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Janov's Reflections on the Human Condition (Click to access!)
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
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Arthur JanovNovember 17, 2012 10:45 AMJan: I agree, of course. Good points about the bubble. art
