deduce what was preventable, to learn what changes are needed to make a better world in the future. This approach is very fruitful. It has made an optimist of me, for I know “It Can be Done”. That was the slogan on the laboratory wall of my father. The fruits of my tiny efforts reinforce my hopefulness. Where does the biological revolution begin? The first factor in the chain is the right of babies to be wanted babies. This requires the availability of 100% birth control services for all who require them, irrespective of age or marital status. This means the last and the least woman on earth, on reaching menarche, should be instructed in the various methods of contraception. The service should be near at hand when she actually commences heterosexual intercourse, even though she may be a minor, still living with her parents. I battled for several years (1972-1975) in my home state of Maine to make birth control for all a reality. A description of the events which happened as I tried to apply Wilhelm Reich’s Sexpol platform (forty years after he first proposed this policy) would fill a volume. Birth control clinics need to be widely available and publicized so that all people know about them. When birth control fails (which it does in only a small percent of cases), it should be backed up by legal abortion services. Birth control is aimed at making possible the birth of wanted offspring and the prevention of unwanted pregnancies. Arthur Janov has shown, through Primal Therapy, that the unwanted baby may experience pain even in the uterus. Babies are human beings and should be treated as such. Babies do feel, even at birth, and also remember their pain. Therefore, no painful procedures should be inflicted on them unnecessarily or against their will. What male infant would choose to be circumcised without anesthesia? Let us stop hurting the young; let us stop putting burning silver nitrate drops into their eyes after birth, for instance. The medical reason given for this practice is that it prevents gonorrhea, which can cause blindness. Instead, why not test ( by both smear and culture) every pregnant woman for the infection at term and again during labor? This simple preventive test is easily done and avoids functionally impairing eyesight. The baby whose eye has been hurt by the chemical quickly learns to resist the second drop in the other eye. We teach pain before we utter a welcome! Though every procedure has an apparent rational reason, let us question, and find better ways. Let us find the truth and the counter-truth in each situation as we gradually change our treatment of the young to nonviolent, humanitarian ways. In order to change the world, we need to proceed in a logical, step-by-step fashion. We must make childbirth education available to all expectant parents. This consumeroriented group is actually changing human awareness on the subject of birthing: The International Childbirth Education Association, through its courses, is fostering a positive, joyful, creative attitude to parenting6 ; for some decades meddlesome, controlling, mechanistic obstetrics has been the vogue in the United States. Sadly enough, it is being copied all over the world. The National Organization of Parents and Professionals for Safe Alternatives in Childbirth (NAPSAC)7 holds annual congresses for those searching for better ways of birthing. Consciousness is being raised and nonviolent, natural births, followed by loving massage of the infant’s body within the mother’s energy field (aura) can become the goal of new parents. Groups of new parents can meet and exchange experiences concerning childbirth. Gentle, butterfly-touch bioenergetic therapy, given immediately following a difficult birth, can heal the consequent birth trauma. Fourth trimester adjustment problems of babies result from violent births or cruel treatment by insensitive grown·ups. Babies need warmth, body contact, breast milk. They would vote for being with their mothers, not isolated in a white glaring nursery. They would prefer the oral pleasure of a living nipple from which warm milk streams into their quivering mouths over a cold rubber nipple, or being propped on a pillow for feeding. When needs are fully satisfied in infancy, the person is free to develop into total independence later on. The argument that it is good for people to suffer is a vicious one. This argument, sometimes veiled in the eastern religious terminology of “karma”, makes excuses for cruelty to the young. I believe we must change human structure by changing each of the harmful assaults on the young. I would like to conclude with a plea to all professional psychotherapists, who are making their living by treating human misery, to tithe some of their time and effort into activity in the social scene, aimed toward preventing some of the specific root causes of neurosis. My hope is for a world where self·regulation will be a guiding principle. Only by our allowing human character structure to become healthy will we at last actualize healthy human social and political institutions in the New Age. NOTES 1 Secondary impulses are defined by Elsworth Baker in Man in the Trap, (New York: Discus Books, 1974), as “Expressions of the body which have to come through the armor and are therefore forceful and destructive? He defines armor as “The sum total of the muscular attitudes (chronic muscular spasms) which an individual develops as a defense against breakthrough emotions and vegetative sensations, especially anxiety, rage and sexual excitation, functionally identical with character armor.” 2 James W. Prescott, “Body Pleasure and the Origins of Violence,” The Futurist, April 1975. Published by the World Future Society, P. O. Box 30369, Washington D. C, 40014. 3 Claude Steiner, Scripts People Live. (New York:Grove Press, 1974. energy & character vol.37 may 2009 17
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