From “The Complete Angler” to Fisherman’s Wharf.

Janov's Reflections on the Human Condition

Teach Me to Fish

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My comment:

From “The Complete Angler” to Fisherman’s Wharf. 

When reading your Reflections  about “Teach me to Fish”, I had fresh impressions from a person who had made the Swedish translation of Izaak Walton’s famous “The Perfect Angler”. Unlike Walton, the translator thought that fishing was cruel. Walton, however, considered fishing to be approved by a higher authority = Jesus in the safe knowledge that he chose fishermen to his disciples. Your Reflections and comments about Walton highlighted my memory of how I through a complex sequence of events and a number of fortunate coincidences got my old dream of “Primal Therapy” within reach.

A little more than 35 years ago, I managed to be part of a perfect “package tour” between Oct. 7th and Oct. 22nd, 1977. The package contained a wedding in Copenhagen, a roundtrip to the US West coast, a 2 week study in “How to Build a Franchise” and finally a visit to Santa Monica in L.A. The US journey began in San Francisco at Fisherman’s Wharf, and the last day, before the trip home, I visited the old Primal Institute to apply for Primal Therapy. 

From 1978 and onwards PT/AJ taught me to “fish” by demystifying my repressed birth trauma and all its persistent secondary effects. In my case, it did not happen “as soon as possible”. It lasted more than 30 years because I for many years had to live with a tricky agenda in order to make ends meet in my career, my finances and the therapy treatment.

In my “fishing”, I will neither be a complete angler, nor will I be dependent  of approval of higher authorities, whether religious or profane.

Jan Johnsson

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqdtzJvliMk

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

It is easy to pin down a butterfly compared to pin down anxiety.

Janov's Reflections on the Human Condition

On Different Kinds of Memory

  (Click to access!)

My comment:

Art, you have “pinned down” one of the butterflies in my stomach.

I certainly value that You still are going strong and inspired to create Reflections. They continue to work in favor of my understanding of my birth trauma and its subsequent seizures.

Over the last 30 years, I have, over and again, tried to pin down what memories are causing different fits in me, and I have been persistent in my almost “scientific” search. I have, however, consequently failed to catch a memory in the moment of a fit even after my seizures, over the years, have shrunk to a fraction of their old magnitude. A brief fit does not worry me, which the impotence to catch and explain the memory behind the feeling does. Every time I have had fits in my epileptic life, I have had, what can be described as an electric anxiety shock, which I never have been able to catch. 

Having a stubborn personality, I have every time thought: “next time” I’ll catch it. How could I? It is a wordless feeling of immense anxiety, which leaks out through my defense when I’m caught off guard in an unexpected emotional situation or memory. (This may sometimes occur in combination with a rapid cooling / temperature change). They have never appeared when I have been doing my often challenging job as an international executive.

I remember how I, after a week of qualified work, having driven 1100 km - non stop - from Karlshamn, Sweden, came to visit a primal retreat with Art in Bergen, Norway, in the summer of 1984. I had disarmed my defense by fatigue, and when I met with Art and his therapists I became overwhelmed by the kindness. Art saw that something was going on with me and came up to me and said “it’s a feeling, lie down”!  Then my primitive, instinctive memory relived a traumatic, oxygen deprived birth, which was one of the crucial steps in the demystification of my epilepsy. In this and all the subsequent occasions, it was about wordless experience of anxiety caused by asphyxia and assault recorded during a birthing process between life and death.

To understand how crucial the repressed anxiety was for my epilepsy, a key factor has been my intuitive allergic reactions to cognitive insights trying to verbalize my anxiety / my symptoms. Art’s intuitive knowledge to guide me to my deepest feelings have been brilliant. In parallel, Art had the ability verbally  to analyze the process, communicate his knowledge and make sure that I understood how I by reliving feelings developed an integrated unified circuit between the different levels in my body / brain.

It is easy to pin down a butterfly compared to pin down anxiety.

Jan Johnsson

If Poul O'Neill had known "Life Before Birth"?

Janov's Reflections on the Human Condition

More on My Primal World

  (Click to access!)

