People generally come to therapy because they are stuck,
whether they are coming for orgone therapy, psychoanalysis,
cognitive-behavioral therapy or medication. Whatever was
working for them before in their life, is no longer. There may be a crisis
of an acute and sudden nature, or they may come in
due to a slow gradual decline, with vague complaints
that they are not getting anything out of life, feelings of emptiness,
etc. Most often it is in the sphere of their emotional life that
their situation has deteriorated. The coping skills
they had used to deal with the stresses of their life are no longer adequate.
Several factors, including the person's history, their
strengths, overall functioning, motivation,
support system and the degree of their decompensation - to name just
a few - will go into the therapist's determination whether
a person is a suitable candidate for psychiatric orgone therapy.
Is the person willing and able to make the commitment
that therapy can require? Sometimes it is best not to open things up if there is not an opportunity to do justice
to the situation therapeutically and be able to address the issues thoroughly
so some type of resolution can be achieved. At the same time, a person
can come to orgone therapy being quite symptomatic and still obtain
a great deal of relief from a brief course of therapy.
Some patients may require a good deal of time in which
primarily supportive therapy is done before more exploratory
and deeper work can ensue. For others, the primary
method of working on the armor may be through character analysis.
The decision to work on patients biophysically is not
to be undertaken without serious consideration. Precisely
because this method is such a powerful tool and can
be quite effective in revealing and dissolving certain defenses and getting
to the core issues of what is actually troubling the patient, it can also
have untoward effects if applied inappropriately.
In orgone therapy appropriately applied, the therapist
is flexible and may often move back and forth from
the verbal characteranalytic realm to the biophysical
mode, as the clinical situation warrants. Whether the therapist is
working primarily characteranalytically or biophysically, a great deal
of attention is paid to the non-verbal communications
and behaviors of the patient. Emphasis is placed more
on how the patient defends rather than why.
