Man in the Trap - Softcover

Elsworth F. Baker

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0967967007 ISBN 13: 9780967967004

Publisher: ACO Press, 2000

Synopsis

This classic book offers a comprehensive understanding of medical orgone therapy. Developed by Wilhelm Reich, M.D., this unique treatment incorporates an energetic understanding of how the mind and body are interconnected. With the failure of psychoanalysis to live up to expectations, the psychiatric pendulum has shifted in the direction of treatment with medications. Reich's clinical discoveries of more than 50 years ago have provided us with medical orgone therapy, an effective method of treatment that does not rely on medication. Man in the Trap, written in a straightforward style, will help readers better understand both medical orgone therapy, orgonomy and themselves.

About this title

About the Author

Elsworth Baker, M.D. (1903-1985) was a brilliant therapist, a charismatic teacher, and a courageous physician who fulfilled the challenge of maintaining and expanding the science of orgonomy after Reich's death in 1957. Dr Baker, who received numerous honors for his achievements, founded the American College of Orgonomy in 1968 and served as its president until his death.

From the Inside Flap

"Dr. Baker was a superlative psychiatrist and an astute character analyst, making him the ultimate diagnostician." --Paul Mathews, M.A.

This classic book offers a deeper understanding of the core concepts of Wilhelm Reich's universal life energy and it's importance to health. Dr. Baker illustrates techniques for dissolution of chronic body armor, which resulted in dramatic transformations for many of his patients. For mankind, caged in his own armor and prevented from feeling truly alive, this book reads like a road-map out of the trap.

What is body armor--the seven segments of blocked sexual energy

How the removal of chronic muscular contractions can most often effectively relieve anxiety and depression and treat manic-depression and schizophrenia

What you can do to help prevent armoring in your children and increase their chance for health

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The Energetic Process of Life

Man is the most complex and incredible accomplishment of nature. One of his great problems has been to understand himself. Self study has caused him anxiety so intense that he studied or explored the universe around him before he dared to look inside his own body. This book is concerned with his understanding of emotions, particularly of those emotions he faces when natural functioning is blocked through muscular contraction (armoring). To understand this study better, let us first observe reactions of the simplest animal, a one-celled creature called the amoeba.

The amoeba consists of a nucleus or core, protoplasm, a membrane, and an energy field. The nucleus is the energetic center of the organism and contains the highest charge, drawing energy from the protoplasm which ingests the food. From the nucleus, waves of excitation flow through the organism. These waves are intermittent. What happens is probably that energy concentrates until the organism reaches a point of excitation with lumination. Then discharge occurs and the organism shortly begins to rebuild the charge. The result is an intermittent pulsatory effect and an appearance of alternating expansion and contraction. In the normal course of events the amoeba is never still; waves of excitation continually flow through the protoplasm. Careful observation can determine an energy field surrounding the membrane and pulsating with the organism. It appears much like the corona of the sun.....

Normal Human Body Functioning (The Orgasm Theory)

Like the amoeba, the human is in a state of constant expansion and contraction. This is present in all the tissues of the body, but is most easily observed in the pulse and respiration. Energy is carried to the surface and the specialized organ chiefly by the blood, but it undoubtedly flows also, to some extent, directly through the tissues. The circulatory system can quickly carry energy to any specific part of the body at need; for example, to the muscles when the organism is attacked. Excitation comes from the vegetative nervous system which sets the direction of the flow of energy by opening some blood channels and closing others. The intensity of the excitation and the amount of energy together determine the strength of the charge or push in any particular flow.

This energy flow is felt as emotion. For example, rage results when energy flows into the muscles; pleasure, identical with expansion, results when energy flows to the skin surface (the genitals are part of the skin or ectoderm); and anxiety follows if the flow is to the internal organs and therefore causes contraction of the organism. These are the three important basic emotions.

There are two subsidiary emotions: longing and sadness. In longing, energy flows chiefly to the chest and arms, but also to the pelvis and mouth (a desire for superimposition), causing a reaching out for something which is not there but is desired. In sadness, which is a reaction to a loss, there is longing with no prospect of fulfillment, and the organism simply contracts....

Energy is built up in the organism by the intake of food, fluid, and air, and is also absorbed directly through the skin. It is discharged by activity, excretion, emotional expression, the process of thinking, and by conversion into body heat which radiates to the environment. Also, it is used up in growth. In the usual course of events, more energy is built up than is discharged; if this were to continue the organism would either have to grow continually or burst. To maintain a stable, economic energy level, excess energy must be discharged at more or less regular intervals. This economic discharging of energy is the function of the orgasm....

Edition details

• Publisher: ACO Press
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0967967007
• ISBN 13: 9780967967004
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 354