My comment:

What might have happened if Poul O’Neill had known of the importance of “Life Before Birth”?.

Over and again I have been asking myself why I have had so much success with Primal Therapy. I have more than once come to the conclusion that PT has been my  symbolic Operating System. To PT / OS I have added applications which have given me winning habits to make it possible to relive pain, dissolve neuroses and to release my “competent neocortex so it could inhibit dangerous impulses and steer me into a healthy life”.

When I wanted to change my problem, I asked WHY it existed, until I felt satisfied with the answer. Then I developed a vision and eventually I developed the HABITS which eliminated the root of my problem. 

I will try to give an example which I have taken from “The Power of Habits” of Charles Duhigg. It is about Poul O´Neill who before his successful career as CEO of Alcoa was working for the US government. He then created a framework for analyzing federal spending on health care, when one of the foremost issues concerning official was infant mortality. The US, one of the wealthiest countries on Earth had higher infant mortality rate than Europe and parts of South America. A staggering number of babies died before their first birthdays.

“O’Neill was tasked with figuring out why. He asked other federal agencies to start analyzing infant mortality data, and each time someone came back with an answer, he’d ask another question, trying to get deeper, to understand the problem’s root causes. Whenever someone came into O’Neill’s office with some discovery, O’Neill would start interrogating them with new inquiries. He drove people crazy with his never-ending push to learn more, to understand what was really going on.

Some research suggested that the biggest cause of infant deaths was premature births. The reason babies were born too early was that mothers suffered from malnourishment during pregnancy. So to lower infant mortality, improve mothers’ diets. Simple, right? But to stop malnourishment, women had to improve their diets before they became pregnant. Which meant the government had to start educating women about nutrition before they became sexually active. Which meant officials had to create nutrition curriculums inside high schools.

However, when O’Neill began asking about how to create those curriculums, he discovered that many high school teachers in rural areas didn’t know enough basic biology to teach nutrition. So the government had to remake how teachers were getting educated in college, and give them a stronger grounding in biology, so they could eventually teach nutrition to teenage girls, so those teenagers would eat better before they started having sex, and, eventually, be sufficiently nourished when they had children.

Poor teacher training, the officials working with O’Neill finally figured out was a root cause of high infant mortality. If you asked doctors or public health officials for a plan to fight infant deaths, none of them would have suggested changing how teachers are trained. They wouldn’t have known there was a link. However, by teaching college students about biology, you made it possible for them eventually to pass on that knowledge to teenagers, who started eating healthier, and years later give birth to stronger babies. Today, the US infant mortality rate, is 68 percent lower than O’Neill started the job.

O’Neill’s experiences with infant mortality illustrate that keystone habits encourage change: by creating structures that help other habits to flourish and to start a chain reaction.”

What might have happened if O’Neill had went one step further and found out of the importance of our “Life before Birth”?

Jan Johnsson

My comment to Richard Atkin's suggestion to start a primal community:

Richard,

In The Country of The Blind

When I read your suggestion of a Primal Community, H.G. Wells’ story “In The Country of The Blind” pops up in my mind. I read it a few times after having tried to explain to my, in many respects qualified,  surrounding what Primal Therapy was. The trick I used in order to “survive”, when my explanations failed, was to imagine that I was a king in a country of “blind” people. So H.G. Wells story is both helpful and beautiful and it has several bottoms...

One of the ambitions with the Primal Therapy is to establish an integrated unified circuit between the different levels in the brain and I am not sure that your community will create such a circuit with the rest of the US or any other part of the world for that matter.

Jan Johnsson

The need of a winner to achieve a vision.

Janov's Reflections on the Human Condition

What a Primal World Looks Like

(Click to access!)


My comment:

The need of a winner to achieve a vision.

The last 15 months I regard as the prime of my Primal life. It took years and lots of primal re-experiences to reach this stage, and I would not have been able to understand and literally feel the obvious logic in “What a Primal World” would be like if I had not gone through hell and felt pain first. I admire your constant naive confidence in how easy it would be, in theory, to establish a just, love-filled and healthy world.

