In The Kingdom of The Blind, the One-Eyed is King.

Art,

In The Kingdom of the Blind, the One-Eyed is King. 

In my metaphor, I equate to live with a painful repression, an imprint, with being emotionally blind. All those who are suffering and want to get help to get out of their “prison of pain” are part of the kingdom of the blind. 

During the last 40 years, you have managed to create a unique knowledge and have in several brilliant books described your theory of how mental pain, engraved in our memories and brains since womb life, can be experienced and lived. That has given hope to many in “the kingdom of the blind” who are aware of their suffering and realize they need help to which you are showing the way. 

In this kingdom, you have contented yourself with treating only a fraction of those who are suffering. Those men and women, which have been fortunate, had the strength to find you and have been able to afford it. Among them, you have had full reign thanks to your superior therapeutic insights. Unfortunately, you have persuaded this in a too one-eyed fashion, and you have failed to build a strong group around you. By failing to develop, educate and encourage like-minded, dedicated employees and create a dynamic organization, you have allowed the cognitive psychotherapy school, with its self-fulfilling organizational networks for education, research and pharmaceutical care, a neurotic treatment monopoly. 

An innovative context requires ingenuity, but equally vital is an organization of strong, critical but loyal employees who can create the dynamic making the ingenious innovation an accessible reality. If treatment, planning, monitoring, finance, research and development is to succeed, the genius must have a professional, organizational superstructure. (Like Apple and Steve Jobs). In a healthy organization, even the most effective, emotion-oriented, right brain needs an intelligent, left brain, superstructure to communicate and create additional development. 

To skim the patient market and conduct an inadequate research and monitoring through nepotistic based personnel policies have little chance of success. Of course, family activities are worthy of respect, but they do not solve universal needs that require treatment and scientific discipline in several segments. In addition, I sometimes have the feeling, during the internal Primal debate, that it is only within narrow circles in LA that there is enough high moral level to deal with the Primal Therapy. 

Why do I not just shut up and appreciate what I got out of you and the Primal Therapy?

There are three main reasons.

First of all, because, I am convinced, it would be possible to build a dynamic organization, but that will and skill are not at hand.

Secondly, it surprises me that no one else has taken hold of the theory of “evolution in reverse” to live pain, which is repressed, and created an international therapy. Could it be that the theory is somewhat in conflict with reality’s / evolutions’s own principle, “survival of the fittest”?

Thirdly, why is the Janovian Solution neglected and suppressed by all of those who educate future generations of psychologists and therapists, etc.? 

Would it not be worth reflecting on these issues in order to spread a little light among those desperate for a better future?

Jan Johnsson

Epileptic literature. (Article 27 of the history of my epilepsy.)

During hundreds of therapy sessions, usually by myself, I have been able to relive how I get stuck, pushed forward, mm by mm, literally choked, swallowing my tongue, filled with mucus and suffocated. After more than two hours of primal struggle (if the conditions for a primal had not existed it would have taken the shape of a grand mal seizure with convulsions and unconsciousness), I feel how I’m pulled out and the memory allows an unadulterated baby’s cry to escape through the throat, as if it had been hiding a lifetime in my stomach. These feelings and experiences, from before any words and thoughts existed in my brain, are accessible by way of the memory cells which allow the historical process to be relived when conditions are right in that defense mechanisms are disconnected, and the pain threshold can tolerate it. If I compare a birth primal to an earthquake, it is usually followed by an aftershock of painful insights to how a neurotic behavior has been linked to the pattern of the birth trauma in my brain. In many chapters, I try to exemplify how my neurotic, painkilling patterns have influenced my daily life. Brain Research is about to confirm many aspects of my experiences. One day I hope there are resources in a more seamless way to a complete confirmation of the mechanisms and processes of the type of epilepsy that I have.

Descriptions of epilepsy and epileptic automatisms are available in a wide range of contemporary literature on the brain. Experts like Antonio Damasio, Joseph LeDoux and others describe it in an excellent way, and I can well identify with their messages. After many years of searching for knowledge in these sources, however, the descriptions feel like one-dimensional still images. Often progress is achieved through trial and error (when someone, for example, got a shot through the brain and allowing room for ad hoc research to investigate what is damaged or intact) which has led to that the knowledge, where in the brain processes are taking place, has grown. What I miss in the petitions and reports by these prominent neurologists is a more dynamic picture of the processes, chemical as well as emotional, that triggers cramps/seizures/attacks, instead of choosing other brain reactions. This is a complex research that makes a psychodynamic and neurological cooperation and a paradigm shift necessary.

