The meaning of “contact,” “contactlessness,” and the “emotional plague.”
The psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich made frequent use of the term “contact” in his writings. By “contact,” he was basically describing the function of integration in healthy psychic (psychological) and somatic functioning: functions of the mind and the body working together, in concert, with the result being a healthy psyche and body. A healthy psyche results in healthy emotional functioning and also the capacity to reason clearly. All the different organ systems of the body need to function in an integrated manner, “in contact” with each other. The same is true for the various functions of the mind and emotions, all of these different elements need to function in an integrated manner, “in contact” with each other.
When this is happening on a psychic level, we can say that someone is “in contact” or “contactful.” When there is a lack of rationality (full integration), we can say that there is the presence of “contactlessness.”
A common phrase in our culture is, for example, “in touch.” We speak of people being “in touch” or “out of touch”—“clueless” [see Clueless: The Great Human Disconnect. Konia, C. 2023. Princeton: The American College of Orgonomy].
And of course to touch something (even metaphorically) requires being “in contact” with it.
When there is contactlessness, people fail to see things clearly, they fail to see the true connections between things. Rather than focus on making observations and seeing how the various observations lead to a conclusion rationally and logically in a spontaneous fashion without forcing the conclusions, they tend to skip the observation phase and go straight to the conclusions by speculating.
Most of what we see that is called “news” is actually editorializing based on speculation: arriving at conclusions prematurely, instead of just sticking with the facts of observation and letting the conclusions emerge spontaneously in the minds of the media audience without an attempt by journalists to force a specific conclusion on the media audience.
Much of the destructive actions in human history are the result of conclusions that are made without adequate evidence.
One thing that gets in the way of coming to accurate conclusions is paranoia. One of the things sometimes found in paranoia is an accurate intuition that there is something wrong with something or someone, but an inaccurate and premature conclusion about what it is due to insufficient observations before jumping to a conclusion. So in other words, paranoia can sometimes be based partly on a rational feeling or intuition about something but with irrational and premature conclusions about it.
Moralizing about things can also spring from similar sources: having a feeling that something is wrong but not completely understanding that thing and coming to premature conclusions about it.
I would say that another thing that often causes error is an overestimation of the function of the conscious will in human affairs. I think that people have a lot of trouble understanding and accepting how much of human life is unconscious, and not a product of the conscious will. For example, I think that the more one overestimates the role and power of the conscious will in human life, the easier it is to come up with conspiracy theories on left and right and to moralize about the other side. The moralizing provides a foundation that can justify violence and supposed justifications or hints at justifications for violence. Incomplete, moralizing “understandings” of things can also generate conspiracy theories, which of course are a form of paranoia. Paranoia happens when people sense that there is something wrong, but they don’t actually perceive or understand what it is and where it is coming from.
Since all human beings in the deepest sense are similar, we often believe we see things in others that may actually be coming from ourselves or at least we may be participating in. This accounts for the almost universal phenomenon of projection in situations of conflict between people, where they accuse others of things that actually they themselves are guilty of or potentially guilty of. We are pretty much all in the same boat. Sometimes it “takes one to know one” and we are more alike than we would like to admit.
The root cause of contactlessness is fear. And fear very often leads to anger, which of course can lead to conflict and even violence. Regarding the relationship between fear and anger, more and more I come to the conclusion that the basis of anger is fear. After all, why would one be angry about something unless one considered it a threat, and therefore feared it? Reich noted this:
"Anxiety is at the base of every reaction of rage." [Reich, W. (1949/1973). Ether, God and Devil. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, page 53]
Fear also leads to intolerance. Reich saw the connection between irrational thinking caused by premature jumping to conclusions and intolerance and destructiveness:
"We observe that human thought systems show tolerance as long as they adhere to reality. The more the thought process is removed from reality, the more intolerance and cruelty are needed to guarantee its continued existence." [Ibid., page 16.]
If we are attacked by a sabertooth tiger, we need to come to conclusions really quickly so we can act quickly. But in most human affairs, jumping to conclusions too quickly just causes more problems and a more lengthy process of resolving those problems.
Reich argued that fear, in the deepest sense, derives from an intolerance based on disappointments and traumatic events in our personal histories. Because of this intolerance, we can eventually run from and even try to destroy anything within ourselves or in others that unconsciously reminds us of things we once loved and hoped for, things which once caused us pleasure, but then caused us severe disappointment or trauma. Examples of things which can cause us pleasure are love, work, and even knowledge and thought, especially rational thought. If the things that we love or do in our work or think about or express result in us being punished in some way, we can become afraid of those things in ourselves and others. Reich called this anxious reaction to things that in the past may have caused us pleasure, but now make us anxious, “pleasure anxiety.”
So pleasure anxiety can lead to destructiveness towards our own healthy emotional and mental functioning or the functioning of others. Reich called this “the emotional plague.” According to this theory, the emotional plague is the ultimate source of all contactlessness. Reich and the students of his work have described various aspects of the emotional plague:
“The emotional plague is the acting out of behaviors and attitudes in the social sphere that are destructive to life and natural, healthy, spontaneous functioning.”[Whitener, V. 2019. The Emotional Plague in Everyday Life II. Journal of Orgonomy V51 N2. Princeton, NJ: The American College of Orgonomy Press, page 47.]
“The mere existence of different ways of living provokes [the “emotional plague” character’s] antagonism....He always arrives at a conclusion before thinking it through; his opinion is set prior to the investigation....The emotional plague is intolerant of rational thinking that might expose it. Consequently it is inaccessible to argument. The given motive of an action is never the actual motive. This is true whether the hidden motive is conscious or unconscious. Such a person seriously and honestly believes his stated goal is correct and rational. But he is acting under a structural compulsion and cannot act except in this manner.
Such a character has no insight at all to the destructiveness or unfairness of his actions. He tries constantly to change his environment so that his manner of living is not interfered with. Everything that he encounters that is contrary to his mode of living or thinking provokes his anger and opposition. His opposition, however, is so well camouflaged by socially accepted mores that it is difficult to refute or even to detect....They are particularly skillful in character defamation from which they receive a kind of perverse satisfaction...“.[Baker, E. 1967. Man In The Trap. New York: Collier Books, pages 160-163.]
It would be very useful if we could fully understand all of these different things I have discussed here and how they are connected, how an understanding of these things might help us to integrate our personal and social and political lives more successfully and healthily and bring us more “in contact” with ourselves and others.