When I try to imagine a Primal World, I often confront plenty of arguments, both internal and external, which are working in the opposite direction. Many of these arguments are offsprings of evolutions unique patented headline “Survival of the fittest”. Although we believe in a future, love-based existence, the consequences of a competitive environment will cause distortions. If we combine these effects with all the flaws which several thousand generations have planted into the human genes, including epigenetic tagging, life will become more of a competitive struggle / stress than love and peace.

I know myself well enough to admit that the pain behind my struggle-filled person is putting a bias on my objectivity. However, it is through this bias that I often get the opportunity to discover and access repressed feelings from my life. Your vision of a Primal World teases and challenges my values and gives me, time and again, opportunities to become aware of neuroses and pain that I have carried for a lifetime.

A Primal World is a vision. The Primal Therapy has a unique principle to bring us one step closer to this vision. In most projects, it is necessary with small wins / gains and measurable successes creating a Frame of Reference. That is how I used the Primal Therapy when, son of a cowboy, I made my way through hands on change-management in trade and industry.

Thanks to the strategy of adding small wins I’m at 72 in the Prime of my Primal life. Thanks for your visions.

Jan Johnsson

Feeling Love.

Janov's Reflections on the Human Condition

On Loving Yourself

 (Click to access!)

My comment:

Feeling Love.

It is fascinating how I am able to screen my long life, when reading and analyzing literature and exposing me to meaningful reflections.

The past week I have been reading an excellent book on “The Power of Habits” + a Reflection of Art Janov: “On Loving Yourself +  an article in The New York Times about oxytocins “The Lovehormone as Sports Enhancement”. It is of course no coincidence that I “accidentally” read this combination of material. There are several inputs to each of the three compositions. I am and have been interested in sports (especially European soccer) and its driving forces, The Primal Principles (about Love as one of our basic needs), and finally of the habit forming processes, which (through the Basal Ganglia in the brain) makes changes possible either occurring in my own, mya daughters or my friend’s world.

Behind my stimulus is an inescapable factor and that is Love: to be unconditionally accepted, recognized, respected and part of a community and the opportunity to develop according to once’s own unique needs. I have spent considerable time of my life creating a neurotic compensation, keeping pain numbed and survive without daring / being able to feel the trauma that an unmet love had caused. Fortunately, my initial lack of love was not total and, despite an emotionally stunted mother and a nasty deforming birth process, I got some compensation. Eg I was privileged to be breast fed for more than 2 years, and I got my mothers specific attention for nearly 60 years.

For several years, I have helped by, primarily, Primal Therapy, slowly been able to demystify my epilepsy and learned to understand, feel and relive the pain behind my neuroses and my struggle, which had its roots in the lack of love. Since then I have aimed much of my life at changing habits, which meant replacing the habits developed to produce anesthetics (neurotic, endocrine and pharmaceutical) to the pain that the lack of love creates.

When I had lived enough pain, and the internal pressure (including the vital signs) normalized so grew the courage being myself and mainly satiesfy my real needs. Two noteworthy examples of this are my daughter and my friend Eva from adolescence. My daughter’s life was founded during my most intense primal-therapy period many years ago when she with my support could choose to define her existence after essentially her own needs and circumstances, and not after my and other’s neurotic needs, which would have meant to fulfill what I / we had failed.

After the pressure in the “pain-chamber” eased during 30 years, I contacted last year a woman Eva. We had during our later teens created lasting impressions. These memories had for 53 years been repressed like “underground oxytocin sources” in my / her subconscious. The year which has passed since we resumed the relationship has been a confirmation of both the positive and the negative forces operating in our subconscious. The good thing is that time has not erased the original positive feelings. However, it was also a testament of the flipside of the coin / the biology of what happened during all the years when repressed pain replaced love.

When I contacted my friend Eva, I had no intention engaging in Primal Therapy. Now it happens, however, as a natural process in order to be free without limiting inhibitions. 

Love is feeling.

Jan Johnsson

How well can I live?

   

Janov's Reflections on the Human Condition

How Long Will I Live?

             

My comment:

How well can I live?