As a layperson in the neurological context, it is difficult to keep up with finding the interesting parts of research and literature. Therefore, my knowledge is limited about the relationship between the different parts of the brain and their evolutionary development and creation. For example, how information from very early traumas goes on to the emotional and thinking brain and conversely, how does that affect communication from a subsequent trauma receptor in the deep reptilian brain where our vital survival reactions are controlled by blood pressure, pulse and body temperature, etc., which are the parts of my brain, which works during a dream sleep or a birth primal.

My feeling, when in contact with neurologists, is that their technical descriptions are given and authoritarian, and somehow, I have, with constricted views, to be kind enough to accept their truths. My great advantage is that I have personal experience of both epilepsy and neurosis and can also download experience from the psychodynamic therapy and make testing in a way that a neurologist never gets the chance to. In my selfish dream world, an ideal research team should at least include a fearless neurotic epileptic, a skilled neurologist and an experienced psychologic therapist.

Experiments and epileptic literature.

Since circumstances allowed, I decided completely to remove all medical assistance and within a couple of months I had settled my Lamictal (200 mg) intake, and I was feeling good and to modernize my physical training, I bought a vibrating machine. It was a different and pleasant feeling to stand on it with various movements and allow the body to be thoroughly vibrated. The explicit recommendations from the manufacturer were not to use the vibrator more than 10 minutes at a time and only do so every other day. The manufacturer clearly discouraged epileptics from using it, which I interpreted as a challenge in my case. When I had used the vibrator three consecutive days for approximately 60 minutes per session, I woke up one night after having had a grand mal seizure. I had been too exhausted to react and go through a birth primal which resulted in an epileptic seizure because I recently had dropped the medication. After consultation with a neurologist, I got a low dose of Keppra, continued with a more limited use of the vibrator and could handle my birth primals and many layers and filters of neuroses were dissolved.

Just after I bought the vibrator, I bought online from the USA a book about epilepsy: “Epilepsy: a New Approach”. An updated edition from 1995, originally published 1990. The book is written by Adrienne Richard, and she has had the support of medical and neurological expertise by Dr. Robert Efron. Adrienne Richard, who like myself had developed epilepsy at age 20 has deep insights from many aspects of epilepsy, and she developed during a couple of decades, a biofeedback technique to disconnect the epileptic discharges and were apparently so successful with her self-care that she stayed free of seizures and has  helped many others to do, likewise.

I've tried a couple of her advice. The first was to revise my diet and my vitamin and mineral intake. This I have always been aware of but never had the opportunity to compare with someone with epileptic experience. The second advice is to create a mental imagination that can change the chemical process of the brain's neurons and slow down an attack that threatens. An example: A potential attack preceded by an aura, which is about music could be stopped by mentally going on a fishing trip. In other words, to use imagination to abort a seizure.

It is a pleasure to read the book. It is very well written and has the backing of a neurological expert. It covers many aspects of epilepsy but lacks insight and awareness of the fact that there are additional steps for many (not all) epileptics: To feel the pain, the cause of the epilepsy. A  feeling psychodynamic therapy (such as Primal Therapy) as a natural follow-up and complementary treatment of her biofeedback and nutrition recommendations could be a potential way to create a different and better life for many epileptics.

During a few weeks, I revised my vitamin and mineral intake according to that recommended by Adrienne Richards, and I continued with birth feelings and had insights into many aspects of what has developed my life into a neurotic acting out. Adrienne Richard’s advice to be aware of what kind of an aura that triggers or precedes a seizure or a hallucination has been spinning in my head for some time. That led to that one day  I could feel how I, in the middle of a dominant attitude, suddenly had doubts and was confused. My dominating approach was a defense manipulation, and I was not honest with myself, and I used learned arguments to avoid a discussion and give a strong impression which had nothing with to do with the real situation. I tried to suppress my anxiety and confusion. This feeling is very close to my birth trauma that was a lengthy process of confused terror and physical abuse during hours. Really, to feel this pain and resolve it requires more than biofeedback.

Each patient carries his own doctor inside him. They come to us not knowing that truth. We are at our best when we give the doctor who resides within each patient a chance to go to work.  Albert Schweizer

Janov's Reflection on "Sex and Healing".

Monday, February 21, 2011

Sex and Healing

We can only heal where we are wounded. If the wounds are preverbal, then that is what must be addressed – such as reliving strangling on the umbilical cord and being stuck in the birth canal. Although it may seem odd to the reader, in order to liberate the body it must writhe, shake, and roll, perhaps, to the early lack of oxygen, or love; traumas that will then free us from their lifelong effects. We need to get down into our bodies. We must again undergo an almost seizure-like response to the birth trauma, which then will liberate seizure-like sexual orgasmic response.


