Ask Neuroscience what it can do for you!

ART JANOV: Having been, for 47 years, our extended arm of a coordinated Neuroscience; Do not ask what you can do for Neroscience, but ask Neuroscience what it can do for you!

The title is a parody and stylish imitation of JFK’s, one of the probably most painfilld presidents of modern times, presidential inaugural speech, January 20, 1961. Few statements have stayed longer in my mind. It was a skilful, tactical, statement of a bright, picturesque, intellectual, whose family and life have fascinated us during generations by reasons, often, being doubtful. 

Today “we” no longer speak of citizens, employees (workers and clerks), Human Resources (they are all “future antiques”) but a new approach is finding its way. The future generations will be asking to be given the opportunity to become PARTNERS in a new civic organism. While most of us are stuck in the “future antiques”, which we started to doubt, a host of American, Austrailian, and European free spirits are growing new successful socio-economic businesses (in both low and high tec), more adjusted to our mental and physical resources and less inhibitory.

I’m reading and being both mentally and physically horrified -  though at the same time helped to understand the primal principles -  by the findings of critical scientists about the extremely serious general situation in the mental health sector.  Although the general situation for middle-age and older patients is regrettable, the overwhelming discloser is that millions of young people are  casually being categorised according to APA’s DSM  (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual). 

A growing number of scientists in the ranks of the intellectually dominated Neuroscience do no longer cope to stand by and watch how our youngsters are going through a long-term treatmeant with a high risk of a longterm predictable distorted mind, and often worse. Even within the scientific galaxy’s often “water proof” ranks, there are obviously “leaky gates”. Those are the emotionally aware scientists who do not want, the often conditional, help  from the Pharmaceutical Industry, but backed by non-profit institutions bring their horrendous findings to those who want to find and read about them. They are out there!

"My fellow citizens of the world, ask what America will do for you, and what we together can do for the freedom of man"

Jan Johnsson

The Moment of Truth for The Primal Principal

The Moment of Truth for The Primal Principal

My comments to an acquaintance who wishes The Primal Therapy to be a fundamental right for all, not just a random fluke for the few. 

Hi,

Much of what has taken place in psychology and psychiatry during the last 60-70 years has, naturally, been an extended “trial and error” operation. From the introduction of chlorpromazine, as a quick fix and economic surrogate, for the masses, of Freud’s psychoanalysis, was discovered (by chance) after WWII, those responsible for mental treatment thought that they finally had a truly revolutionary medicine. Their, and their patients’s, joy was relatively short-lived because, after a few years, it was concluded that the side effects often were worse than the original symptoms. Today, we can, after a number of short-term successes, state that the field of antipsychotics and of psychotherapies, both have failed as a longterm cure. Although epigenetic research is making great progress, it is still a far step away to produce accurate “magic bullets” that combined with dynamic psychotherapy may increase the proportion of patients who are cured of neurotic anxiety disorders caused by repressed traumatic pain.

Since I got the opportunity, with a holistic support, go through the hell that my birth trauma meant, throwing addictive medicine away, and during a few years re-living epilepsy, pain and anxiety, I understand your anger that an effective and coordinated assistance isn’t available for everyone. But unfortunately, that’s how it looks. Neither the pharmaceutical industry nor the psychotherapy has found a formula for correcting the epidemic of the ravaging mental problems. The knowledge, the resources, and the organization of society are not developed to give a curative treatment adjusted to each person’s individual needs.

We were not given the right to choose our parents, but the same can our kids say. When do we start and where do we stop? In a democracy we, as adults, are the “society and its institutions”. No one can solve all the problems alone.  I doubt your ideas about using lawsuits to propel the solutions and resources, and it is nothing that I want, actively, to participate in. To, on a broad front, generally accuse institutions, which have been in good faith and who is stuck in an old outdated paradigm, will only lead to further complications and wasted resources.

Then it is better trying constructively to influence the person who has a brilliant idea, like the primal principle. Janov’s invention, on a number of occasions, has proven to contribute to that a patient has been cured. Janov, however, is a seasoned veteran and do not want to (or cannot), of unexplained causes, disclose why many people have failed in his primal treatment or explain the whole story why some patients succeeded.