It was necessary to understand my terror / epilepsy. To relive and to feel the wordless trauma of not being able getting out and having been cheated to struggle during two days in the wrong direction only to be turned around and eventually be sucked out as a strangled breech has been a physical, mental and neurological privilege. However, the documented demystification took years to relive, step by step, because of the tremendous magnitude of imprinted horror and pain that the fight, for life and death (equal to my subsequent epilepsy), had established.

How could I choose to live through all that pain? The reason can be summarized in the deep satisfaction it meant to finally understand knowing the importance of my real needs and to get rid of / dissolve a degrading neurotic behavior. Through continuous added small positive improvements, I could also brake the trend of over taxation of my organs.

Your question “How long will I live” has to a limited degree occupied me. My dominating returning issue has been “How well can I live?”. My priority of quality of life is the finest and most significant consequence that the Primal Therapy has had on my attitude to life. Primal Therapy, as my Operating System, has founded a literal feeling of growing younger and to resetting my biologic clock with the help of my different physical and diet applications.(What matters is to focus.)

Having experienced Art Janov’s “Evolution in Reverse”, during 40 years, has, step by step, given me an opportunity to relive life distorting pain. Imprinted, repressed pain creates depression, anxiety, neuroses, which includes shortened telomeres and is an vital piece in the puzzle of human aging, cancer and stem cells. The Primal Principle leaves a decisive answer / Frame of Reference to the question WHY certain telomeres shorten. Two Nobel Laureates show without corresponding reference that these telomeres shorten.

Focusing on telomeres Elizabeth Blackburn and Jack Szostak received the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The “Nobel Prize.org” issued a press release with the following final conclusion: “The award of the Nobel Prize recognizes the discovery of a fundamental mechanism in the cell, a discovery that has stimulated the development of new therapeutic strategies”.

I hope my discontent that the innovator of the Primal Principal has not been able to produce convincing research data to be remembered by the Nobel Committee, should not lead to shortened telomeres.

Jan Johnsson

What matters is to focus.

JANOVS REFLECTIONS:
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2012   What Really Counts in Our Development   
(Click to access!)

My comments:

What matters is to focus. 

When I read “What Really Counts” in your latest Reflection I enjoy the first paragraphs that describe how a fully feeling experience is shaped as we relive painful events from our childhood, which have become imprinted in our systems and caused depression, panic, anxiety and many other symptoms that made our lives miserable. In your typical simple, natural way you describe the ingenious principles of Primal Therapy. These principles, applied correctly and with neutral guidance allows us to drain the pain out of our subconscious archives, live them in the present and integrate them and liberate us from being controlled by our pain-propelled neuroses. 

In the treatments and therapies which I have combined, Primal Therapy has been my “Operating System”. Complementary treatments such as physical integration, diets, etc., have been my “applications” that work in cooperation with my PT/OS. Sometimes the “applications” stimulate the PT/OS but as a rule, no permanent cure occur unless the OS/PT lead to that all levels (3rd, 2nd and 1st lines) in the brain beeing involved.

If I had not started this process 40 years ago, I had probably been dead today, either by committing suicide, had a stroke, heart attack or an asthma attack. Slowly - as I could feel / integrate repressed pain - my life slid over from being controlled by neurotic / unreal needs to be driven by real needs. My need for painkillers such as sugar, cigarettes, work, medication was reduced gradually as my immune system and my vital signs improved eventually and I was free from constant allergy and anxiety / suicide attacks.

You bring up the harm being caused to our physical systems later in life and you mention eg heart problems and cancer being two of humanity’s most common diseases. You describe the first line damages as heavy and deleterious creating an early vulnerbility which, however, only become apparent a few decades later and that also could be the beginning of the development of cancer.

You present, to my surprise, plans to start cancer research in order to develop stem cell-like methods to increase a cancer patient’s Natural Killer cells. My astonishment is of course not your ambitious aim of reducing cancer patient’s suffering and develop a more effective treatment with reduced side effects. No, my confusion is that you as innovator of the principles of Primal Therapy give up your focus on developing, to perfection, these important treatment methods, that have repeatedly shown to have beneficial effects on the immune system, in which Natural Killer cells are included.

