Truth-oriented fantasy, vision and reality.

A major lifelong satisfaction in my life has been my imagination and my ability to be enthusiastic, when a mental spark - in terms of a thought or idea - hits or create a neuron cluster in my brain. To a degree, it has been both my source of personal growth and survival.

One of my favorite habits over a lifetime has been, mind games, mental exercises, which I designed to improve my functioning and personality. I picked a counterparty and a topic due to my mood, need and circumstances. The debate, a veritable psycho and sociodrama, is guided by an actual occurrence or dilemma / problem, and it lasts for 40-60 minutes, which today is the equivalent of what it takes to walk my dog, Puskas. It is/was a very intense arguing pro contra about whatever shortcoming I might have. With a rough estimate, I have probably been through more than 10.000 such games/debates in my life...

When I pick my counterpart, I feel no limitations. I often imagen somebody, who has an important , actual, impact on my life, and whom I in most cases have met. I let the opponent criticize me, and I dig deep into myself to find and test a variety of answers, defenses and explications, which trigger me. My 40-60 minute walks feel like nothing, and I often come home with a new or modified point of view. It has been an excellent, inexpensive way to consult experts and take them through a rough walk while seeing things from another angle. 

The accumulated number of counterparts in my mind games is immense. Just to mention one, who have had a decisive influence on my life, I will highlight Art Janov, with whom I met a few times over the years. During my walks and mind games, we have had many animated discussions regarding therapy, feelings, neurosis, behavior, epilepsy, etc. He has not always been nice to me and vice versa I have told him my honest opinion a number of times..... and he responded... and so on. With knowledge, suggestions and ideas from hes books, in combination with our debates during my mind games, I have had private sessions for a tax-free fortune...

When I was a young lad, I could imagine myself out of boredom and out of my internal prison of pain. Sometimes I could live myself into the role of an adult or an actor, to be able, in the daydream, to charm the world or the surroundings - not seldom represented by beautiful women and girls - to fit into my needs. When I was young, the needs were numerous and frequent. However, since my reality also worked, I was fortunately not an introvert dreamer. The fact that I accepted reality meant that I was never bored because the imagination was at hand, both as a transient experience and a learning exercise when I on and off failed.

Today, when I’m cured and out of my internal prison, and my pain is virtually eliminated I don’t need to fantasize. My fantasy has turned more into mind games about my actual real situation.  But, reflections of past times remain and if circumstances turn tedious, I can get the urge to start arranging for a different reality. These reflexes put me on the alert. They include all the attributes of vanity and a mental as well as a physical preparation to activate my extensive range of subtle seduction tools. My old, often neurotically propelled, pattern; “fantasy, vision and reality” is deeply engraved in my soul and body. Nowadays, it has not the same power over me, so I can laugh at myself and understand how impossible situations could arise, which had nothing to do with my real needs.

A neurotic is suffering, often unconsciously, because he is the slave of a pattern which continuosly produces anesthetics so that he does not feel anxiety and repressed pain. High blood pressure, elevated heart rate and other physiological wear and tear imperfections are discretely taken care of. The research and the pharmaceutical industry have fueled their “dreams and visions” with eager dollar allocations to respond to the general insatiable need for painkillers. Their premium to kill anxiety and pain has grown exponentially. They have, based on human shortcomings, so far got  record profits and capital gains, which has given them dictatorial power in the economic, political and medical fields. Does anybody believe they need Primal Therapy?

Unfortunately, it is not our long term well-being, which determines how the stock market reacts and how the business cycles in the world develop. No, the patent-controlled profit margins in for example the pharmaceutical industry has to a large extent the upper hand. The pharmaceutic industry, in its ambition to survive, could never ask for solutions, which give us a final cure, and they are up for trouble when their lucrative patens start to expire. We can expect shady transactions, in the name of democracy, to take place between the pharmaceutical industry and the politicians soon. 

The politicians, who are the slaves and manipulators of the business cycles, make promises and buy votes according to the theoretical economic ability of their countries. When the economic realities, as in Greece, for many years have not been present, then they have borrowed money to pay pensions, social security and structural investments like high-speed trains, airports and modernist museums, etc. When the bubbles burst, financial institutions are  collapsing and reality is catching up, as it at present is in the western part of the world, no calls, therapies or religions will come up with a solution. Now is the time for a new but true “Fantasy, vision and reality”! 

