Charles Konia, M.D.

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

In order to understand what is wrong with political ideologies one must first recognize what is right about them from a biophysical point of view.  In my blog on February I stated that the politics of the Left and Right originate from the basic contradiction in the structure of all armored humans: the longing for freedom on the one hand and fear of freedom on the other.

The ideology of the true liberal is determined by and is an expression of the underlying human longing for freedom, happiness and a desire for social improvement.  The ideology of the true conservative is determined by a sense that these desired states of being if not unrealistic, are, at the very least, not practically attainable beyond what people actually have.

Thus, liberal ideology has always been more popular and attractive to the masses and why it is that left-leaning presidents in the past such as Wilson, Roosevelt and Kennedy have enjoyed an inordinate amount of  adoration.  In today’s anti-authoritarian era social conditions are even worse that before.  Many people including especially those on the political Left are in a state of chronic over-expansion and unsatisfaction.  Originating from their helplessness and need to taken care, their expectation to be given a continuous  supply of  security and material possessions seems unquenchable.  This need fits in well with President Obama’s far left domestic policies and accounts for his continuing popularity among this segment of the population even as social and economic conditions worsen.

July 24, 2011
Categories: Politics, Social Sciences . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: Leave a comment

The vitality of a nation depends on its ability to regulate itself economically.  The well-being of the economy is a reflection of the quality and quantity of people’s biological work function.  Since armored humans have a disturbance in their work function in varying types and degrees, the ability for self regulation of the nation’s economy must become dysfunctional.  A sign of the worsening in their emotional health in today’s anti-authoritarian society is the decline in the quality and quantity of  people’s capacity to work .  The  degradation of the American economy is a direct result.

Some of the signs of the degradation in the work function are seen in the following manifestations of social pathology:

1) The increase in the number of people’s economic helplessness, those who depend on the government for their survival. This is done either directly in the form of handouts of welfare checks or indirectly through the unionism of the public sector.

2) The rising power of unions over workers’ lives.

3) The increasing sense of public entitlement, expecting something from the government in all segments of society, from individuals to giant corporations.

4) The application of affirmative action rules in the workplace.

5) Irresponsible and fraudulent credit practices by business and government leaders resulting in the erosion of public trust in the marketplace and in financial institutions such as banks.

In response to the economic troubles, the government steps in to “do something”  by passing laws in the form of  spending, including bail-out and regulatory legislation, none of which has anything whatsoever to do with the underlying source of the economic problems.  Self regulation in the private sector is replaced by compulsive regulation from the public sector.  These politicians are incapable of  admitting  that they have no solution to improve social conditions.  Others who are more realistic know that they have nothing better to offer except to cut back on the government’s involvement in trying to fix things.  This is the only possible rational solution considering the general lack of understanding of the  biological work function.

July 23, 2011
Categories: Politics, Social Sciences . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 4 Comments

The breakdown of the two party system began with the anti-authoritarian transformation of American society around 1960.  Pseudo-liberal/communist politicians succeeded in infiltrating and taking over the Democratic party.  This brought abut a shift in the American political mainstream to the left of center.  Because of this shift, there was no longer a far left in American politics, only a far right.  Republicans who were on the political right reacted to this shift by forming a party of their own, the Conservative party.  Politics became ideologically polarized.  The relationship between pseudo-liberals and conservatives became one of antagonistic opposition.

The anti-authoritarian transformation resulted in an explosion of social problems such as the breakdown of the authoritarian family with all of its catastrophic consequences.  People were helpless to cope with this breakdown and many looked to politics for solutions.  With no knowledge of the depths of humanities problems, politicians took over and  posed as liberators caring for the public.  This situation gave rise to socio-politics.  But politicians can never provide answers to people’s social problems.  In fact, it is their very helplessness that is a major part of people’s problems, their inability to deal with their personal and economic problems in a healthy manner.