It is easy to understand that you are tempted to apply for a portion of the ample resources that cancer research gets. However, I had hoped that the research would focus on the use of primal principles, to reach the point where  

it become a public and obvious leader as “operating system” being the first accepted science of psychotherapy. A coordinated cooperation with other methods / “applications” (eg cancer treatement) would be the basis for a healthy and curative life-style that stimulates our organisms to maintain the immun function and Natural Killer cells in good shape. A separate manipulation of NK cells, independent of PT, in my logic, is an additional non-curative, no-long-term symptomatic treatment.

An affordable version of cancer research may be, with Primal Therapy as “Operating System”, to conduct a test together with a serious health institution carrying on diets and fasting to restore overtaxed immune system to cure cancer. Several of these health institutions / spas often reach astounding success and prolong life significantly for many patients, who of neurotic reasons have had a lifestyle that after enough time lead to the development of tumors. In this way, the “emotional archives” can be cleared of unconscious memories and pain (by PT), while a lifestyle is introduced that eliminates toxic substances and enables a human organism to work as it was originally intended to. Here we can speak of a Frame of Reference with good prospects for a curative effekt and a new treatment paradigm.

My ideas have support, admittedly biased, from an academic research and training specialist!

Jan Johnsson

The Connection Between a Verbal Neurosis and a Birth Trauma.

The Connection Between a Verbal Neurosis and a Birth Trauma.

When I wrote about the definition of oxymoron and exemplified by my own neurotic word-games to keep the outside world confused, I was not consiously aware of the degree to which I described one of our most deceptive phenomenas. Interpretation and definition of words and expressions is an insidious phenomenon with results that ranges from to clarify, please and sublimate to trouble, adulterate, confuse and terrorize.

For those who are unsure of their identity and of their role in a context and who become exposed to deliberate verbal confusion / terror, life becomes a painful trauma and we need all the creative goobledegook and definitions from Psychology and Psychiatry to describe the mental states that arise. For those who feel secure (true or false) on their intellectual ability, verbal acrobatics, poetry, bilblical interpretations, litterary brilliance become a both addictive and pleasurable while effective defense against an undefined anxiety / repressed pain.

Until I had understood and experienced The Primal Principles and created a Frame of Reference (which meant that my left brain communicated with my right brain) I controlled, through my intellectual / left brain, my language so that it would provide maximum pain relief. The opportunities and possibilities were limitless. Interpretations of languages, messages, information and emotions etc., have been my main job for most of my life.

The more I have relived/experienced the pain that has been below my neuroses, the more I feel the need to let my expressions, of all kinds, which I produce in the left, intellectual brain, be filtered by the emotional Frame of Reference, my real need, in the right hemisphere. 

If I create too big a difference / confusion between a verbal construction (a message) and a feeling (reality) I risk causing miswires in the brain (connected to my traumatic birth process), which then react with (overload / leaky gates) hallucinations and sizures. It might sound complicated but the context is very simple! (If You want to know more, go to: What Really Counts in Our Development!)

Jan Johnsson

PS

Looking for an antonym to neurosis I found, among others: Balance, sanity, liking and LOVE!

There is a difference between Right Brain Scientist and Military Intelligence!

There is a difference between Right Brain Scientist and Military Intelligence!

I hope that I’m not cutting the oxygen supply to any (fish-) brain (left or right) when I bring up my hang up of Art’s use of the word oxymoron.

The use of oxymorons is a use of words diverging from its usual meaning. Figures of speech often provide emphasis, freshness of expression, or clarity. However, clarity may also suffer from their use as they introduce an ambiguity between literal and figurative interpretation. Our language is full of oxymorons; we have many hundreds of them, and they often make the language colorful but biased. A few examples: Clever fool, common sense, diet ice cream, eternal life, free love, fuzzy logic, military intelligence, healthy competition, just war, mini jumbo, open secret, objective morality, poor intelligence, sure bet, white lie etc., etc..

