Click here to listen to an audio recording by Dr. Morton Herskowitz speaking about psychiatric orgone therapy.
Lecture by Dr. Morton Herskowitz, March 18th, 2010.
The point of departure of psychiatric orgone therapy from conventional psychiatric therapy is our acknowledgment of the presence and function of character armoring.
Armoring is the eyes dulled, in a world which there is no escape. Shoulders tighten and raise in fear, the neck stiffens in stubbornness, a belly tightens in apprehension. With chronic environmental insult, these become regular body costumes. Armoring is the bodies attempt to encompass anxiety, it inhibits the flow of the bodies natural grace and limits behavioral choices.
Orgonomy recognizes that except in the cases of infantile pathology, we are born with bodies of free flowing energy. And as regular environmental influences impinge on us, we become physically and emotionally impaired. We are no longer able to respond to our environment in an open way, but in an inhibited predetermined manner according to how our armoring shapes our character.
We speak in terms of expansion and contraction and of the ability to hold a charge. Patients come to us with troubles and symptoms, depression, anxiety, physical pain, symptoms of psychosis, etc. Of course our first duty to the patient is to attempt to alleviate the symptoms to the extent that we can. In this attempt, we use whatever conventional therapies that might be useful, pharmacology, psychotherapy, etc. But beyond the symptom alleviation, we appreciate the affect that the character armoring has had on symptom production, and this becomes the essence of our work.
Consequently, patients become aware that changes are being affected in their lives beyond the reduction of their symptoms. The ability to affect these changes makes patients aware that something has happened in their therapy beyond the ordinary, and the therapist enjoy their choice of vocation.
The fact that political ideologies are tangible realities is not a proof of their vitally necessary character. The bubonic plague was an extraordinarily powerful social reality, but no one would have regarded it as vitally necessary.
