Charles Konia, M.D.

A Work Democratic Organization

In a work democratic organization, the natural and intrinsic rational work relationships among human beings regulates the work process. Since its incorporation in 1968, the American College of Orgonomy has functioned as a work democratic organization. In contrast to formal organizations that are governed by the principle of compulsive work, the participation of an individual in a work democratic organization is entirely voluntary and is sustained by the capacity to engage in work that is vital to the organization’s survival.

Healthy work originates from the biological core and is expressed through the periphery undistorted by armor. It is rational, constructive and is experienced by the worker as pleasurable. It has been typical in the College’s history that once a member’s particular work function begins to deteriorate for whatever reason, they lose touch with the organization of their own accord. The deterioration usually takes the form of a mechanistic or mystical distortion manifested as rigidity of the original work function. This is a clear indication that their secondary destructive layer (armor) is interfering with their ability to work. It often comes out later that the exiting member or members had some personal reason justifying their leaving such as having a greater knowledge as to how the College should develop or a higher vision that the organization should have adopted. The reason for their separation always comes out only after they leave, not before.

People often ask me why this or that person has left the College? The answer in almost every case is the same. It is the result of the breakdown in the individual’s specific work function in the College. It is primarily the rational work function of the College’s members that sustains their ability to cooperate with each other and to work productively.

February 19, 2012
Categories: Social Sciences . Tags: American College of Orgonomy, Work Democracy . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 1 Comment

A Work Democratic Organization

February 19, 2012
Categories: Social Sciences . Tags: American College of Orgonomy, Work Democracy . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 1 Comment

Why It Is Necessary To Come To Grips With The Emotional Plague As A Medical Disease

The emotional plague is defined as destructive human behavior on the social scene. Often, I come across someone who asks why is it necessary to use the term emotional plague when we see destructive human behavior. Since the plague is manifested everywhere, why can’t we just call it human destructiveness and leave it at that? The answer that I give is that unlike the behavior of ordinary neurotic individuals,the emotional plague individual cannot tolerate the expression of life in others. Because of this intolerance, his behavior is aimed at destroying in some way the lives of others. The element of infectiousness squarely places the emotional plague in the field of medicine as a legitimate communicable disease. Therefore, the plague must be understood and treated medically as any other infectious disease.

As an analogy, imagine speaking to someone from the fifteenth century, a time when one-third of the European population was wiped out by the bubonic plague and telling them that the disease is caused by an invisible organism that lives on a flea that lives on a rat and that the only way to eradicate the disease is to practice sanitary hygienic measures. The person would have no understanding of what was being said. This is the same situation that exists today when, because the emotional plague is not recognized, any mention of it as a grave danger to human life is met with incomprehension and disbelief. People today are living in the same state of ignorance and are jeopardized about their vital emotional functions, healthy as well as pathological which includes the emotional plague, as that which existed in the eighteenth century when medical pathology had not yet discovered the sources of infectious diseases.

February 13, 2012
Categories: emotional plague, Medical Sciences, Social Sciences, Uncategorized . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 1 Comment

What’s Wrong With The Teenage Mind?

In a recent article in the Wall Street Journal (Jan. 28-29, 2012) entitled, What’s Wrong With The Teenage Mind?, professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, Alison Gopnik ascribes much of the troubles modern teenagers have in coping with the world to the teenager’s brain. Ms. Gopnik attempts to understand teenage behavior by way of localized pathways in the brain such as “reward centers” and ” control systems” that underlie certain behavioral functions.

That the brain is involved with the teenager’s behavior or that the interaction between the teenager with the environment is important in the kind of behavior that is exhibited goes without saying. These statements about the brain are insufficient to explain the erratic, dysfunctional behavior of many teenagers today.

What is left unsaid is the effect that the dramatic changes that have occurred with the transformation of Western society from authoritarian to anti-authoritarian and the mechanistic-mystical world view that accompanies it has had on the lives of everyone, including and especially teenagers. The breakup of the past authoritarian social order and its underpinning, the authoritarian family based on sexual repression, has been replaced by a social order that is even more inimical to life than its predecessor. To make matters worse, all that was painstakingly gained in psychiatry in the past, including the knowledge of human psycho-sexual development (the disturbances in which account for much of what is troubling teenagers today) has been completely thrown out in the practice of psychiatry.