A use of the primal principle ought to be a natural corrective element in a healthy lifestyle. This implies that we live for our children, care for them and ourselves without over-taxing our own body and mind or the resources of the environment. The epidemic in, for example, the mental health context is related to that we have lost the sensible judgement of what is reasonable from different standpoints like standard of living, lifestyles, nutrition and the care of our mental and physical resources.

Robert Whitaker, in his book “Anatomy of an Epidemic”, shows among other things, with research, investigations and patient interviews how temporary medical achievements after a few yeas began to create ominous information about serious side effects. This was controversial information because these medications, led by Chlorpromazine, had contributed (accelerated by financial government incentives) rather quickly to drain the old mental hospitals on patients.

After a number of decades, and a further number of famous short-term magical medicines, a general picture has emerged showing that the many addictive and degenerative sides of antipsychotic medicine have created a situation extremely hard to handle. During the same time, new patients from early school age, casually diagnosed according to modern psychiatric categorization (i.e. ADD), have been provided with life lasting medications that often cause severe disabling consequences.

In his interesting interviews Whitaker showing how a growing number of individuals, as a last desperate resort, taking themselves out of their addiction of antipsychotic medication. During painful mental and physical suffering they choose to return to their “old self” before neuroleptics were inserted. There are stories of processes similar to the experiences we know from Primal Therapy, however, without the patients having access to Art Janov’s ingenious insights into Evolution in Reverse.

With 60 million patients (only in the US) presently dependent on antipsychotic medication, the future ought to be bright for a revitalized Primal Therapy.

Jan Johnsson

Gambling for a Revolution?

A gambling addiction often begins with the discovery of the electrifying feeling which winning brings. A stunning, comfortable feeling that temporarily makes the gamblers feel good. The gamblers need to stay gamble are increasing afterwards at an accelerating pace and scope. The gamblers want more of that comfortable, painkilling feeling so they continue to bet even when the losses start to repeat themselves. Information “the bank always wins” and that temporary winnings are a signal to stop making bets, does not reach the gamblers’s conscious logic. They do recognize that they aren’t playing for money when they have lost everything.

Although the newspaper press, often influenced by advertising money from the gambling industry, only writes about the winners, when the world is full of losing pathological gambling addicts. They are stuck in the gambling addiction trying to get rid of their mental pain; even if it means losing a fortune, a job, a family and to use illegal funds to complete the Big Win. It is a, of the community, accepted and regulated neurotic business with remarkably few winners and too many humiliated losers.

The first primal, 47 years ago, was a fantastic discovery and a Happening which gave birth to the hope of a new era / a new paradigm of psychotherapy. The subsequent book, “The Primal Scream” became an international bestseller  and spread the hope of a final cure, to those who suffered from anxieties and depressions. Art Janov himself became the star of psychotherapists conducting the, only true, Primal Therapy. His fame grew to an unusual dimension because of the many patients with fortunes, stardom and influence who made their way to him to buy themselves free of their childhood traumas. (The book also tempted unauthorized therapists around the world to conduct mock therapies.)

Dr. Janov became a “Nova” in the galaxy of psychotherapy, located in LA, Hollywood and Malibu Beach. His financial independence and a few legendary successes (especially the one about John Lennon) kept his own pain filled upbringing at bay. Many suffering patients from all over the world betted, in a hope for a quick fix / cure, huge amounts of USD to benefit from The Primal Therapy, performed with internally trained therapists on top of a licensed psychology education.

The patients spent a few weeks, sometimes a few months and in rare cases one to two years, in the serotonin creating daylight, in California. Especially during the first decades of Primal Therapy, the patients spent much of their stay on the beaches of Santa Monica and Venice, which gave most of them a kick that caused them to forget their daily troubles back home while large amounts of money were consumed in the seductive environment and on private sessions in the therapy.

The therapy was not conducted by charitable purposes, and many patients have used tens of thousands of dollars on therapy fees, private sessions and living expenses. Many left LA penniless and went back to the old straitjacket of neurotic behavior with families, jobs, and triggering environments. Many had during therapy treatment opened up their mental defenses without having been able to re-live their deepest pain, and they have many times returned to a difficult fate.

