You make me feel intelligent!

Janov's Reflections    On the Diagnostic Manual in Psychiatry   (Part 2/3)  (Click to access!)

My comment:

You make me feel intelligent!

The more I read about psychiatry and the old, still dominating paradigm, the  happier I am that I developed epilepsy, which, how strange it may seem, kept me basically a feeling person, even though I during 40 years was being chemically lobotomized. What I read from your Reflections (clearer than ever) I understand and recognize as my truth. When I realize that it is the only true and possible way, I feel a tremendous relief. 

Being trapped in the uterus with my head, face, mouth and body squeezed together to the utmost under unbearable pain, which eventually turned into seizures, can be used as a metaphor to explain how I felt during the years when I tried to study psychology. I just felt epileptic and stupid when I tried hammering useless skills into my head. My progress did not materialize, and I felt  depressed and unreal. To become a Primal Therapist, I needed to humiliate myself and to get a degree in accordance with the old but still reigning psychiatric paradigm. I could not manage that, my pain was too real and big.

So even though Art Janov’s PT saved my life, and I could understand the underlying causes of why I was cured, I had no degree to become a Primal Therapist. I was too smart to believe in the old paradigm, but I was not, officially, cunning enough to become a Primal Therapist. I had adopted a therapy, that suited my personality, which cured me, but I could not adopt to the necessary theories which are officially required to become authorized like those who can absorb knowledge for a cognitive degree even though they later turn out impotent and dangerous.

We need someone who can offer a creative solution to that, someone who can take the stand as Columbus finally to make the egg stand. Someone needs gently to tap the egg to make it stand. Once the feat has been done, anyone will know how to do it!!!

Jan Johnsson