Mental Context
Childhood=programming
After birth, human offsprings receive a special type of treatment, through which they pass
from 'helpless animal' to 'human' condition. The personal periodof
thistreatment is absent from the memoryof most humans - a condition Freud named 'childhood amnesia'. The
treatment itself consists of the repressionof the biological impulses of the small human,
according to specific cultural patterns - in this case -patriarchic ones basedonan Abrahamic
religious worldviews combined withthe newest layers of the
machine civilization, until the offspring"internalizes" the rules enforced
by the adults, and is able to controlbyitself, instead ofbeing forced to control, the various impulses like:
defecation
urination
passing wind
belching
touching it's body
movement of the facialmuscles
tone andpitch of sounds made by mouth
positionof the body at work and at rest
sleeping
feeding
Together with the ability to control the biological impulses, the young
human must also develop the ability to control its emotions and
thoughts - it must not show feelings which are not 'appropriate', and
must not thinkthoughts whichare not "appropriate". Examples are
the desires todo 'bad things' to the parents
when frustratedby them - thoughts like that must not
be thought, and the impulses which power them - not felt. Also the impulses to cry, shout,
run away, break things.
Another layer of adjustment of the
child includes learningto not see and feel things which the
parents claim are not real, or are other things - the authority of
the parent overrides the judgment of the child, and that which is being perceived but mustnot be
-for instance a conflict in the family, whichthe familydenies, or something which is
claimed tobe 'nothing' - is repressed below the threshold of conscious thought. Therefore on
one hand, through repression of emotion and editing of the perceived reality, the 'standard'
humancondition is achieved, and on the other from early childhood
the human begins collecting layers and layers ofunrecognized and unresolved pain and anxiety, connected
to certainevents.
The abilityto not perceive existing things and
events and simultaneously make effortswhichcanonlybe directed towards them was encountered spectacularly by
Freud, when he brought upthe subject of child sexualityand masturbationat the turnof the
19th and 20th centuries, to the disgust and horrorofeveryone - as it turned out, the adults
were quite able toonone hand spend serious efforts in suppressinganyvisible
sign of sexualityin children andon the other - todenyso forcefully as if
life itself depended on it, that such a sexuality exists at all.
Unlike Freud, some decades later, Reich1 does not restrict the effectsof the childhood
period to the functioning of the mindonly, and the bodilyfunctions under conscious
command. Together withthe domination of the biological impulses, the repressionof
emotions leads toprofound effects onall levels of the organism of the younghuman:
on the level of organ functioning
on the level of theoxygen and foodintake - i.e. thechemical balance also
on the level of blood circulation
on the level of nervefunction
on the level of bioelectriccurrents
The following generalization use as basis his book 'The Function
of The Orgasm: sexeconomic problems of biological energy' New York 1973, Farrar, Straus and
Giroux.