To see a reliving of oxygen deprivation at birth or other early trauma, a reliving that can go on for 2 hours a day for months, is to realize the amount of compressed force that must be diverted elsewhere. It makes the development of "sexual problems" less of a mystery. It explains why people become obsessed with sex, or twist sex into something deviated. The spread of the energy of the pain on the first line can go in several directions – first, to vital functions, the heart and lungs, and also to sex. The pain can seep into sexual thoughts and be channeled into sexual rituals. It makes the ritual an urgent undertaking. The obsession is the end product of the pain, now transformed as it wends its way upward through the limbic system to the cortical thought processes. When we deal only with that transformation, we are on the wrong track, or at least on a very narrow track. As the old saying goes, to get on the wrong train means that every stop one makes is the wrong one. We must take care to board the right train that will take us to our destination. The tracks are nerve tracks with a specific destination. It is a strange track system leading backwards to early memories before chugging forward in time. Then it allows us to return to the frontal cortex and current life.


Sex is the vehicle in the search for relief. It can finally discharge the energy of suffering over and over again. It is a lifetime affair since the imprint is a lifetime affair. Sexual ritual provides relief on the second-line (limbic system), and the first (brainstem). It drives the person to spank or beat his partner while ejaculating or exhibiting himself while masturbating; and it never ceases.


Why is showing oneself naked sexually exciting? It is not intrinsic to the act, except for the inherent meaning it has to the person. We must think of it this way. What would happen if he showed himself naked as a child, without the masturbation? The parents would have seen him and responded to him instead of ignoring him. This is the dynamic in so many of our exhibitionist patients. Of course there are other complicating factors, but the central motivation is often as simple as that. The excitement of being seen and responded to – even with shock – is what excites. He is excited by his need and the hope of fulfillment and relief. The compulsivity of a ritual may be given its impelling strength by the pain at birth, which is a measurable event.


For an exhibitionist, "look at me, momma," can become showing the penis to female strangers so that they will look at him and pay attention to him; and of course, react emotionally. He is getting what he needed as a child, symbolically, not what he needs as an adult. So long as we treat it as an adult problem we are on the wrong track. It is a condensed symbolic act reflecting a lifetime of early experiences. We take the symbolic act out, showing the penis, in group therapy, and turn it back into the need – look at me, momma!


Grown men can’t suck on their mother’s breast, so they suck on their partner’s. The excitement is the same for the baby and the adult who never had enough as an infant. The excitement for the adult is the baby need, except that it takes a sexual turn. The need to suck never leaves. It is very true in my homosexual patients; I mention elsewhere that one man called his partner’s ejaculation into his mouth, "mother’ milk." 

Posted by Arthur Janov at 12:23 AM 

Jan Johnsson’s Comment to a reflection re. “Sex and Healing” by Art Janov.

Interesting that you are reflecting on sex. After having written 30-40 articles about my epilepsy and how it has influenced my private life and my career, I have hardly touched on the subject which has been on my mind more than anything else, including epilepsy, since before puberty, if I have been awake or asleep. “I have really been down into my body and undergone seizure-like responses, daily during months, due to the birth trauma, which has liberated seizure-like sexual orgasmic responses.”  As you say, sex has been a lifetime affair.

After my horrendous, pain filled birth caused by religious, biblical reasons, I was breast fed during more than two years, and, even if I like beautiful natural breasts, they have never been an obsession for me.

My sex life can be divided into three different phases.  

1.  The period of sexual obsession from puberty until I developed epilepsy at age 19.

My sexual debut was not extremely early from todays point of view. At age 15-16 masturbation/petting was the preferred sexual release performed by myself or my girlfriends when there was a need for it and that was often. When I think of these years today it is amazing the amount of energy / pain, which went through my penis. I don’t see a big difference after that intercourse was part of the game. It was the same pain driven sex, whether it was sport sex or onanism. Up until I got epilepsy and antiepileptic medication, I was a pushy obsessed sexual screwball. However, I was ensecure and smart enough to understand when sex was possible to access and during these years I developed simultaneously a seductive and enchanting style to create sexual arousal in both, myself and the other party.

 2.  20 years of transition between when I developed epilepsy                             and went to Primal Therapy. 

 During this period, my painkilling sexual obsession was substituted to a great deal with epileptic medication. During these years, most of my energy went into a combination of studies, work and establishment of families. During these years I was still very sexual active but mainly due to my two marriages to attractive women who both very much liked sex, and they kept me busy, even if my obsession was gone. I had during these years, less need for my seductive style to create sexual arousal, although it was always latent and present.

