Charles Konia, M.D.

Making Sense Of Politics

In order to make sense of politics one first has to think functionally and have an understanding of the three basic layers of the bio-psychic structure of armored humans: the biological core, the destructive middle layer and the superficial layer or social facade. Otherwise, one is likely to throw one’s hands up in frustration and walk away from what is happening.

All political interactions occur from the social facade. However most political activity originates from the destructive middle layer while the biological core, the source of every constructive social endeavor, is not represented at all in social life. To make matters worse, most people operate in politics as if the destructive middle layer, the source of human evil, did not even exist. It’s as if the emperor has no clothes: all political activity is believed to occur and can be addressed satisfactorily in a rational, parliamentary fashion from the social facade. This charade, expounded mainly by the political Left, continues to have tragic consequences while the political Right, having nothing better to offer, finds itself following in the same path.

This is the unfortunate state of affairs in politics today. It is the reason that American society is falling apart and that the survival of America nationally and internationally is increasingly becoming a matter of chance. People in political power remain ignorant of the underlying dynamics of the biological forces, both healthy as well as destructive, that govern social life. What is more, there is no indication that they are in the least bit interested in learning about them. “Politics as usual” is the rule.

The world is fortunate to have knowledge that can potentially reverse this dangerous decline in social conditions. The subject of politics is discussed extensively in my upcoming book, “Neither Left Nor Right”.

May 21, 2011
Categories: Biological Sciences, Politics, Social Sciences . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 2 Comments

The Mechanistic And Mystical Views On Human Sexuality

Differences in the world views of armored people’s mechanistic and mystical thinking are apparent in every area of human life including human sexuality. When applied to living functions, mechanistic and mystical thinking are distortions and serve as a defense against seeing things as they really are. These views generally correspond to the thinking of the political Left (mechanistic thinking) and the Right (mystical thinking).

When applied to human sexuality, mechanistic thinking seems to be able to investigate every aspect of human sexuality in minute detail from different varieties of pre-genital sexual activity to the hormones, neurotransmitters and brain centers that are involved in sex. After all of the studies, little if anything new has been learned about the sexual functions of emotional life. Mystical thinking, on the other hand, focuses on terms such as “love”, “energy” and so on that have no physical basis.

Both views contain serious distortions. They ignore the existence of the physical biological energy that is capable of providing the basis for understanding every aspect of the human sexual function. Knowledge of this energy, which was discovered by Wilhelm Reich around 1940, continues to remain off limits to those who think mechanistically or mystically through their armored character structures. Through bio-electric experimentation, Reich found that the charge at the skin surface increased during states of pleasure and decreased during states of anxiety. He concluded that there is a real physical energy involved in these differing emotional states. The emotions of pleasure and anxiety correspond to different directions of energy movement; from the center of the organism to the periphery in pleasure, from the periphery to the center in anxiety. From clinical investigation he concluded that the sexual orgasm in the relatively unarmored organism functions like a safety valve to regulate its energy economy and by so doing prevents the build-up of energy that can lead to every form of human pathology, medical, social and psychological. However, in most armored people the regulatory function of the orgasm is disturbed and this is why they cannot recognize it’s functional importance in maintaining emotional and physical health. The current mechanistic-mystical views on human sexuality are the inevitable result of armored thinking.

May 15, 2011
Categories: Biological Sciences, Child Rearing, Medical Sciences, Politics, Social Sciences . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 1 Comment

Symptomatic Versus Curative Approaches To Medical Illness

In almost every case, the approach of the mechanistic physician to illness is to focus on and eliminate the disturbing presenting symptom. This is because the underlying cause of diseases such as cancer, heart disease, schizophrenia and so on is outside his or her scope. To make matters worse, most seek medical help when they develop overt signs and symptoms of illness at a time when the disease process has become irreversible and the only possible treatment is symptomatic. The impressive advances in infectious diseases, surgical techniques and the diagnostic sophistication of specialized branches of medicine only serve to highlight how far medicine has gone in the direction of mechanization. Medical specialties excel exactly because the application of mechanistic principles to medical practice develops in the direction of greater specialization.

One must step outside this mechanistic paradigm in order to find a truly curative approach to medical (including psychiatric) illnesses. Wilhelm Reich’s discovery of the biopathic predisposition of armored organisms to illness provides exactly that. A biopathy is a pulsatory energy disturbance of the plasmatic system (which consists of the autonomic nervous system and the vascular system) resulting from the presence of chronic armor. The approach of the medical orgone therapist is to gradually eliminate the pulsatory disturbance which underlies the biopathic symptom. Successful dissolution of armor results not only in elimination of the disturbing symptom but also in the a permanent improvement in the individual’s functioning and emotional well being. Armor prevention in infants and children would be an important natural, not a mechanically artificial, step toward improving the level of health and longevity in the general population.

May 12, 2011
Categories: Biological Sciences, Child Rearing, Medical Sciences . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 1 Comment

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

The Brain Is Not The Mind: What Can And Cannot Be Expected From The New Brain Atlas

Mechanistic scientists believe that the brain and the mind are one and the same. A 55 million $ computerized atlas of the human brain has recently been built for purposes of studying not only organic diseases involving the brain such as Alzheimer’s disease and autism but also psychiatric illnesses such as depression that are supposedly believed to originate in the brain (“Atlas Gives Scientists New View of the Brain,” Wall Street Journal April 13, 2011.)

The atlas may have value in pinpointing organic brain diseases; however, equating the mind (psyche) exclusively with the brain and not with the whole body which includes the brain has been downright destructive because it has set the stage for mechanizing the practice of psychiatry. Through a better understanding of brain physiology, psychiatrists hope that they somehow will have a pharmacological cure for mental illnesses by altering brain functioning.

This view of mental illness has brought about the current deplorable state of psychiatric practice where the diagnosis and treatment of every patient is exclusively determined by the symptom that is exhibited. From the symptom, a drug has to be manufactured that is hoped to be “tailor made” to treat in cook book fashion the “brain disorder” that is responsible for it.

Since, however, psychic illness is the result of a disorder of the whole body and not just the brain, this pharmacological goal can never be reached no matter how well brain physiology is understood. Sooner or later the psychiatric profession will have to realize the futility of this mechanistic-mystical approach. They will have to come to grips with the enormous destructive consequences of their erroneous ways of thinking and start thinking functionally. What they must attain in order to effectively treat psychiatric disorders is not a better psychiatric drug but a functional understanding of the simultaneous identity and antitheses of psyche (mind) and soma (body) that underlies health and disease.

April 17, 2011
Categories: Biological Sciences, Medical Sciences, Orgonometry . . Author: Charles Konia, M.D. . Comments: 1 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