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The World in an Orgone Box

Saharasia: The 4000 BCE Origins of Child Abuse, Sex-Repression, Warfare and Social Violence, In the Deserts of the Old World, by James DeMeo. Natural Energy Works, P.O. Box 1148, Ashland, Oregon 97520. 1998, 454 pages, 100+ maps and illustrations. Softcover $34. ISBN: 0-962-1855-5-8.

richard morrock
Volume 26, Number 4, Spring 1999

Shredding Saharasia: A Response to Richard Morrock's "Review"
James DeMeo

Psychohistorians are all in agreement that history cannot be fully understood without a clear comprehension of the psychology that underlies it. Where we differ is in the source of our psychological understanding. Freud, Jung, Adler and Arthur Janov have all been used, singly and in combination, by IPA presenters over the last decade or more. Strikingly absent, however, have been any references to Wilhelm Reich. This is despite Reich's pioneering work in the field, typified by such books as The Mass Psychology of Fascism, about Germany, and People in Trouble, about Austria.

James DeMeo is an independent scholar and erstwhile associate of the College of Orgonomy, a group of hard-line followers of Reich with whom he is now apparently on bad terms. Out of his Oregon laboratory, where he conducts seminars on rain-making, has come this extensive work which applies Reichian theory - or at least DeMeo's interpretation of it - to the entire span of human history.

Other Reichians will probably quibble with DeMeo over various points, since the Reichian movement has long been bitterly divided into a number of factions. But it should be understood that Reich's strengths and weaknesses as a theoretician are reflected in DeMeo's book, with the latter unfortunately outnumbering the former. What DeMeo has given us, in the final analysis, is a form of intellectual bubble gum: there's something to chew on, but one would be ill-advised to swallow it.

The essence of DeMeo's argument lies in four points. First, social evils are rooted in family pathology and oppression of children; no psychohistorian would argue with him here. Second, preliterate societies are matrist, i.e., governed by women, and are free of this pathology, which arises when societies become patrist, i.e., ruled by men. Third, the desertification of a vast area of Northern Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia, which DeMeo terms "Saharasia," originally gave rise to patrism and all its consequences. And fourth, wherever patrist, caste-ridden or warlike societies exist, this is entirely due to diffusion from Saharasia. DeMeo's approach clearly parallels Reich's perspective in its reduction of psychology to physics, and its downplaying of consciousness, which Reich preferred to replace with the concept of energy. But Reich had a tendency to confuse the subjective with the objective. For example, the "orgones" which he often saw swarming in the sky were nothing but the result of the overexitation of the eye by bright sunlight. DeMeo goes him one better, confusing the objective with the objective.

Nowhere is this more evident than in his discussion of the Trobriand Islanders, Melanesians who were researched for years by anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, who became a good friend of Reich's. Social scientists have been divided over the Trobrianders, with some arguing (like Reich) that they were healthy, "unarmored," and free of Oedipal conflicts, and others, such as Freudian anthropologist Melford Spiro, claiming that they were even more neurotic than Westerners. It didn't help matters that neither Reich nor Spiro ever set foot in the Trobriands, and that even Malinowski may have missed some crucial details. DeMeo argues, on the basis of his tertiary research, that the Trobrianders, like other matrist cultures, had access to contraceptive herbs, which are kept from us unfortunate Westerners by patristic, sexually-repressed, "armored" representatives of modern medicine.

The problem is that Malinowski only speculated that the Trobrianders might have had access to contraceptive herbs. And this idea contradicts what he said about the Trobrianders not knowing that sex was the cause of pregnancy. Spiro insisted - again, this is speculation - that the Trobrianders knew the connection between sex and pregnancy, but repressed the knowledge. Either way, these fisherfolk were hardly likely to make use of effective contraceptives. Why did Malinowski notice no unwanted pregnancies in his four-year sojourn? Perhaps the pregnant single women merely secluded themselves until they gave birth, and then gave the babies away to other women. This, at least, is what Malinowski's own research indicated, although he failed to draw the obvious conclusion when he came across a deformed albino woman with no known lovers and a brood of kids. His local informants used her as evidence that sex couldn't cause babies, since no man in a sexually free society would have given her a second glance. Malinowski concluded that the woman had boyfriends visiting her in secret; he never suspected that there could be a third explanation.

DeMeo, who regards matristic societies as literal Gardens of Eden, parts company with the deMausean mainstream of psychohistory at this point. DeMause's understanding of these pre-technological cultures, specifically in Melanesia, is that they are particularly abusive toward their children, and that healthier modes of child-rearing do not appear except in conjunction with the spread of education and economic development.

