it, increased sexual stasis.

Each individual has had to cope with the increased level of anxiety according to their character structure. Some people develop forms of addiction, such as gambling, drug use, or pornography. Others become impulsive and involve themselves in sociopolitical activism or mystical, religious preoccupations, while others develop a biopathy, such as obesity. The latter are individuals with a pre-existing oral unsatisfied character structure, prone to overeating and using their obesity as a way of dealing with increased anxiety levels.1

All these pathological behaviors are nothing less than attempts to achieve a compensatory substitute state of chronic expansion to overcome a chronic condition of anxiety.

Conventional methods of treating obesity stress mechanical factors such as caloric restriction or behavior modification. These methods focus exclusively on eliminating the symptom of obesity without paying attention to the individual who is obese. In contrast, medical orgone therapy focuses on the underlying character of the obese patient. Addressing the patient’s characterological and biophysical basis for the obesity, if successful, results in a gradual return to normal weight levels. Elimination of the characterological basis for obesity leads to the capacity for greater sexual satisfaction. In this issue the medical orgone therapy of an obese patient is presented, illustrating the functional energetic approach to this biopathic problem.

1 There are two ways that fat reduces anxiety. Fat absorbs more than twice as much energy per gram than muscle. Also, abdominal fat puts pressure on the solar plexus reducing sensation from this area.

References

1. Science News, 165:139, February 28, 2004.

2. Katz, D. “The Scarlet Burger,” Wall Street Journal, November 9, 2003.

3. Calle, E., Rodriguez, C., Walker-Thurmond, K. Thun, M. “Overweight, Obesity and Mortality from Cancer in a Prospectively Studied Cohort of United States Adults,” The New England Journal of Medicine 348:1625-1638, April 24, 2003.

4. Dew, R. “The Biopathic Diathesis: Obesity,” Journal of Orgonomy 12(2):216-231, 1978.

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