3.  The latest 30 years after having lived primal pain from my               birth process.

After 40 a lot of my sexual drive went into my career. However, I still looked for sexual arousal but my need for sexual release was decreasing drastically, caused by the feeling of and the fear for the connection between a seizure and an orgasm. Up til a point that my seductive style and my indifference practically to implement my sexual challenges have caused problems and criticism. The more pain from my birth process I have lived the less I have sex on my mind. Which of course also might have to do with my advancing age.

Another turning point in how I channeled my seductive/sexual behavior was when I lived the pain in Primal Therapy of how my sister and father dethroned me at the age of  5. This primal brought up how I during 20 years had been obsessed by good looking, blond, curly girls (reminding of my sister when she dethroned me) which I could bring home to impress my father to get his attention.

My instinct to arouse myself by being seductive and enchanting is still available, indicating that there is more pain in the “septic tank of imprints”. The other day when I visited a neighbour city, a beautiful woman, who went in front of me on my way to my car, suddenly turned around and smiled at me and said: “Hi, Jan, do you not recognize me?” No, I did not. In stead, I thought it was a pleasant mistake because the good looking woman was half my age. She continued: “But Jan, I’m the girl from Cordoba! Have you forgotten me, we went to the mountains together?”. Suddenly I could recognize her from our Hiking Club, which I joined last year and how we during a few hours walk had en enchanting talk together.  

I had to move my car, so I kissed her goodbye and went home and told the story to my daughter. She was not surprised. “You are such a charmer when you want, dad!”....

Jan Johnsson

Thoughts and reflections on epilepsy treatment. (Article 26 of the history of my epilepsy.)

After suffering from epilepsy for several decades, I have gained great experience from many neurological centers in various countries. ( MRI = Magnetic Resonance Imaging, I have, for example, been involved in four different countries). I have experienced how they have treated me, taken care of me, have talked to me or what atmosphere they offered and which general resources of a technical and human kind were available.

The focus of neurology,epilepsy, which I have met has been and is largely a clearly technology-dominated world, so I start in that end. When I debuted as an epileptic l960 EEG (Electroencephalography) was the instrument that dominated. It registered neocortical electrical activity and produced an electroencephalogram. A routine EEG measurement takes 20-40 minutes, plus preparation and measurement are usually done by 25 electrodes glued to the scalp in an international grid using a conductive gel. EEG measurements are to distinguish epileptic seizures from other types of disturbances such as psychogenic non epileptic disorders and variations of migraine and to characterize the attacks, to be able to ordinate medical treatment and to locate the origin of seizures and address of the brain to have a basis for possible surgical intervention.

I went through my first EEG-test in Lund l960 and the latest in Xàtiva, Spain, 2009. In between, I passed such a test each year. In addition, I participated two times in a 5-day continuous testing with portable fixed electrodes, which was a very hard experience. The outcomes have all had very small deviations compared to what has been considered normal curves. According to my favorite neurologist in Helsingborg, it has been very difficult to show abnormal responses in my brain's electrical activity,  although I had petit mall seizures during the measurements.

The big development step in neuroscience was when MRI was introduced. It is a fairly young technology and has been in operation little more than 30 years (compared with 110 years of X-rays). The first MRI study I was involved in took place in LA 1978 at UCLA (arranged by DR David Holden) when I was undergoing Primal Therapy. Later, I have been through similar tests at different hospitals in Sweden, Denmark and Spain. Apart from a Spanish study in 1990 in Valencia,  no abnormalities have been detected. (In Valencia, the doctor pointed to some minor irregularities which, however, were neglected when I presented the film for a Swedish neurologist.)

For medicines, I have been treated with a small number of variants. Out of a list of 30-40 international medication for epilepsy I have tried the following four during the many years: Tegretol, Dilantin, Lamictal and Keppra (names differ slightly between different countries). However, I never took them in combination. Most anti-epileptic drugs can have strong side effects, and my liver became negatively influenced by my Tegretol intake. On some occasions, I was kindly advised to be careful with alcohol consumption in view of my liver. These suggestions I received accompanying the annual general health screening at the company where I worked when epilepsy wasn’t in the news. Alcohol, I have largely avoided for 50 years, and that was why suspicions were directed against my Tegretol intake, which led to that, I eventually decided to close it. Tegretol is an effective medication for epilepsy, but it is supposed to be harmful to the test rats.

All neurology doctors, I have met have proven very uncertain or unwilling when I asked them to recommend anti-epileptic medications. If a drug has been effective and stable from the point of seizure without serious side effects a neurologist is reluctant to make changes no matter what other reasons exist, such as a sense of inertia and lethargy or due to sexual problems.

