THE ROLE OF OXYTOCIN IN ORGONE THERAPY
Prior
to attempting wider publication, I would welcome comments on this
hypothesis from orgonomists and others with experience in this area.
In
orgone therapy, the victim frequently forms an unacceptably strong bond
with the therapist. In many cases, this bond remains throughout life,
preventing the victim of orgone therapy from ever regaining his
emotional independence from the therapist. This is one reason I have
always thought of orgone therapy as more destructive than other forms of
psychiatric assault.
There
is a much stronger transference in orgone therapy than in any other
kind of psychological treatment, and Reich never did realize this or
figure out how to desolve it. So the pateint becomes emotionally
dependent on the therapist for life. Even long after ending therapy, I
have seen them run to their ex-therapist for advice on who to marry or
what to invest in, and to ask for permission to talk to me.
I
know one man who has been in therapy for 22 years and still thinks he
needs more of it. I would think, after 22 years of it, that he should
conclude it is not working and it is time to try something else.
Recently,
in conversation with a biologist, it was suggested that the techniques
used in orgonomic attacks by a therapist might result in increased
levels of oxytocin, and that this well-studied biochemical substance
could explain the unacceptable effects of orgone therapy that render it
so destructive to the mental health of persons who are so ill-advised as
to enter into this form of psychiatric manipulation.
Upon
further study, it does indeed look as if oxytocin secretion accounts
for the harm to the emotional independence of the patient done by orgone
therapy and this danger should be brought to the attention of potential
victims.
The
deep breathing induced in orgone therapy results in increased levels of
oxytocin, and that leads to intense bonding with the therapist. The
effect leads to emotional dependence upon the therapist, often for
life.
This
phenomenon can be found in another context. The inflated respect and
admiration of the chela for the guru in traditional yoga as long
practiced in India. In
yoga, as in Reichian therapy, unusually deep breathing is induced. And
the same results follow. The student become emotionally attached to the
teacher for life, to an irrational degree, permiting the teacher to
interfere at will in his life, his values, his other relationships, and
every other aspect of his life.
Just
as the dependence on the orgonomist can cause a patient to abandon
long-held values and attitudes and substitute those of the therapist in
science, politics, etc., the chela in traditional yoga training become
firmly convinced of anything he is told by the unimpeachable source.
Reincarnation, karma, etc., all come to seem unquestionable because of
this chemical bonding due to the deeper breathing.
In
orgonomy, the therapists of the ACO, a viciously far-right
organization, consider anyone even slightly to the left of the political
spectrum to be exhibiting symptoms of psychopathology, so they cannot
consider anyone to have been treated successfully until he has given up
any leftist tendencies and replaced them with the far-right orientation
of the orgonomist. This explains why the patients and former patients of
orgonomist so often can be found on the far right.
If
the therapist is a member of the ACO, no patient would be considered
cured and ready to end therapy unless he agreed with the politics of the
therapist since the ACO position is that their own political positions
are "healthy" and others are "sick". So in
that context, that "set" and "setting", orgone therapy amounts to a
form of brainwashing of the patient into accepting the political beliefs
of the therapists. And in the case of the ACO, those are the political
beliefs of the late Ellsworth Baker, since he was the training therapist
of most of the ACO therapists. This is the unrecognized fact behind a
public statement I once heard by a prominent orgone therapist that
"Successful therapy make a person more conservative".
The
uncritical acceptence of other claims frequently made in Reichian
circles, such as the alleged "communist plot" against Reich, or the
claim that the earth is under attack by UFOs, are also accepted not on a
basis of any evidence, but only because the honored and respected
therapist proclaims them. People who have been
in Reichian therapy and accept such ideas should be regarded as if they
had been subjected to hypnotic drugs, as indeed they have been.
The
breathing exercises in orgonomy are tailor made to bring about this
dependency via the elevation of oxytocin levels and this should be taken
into account by anyone contemplating entering this form of therapy. And
a lot of research needs to be done on the apparent relationship`between
the effects of orgone therapy and the effects of oxytocin.
