Quick Fix vs. Therapy Forever

Janov’s Reflections On More Therapeutic Nonsense

http://cigognenews.blogspot.com.es/2012/05/on-more-therapeutic-nonsense.html 

Quick Fix vs.Therapy Forever

Having read Jonathan Alperts article in the NY Times and your Reflections on the same, I have as an observer and longtime patient a few opinions. First, I’m not surprised at all of Alperts populist opinions. They are born of pure survival needs of a cocky psychologist who live on those lying on his costly couch.

From a growing number of sources (friends, acquaintances, therapists), I have long heard a growing dissatisfaction with the impact most psychologists have on their patients. Why? They do very seldom see any curative effects on the therapy treatments, on the contrary, they are worried about the secondary and habit creating effects that the medications, the psychologists prescribe, have. Hence there is no reason to doubt Alperts comment: “Ineffective therapy is disturbingly common”. However, since many patients doubt the cognitive psychologist corps, that Alpert is a representative of, one of his marketing tactics is to change the treatments, “which goes on forever” by asking his future patients to “ask fearless: change your life in 28 days”...

40 years ago, I believed in a “quick-fix-promise” which would take 4 months. Please note that this was the Primal Therapy in which you were allowed/asked to feel your pain, in contary to Alperts “28 day promise”. However, together we learned that 4 months was hardly enough basically to understand, what had taken 40 years to repress, that might need years to cure. 

Does that sound as another therapy forever? Maybe, but there is a huge, radically positive difference. In Primal Therapy, you feel gradually, relived, you feel real and you understand why you feel the way you feel and you feel that there is a hope and eventually you don’t need prescriptions of painkillers. That to me is to be cured.

The cognitive therapy, unlike Primal Therapy/Evolution In Reverse, is pushing your pain further down. You will never know, understand what originally caused your anxiety and neuroses.This fact / shortcoming will blur your ability to connect your feeling and intellectual brain. Propelled by pain and depression much of your life will be turned into perpetual neurotic games/life patterns to satisfy unreal needs.

How can I be so sure of my claim? Because, over 40 years (during which I came and went with Art’s blessings, and so I could combine a successful career with Primal Therapy) I have felt, relived a horrific birth, which created epileptic seizures, neurotic behaviors. Thanks to this combination of job and therapy I have fysically and mentally slowly become normal. Evidence? I think that my vital signs at age 72 and my ability to communicate my experiences are adequate evidence for most.

Jan Johnsson


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/22/opinion/sunday/in-therapy-forever-enough-already.html