December 30, 2022
Dear Friends of the ACO:
Clarity and simplicity are at the core of orgonomy. For years we’ve used images of babies and children such as these to convey the clarity and simplicity of unarmored life.
We long for clarity but the medical and social pandemics of the last two and a half years cast clouds of complexity, confusion and darkness over the world with profound effects on us as individuals and as a society.
Navigating in the clouds. Well into the pandemic in a conversation with Dr. Charles Konia, I brought up the pall of confusion and clouds of darkness that the recent events had cast over all of us.
He gave me an intense, serious look. “We have to fly straight and level.”
“What do you mean?”
“My flight instructor taught us when flying through clouds, and you can’t see where you are, fly straight and level. That’s how you avoid crashing until you come out of the clouds and can regain your visual perspective.”
I nodded. “That certainly is applicable to what’s happening in the world now.”
Flying straight and level describes how the ACO has been navigating since the pandemic—straight and level until we gain our perspective in breaks in the clouds. In the sea of bad news that has inundated us every day for years before and the years during the pandemic, we need rays of sunlight to keep our perspective.
We need go no further than you, the friends of the ACO, to find a major source of good news. Each of you who supports the ACO, and our work, is a ray of sunlight that allows us to continue to illuminate the darkness and be a beacon for functional knowledge. Your support gives genuine hope for a future embodied by the light of each healthier child that comes into the world supported by the functional knowledge we have to offer. With it you continue to help us build momentum in carrying our gifts to the world.
Several times we’ve used this picture of the children with a sled filled with presents as an image to represent how the American College of Orgonomy has many gifts that the world desperately needs and how momentum in the ACO’s work has continued to build year after year.
Every year we have more and more to report. I look forward to when circumstances will once again allow us to give you a more complete and detailed report.
In our recent seminars, presentations, workshops and discussion groups, we have emphasized more than ever a basic functional scientific method: observe, observe, observe until a conclusion spontaneously emerges that comes directly from the phenomenon under observation rather than some preconception, misperception or prejudice. To understand nature, and think functionally the way nature functions, we must allow ourselves to accurately perceive nature. To avoid jumping to unwarranted conclusions, we must be able to take a clear-eyed view of human nature including its neurotic distortions despite how painful those may be to see.
The holiday season is a time to acknowledge our thanks as well as for giving and receiving gifts. We have so much to be grateful for at the ACO. We can’t thank you enough for your monetary gifts as well as your gifts of time and energy. Those gifts are helping us find new ways to share our functional knowledge.
This year, notably, our outreach is developing thanks to our popular, A Different Kind of Psychiatry Podcast and the ACO Case Presentation Webinar Series, many of which are posted on the ACO YouTube channel where people can watch them at their leisure and convenience. We are also continuing to improve our outreach with our engagement with marketing and design firms. And as announced in the recent Living Campus Appeal we’ve made exciting changes at the ACO campus in preparation for when we can return to our educational activities there. The support from our donors this year has continued to be astounding. We continue to build a long-term financial foundation for our work that will carry us into the future. Your ongoing support allows us to continue hiring professionals to free up the orgonomists to do the work that only they can do.
In this season of gift giving we appreciate your continued support.
You may still find tax advantages by making a donation before December 31st.
Thank you and best wishes for a happy and healthy new year.
Peter A. Crist, M.D., President