In fact, the practice of psychiatry today has regressed to where it was over 100 years ago when the subjective workings of the mind was equated in a one-to-one fashion with the objective operation of localized brain functions. Modern psychiatry is as far away from understanding the problems of teenagers as it was then. Meanwhile, thanks to our anti-authoritarian social order, the level of social pathology manifested by everyone including teenagers has escalated to a far greater extent compared to where it was then. These social developments can only be understood as a direct manifestation of higher levels of emotional plague activity in today’s world.

February 12, 2012
Categories: accurate diagnosis, Biological Sciences, character structure, Child Rearing, emotional plague, Politics, Social Sciences, socio-political character . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 1 Comment

The Portrait Of A Political Demigod

According to The Random House Dictionary, a demigod is more than human. He is a deified mortal. Many politicians appear to be demigods when they are campaigning for public office, but once the election is over, they stop acting like that, whether they have won or lost. The true political demigod, on the other hand, has a constellation of permanent characteristics that is unique. 1) He has no history of a stable, consistent work function prior to entering politics. 2) Politics is a substitute for genuine work. 3) His political mission is entirely self-serving to fit his preexisting ideological world view. 4) He has an overriding hatred of and a need to change the established world order with grandiose schemes of a heaven on earth. 5) He is convinced of the infallibility of his belief system. 6) The success of his campaign strategy is based on promising the electorate anything and everything for the sole purpose of gaining power over them.

This strategy is designed to cement a powerful identification of the demigod with the electorate. Once he has succeeded in this strategy, the demigod has attained a godlike stature. He can do no wrong in the eyes of the populace. Demigods can appear on both sides of the political spectrum. In today’s anti-authoritarian society with the marked shift of the political mainstream to the left of center, demigods are likely to appear from the political left. Barack Obama is a recent example of the appearance of a demigod from the political left.

Obama’s choice of work before entering politics was that of a political activist. According to his wife Michelle, Obama was a community activist exploring the viability of politics to make [social] change. ” The solution to every problem,” according to a reporter who studied Obama’s projects, ” was a distribution of government funds.” Until he became a full time legislator in 1996, Obama’s primary focus of work was Acorn, the largest radical organization in the United States. The infallibility of his belief system originates entirely from his highly developed intellect. At the height of his election campaign, he announced: “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” Just prior to his entering the White House, in a moment of candor he said: ” We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” In his election campaign he appealed to the entire electorate and promised that if he were elected president he would finally put an end to the political divisiveness that was tearing America apart. Once elected, however, he did exactly the opposite. He immediately proceeded to ram his socialistic medical agenda (ObamaCare) down the throat of the American people (which he later said will be for the good of everyone) and dramatically increased the authority and spending power of the Federal Government at the expense of the private sector.

Personally, he exhibits overt contempt for American policies internationally and for hard working, decent American people in general. The effect of this attitude is to chastise Americans. An emotional plague tactic, it is an attempt to induce an unconscious sense of guilt and paralysis and to make Americans feel that whatever they are doing is somehow wrong. According to him, Americans have to change their ways. If they would only follow him, President Obama is the one capable of redeeming Americans of their evil past deeds. He is also the only one capable of providing all Americans with an illusion of economic security while, at the same time, making them ever more dependent and under the control of the Federal Government with people like him at the top.

The problem that confronts us is not the political demigod. It is the helplessness of armored people that makes it possible for demigods to regularly appear on the social scene. The political interaction of the demigod with helpless, socially dependent people who are emotionally out of touch with themselves is what enables the demigod to exist.

February 2, 2012
Categories: character structure, emotional plague, Politics, Social Sciences, socio-political character . Tags: Barack Obama . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 2 Comments

The Real Source Of Poverty In America

Unlike many other countries, the freedom and the opportunities to acquire skills and to work is still available in America. This is why people have always flocked to America from all over the world.

According to tradition, healthy Americans are supposed to work and be self-sufficient. Yet, there has been a decline of industriousness in the number of able-bodied men in the work force (see “The New American Divide” by Charles Murray, The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 21-22 2012). Although Mr. Murray is correct in his assessment of the situation, he does not get to the root of the problem. The question, why many people today do not take advantage of the opportunities that are available to learn and work, is never asked. This is because knowledge of the importance of work in regulating social life from a biological point of view is outside the frame of general thinking. What is not understood is that work is a biological function that in an increasing number of Americans is in danger of being completely destroyed. The poverty that exists in America today is the result of the destruction in people’s biological work function. The problem of poverty in America is not the result of economic factors such as class differences which, in general, are actually the result and not the cause of the poverty.