Certainly based on Art Janovs many human qualities and a lovely charisma, he has continued to fascinate and spread, mostly unfulfilled, hopes of a cure among anxious and depressed patients. This fact, he reinforced by, during 47 years, documenting patient stories. Successful elements of his clinical experience, he has, in his writing, skillfully translated into the key scientific advances in Neuroscience.

An official acceptance of The Primal Therapy has neither been achieved in the training of psychology nor in the training of psychotherapy. This has probably been the cause of that the development curve of revenue, patients and therapists for many years has been falling although patients with a dependency on psychoactive pharmaceuticals has risen dramatically to 60 million people only in the US.

In a plan to accelerate the research efforts, in order to accomplish his revolution in Psychotherapy, Art has decided, on gambler mannerisms “to go all in” and risk the resources that he can build. Art introduced his innovation in his 40ies (just above average for a creator of a revolutionary, paradigm busting invention), and it has been a 47 year journey with his ingenious principle without being able to achieve scientific recognition. One can assume that it has been a life for Art that has certainly had much in common with the neurotic stars he treated. A life of discreet wealth and luxury, with the pain from early childhood always lurking or as a companion.

The Primal Principle / Evolution in Reverse demonstrably works. However, it takes time and requires a lot of resources. There is considerable potential that Primal Therapy can cure repressed pain with the right conditions with a proper holistic composition / treatment team, which has co-responsibility for the patient, who is overall responsible.

Jan Johnsson

Is a Neuroscientific coordination possible?

Is a Neuroscientific coordination possible?

The Universe Aspect

A Supernova can be triggered in one or two ways: by the sudden re-ignition of nuclear fusion in a degenerated star; or by the collapse of the core of a massive star. The core of an aging massive star may undergo sudden gravitational collapse, releasing gravitational potential energy that create a supernova explosion. The exploding shock waves from supernova explosions can trigger the formation of new stars.

The Academic / Scientific Aspect

The academic world (“the Galaxy”) with its faculties (the Supernovas”) is populated and manipulated by the intellectual / neurotic stars (the Novas). Individuals, propelled by repressed pain, can develop neuroses and beliefs of epic proportions in their Triune brain. Many of these neurotic individuals achieve stardom and become shining stars like mini Novas in their environment / faculty. 

Like in the Universe a degenerated Supernova (a faculty) explode and create new shining stars (branches). The organizational chart of the 20 major branches (shown below) of modern neuroscience (with all its local superstars, “mini Novas”, battling for resources, awards and power) create together a Galactic “Super-neuroses”; in need of a Primal Super-coordination. Just looking at them can make you primal.

The Lone Individual Aspect

When I had a burn-out in the 90ies, I was working with a team of a neurologist, a psychiatrist, a psychologist and a homeopath + long-distance guidance by Art Janov. The neurologist, the psychiatrist and the homeopath supported (sometimes with fear) my use of the Primal Principal, but they rejoiced my excellent progress! The psychologist shook her head and understood that we could not cooperate; her cognitive methods cracked and she had to retire.

During these years, I had a rough insight into how difficult it is to influence the often bureaucratic, time pressured and symptom-oriented treatment machine around us. Most participants in the health care system are deeply rooted / molded in their academic branch belongings.  You have to be strong to get healthy. I was determined, but without the energy from my belief in the Primal Principals it would not have been possible to overcome a degenerated treatment paradigm.

Jan Johnsson

Branches of Neuroscience:

An Abstract of an Abstract of something Abstract.

Janov's Reflections on the Human Condition

The Origins of Anxiety, Panic and Rage Attacks (Abstract)

 (Click to access!)

My comments:

An Abstract of an Abstract of something Abstract.

Widely in the world of psychotherapy (even among patients who have been treated many years in LA) there exists a lot of uncertainty regarding the practical application of Primal Therapy. So when reading your abstract of your article about “The Origins of Anxiety, Panic and Rage Attacks” (a brief summary / abstract of the essence of your books and reflections) there is a high risk (calculated?) that the interpretation will be: “An abstract of an abstract of something abstract / not applicable or practical”.