DeMeo wanders even further afield in his interpretation of patrism as the result of desertification. This leads him into a gross misunderstanding of ancient Rome, which he sees as "generally opposed to the austere antifemale and antisexual philosophies which prevailed in the Near East..." (p. 275). This is an odd thing to say about a society which practised slavery, held unspeakably degenerate orgies, crucified dissenters, exterminated the nation of Carthage, andÑeven in its early daysÑboasted of its rape of the Sabine Women. And the Roman origin myth of Romulus and Remus indicates that they were quite familiar with the exposure of unwanted infants.

But even as DeMeo praises Caesar's countrymen, he argues that the Dorian Greeks, who reached the Mediterranean at the same time as the Italian tribes who founded Rome, were evil patrists from SaharasiaÑalthough they came from what is now the Ukraine, a fertile and well-watered land. DeMeo's history is distorted throughout the book by his need to cram his facts into the Procrustean bed of the Saharasia theory. If a nation is warlike, it had to originate in Saharasia; and if it came from Saharasia, it had to be warlike.

He misidentifies Turks, Mongols and Khazars as Indo-Aryans. The early Shang and Chou dynasties in China become warlike tribal invaders. Fertile Yugoslavia, with its many large rivers, becomes part of arid Saharasia because that is the only way DeMeo can explain its bloody ethnic conflicts. Kyrgyzia, in the heart of Central Asia, is chaotic or despotic in DeMeo's mind, although it has actually made a shaky transition to democracy; Moldova, on the other hand, is described as a stable democracy since it lies between two rivers, notwithstanding its massive conflicts between Slavs, Latins and Tatars. The Sri Lankans supposedly have no caste system, since DeMeo wouldn't expect one in a tropical paradise. And so it goes.

Scattered throughout his book are global maps, too small-scale to distinguish even particular countries, much less tribes and cultures. These are intended to show the prevalence of various patristic practices. But the numbers DeMeo puts on his maps are meaningless because they are only averages; he can get any number he wants just by shifting individual cultures from one column to another. Even so, his data sometimes conflicts with his thesis. Matristic and patristic societies show up where they have no business. The Bushmen, for example, live in the harsh Kalahari Desert, but are as happy and emotionally uninhibited a group as one might hope to find anywhere.

DeMeo often puts forth evidence which demolishes his own assumptions. Discussing ancient Persia, he goes into fascinating detail about lost cities buried under the sand in areas which were once fertile farmland. This proves the existence of desertification in Persia, but it also proves that it took place following the rise of patristic empires. As he points out, even when Alexander conquered the Persian Empire, he did so using elephants as pack animals. These beasts obviously required immense amounts of forage and water, indicating that the country could hardly have been desert-like at that time. On the basis of what DeMeo tells us, patrism actually preceded desertification in this instance.

There is the more complex case of the Aztecs, rulers of one of the bloodiest and most perverse empires in human history. Their capital, on the site of modern Mexico City, was built on an island in a lake, traversed like Venice with numerous canals; the surrounding countryside was lush and well-watered. DeMeo might point out that the Aztecs migrated to their tropical home from the arid region to the north. But the fact remains that their history of human sacrifice begins only when they make the transition from nomadic desert-dwelling band to imperial state. Other tribes from the same region of origin - such as the Navajo and Hopi - exhibit no such behavior. And, as DeMeo states, the deserts of North America contain far more plant and animal life than the barren Sahara of the empty quarters of the Near East. This would imply that Aztec blood-lust had its roots in the domination they exercised over other peoples, rather than any waterless terrain their ancestors may have wandered through on their way to Tenochtitlan.

Such considerations are unlikely to derail DeMeo's one-track quest for the single explanation of all human unhappiness. Warlike and oppressive societies in the New World and Oceania might be seen as disproof of his theory that Saharasia gave rise to all forms of patrism, but DeMeo is undaunted. Relying on cranks such as Barry Fell (America B.C.), DeMeo insists that the Indians derived their political and social institutions from unnamed Old World "ocean-navigating patrist states of the ancient historical period" (p. 108). This contradicts what scholars know about Mesoamerica and the Andes. How could the predecessors of the Incas have been in contact with Asia or Europe without learning about the wheel? And why did Indians die by the millions after the arrival of the Spaniards, having no immunity to Europe's diseases, if they had already been interacting extensively with colonists from the Old World?

Given Reich's advocacy of "sex-affirmative" upbringing for children, it is unlikely that there will ever be a meeting of the minds between his followers and mainstream psychohistorians. Thanks to deMause's work, we are all too aware of the license sexual predators will take with children in the name of "sexual liberation."

DeMeo's intentions in writing Saharasia were evidently noble, but his countless empirical errors and theoretical confusion serve to invalidate his work beyond redemption. Saharasia is a cautionary example for psychohistorians, warning us of the dangers of too much reductionism.

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