The degradation in the work function in Americans is the direct result of two forces: 1) The breakdown of the authoritarian social order which led to the disintegration of the authoritarian family and 2) The introduction of illegal drugs into American society. In the authoritarian era prior to 1960, many men with a poor work function were obliged to work compulsively because of social pressure placed on them. With the anti-authoritarian transformation of society, the traditional roles of males in the family as husband, father and breadwinner was lost. There was no longer such external expectation placed on them to function in those roles.

The current administration’s promoting all kinds of welfare programs is obviously a self-serving tactic to buy votes from the electorate so that they can have political and economic control over their lives. To make matters worse, welfare programs bring out the worst in the recipients by destroying whatever remains of their self-pride and their capacity to work and also by encouraging a sense of entitlement in those emotionally dependent people who always want something from their government. A manifestation of the emotional plague, these programs function to cover up doing something about the real source of poverty in America (a disturbance in the biological work function), and to secure the power of those who benefit from them.

January 26, 2012
Categories: Biological Sciences, emotional plague, Politics, psychiatric therapies, Social Sciences . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 1 Comment

The “Occupy” Movement Is Self-sustaining

The protests which began in the summer of 2011 as the Occupy Wall Street movement that spread across our nation like an infection will be around for a long time and they will probably increase in violence. This is because of two reasons: First, they are an undisguised manifestation of the organized emotional plague and second, the existence of the plague and its operation are far from being recognized and understood by the the general public.

Ostensibly exercising their First Amendment right, the protesters have stumbled on a tactic that gives them the upper hand with the authorities and that will do as much damage to the American nation and its economic system as possible. With nothing positive to offer and with the tacit support of the American president, this movement is nothing more than an undisguised, mindless expression of pure hatred directed at America that originates from the destructive secondary layer of the protesters.

The reason that these protest movements are self-sustaining and will probably intensify is that the responsible public authority’s equivocating response makes them an active partner in support of the protester’s movement. Should the authorities stand firm and risk an escalation of violence or should they be accommodating and negotiate with the protesters ? The public authority’s helpless quibbling functions to excite the protester’s zeal and encourages them to become ever more brazen and violent. Widespread coverage of police-protester clashes on the evening news, a First Amendment right of the media, generates public interest and more confusion adding support to the protesters “cause.”

The problem of the protest movement lies outside of this narrow social framework. Until it is generally recognized that acting out personal problems and trying to work out people’s helplessness and inadequacies through politics are not the answer, nothing will change for the better.

January 22, 2012
Categories: emotional plague, Politics, Social Sciences, socio-political character, Uncategorized . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 1 Comment

The Emotional Plague Uses The Truth As A Trojan Horse

There is always a grain of truth to the emotional plague individual’s point of view and in order to understand and fight the plague it is important to see what it is. This truth serves to demonstrate to everyone that the plague individual’s intentions are pure and above reproach and that what they are saying and agitating for is for the good of all. A recent example of this tactic of the plague is President Obama’s telling the American people that ObamaCare will be good for everyone. The use of the truth in the service of the plague is the reason that Thomas Sowell refers to leftist ideologues as “the anointed ones”. The germ of truth expressed from their facade functions like a Trojan Horse to push through their destructive socio-political agenda from their middle layer.

The basic premise of leftist radicals is that America is by its very nature a corrupt nation because the “Haves” have taken from the “Have Nots” and therefore, in order to do away with this injustice a class warfare must take place between them. This war must become actualized with violent acts when necessary in order to remove the inequality even if America is destroyed in the process.

It is true that there is corruption in America and that some people have more wealth than others and that there is economic inequality. These facts although true are twisted and used to justify bringing about America’s destruction by reducing everyone to the same level. However, what is accurate in all of this is not what the leftists accuse America of, but that they are accusing America of their own evil impulses contained in their destructive middle layer. These impulses are projected onto well-to-do people in America to bring about its destruction.

Why do they want to destroy America? Because the impulses of hatred and of revenge that originate from within them which were first directed against their own fathers are now by extension directed against all authority figures and authoritative institutions and, also against “the rich” so that no one is “better off” than they are.

January 19, 2012
Categories: emotional plague, Politics, Social Sciences, socio-political character . Tags: Barack Obama, ObamaCare . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 3 Comments