Orgone Therapy: what is it?
The term Orgone Therapy refers to the therapeutic technique developed by Dr. Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957).
Today this approach can be learned at the American College of Orgonomy (ACO) in Princeton, New Jersey, USA.
The founder of the ACO was Dr. Elsworth F. Baker in 1968. In 1950, Reich assigned Baker the task of training therapists and, in January 1957, during their last meeting—just weeks before his imprisonment—he asked him to personally assume responsibility for the future of Orgonomy.
Dr. Baker accepted and devoted himself to this work until his death in 1985.
The current president of the ACO is Dr. Gary A. Karpf, and the head of training is Dr. Charles Konia.
First of all, it is important to clarify that a verbal or written description of orgone therapy cannot capture all the aspects that make this treatment so unique and particular.
The bio-physical reactions, which are an integral and irreplaceable part of the therapeutic process, occur beyond the linguistic sphere.
Furthermore, the uniqueness of each patient’s bio-psychological structure makes every introductory explanation inevitably general.
Having made this necessary premise, we can now begin to focus on…
Essential Aspects of Orgonomy and Orgone Therapy
Orgonomy is the science that studies Orgone Energy.
This energy was discovered by Dr. Wilhelm Reich (1897–1957), a former student of Freud and director of the seminar on psychoanalytic technique in Vienna during the 1920s.
Reich’s work on the structure of patients in analysis and his research into the causes of the emergence and persistence of symptoms first confirmed the importance of sexual disturbance already highlighted by Freud. Later, in attempting to understand the physiological substrate of anxiety and pleasure phenomena, he realized that these experiences are antithetical and can be considered the psychological aspect of real energetic movements within the organism:
From the periphery toward the center in the case of anxiety (contraction), and from the center toward the periphery in the case of pleasure (expansion).
The anatomical substrate of these events was identified in the “plasmatic system,” consisting of the autonomic nervous system (sympathetic and parasympathetic) and the vascular system.
These studies highlighted a fundamental aspect completely overlooked by official science: the pulsation of every living organism.
Pulsation
Pulsation is a rhythmic alternation of expansion and contraction which, in biological systems, shows a greater emphasis on expansion, which in psychological terms corresponds to the desire to express oneself.
The reduction or blockage of this pulsation is at the root of all pathology, and what orgone therapy aims to achieve is to allow the contracted and blocked organism to pulsate naturally again.
The removal of these blocks in fact restores the person’s functioning to an optimal level, diverting energy away from symptom formation and initiating a natural process of restructuring and rebalancing of psycho-somatic functions.
It must not be forgotten that the symptom, however unpleasant, is nothing other than an attempt by the organism to make its internal conflicts less painful.
The ultimate goal of orgone therapy is to bring the patient to what Reich called orgastic potency, defined as:
the capacity to surrender completely to the flow of the organism’s energy and to fully discharge genital sexual excitation through periodic involuntary convulsions of the entire body, experienced as pleasurable, without inhibition, fantasy, or anxiety.
Clinical experience has shown unequivocally that natural sexual functioning prevents the accumulation of energetic tensions that would otherwise find an outlet through the formation of symptoms.
At this point it is essential to recall Reich’s discovery of the difference between primary sexual impulses (natural and the only ones leading to complete gratification) and secondary impulses (unnatural and arising after the primary ones have been inhibited), which never lead to true gratification.
We are referring here not only to officially recognized sexual pathology, but also to all those “prurient” attitudes, brothel-like sexuality, pornography, promiscuity, and sexual acts conceived as a test of one’s pseudo-power, etc.
Character Types and the Armor
An individual who functions predominantly on the gratification of primary impulses is defined as a genital character, while someone who is permanently entangled in their secondary impulses is defined as a neurotic character.
The neurotic character is therefore imprisoned within their armor.
The muscular armor is a central element in orgone therapy and is defined as:
the set of chronic, automatic, and involuntary muscular contractions that an individual develops in order to defend themselves against their emotions—particularly anxiety, anger, and sexual excitation—and is functionally identical to character armor.
The character armor consists of all the psychological attitudes that a person, automatically and unconsciously, adopts to defend themselves against anxiety and other emotions perceived as unpleasant. The ultimate result is rigidity, a lack of genuine contact, and a feeling of inner emptiness. It is functionally identical to muscular armor.
The dissolution of the armor, which is the goal of therapy, allows the patient to regain qualities such as seriousness, honesty, vigor, commitment, and satisfaction in both emotional and working life.
They become able to face life’s challenges rationally, whereas before, trapped in their armor, they lived a life marked by avoidance of what is essential, superficiality, a tendency to lie, impotence, frigidity, promiscuity, neurotic dependency, neurotic resignation, and a tendency toward mysticism.
[source: Orgonomia.org]