Medications and instruments (EEC and MRI) are universal in the neurological epilepsy management and my hopes that new cultures and countries could offer something different has ended in disappointments. Unfortunately, doctors, waiting rooms and receptions, are a reflection of the standard international pharmaceutical and instrument industry, which means they are a cold, technical environment with minimal time and understanding of innovative solutions. Doctors, trained neurological technicians on a high formal level, working with a complex problem and squeezed by limited financial resources and efficiency requirements. Logic, techniques and verbal ability dazzle us when we meet our neurologist. Expressions of the emotional right side of the brain, I have rarely witnessed at a meeting with a neurologist, and then I have been lucky in this respect, and met some of the best neurologists such as Dr. David Ingvar, Dr. Ingmar Nilsson, PhD. David Holden (an exception in the case of emotional expressions) and Dr. Gert Malmqvist to name a few.

Along with access to these skilled neurologists, I have had access to first-class clinics with the latest instruments. When I dare to be critical I try not to think of all the wretched creatures who lived in the wrong place with poor access to doctors without tools and a limited drug availability and without Social Security. My crying make me remember the story of when Hellen Keller, who was born blind and deaf, on one occasion later in life, wanted a new pair of shoes. Since she could not get them, she felt miserable. Until she met a person who had no feet ....

The world, who faces an epileptic, as I have described, is a quite unreasonable, formal and conservative world. Patients are often disabled, drugged by anti-epileptic medication and without self-confidence and resources to drive change and innovation. “In the world of the blind the one-eyed is King” is an old well-known expression of Rousseau. It is a world, I had to respect and to play a formal game with to get drugs, marriage licenses, driving licenses, etc.. However, I have always believed that there were other solutions, and I have on several occasions been awarded for tireless diligence. In particular, Primal Therapy helped me sensationally, but also homeopathy, the food sector (including health food), various massage techniques (including Rolfing) and physical training have proven very useful in helping to cope with and mitigate my epilepsy.

In my job as an internal change consultant working in an international environment, I have been accustomed to working with business plans, leadership and control. Business Plans have meant that we have developed visions, set goals and worked out strategies which a management team, with the ability and willingness to implement a project has been responsible for. A monitoring system has meant to quantify and check targets and to follow  the outside world and make comparisons where we stood ourselves from a competitive point of view. In my struggle with epilepsy and in search of alternative solutions my entrepreneurial thinking often has helped me to dare to take decisions that  have been different.

I hope that the future epilepsy treatment will develop a positive approach in which visions, goals and a team of responsible can raise the quality of treatment as well as the lives of the sick. The explosion of knowledge in the brain research and the dynamic therapies in combination with modern patient treatment give me the courage to be optimistic. Future neurological clinics will naturally evolve from today's technology oriented center, with the hunting for symptoms with drug recipes as the main weapon, to a more holistic treatment center. Here teams will analyze the causes which will be treated with therapies, diet, exercise, medication and surgery when all else fails.

Within a few years, our neurologists have gained a much better knowledge to define the type of epilepsy that we suffer from. There will obviously always be different reasons for developing epilepsy and the guidance of a neurologist is necessary. A neurologist is also needed to judge that criteria are met legally to obtain a driver’s license, do military services, etc.

Medications are from both a short and long term perspective a prerequisite for those who cannot or will not use therapy or other alternative solutions. For those who are able to go to therapy a flexible administration of medicine may act as a balancing aid. This flexibility will depend on teamwork between the patient, the therapist and the neurologist. The current knowledge explosion is likely to make it easier to be epileptic in the future.

“It is sad to live in a time when it is easier to split an atom than to blow up a prejudice.”  Albert Einstein

Rolfing 10. (Febr. 17th, 2011). Conclusion.

I have over three months (Nov 19th 2010 - Febr. 17th 2011) been through my 10 Rolfing sessions. I have during these months been aware of many things. In general I have for more than 30 years could feel that my psyche and body are interacting. I have for a life time carried effects of my lengthy and painful birth process, which developed a first line imprint which later has evolved into second and third lines manifestations or to be more specific developed into epilepsy and physical blockages and neurotic activities as my body  grew and the intellectual part of my brain over the years expanded.

In my endless search over decades for solutions I have been specifically attached to two techniques to live my pain, Primal Therapy and Rolfing. The impacts and effects of the two have interacted over the years. Rolfing, in the way it took place 30 years ago, blew all my defenses away and took me to a position to live birth primals, where my knowledge of Primal Therapy (understanding that the way out of repressed pain is to feel / live it) and the use of Tegretol saved me. After I, during many years, have lived and felt tremendous amounts of the pain and terror during my birth, I have very little need of neurotic / compulsive filters and actions and after having been through several traumatic primals how my life has been propelled by abnormal, humiliating behavior to kill pain of the similar magnitude. Today I am driven by more realistic day to day needs.

