A Meditation on Reich’s Concept of “Organ Sensations” (part 4 of 4)

Part Three

Once this model of healthy function becomes clearly defined and understood, pathological variations are easy to identify, and to correctly address and guide back towards the model. Some of the examples of blockages to this healthy function include:

The unarmored living feels and understands the expressive movements of other unarmored organisms clearly and simply by means of its own instinctive empathetic movements and organ sensations. The armored living on the other hand, can perceive no organ sensations, or it can feel them only in a distorted way; thus it loses contact with the living, and the understanding of its functions.

The full range of treatment must ultimately aim to release the patient from any layers of armoring which are blocking their natural, healthy functioning and full living expression. Issues which appear as emotional blockages, as well as physical blockages through the armored musculature are experienced as follows:

The sex-economic examination of character neuroses revealed again and again the crucial role of muscular spasms and their devitalizing effect upon the organism. Muscular spasm and deficiency in orgonotic charge are felt subjectively as ‘deadness’. Muscular hypertension, resulting from chronic sexual stasis, regularly causes a decrease of organ sensations, to the point where the individual feels dead.

As Dr. Bates confirmed in his research on re-establishing healthy vision, our perceptions are dependendent on movement, or “motility” as Reich expresses:

The biopathic shrinking process had almost destroyed orgonotic motility and with it organ sensation, which fact supports the conclusion that organ sensation is a direct expression of the motility of the organ plasma.

The degree of motility, or lack of it, form the basic definition of health:

Just as all emotions and reactions in life spring from and correspond to organ sensations and expressive movements; just as the living organism forms ideas of its surrounding world from impressions it derives from the expressions of the world around it; so all emotions, reactions and ideas of the armored organism are conditioned by its own state of motility and expression.

Chronic armoring, or lack of motion or motility, is at the root of any disease process of a physical or emotional nature. Such a process is seen as a dis-integration, or “lack of integrity” in the ogranism:

Proprioception is composed of different organ sensations; it forms a unity which is indivisible. Where the somatic organ functions lose integration in their unity, bodily sicknesses appear. A brain tumor, for instance, excludes the brain from the total function of the organism. Similarly, a schizophrenic delusion excludes a part of the organ sensations from the unitary proprioception: The well-known dissociation of the affective personality is a result that is exactly described by the term SCHIZOPHRENIC. Thus, we are able to apply a new criterion for the judgment of biological ‘health’ and ‘sickness’. The undisturbed totality of organismic functions in both the somatic and the psychic realms establishes ‘health’ in the bio-energetic sense. Every disturbance in this totality and unity, be it in the somatic or the psychic realm, will be the basis for disease to a greater or lesser degree.

2 thoughts on “A Meditation on Reich’s Concept of “Organ Sensations” (part 4 of 4)

  1. Lee

    Hi Jeff,
    This series is really helpful right now to organize my experience … in addition to being an INFP … I would call myself myself myself “Proprioceptive” in the way I experience and process my (inner and outer) environment. I started putting this together several months ago when I connected with a community for gifted adults some of who like me are also “twice exceptional” aka “gifted and with learning disabilities”. One woman in particular I connected with has written, describing her experience and, referring to the movie “The Matrix” of “Proprioceptive Thinking” … seems to me to be a natural extension of an evolving capacity of a multi-directional sense of intuition. If you’re interested in her article: http://silverhuang.com/proprioceptive-thought-introduction/
    Cheers,

  2. reception

    Hi Lee,

    Thanks for all your excellent blog comments this week. We are happy that you are gaining so much from them.

    Cheers,

    – Diane

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