Page    1  2  of this article. Raising Children,  R. Schwartzman,  Jour of Orgonomy,  V 19 no. 1   In some matters of advice about what to do for the baby, it would be better to ask an uneducated, contactful mother, maybe one who has bright eyes and a sense of humor and has raised a couple of happy children, and possibly has lived out in the country. It is often better to trust nature rather than authority. At home the mother should receive support, encouragement, and assistance, as much as possible, and be freed from household chores. The infant needs to be held and not left to cry unheeded. One study found that putting a baby on one's shoulder is the most effective method of reducing the crying, because it is a "potent elicitor of visual alertness" (13). The myth that excessive crying is "good for a baby's lungs" is an invention of the emotional plague. It is in the same league as the rationalization, "Well, we have to toughen him up for this world that he's going to live in." Is that why we should neglect him, let him cry? Is that why we should let the harsh, neurotic world come down on him? We do not want to adapt the baby to a neurotic culture; we want to keep him as free from armoring as possible. We don't want to armor him like all the rest of us. To the extent that armoring is laid down, the ability for self-regulation is lost. Reich said, "We should not strive to bring up children who have no trouble at all, but children who are free of pathogenic armoring so that no symptoms can take root and persist. It is unrealistic to hope to completely prevent armoring. However, it's enough to prevent the formation of rigid armoring in the infant and child" (1:63). Reich stresses that if the biophysical structure is not severely bent early, later emotional experiences will not take hold and become fixed. The sooner armor can be alleviated, the better the functioning will be. If residual holding can be freed up prior to puberty, the better the adult will function throughout life. We have found that a little bit of therapy on infants and children goes a long way. They're usually very pliable and easy to work with, and grateful for the work. Just a few sessions can do a great deal to relieve armor. Once puberty is reached, the energetic push behind it can turn the armoring into cement. That's when character becomes solidified, when the armor solidifies. Clearly the answer must lie in prevention. Once the damage has been done, there's really little, save orgone therapy, that can be offered to help reverse it. The biopathic process is so deeply rooted that years of treatment are necessary to restore even partially a state of relative health. Of course, individual orgone therapy can be applied on such a limited basis that overall it cannot be considered a solution in terms of the worldwide picture. Assuming that natural functioning is possible to elicit, what would a child be like? How would he act, think, and relate? Reich tells us again, in Children of the Future, that we cannot have a preconceived idea of what the child would be like. We do have an approximation of how he might be from Reich's concept of the genital character. The genital character most closely approaches health. But we do not know the qualities and characteristics of a truly functional human being. We do not know to what extent the character traits that are seen in infancy are the result of natural life expression, or the result of early armoring. Reich stressed that the child of the future would shape its environment according to its needs, if only the environment would leave him alone and allow him to grow up in agreement with his true nature. We really have no knowledge in our armored society of how a child could regulate his nursing, toilet training, sexual life, play, socialization, or even how often he would choose to bathe, or what kind of diet he might choose. We don't even know to what extent the functional child would be prone to infection and all the other biopathic illnesses. There are certain people who have natural immunity; we don't understand that either, but the biopathies are certainly based upon the armoring that the child's subject to and has elaborated within himself. Self-regulation, however, does not mean that the child is allowed to grow up without structure and without limits set on behavior. But, the less armored the child, the less structure will need to be imposed. A child allowed to gratify every impulse willy-nilly, without regard for others, in the name of self-expression or to prevent inhibitions, will be inclined to impulsivity. He will seek to unconsciously find structure from the outside, which will limit his anxiety and his impulsivity. He, therefore, may well grow up seeking authority by defying it and end up bringing it down upon him. By testing authority, he brings about the control he never had in an effort to limit his unbridled behavior. Studies reveal now, and Reich again told us long ago, that inconsistency in childrearing produces the impulsive character. Reich felt that all disciplinary measures are indications of the helplessness and ignorance that we feel. "Neurotic behavior forces authoritarian measures." Once the child is neurotic, you cannot relate to him in the same way that you would relate to a child who still has core functioning. An incident from my daughter's school is a good example of this. My daughter, who is a very nice little girl (of course, she's mine) was teased and cruelly mistreated by her schoolmates. Ostracized, she was suffering terribly and didn't know what to do. We talked about it at length; I supported her by pointing out their meanness and cattiness and telling her that she was basically all right. I tried to show her the neurotic world clearly, so that she would not get