However, to avoid feeling my imprinted pain, over the years, during my efforts to survive and function, my fascia has directed and constricted my muscles in an instinctive, protective way that has blocked my body (and psyche) in positions which over time have been fixed to my bones and in different ways crippled me. Furthermore, I have over the last few years as a consequence of my need for less neurotic protection, been aware of the uselessness of building muscles and strength and instead started to look for an extension of the mental relaxation which has come as an impact of that much of the pain from my birth has been lived and dissolved.

To release reflexes established in the fascia and muscles since many decades it requires a technique of a special format. Rolfing, with its gravity principle and its rearrangement of the fascia, has meant a new step towards a further liberation from my prison of pain.

Four areas of behavior won’t be the same after my 10 Rolfing sessions; My breathing, my walking, my posture and my physical exercises.

I will, in stead of an abdominal (associated with the parasympathetic nervous system) breathing, through my posture and by a new way of walking,  carefully try to direct my breathing towards a dominance of thoracic breathing.

My walking will feel and look totally different. In stead of tip toeing, I will use the whole leg and the whole foot, stretching the heel and extending the leg and “breathe” through the foot sole and end the step by using the big toe actively.

My body will be better able to search the position of optimal gravity. I will walk straighter. (Not only from a physical perspective). My shoulders and arms will make less efforts to tense my posture, which means better breathing, more economical movements and my thinking will eventually lose its tendency to become rigid and protective of historic reasons. 

My physical exercises will take time to develop. I will find drills in which extending, opening up joints and muscles all will improve, confirm a better equilibrium.

During these three months, I have learned that when my body is in balance, I feel strong and relaxed. When my muscles are pumped up, I may look strong, I don’t feel strong and I’m certainly not relaxed.

Jan Johnsson

Valentine's day post: The Difference Between Romantic Love and Sex. Arthur Janov

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Romantic love exists. Emotional attachment exists. Yet they involve different brain structures and different biochemistry than what drives pure, lustful sex. Once there is attachment or love, a separation can cause pain. Oxytocin helps to quiet this pain and can function very much like other neurotransmitters and inhibit suffering. To listen to my patients is to understand the terrible pain of a child separated from his parent; the cry of separation is an attempt to bring that parent back close again; it is true in nearly all animal forms.

There is a structure within the brain known as the cingulate cortex, which is responsible for that cry. This cortex is like an arc overlaying the limbic/feeling area and also deals with aspects of emotion. This area plays a role in maternal care and loving. The cingulated cortex is responsible for making the chemicals of comfort, and is also involved in inducing a sense of empathy, the ability to feel what others are feeling.

The cingulate cortex is endowed with endorphins, internally produced painkillers. When animals cry (as a result of separation from their mothers), these painkillers surge forth to ease the pain. When such a separation is abrupt and goes on for a long time, the baby’s pain becomes imprinted in the brain and remains. It is more pain than what a young body can tolerate.

Mother Nature knows that a baby needs two parents to care for him. Pair bonding is the result of two adults becoming attached, having sex, having a child, and loving that child. With the love these parents themselves received early in their own childhoods, they have the oxytocin and vasopressin that enables them to love their own child. Love is the foundation, therefore, for survival because when it is lacking, the child does not get the love he needs and he suffers, and the system becomes skewed and dislocated. Later, there may be disease and premature death as a deviated system is forever out of whack. A baby needs to be caressed and feel the sense of touch, which is the baseline of love. Without it, the brain changes and is less adaptive.

Alterations inside a pregnant woman, who does not want her baby, can affect the brain development in the womb so that the frontal cortex of the fetus becomes impaired. This has implications for later learning and adaptation. The mother's attitude, if not loving, adversely affects her fetus. It is one reason that we cannot be taught to love later on, though we can be taught to behave in a sociable manner. Love is not something to be taught. It is something we learn through our experience.

When the stimulating hormone, dopamine, and the repressive hormone, serotonin, are both at proper levels, there can be feeling and love. When serotonin is too high, there is too much repression and the ability to love is less. When dopamine is too high there is too much agitation and not enough cuddliness to allow love. A proper balance is needed among all the hormone systems. This is particularly true with oxytocin in females and vasopressin in males. After sexual orgasm, both of these levels rise by hundreds of percent in both parties, as if to say that attachment and closeness are part of sex or perhaps "should be," according to nature. It's nature's way of saying that sex should be taken seriously and is part of the syndrome of romance.

Constant random sex has nothing to do with love and is more or less a release of tension. It actually contradicts nature. However, there are two different brain/biochemical systems involved – one for pure sex and the other for attachment. We can be attached to someone and still have sex with someone else without love. There is evidence that in the latter case – sport-sex – the oxytocin and vasopressin levels are lower.