There exist of course always a risk to confuse reality and fantasy. Especially if the fantasy world is strong and a false reality successfully is created. Such a politically organized fake, in the sense that democracy, justice and quality of life are at stake for a whole population, has been the case during 15-20 years in countries like Greece and in other parts of the “democratic” world.

A healthy imagination will turn into a vision before leading to an innovation and / or a creative change. The border between fantasy and vision is perhaps even more elusive and dynamic than the corresponding gap between vision and reality.  The entire process from imagination, through the vision into reality is a part of evolution and is the tip of the iceberg of the total of fantasies that reach the stage of reality. Those are the ones which determine our survival in different contexts. Only in order to later be subjected to further screening and sorting in the deterministic evolutionary process.

My imagination to understand, “enter” and survive my epilepsy became a vision when I had read Art Janov’s “The Primal Scream”. The vision eventually became a reality as I could combine my ability to feel and understand the principles as Primal Therapy gradually developed. Besides, I also learned to be prepared, with new insights, to make the necessary changes in the conditions of my life that made me a prisoner of my pain. During the 40 years the journey has lasted I have gradually seen a clear parallel between my personal development, my demystification of my epilepsy and the evolution of the Primal Theory. Art Janov was the genius and guide who showed the way with the help of which I made a vision of my thoughts, which often became realities and primals.

The result can best be described as follows: My life today is my original imagination and vision gradually turned into reality. I have acquired an ability to achieve a state that is unobstructed by pain and defenses. This makes it possible to feel, to relieve the historical imprints and constrictions of wordless physical and mental pain. These feelings were originally too overwhelming and intimidating for my unborn fragile system. When the pain has been felt often enough, then the established defenses, which the birth trauma established in order for survival, dissolve. There is simply no longer a need for these defense mechanisms. 

Everything, I’ve described about my reality, is extremely well documented in Art Janov’s literature, and it is easy to take in from both an emotional and intellectual point of view. The principle of evolution in reverse is working. In Dr. Janov’s literatur there is an unparalleled insight and documentation of the negative effects on the fetus due to lack of love and due to the consequences of a mother living a physiologically and mentally unhealthy life, smoking, using alcohol, drugs, crazy diets not to mention the consequences of a bad relationship with a potential spouse. Unfortunately, Primal Therapy as a practical therapy has been unable to grow and develop and become everyone’s property. This is mainly due to a number of parameters, which requires substantial resources of the patients, which often cannot be met.

Art Janov has lately repeatedly said: “I’m only the messenger. Now it is up to you!” I cannot free myself from the feeling that this message can be interpreted as a resignation. Art has probably drawn his consequences. The original message of The Primal Therapy was based on a cocky, but democratic attitude that we can feel and remember the repressed pain, by evolution in reverse. This attitude has now faded down to a more cautious, risk-free position; That a fetus exposed to risks of genetic modifications and repressed pain, which later may result in a variety of health hazards and shortened life. 

I have read Art’s many unique and well-written books over the years as a guide into my own pain to find out why it has developed, so that I eventually could relive and dissolve it. The books are of course valuable when just interpreted as a sound warning about what happens if loveless ness, anxiety and pain analgesic agents and inappropriate behavior control the surroundings and the world of the fetus. However, in the future if we only have access to the books and no real therapy the vision to cure depression, phobias, panic and a host of other symptoms will be very restricted.

A primal friend claimed recently that my worries, about Art Janov's "resignation", was Art's way to give in to reality. I allow myself with 40 years of sensational experiences to look at it as a resignation from a revolutionary therapy vision. To be able to cure those who have been victims of injustice and wrongdoing during their life before birth. It is not a question of right or wrong. It is a question of letting a vision become a reality. The need for a cure will be eternal.

I will not go so far that I think everyone, who, for example has epilepsy of any type, can be cured. Nor will I pretend that anyone with depression or phobias can be helped. Nevertheless, if their ambitious fantasies and visions with the help of Primal Therapy do improve their reality, I will not be surprised.

Jan Johnsson