confused by it. But it didn't work. We tried different strategies, too, as to how she might make these little girls her friends. When eventually it turned out there was nothing she could do, I said, "Well, you're going to have to punch one of them out." And that's exactly what she did. I told her that she had to wait for the appropriate moment, a legitimate, appropriate moment when she was put upon in some way that would justify her doing what she had to do: impose authority upon neurotic behavior. Shortly thereafter, she punched one of her tormentors right in the eye. She also broke her own hand. (Unfortunately, I forgot to tell her to make a very tight fist.) The other girl got a black eye, and from that time on everything was wonderful. Everybody respected her; she became popular and well liked in the class. Even the girl she hit became her friend. Prior to this, the principal (this was a Quaker school, which she no longer attends) came in and tried to reason with these neurotically acting 10-year-olds. They sent letters home to the parents, advising them that their children's behavior was not nice, that they should love one another, and understand that it was cruel and mean to tease. But it took authoritarian action on my daughter's part to straighten out the situation. Reich has cautioned us that, "Self-regulation has no place in and no influence upon emotions which do not come from the living core (1:47). The Orgonomic Infant Research Center was formed expressly for the purpose of observing and studying healthy children. It was Reich's plan to allow the child to develop naturally. The only way to really arrive at an understanding of natural functioning was to study natural, healthy individuals, and not diseased individuals or the disease process. As Reich notes in Children of the Future, "The hope for arriving at a sound conclusion about healthy development on the basis of biopathic functions has totally failed. There seems to be no approach to health from the study of sickness" (1:8). And, of course, this is quite a departure from the usual in the scientific and medical approach. Reich was one who said that he wanted to look at things alive under the microscope; that we can't study life by looking at stained slides and dead tissue. But even today, if one talks to a microbiologist or pathologist about examining a live preparation, they don't understand; why would you want to do that? To allow natural functioning is precisely the problem. Most of us cannot tolerate natural functioning. As Reich points out, "It is brutal hate, based on terror, which regulates the armoring of the newborn" (1:18). Now what does this mean: hate based on terror? Life and movement and aliveness strike terror into our hearts, and we cannot stand them. It makes us anxious. So the plague in all of us (and we all have some), tends to limit the aliveness, making us feel a little bit better. What we do is stop natural behavior and rationalize that it is for someone's "own good." This is what operates in the destruction of children. Everything that is done to children is done in the name of what is best for the child. Reich felt very strongly that the emotional plague was the single greatest force working against natural childrearing. The destructive treatment that mothers and infants receive in the hospital is a case in point. Toilet training, stopping breast-feeding, taking away the baby's bottle, interference with masturbation, even the most cruel and vicious beatings that are inflicted upon children are felt by the parent as necessary for proper childrearing. If you were to tell a parent who murdered his child, "You just killed your child," he would say, "I was trying to teach him the difference between right and wrong." Stinging eye drops at birth, separation from the mother, tight swaddling in the bassinets, circumcision, allowing the child to scream to exhaustion; these are all rationalized as being good and necessary. And this is the emotional plague: It is destructiveness on the social scene by those in authority dictating rules of living and rationalizing them as right and proper. The problem is that as parents or educators, or as doctors and nurses, we cannot tolerate the anxiety we feel from the child's behavior so we stop it. Aliveness, movement, openness are just the things we can't stand, so to prevent the anxiety, we prevent the behavior. "Don't jump, don't run, don't shout, sit still," and, of course, "don't touch your genital." That's the biggest verbot, and the one that will be the last to be tolerated in the true sense, if ever at all. However, not everyone is plagued; there are those who are only ignorant of what is natural and functional for a child. And that is where education can help. Some can benefit from that kind of education, or at least be encouraged toward allowing their children to develop naturally. Telling a mother that she is right to pick up her crying infant could be enough to help her override what her mother or grandmother says. A mother should be encouraged to have a natural delivery, to keep the baby with her, to breastfeed, and to avoid, if possible, a traumatic hospital situation. We are now seeing a swing toward midwifery and home births, the direction of more natural birthing. The public has become disenchanted with the sterile, routine procedures of the delivery room and is opting for a more natural environment. This is an encouraging development. Not too long ago I was reading about a conference that was being given for obstetricians - they're really worried now since their income is being affected as a result of natural deliveries with midwives. The conference talked directly to the point: how to get the patient back into the hospital, what needs to be said to the mother to show interest