What are we to make of all this? That love exists and it is has physical effects. It can sculpt our brains early on. It is an intimate part of sex, and it ensures healthy development, both physically and mentally. Love is not an ethereal entity, but something we can measure. It may be a more accurate gauge of our state of being than all the protestations of love we might make. Love really does make the world go round. 
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Killing Softly. (Article 25 of the history of my epilepsy.)

Killing Softly

Part of the price of having lived with neuroses, epilepsy and a hidden agenda in virtually an entire life has been that my turnover of spouses, cohabitants, jobs and home addresses have been significantly higher than the corresponding average of my colleagues. During almost 40 years, I have saved my thoughts, concerns and frustrations about what has happened to me, so I have in retro perspective, a good background,  to analyze with sharp memory to which extent my epilepsy and the neuroses that come with it, has caused my apparent capriciousness.

The crucial dynamics that arise in me are: The feeling of being stuck and not being able to get out even though I'm struggling for a long while without giving up, leading eventually to a crippling sensation that makes me desperate. During this paralysis and despair, something extreme often occurs that makes me turn 180 degrees and like the birth process, I’m pulled out of the inhibitory situation which is about to destroy me. From job history, these radical changes have been due to mergers, closures, offer from a headhunter, promotion to a new job, being dismissed, or that I applied for another job. These have been the best moments in my life, and I have been able to start afresh with the sense of unlimited motivation and the feeling of being stuck has temporarily receded. With new experiences and knowledge and often at a new place, with a new job and sometimes with a new language to learn, life felt easy.

Identical feelings and patterns that existed in my career were repeated in my private life. It is hence the similar basic underlying currents which have propelled my changes in both my career and in my social life.  Employers with tempting assignments or women with a seductive look could temporarily overturn my plans, but not for long periods of time. I could not escape the forces of the engraved patterns, which represented my nature, which had existed in the brain since birth. It has by a law-bound force created the same reactions, whether I worked with Dutch tiles, hats, corsets, toys of all categories, fashion clothes, sports equipment, plastic products, analytical instruments, high pressure laminates or furniture components. Similar results, whether I have been married / living together with a 16 year younger Spaniard, an eight year older Danish, a 4 or 12 year younger Swedish or a German of the same age.

Although my psyche has undergone many crises and traumas caused by my compulsively repeated life patterns, I have only fond memories afterward of all I have been through and there are few experiences I would like to have undone. The same is true for all the great people who have crossed my path because of my compulsive behavior. Many of these people I continue to have contact with. From a professional point of view, my neurotic wanderings definitely meant that I was capable of dealing with difficult change situations, which of course have been a major reason that my life has been possible to implement.

From a private social life point of view, I have obviously also improved over the years, but here I feel, however, a greater sorrow over the injuries, I may have caused family members because of my obstinacy due to my hidden agenda, to which they of course, were innocent. The best I can say to my defense regarding my three surviving children is that they all were wanted and loved. It is harder to bear that regarding two of the children, I was often not on hand as a father when they needed it, which certainly is the big blob of a painful but fascinating epileptic adventure.

The relationship with my second spouse followed the pattern described and have been especially difficult to overcome. It was not just a romance, a marriage, a crisis and then a divorce. Through the fascinating and dramatic events we experienced simultaneously, the various transformations that we went through jointly and individually (I by Primal Therapy and she by an exciting design education) and because that we really enjoyed being together for many years, it has taken a very long time to get over the loss of this relationship.

Killing Softly

Over two years I changed jobs two times, which meant that the earliest move took place in 1972 from Malmo to Hillerød, Denmark and then the second move to Gothenburg in spring 1974 and that fall back to Denmark. Then my first spouse said stop. She was tired of me, on the moves and wanted to stay in Gothenburg and develop other solutions there. This was a traumatic shock for me, and it took me a few months to work out myself of the crisis. However, a new, exciting, reasonably well paid job as head of a toy company with in-house production and wholesale activities took my time and being taken care of by Danish friends, the feeling of being abandoned turned while thrilling opportunities developed. December 13, 1974, I met, at the headquarters in Osby, my future spouse. Admittedly, my first spouse had begun to doubt her Gothenburg Project, and since I met her and the children regularly she had failed glimpse that they would be willing to move to Denmark again. This thought tempted me for a while, but then I met G. and after during a period have felt through the situation the decision was made steadfast by my first wife when she realized that she after all had had enough of me.

