To be dethroned

To be dethroned  (Example no. 1 of outstanding memories)

“The Dethroned Prince” (“El Principe Detronizado”), is a book of the Spanish author Miguel Delibes. He gets into the skin of a four year old boy and tries his world with ingenuity, simplicity and fantasy. The family, which Delibes masterfully paints, consists of a professional, working father and a home-reaching mother who together had a traditional / unequal and correct relationship. The boy Quico, seeks and is continuously receiving everyone’s attention. As a natural consequence, he gets used to dominate and be noticed until the family was extended with a baby girl. The sister, constantly cheerful and happy, took quickly, and seemingly undramatic, the lead role and Quico saw himself dethroned. 

Delibes’s narrative, with few deviations, could have been my own story. I was 3 years old when my sister was born. I was first born and eagerly awaited according to the, slightly formal, suitor letter, which my father wrote to my mother a few years before my birth. My parents were young, had lots of friends and family, whom they socialized with. Even if World War II was going on, the situation in the neutral Sweden seemed relatively “safe”. 

For someone, who is inexperienced in the emotional processes, it may sound contradictory that the advent of a sister July, 1943, would show up as a larger threat for my future, emotional, security than the threatening war around the borders of our country. A circumstance that was not changed by the fact that a B-17 Flying Fortress crashed quite near our home.

During decades, my agonizing jealousy and my obsession with curly people were propelled by anxiety neuroses. They had their roots in my being dethroned and in my nasty birth process. Anxiety provoking stabs from my inhibited environment, which was poor on emotions and touch, easily started these painful reactions. 

Many years later I was seduced by the cover picture of a book by a curly shrink in Santa Monica. The “Primal Scream”, had in addition to its cover art, also a revolutionary content, and I intuitively knew it would bring me closer to a demystification of my stigma. So in April 1978, I went through three weeks of Primal Therapy in LA and I had my first primal experiences.  I had a feeling / flashback and saw, how my sister (with blond curly hair) sat on my father's lap and I found myself standing heartbroken, pushed to the floor. In my sister’s early teens, her hair color turned very dark from being blonde and curly, which I had forgotten / repressed. Eventually I could feel / understand why I, for decades, had been obsessed with people / girls with blond curly hair, and why I had been neurotically jealous when my position with someone was threatened. Over the years, I intended, often with success, to impress my father with blond, curly fiancees to get his attention and avoid my feelings of inferiority / jealousy.

I needed many occasions, when I have “laid back and felt the stab of anxiety”, to realize that my picture of my life prior to Primal Therapy was not true. The picture of my happy childhood was, in fact, a fake in order not to feel the pain. A dramatic birth, lack of physical contact and conditional love were the factors which created my neurotic life pattern. By going against the current and apply the Primal Principles, I have painstakingly regained much of my original self. It has been a kind of modern, short term “archeology”. Archeology is defined as the study of human activity in the past!

Jan Johnsson