in baby and mother. It was really quite a strange brochure that came through the mail. And, of course, as Reich said, "Everybody's right in some way." And the obstetrician is right: Baby is better off in the hospital for that emergency situation that might occur. And yet, baby is also better off out of the hospital. We would hope that eventually there would be some kind of coming together of these two views, so that baby has the best of both worlds. The infant should be allowed to look out of the window and see the world, and not lie in a corner of the room, staring at the crib sides or the ceiling. The house should be childproofed when he begins to crawl, so that he does not have to be trained against touching. Every "no" and every "don't" in this early stage produces a bioenergetic contraction, the foundation for armoring. Unless necessary for health or safety, restrictions should not be imposed. This, of course, is age-appropriate. At a certain point, it is necessary to set some limits. But one sees a nine-month-old infant crawling around reaching up to touch an ashtray, for which he gets a shrill "Don't touch that!" That's not right. The ashtray shouldn't be there. A baby should breast-feed for as long as and the mother are comfortable with this. The cessation of breast-feeding should be gradual, rather than precipitous. The mother has to know that she must stop it slowly; not just say one day, "No more breast-feeding," or "You can't have your bottle anymore." He should be allowed to suck his thumb for as long as he likes. The same applies to taking his bottle to bed. He will eventually stop it. I'm sure by the age of 21 he will not have his bottle in bed or be sucking his thumb. We're afraid that the parent next door is going to say, "Johnny's not toilet trained yet? My goodness, my boy was toilet trained at eight months!" Most mothers are unaware that the child doesn't even have nervous control over his sphincter until 18 months of age. Early toilet training is considered desirable and an important accomplishment. No attention should be paid to bowel and bladder functions. Do not train him, but let him train himself. Every child always does. No toilet training is necessary; none at all. No encouragement, no matter how subtle. It makes little sense to talk about self-regulation, if we're going to impose regulation from the outside and deprive the child of autonomy. The command need not be a slap, only the implication that "if you don't please me, you will lose my love." A child cannot afford to lose the love of a parent, for that is too threatening. So, he will, indeed, comply by holding back in the pelvis and adjacent musculature. To imagine what it must feel like to be trained on command, one has but to tighten the perineum, as if holding back stool, in order to simulate what the child does chronically to keep the mother's approval. This type of holding later gives rise to anal character types, like the compulsive. A healthy child will spontaneously train himself, usually by two-and-a-half to three-and-a-half. Parents need support that this "failure" to toilet train is right. They need the support to resist the intimidation from others that what they are doing is wrong, or that their child is not as "advanced" as others. Genital play should neither be promoted nor interfered with. Peer-related genital exhibition is permissible. Allowing this natural function will not produce a child who, when older, will masturbate in public. If a child 's fortunate enough to develop a romance at about age five or six, he certainly should not be laughed at, but should be taken seriously and respected. Sex positive means sex affirmative. This implies a natural, comfortable attitude rather than silent disapproval or "neutrality." It doesn't take an overt slap or a threat to do harm; merely distracting a child from genital play, or casting a look of disapproval conveys to the child a negative value judgment, that is not the right thing to do. Sexuality unfolds from childhood; it's not something that springs full-grown at maturity. Peer-related sexual play should be allowed, including intercourse, only if the children can accept it. Unfortunately, in our present culture, most children, like most adolescents and adults, are so armored that healthy, natural sexuality is a rarity, so they are simply not ready for full sexual expression. As the child moves out into the world, he'll face the sickness of individuals and of the culture. He'll meet with sick children, cruel, mean, and devious, already twisted. On the social scene, he'll meet with the formalized, neurotic, and plagued structures of religion and school. In order to raise relatively healthy, functional children, it requires that the parent be able to see the neurotic world clearly for what it is and, also, to oppose what is the accepted norm. This is not easy. Parents who try to take this route will find themselves at odds with parents, physicians, administrators…everyone. The child also needs support and confirmation in his correct perceptions of the neurotic world. We must do all we can to present the world clearly to our children, and to maintain their natural aliveness and alertness. Wilhelm Reich's discovery of the armoring process and its formation points to an exit out of the trap. These discoveries are our hope for the children of the future. Page    1  2  of this article.   REFERENCES 1.   Reich, W.: Children of the Future. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1983. 2.   Moss, H. A., and Robson, K.: "The Role of Protest Behavior in the Development of Mother-Infant Attachment." Paper presented at a meeting of the American Psychological Association, San Francisco, 1968. 3.   Brazelton, T. 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