With my unique experience, I am not one of those who think that your creation of Evolution in Reverse is something abstract. However, after 40 years of using your primal principals I have learned that it takes more than an ingenious inventor / guide and padded rooms to work our way back into the depth of our triune brain. With the psychotherapeutic expertise that you and your team have and with the varying patient experiences you have gathered over the years, it is difficult to understand that you have not put greater demands on the patient’s ability to implementing the, often long-term, therapy treatment in question. 

You have in an educational and captivating manner described the principles of how early traumatic pain can be re-lived. You have consistently during 47 years of clinical experimentation, using patients’s narratives and your own made observations, “limited” your books and articles to the processes that our organisms undergo, from the fetal stage onwards, in the short and long term, when exposed to trauma and excessive pain. When you have deviated from this model, it has been to criticize the obvious flaws in the current psychotherapeutic paradigm.

For those who are not, like the famous avant-garde artist Raphael Ortiz who once upon a time indirectly provoked the first primal, obsessed with desire and ability to experiment, and find their way into your therapy to re-live their pain, and who cannot, long term, organize their lives career-wise, financially and family / socially, it seems your treatment, to be successful, must be offered to a limited number of “lucky” victims of extremely early traumatic experiences.

It is remarkable that, during 47, years, you have not developed / refined and documented a practically applicable method to channel patients, in and out, from the therapy, considering the potential that PT has to cure people of repressed pain. Apparently, the patient needs collided with your scientific ambitions. Fortunately you are trying to convince, a, hopefully, growing part of the future parents about the requirements, for unconditional love and care, required, for a child, to be optimally healthy and uninhibited.  

The world is screaming for a serious “Primal Therapy for “Dummies””...

Jan Johnsson

Arthur JanovApril 12, 2013 at 1:55 PM


I am not sure I get it. What do you want us to do?
I do not understand your last paragraph. art

My comment:

What do you want us to do? Art

It is such a vast and complex issue! It brought up birth feelings this morning when I first felt helpless and thought that I wouldn’t make it; to come up with an answer. My father used to ask me “what do you want me to do”, when he did’nt get my suggestions. However, after having laid back and felt the stab of anxiety, I will now answer after my best ability.

The last couple of days I have read your article "The Origins of Anxiety, Panic and Rage Attacks" a couple of times. It made me happy but also a little sad. The dominating positive aspect, that gave me pleasure, was that you, in one pice, brought together all the psychological, biologic and therapeutic knowhow, giving examples, about the nature of mental /physical pain and how it directed by evolution is distorting our entire lives, back and forth, in our Triune brain and in our entire organism. Since I have lived / experienced my pain and been guided by you and the primal principle, the reading felt like a morning swim in my favorite lake. The content has become part of me.

Your article is in essence your contribution to the medical and psychotherapeutic world how pain caused by lack of love and touch, maltreatment, abuse and negligence is rooted and, over time, spread in our entire organisms if not relived and felt.

The negative part of your article is what is missing. Your experience over 47 years does not include a research / analysis about;

What made your therapy work for those who were successfully cured, taking into consideration everything of importance, not just what took place in the Primal Center / Institute?

Why did a large number of patients fail, compared to those being considered successful?

To make a research about the reasons for success and failure based on 47 years of experience might erase a number of question marks both among patients and psychotherapeutic therapists and provide an answer to why the principle of Evolution in Reverse is not spreading like wildfire around a world full of anxiety / pain propelled sufferers.

Given enough lead time I could go on elaborating my own vison how I think that a Primal Treatment Center should be organized, which I sometimes have indicated in my blogs. My interpretation of your shortcomings has a double ambition; to motivate you and / or inspire some young, dynamic and creative inventor / primal person who is willing to try to apply your vital principals on a wider audience.

I still believe that much of my own experience which meant a combination of Rolfing, career counseling, diet, physical activities and a selective choice of my social environment could enrich a future profile of a new even more responsible treatment center then up till now.

Jan Johnsson

PS

What is it in the last paragraph of my previous comments, in particular, that you don’t understand?

PaulApril 13, 2013 at 2:01 AM

Hi,
I sense I understand very well what Jan is saying. Let me try to re-phrase, first of all the following is obvious to me, but to others maybe not:

Firstly, there are those who make a commitment in life 'to help others'.
I'm sure it is part of the way our history interacts with our social relationships. It may just be a tendency to help old ladies across the road or it may be a full blown international conviction.