A left-brain scientist who cannot objectively supply an untrammeled frame of reference that is to me a contradiction, or if you want an oxymoron. A right- brain scientist must also have a left brain, how could he otherwise have been a scientist? Objectively seen he is no oxymoron. He is a scientist in touch with reality with a frame of reference.

I always liked the use of oxymorons and for many years I played with them in a neurotic game, in which it was hard to catch me. I could slip around and distort the sentence a bit (or just enough) if I was under pressure. I became shockingly aware of this fact at a Primal Retreat, in the early 80ies, in Chantilly, France. A man from a different culture (Kuwait) suddenly during a meeting yelled at me: “Jan, stop your way of communicating with words of contradictory meaning; I never know if you are happy or sad, or if you mean this or that.” He had disclosed me, and I knew he was right. He put his finger on one of my neurotic defense mechanisms. 30 years later, I’m still good at verbal game playing, but I am at least aware there is anxiety and pain underneath.

Jan Johnsson

To miss a Frame of Reference can that cause a Global Bubble?

Janov's Reflections on the Human Condition (Click to access!)

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2012

Why We Need a Frame of Reference

My comment:

To miss a Frame of Reference can that cause a Global Bubble?

After more than FIVE decades I have reestablished contact with a woman I liked as a young man. She also liked me, but nevertheless, we went through life, during these decades with our respective memories of each other repressed. Eva went straight from where we grew up (an agricultural university) into a university career as researcher, doctor and department head of chemistry focusing on drug research. She made a successful career and followed in the footsteps of her father and grandfather who both were heads of departments and professors. Eva formed her own family, had two children and lived throughout her career less than 20 miles from the place where she / we grew up.

For several reasons, mainly ADHD-like symptoms, I chose another path through life. An exiting journey that was full of problem-solving and applying new methods and new knowledge in different departments in different companies in different countries, so for me, it became more applied than theoretical chemistry and far from our childhood environment. Looking superficially at or CVs, our personalities seem to  be diametrically different. Looking at it a little deeper; however, you discover that I, for 50 years, in parallel with my daily struggle as a change consultant,  worked with an uninterrupted “research” to find out WHY I had epilepsy.

Since we resumed contact a year ago Eva has read my book and been fascinated by the Primal Therapy principles and of course of its curly Arthur and his Reflections. She is fascinated and sees both in herself, in her surroundings and in her previous professional environment (university/research) how far they often are from asking for / looking for the WHY?, behind all the symptoms, that we suffer from. Instead, the research creates the means to repress the reasons behind the symptoms. Eva often talks about all the academic careerists who collect papers /qualifications to take the next step in their career. This group is to a great extent “unrelated to / out of touch with a larger picture” and is trapped in the academic career game and / or their clients (which contribute research funding; for example, the pharmaceutical industry) interests and preferences.

Having experienced the truth that pain caused by lack of love, attention, need satisfaction and other similar or worse traumas (both before and after birth) which lead to repressed pain causing an endless number of symptoms is like having received entry into a new and different life. To be allowed to share my experiences with a qualified friend gives further satisfaction, however, it has also a tendency to become worrying being able to interpret the general neurotic behavior and predict how it results in bubbles that eventually will burst. In the following article: “The University Has No Clothes” (http://nymag.com/news/features/college-education-2011-5/)  they have identified a third global bubble in Higher Education after the Dot-Com-Bubble Burst and the Housing-Market-Crash of 2007. 

All these neurotic bubbles have been about missing a “Frame of Reference”. We, on all levels, live in a world full of people that resist repressed pain created by lack of love and recognition. We kill our pain with drugs and neurosis asking for “higher returns” than we are meant for. Like a Ponzi Scheme, we are destined to collapse because our overtaxation of the organism are taller than evolution took height for. Global super bubbles crash now and then, and we can daily witness how individual bubbles burst when overtaxed organisms have crossed the line for a healthy life. That will, of course, unfortunately lead to that a Health Care Bubble, which we globally are building up to, will burst.

We certainly need more imagination and a Frame of Reference!

Jan Johnsson

Replies

Arthur JanovNovember 17, 2012 10:45 AM
Jan: I agree, of course. Good points about the bubble. art