The
dependency is missing in modern New Age yoga students in the West
because in the West, yoga is normally engaged in only a few
sessions a week, and often in a group instead of in a one-on-one
situation with a student spending daily time alone with the guru.
This
is the same in Reichian therapy situations. With an orthodox
orgonomist, such as a member of the ACO, the patient is alone with the
doctor, but in other situations, such as the group workshops introduced
by Charles Kelley and Alexander Lowen, with a lot of other people
present, usually strangers, the transference is less intense.
That
is why I have frequently been impressed with the ( relative ) sanity of
the people who have been through Kelley's Radix training program
compared to the former patients of orgonomists. They usually seem more
independent-minded people and less
subservient to their therapists.
Reich
never got around to doing group sessions, and neither has any of the
orgonomists. Kelley and Lowen introduced this inovation, among others,
and it seems to help reduce the dependency caused by the elevated levels
of oxytocin brought on by the practices.
This
idea is consistant with the known bonding effects of oxytocin. It helps
bonding of a mother to her child at birth, but does not make a
kindergarden teacher bond to her charges . Both yoga and orgone therapy
show the same tendency to dependence developing in one-on-one
situations, but not when the practice is done in a group setting.
In
exploring the possible role of oxytocin in the transference experienced
in orgone therapy, I came across another possibile connection.
According to research findings, oxytocin can also stimulate what is
called "lordosis behavior".
The
descriptions of this are nearly identical to what Reich refered to as
the "orgasm reflex" or "breathing reflex" and considered the criteria of
success in therapy.
So it would now appear
the breathing reflex is triggered by the secretion of oxytocin, the same
chemical that results in the extreme transference of the patient to the
therapist and which explains the frequently life-long emotional
dependence on the therapìst that so often occurs in orgone therapy.
Reich
thought the breathing reflex was due to simple removal of obstructions
that were preventing it from occuring, and that it represented a
fundamental natural behavior that would happen anytime the blocks that
were preventing it were removed. It is usually thought that the reflex
is only obtained towards the end of therapy, and that it is an
indication the treatment has been effective. But there is now plenty of
solid research that shows similar behavior can be initiated by a
secretion of oxytocin, and by no coincidence, this happens to be the
same chemical that brings about the transference relationship between
patient and therapist upon which success in therapy is said to depend.
This
further bolsters my contention that orgone therapy is more a matter of
deep breathing and other practices that stimulate production of oxytocin
than of any theraputic potential of the techniques.
If
it is true, it fits right in with the hypothesis outlined above, that
there is an elevated level of oxyytocin stimulated in orgone therapy,
and that has the effect of producing the exceptionally strong
transference seen in this form of therapy compared to any other form of
psychiatry. Oxytocin has such a long and varied list of effects that I
thought there was a possibility that it could also account for some of
the other results of orgone therapy as well.
But
if that is not so, and only further research could show if it is or
not, the hypothesis of elevated oxytocin causing elevated dependency on
the therapist still will stand on it's own, independently of if oxytocin
is involved in production of the breathing reflex or not. .
I
know there are differences between the deep breathing seen in orgonomy
and that in yoga, but there is a common denominator, or what Reich would
call a "common functioning principal" in that both alter the normal
concentration of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the blood, changing the
blood ph and other aspects of blood chemistry.
The
neurological difference between spontaneous, involuntary autonomic
breathing as done in orgonomy and controlled breathing according to a
rigid fixed rate determined in advance as is done in yoga is not at
issue here. The chemistry of the blood is what would determine if excess
oxytocin is produced. And to judge from the information avalable
on-line about oxytocin, both would have the
effect of altering blood chemistry in a way that would produce more
oxytocin than normal blood chemistry would.
And the fact that so many medical doctors have apparently failed to recognize this over the now more than three generations in which orgone therapy has been promoted shows how strong their own indoctrination in the psychological paradigm of orgonomy has been.
And the fact that so many medical doctors have apparently failed to recognize this over the now more than three generations in which orgone therapy has been promoted shows how strong their own indoctrination in the psychological paradigm of orgonomy has been.
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