Today, an increasing number of independent and responsible people are becoming fed up with politicians and the politics of both parties and their makeshift and self-serving solutions.   According to a Harris poll, the number of people who called themselves Democrat or Republican declined in the past several decades.  During the same time, the percentage of  “independent” voters increased.  Democrats dropped from 49% to 35% and Republicans dropped from 31% to 28% while independents rose from 20%  to 28%.

The tragedy is that there is nowhere for dissatisfied voters to go.  Desperate politicians keep coming up with the same outworn solutions by providing socialistic remedies to the  dependent and helpless masses while the independent people’s disillusion with politics grows.

Nothing will change for the better until people start looking within themselves for the source of their problems and not to external sources such as politics.  Then it will be possible for people to help themselves.

June 23, 2011
Categories: Politics, Social Sciences . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: Leave a comment

Experiencing the emotion of fear (biophysical contraction) is a vital function for individual and social survival.  This is true for all animal species  including humans.  Because of  the presence of armor, many humans have lost the ability to experience fear as a reaction to danger.  In them, it is either distorted and felt as anxiety or it is not felt at all.  In fact, today’s anti-authoritarian society is in a state of a chronic,  false sense of well-being ( biophysical expansion), individually, economically and politically.

Anxiety is a symptom of an underlying emotional disorder.  This is the reason that  fear including its distorted manifestation, anxiety, is avoided by almost everyone at all costs.  Since people are unwilling to look inward for the source of what is disturbing them, they look outward and blame their personal emotional problems on external sources.  Or, they avoid feelings entirely and are left being out of touch with themselves.  One way to avoid anxiety is to extinguish any uncomfortable feeling with the help of medication such as prescription or street drugs.  Instead of rejecting  these drugs and tolerating their uncomfortable emotions, which would be a healthier reaction, many look to drugs as a panacea.  People’s avoidance reaction to experiencing fear and anxiety is, in fact, the real reason for the popularity of marijuana and the power behind the  political push to have it legalized.

Another way to avoid disturbing feelings is through the defensive use of the intellect.  According  to this approach, everyone (including those who are forsworn to destroy people’s freedom throughout the world if they have the opportunity), is viewed as harmless or well-intentioned.  Therefore, fearing them and taking appropriate defensive action is not rational or is unnecessary.

To the contrary, the inability to experience fear renders individuals as well as society as a whole defenseless. History has repeatedly shown that emotional plague-ridden individuals will sooner or later appear and take advantage of other  people’s vulnerability to usher in a catastrophe on an individual or social scale.

June 18, 2011
Categories: Politics, Social Sciences . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: Leave a comment

In my blog “Making Sense Of Politics”, May 21, 2011 I state that the biological core, the source of every constructive social endeavor is not represented at all in social life.  Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech at the joint session of Congress on May 24, 2011 is the exception that proves the rule.

Mr. Netanyahu’s view of the Arab-Israeli conflict originates from his biological core.  It is life positive and is based on the right of all humans, Jews and Arabs alike, to live with each other in peace and harmony.  This means recognizing Israel as an independent Jewish state. His aggressive response against Islamic terrorist organizations such as Hamas has proven to be more effective in securing the state of Israel in a hostile world than the approach of the soft-liners.

His approach indicates that he has some understanding of the emotional plague’s operation.  For example, in his speech he stated that whenever any mention is made of terrorist attacks that are made against Israel, the world reacts with silence, and attention is directed on Israel as the culprit.  However, having an intuitive awareness of the plague is one thing and stopping its destructiveness is another.  The plague must be universally recognized for what it is, a destructive social force embedded in every armored individual that can, when conditions are right, wreck havoc on every life positive social vision such as the one so eloquently stated by Mr. Netanyahu before Congress.  The world will probably soon forget Mr. Netanyahu’s words as the emotional plague of armored humans silences him in front of everyone’s eyes.

May 31, 2011
Categories: Politics, Social Sciences . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 1 Comment