Considering the societal value of treatments

The Primal Mind

Abreaction Part I: What it is and why it was abandoned in psychotherapy (click to access)

Hi Bruce,

Although we can say that the abreaction method was dangerous, there was for many years a breeding ground for the creation of alternative therapies /schools around it. With the spread of economic prosperity that occurred, at least, three phenomena has changed our focus on "safer and more rational therapies". Of democratic, human and economic factors, much of the enlightened world, closed the majority of their mental hospitals (“the cuckoo nests), which was made possible by mass production of painkillers and mass training of psychologists. Like in a tango a few step forward and some back...

Something that once has been established, tends to maintain itself. Although we, as patients may feel differently, cognitive talk therapist, a successful, titanic (sic), pharmaceutical industry mafia and patients (who mostly shut up) have, so far, been considered a great value for the community economy / image. This seems so incomprehensible to us as Primal People. In our internal debate, it is hard to admit that the cognitive therapy treatment has a different total value that makes a general commitment to PT still unrealistic. The fact that PT has a lower  value plays of course also a role from a scientific point of view. 

Art Janov’s genius lies in the creation of conditions, at a laboratory level, for connections with the original primal pain, to live it and thus creating a reverse evolution. Art is not an entrepreneur like Steve Jobs, and therefore, so far, failed to create a platform to have an impact on political and scientific support that could add to PT’s societal value.

During 40 years, I have tried a combination of PT, Rolfing and Homeopathy and to that added a common sense of healthy living based on values I continuously have been working on. I started with Primal Therapy and Rolfing when both were more of young enthusiasts than serious experts, and I have seen and experienced treatments in both that never should have been allowed to take place. However, the two therapies have eventually developed and have established methods with scientific ambitions, and they have great potentials for those who can find them and combine them.

Both therapies, PT and Rolfing, are being invented / developed by two geniuses based on established eternal true principles / values. Primal Therapy on a method to reverse evolution and Rolfing on how to adjust the body / skeleton and mind to gravity. In contrast to the cognitive talk therapies, which neglect the pain, PT and Rolfing are releasing / reliving the pain and connecting our minds and bodies to what they originally, from a feeling point of view, were meant to be.

Based on PT and Rolfing I have succeeded to demystify my epilepsy, which after I have been reliving my painful birth has very little impact on my life. They, epilepsy and pain, do no longer propel crazy neurosis, they do not give me fits. Today, I can see all these years as a positive experience which took me on a journey which increased my knowledge and understanding of the needs for a sane life. Still, I’m surprised about the fact that what I have been through and written about: No one cares! Where are all those who say that they care for science? Science is the method of deciding how things actually work, regardless of how we think they ought to work!

Can you please explain why?

Jan Johnsson

2. Do you want my own answer to my question in my comments to your article?

   
   

   The wisdom of a dream.

   
   

   In my dreams, I resolve my problems and conflicts, or at least I work on them. After having been through Primal Therapy over four decades and having lived a lot of the pain, which was imprinted during a horrendous birth process, my dreams during the last couple of years have changed in different ways. They are still about getting stuck, not finding my way, being isolated and not understanding what is being expected of me. However, nowadays, in a dream, I can feel the reason, often all the way back to my birth. When I reach this stage, I dare to stand up and explain how I feel, and can ask for explanations about things I don’t understood, which are confusing me.

   During the spring, I had a fascinating dream. It was a realistic and positive dream, filled with music and good feelings in which epileptic cramps were understood. In the dream, I was singing like Nat “King” Cole and at the same time going through hallucinations of various kinds, both painful and pleasant. Often, my dreams have been about how I was scared of losing my job, which I was supposed to perform without understanding what was expected from me!

   Last night I had a dream of this kind, when the people, I worked for disappeared most of the time giving bad management and unable to motivate me but still expecting good result and simultaneously looking for my leadership and initiatives. It went on for a while, and I could feel the pain. Suddenly, I said stop and asked the people to explain to me what this was all about, to understand that they were responsible, and that they had better instructed me than be running away.

   All at once, I asked them if they knew what it takes to be able to feel pain? If they, for example, knew that somebody in pain is scared to death to let his pain out if she/he is worried to lose her/his job so that she/he cannot support her/himself or her/his family? Art Janov, I said, could do it because he became economically independent after his pyramidal success with his book “The Primal Scream”. Never more he had to worry about food and shelter. He could live his dream, like John Lennon and Steve Jobs, which both became economically independent of a young age. They had all the subjective wellbeing which Abraham Maslow is talking about in his Hierarchy of Needs, to realize themselves.

   In the dream, now I felt I had one answer to why so few are interested in asking for my experiences regarding Primal Therapy and Evolution in Reverse. They are too scared to lose what they have which on different levels give them food and shelter.

   First when I woke up, I felt confused. It confused me because I had no one to talk to about my dream, and because I am aware of the fact (especially in Spain) that we are living in a time of crisis when so many are constantly worried about their job, survival, family. Many are far from Maslow’s subjective well being, which is necessary to feel what is behind their anxiety, pain and/or intake of anxiolytics. Though this is, might be, the adequate moment to do it.

   When the confusion left I decided to write down my dream.

   Jan Johnsson
   Jan Johnsson

   7 Dec 11 at 11:13 am
3. Hi Jan, 

   
   

   Thanks for your post. You make an excellent point about the economic freedom required to get well with primal therapy. You need sufficient money for individual therapy sessions, intensives and retreats, and for taking time off to heal. You need enough savings to quit a bad job and find a better one, or to go back to school to retrain for a healthier career.

   Being poor or dependent on a stressful job is an impediment to primal healing. Being unemployed and in poverty is even worse. The deprivation of the past is mirrored in the present and one can stay stuck in a combination of old and present pain. At the Denver Primal Center, Helen Roth often said, “you’re only as healthy as your environment.” The irony is that the poor and deprived are usually the most desperate for therapy.

   I hear stories from primal therapists about people who stay stuck in their pain, feeling the same old pain over and over, while making no changes in their life. If you have a painful present, the solution is not to feel the pain of the past. A key measure of progress in primal therapy (and any therapy for that matter) is developing the capacity to change your life. Sometimes that means shutting down your access to feeling and doing what it takes to get a decent job. The business world does not recognize deep feeling; you’ll find no primal rooms in corporate offices or factories. You have to suck it up and do your job.

   Arthur Janov says it’s not the job of primal therapy to tell you how to live your life, but people often need career counselling during their therapy to make positive changes. Knowing what to do after spending a lifetime hiding from your inner self doesn’t come automatically. Primal therapy is toughest for those who have the least resources, but they should never confuse their current deprivation with their past deprivation. It takes real grit to do this therapy. Resolving the past while changing the present when you can hardly pay the bills, let alone afford therapy, takes superhuman effort. Some make it; many don’t.

   Sad to say, sometimes the most appropriate thing to do in this unfeeling world is to suck it up and make the money required to find freedom.

   Bruce
   

   theprimalmind.com

   8 Dec 11 at 10:17 am