From spring 1975, and until 02/16/1982  I lived with G., who was more than 12 years younger than I. We lived in Denmark, Jyllinge to 1977, in Sweden (with housing in Malmö, Gothenburg and Olofström) for the remainder of 1977 and subsequently in 1978 and 1979 in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles. From 1980 to 1982 when we parted, we stayed in Brokamåla, Olofström in Blekinge. 1976 G. was very close to death when she received prenatal poisoning during her last week of pregnancy. She was rescued by the life because the same week in which she suffered from fetal poisoning, there was an international gynecologist Congress in Copenhagen where she was transported from Roskilde. She was treated by an American specialist who saved her life. During the two years that I had arranged in the U.S., first for myself to go to Primal Therapy, G. avoided therapy and studied textile art at Passadena Art School in L.A., and she took weaving classes in St. Barbera.

After our experience with fetal poisoning, my new insights through Primal Therapy and the dramatic development of my primal experiences when returning home in 1980, I was not interested in having more children, which developed into a conflict issue between us. Furthermore, G. studied from 1981 onwards at the Art School in Gothenburg, while I worked as a consultant to the Bonnier Group's leisure division, and visited the retreats which DR Janov during those years arranged in Europe.

Already in the years in California I had the first feelings that our relationship might not hold.  This was due to the fact that I was not interested in getting more children and partly because I thought that G. needed therapy (which view, I based inter alia on her unreasonable jealousy of my first wife, who G. was reminded of every time  we discussed my children and it was often), which she didn’t want and that this eventually would make our relationship difficult. However, I felt that G. was at that time dependent on me and I postponed the decision to end our relationship.

During a Primal retreat in Frutigen, CH, at the end of January 1982 I sat listening to a discussion, between Vivian Janov and a male patient, about a relationship in which one of the two parties did not love the other but didn’t dare to conclude the relationship. "Killing Softly" suddenly flew out of my mouth without being able to stop myself. Shortly afterwards Vivian came up and spoke with me and during our conversation, it became suddenly clear to me that I was in a relationship that I did not dare to leave. Two weeks later I had made up my mind, and I left G., house and home on 02/16/1982 at her 29th birthday.

From 16.02.1982 onwards, I had many dramatic feelings and dreams around G. and it took several years to get over the divorce. Dreams are the brain's own way of resisting and trying to solve problems and they have often been followed by primal feelings that activated the neuroses that have been behind my unreal needs and practices.

The mice

The night between 27 and 28 July 1984 I woke up after a nightmare and primal birth feeling. The nightmare was about two mice whom I had hunted and killed. The hunt took place at the end of my bed, and my tools were my legs and feet. One of the mice had a thick and blond curly hair that was identical to G’s. The non curly mouse was attracted like a magnet to the curly mouse. The painful and exhausting dream ended up with that I squeezed the two mice to death between my feet and the floor. First I squeezed the curly mouse to death because I sensed that the non-curly mouse's death would follow automatically. The non-curly mouse, which had an unlimited willpower, tore off its head while the body was jammed between my feet and the floor. I had a constant fear that the curly mouse would become entrenched in my penis. A piece of the non-curly mouse's head and spark of life disappeared out to the right, and I felt in the dream that it was no longer dangerous, and that it should disappear.

The night before the July 27, G. visited me in Karlshamn, since we had met in Brokamåla together with some friends from Denmark. We had been separated for more than two years, and I had slowly started to get over our divorce and hung out some with a Hungarian woman, Hh from Stockholm, who I met at a retreat in Bergen, Norway. Hh was a non-curly psychologist and was a sensual experience of a new kind for me. I felt strong and independent after an inspirational dance evening at Ronneby Brunn with Hh., G. suddenly showed a new seductive interest to me which I to her disappointment, however, managed to ward off, which seemed like a liberating response to the fact that I just a few months ago failed to reestablish a relationship with her. It turned out that I mentioned the meeting with G. to Hh., when I later during the evening spoke to her on the phone, and she got the idea that I was dragging myself out of our newly established relationship. 

The G. incident on 27 July and the following dream during the night made me both sad and happy. Sorry for getting rid of the beauty which G. represents and the imaginary symbols of success she brought with her, and because she is a sweet and lovable person. Happy that G., in front of herself and in front of me had been able to make up her feelings with me. It is easy to understand the emptiness I felt by the exciting development and transformation, we both had been part of. However, it was a relationship which, had started on distorted conditions: I didn't dare to say no and challenge my loneliness when the exceptionally beautiful, blonde and curly G. suddenly decided to, certainly after subtle invitations from me, to move in with me in my house in Jyllinge during the spring of 1975. As a result, I took the responsibility to be loyal and did my best to rid G. from sad childhood memories and try to make her as strong as I had hoped that my mother would have been against my father.

The greatest sorrow is to recognize that we ourselves are the cause of our misfortunes. Sophocles

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