Secondly the helper is faced with the actual technical difficulties of the undertaking. After a while the 'aim to help' and the technical problem part company. . . You could say it's a combination of a 2nd line feeling (wishing to help) trying to connect with a 3rd line perception (the scientific facts).

-"Apparently, the patient needs collided with your scientific ambitions"-.

Real 'help' can only be instrumented / measured scientifically if it is to become a universal 'help'. One would not set up a research laboratory every time just to Primal for oneself, would one? When people break down and cry deeply they don't necessarily realise the significance of the scientific facts nor the tremendous potential. . . . . .

Once the helper finds a tally between his emotional desire and the scientific facts he is in an unenviable position of being "THE CONNECTION" incarnate. The connection between his 2nd line limbic desire (to help others) and the 3rd line scientific facts.

If there were a "connection" already existing in society; if there were not a repressed split in the first place then there would not be this conundrum. So, the problem for people like Art (he is not alone) is that as long as they are alive (and kicking) they are both the 'connection' and the 'conundrum'. Quite likely the helper is also (but only by default) the main obstacle to the wider spreading of the new comprehension.

This would explain why some of (not all) Art's books are at the moment a tad mixed up (in my and other's opinion). . . I mean no offence but Art is trying to join up a circle, or do I mean cycle? In his books he is trying to write about emotional connection with scientific facts and he the author is the connection and the conundrum.

Hence a need for 'Primal Therapy for "Dummies" '...

As Art keeps on saying, he doesn't go on for ever and also on his blog he makes essays about the theories and we are the ones to round them out.

I imagine The Legacy Program will 'set up' the future of 'Primal for Dummies'. I don't doubt that this blog is part of the future too.

Paul G.

History is Repeating Itself

Janov's Reflections on the Human Condition

On Anorexia Nervosa

 (Click to access!)

My comment:

History is Repeating Itself

Mark Twain wrote: “It is not worth while to try to keep history from repeating itself, for man’s character will always make the preventing of the repetitions impossible”.

When I read about the “Deep Brain Stimulation” (DSB) experiments by neurologists in Toronto with patients with chronic Anorexia Nervosa and then about how you guided a patient into her repressed pain and out of her anorexia,  you first awoke my memory of the scaring history of surgical lobotomy followed by a number of specific questions regarding Primal Therapy and research.

I have in an article (http://epilepticjourney.blogspot.com.es/2012/05/after-surgical-lobotomy-incapacitation.html) accounted for that incapacitation, apathy and irresponsibility are the rule rather than the exception in surgical lobotomy. In 1949, when I was very young, and still an “undetected ADD-talent”, the Nobel price was given to António Eges Moniz. He developed a lobotomy technology that would prove disastrous. It has been one of the most criticized prices ever and has been considered a severe stain on the Nobel Committee’s judgment.

The neurosurgeons’s (hopefully) benevolent technical expertise is obviously contrary to research in epigenetics. Epigenetics is a close ally to Primal Therapy trying to find explanations about how evolution as a natural protection is handling traumatic experiences of mental/physical pain. It can thus be unwise to drill in insufficiently known parts of the brain without taking into account the multifaceted processes between the different layers of the  brain.

When I read your candid and touching, and easily understood story about how you cured an anorexic patient by guiding her to relive the pain and the abuse that caused her symptoms, I wonder: 

Why do the Primal Center, in practice, work as a closed institution?? Why do not all your successful treatments spread like wildfire among physicians, scientists, patients, donors, research agencies not to forget politicians, etc., etc.? Cured anorexics, epileptics, mentally ill people, etc., etc., are living, breathing proof.

What is missing? What fears and inabilities are holding back / have held you back from getting the message out about the primal principle as the missing step in the psychotherapy revolution that Freud once started? To research around telomeres, to achieve 120 years of age is fascinating, but to save lives here and now is more urgent!

Only to get started and to learn to understand the primal principle may be the beginning of an exciting life story even if cure takes time and costs money.

Jan Johnsson

Arthur JanovApril 10, 2013 at 1:26 AM

Jan: We had a major meeting yesterday with a brain scientist to kick off our research which will 
be world shaking. We need funds to pay him and a biologist to carry out the work. Dr. Justin Feinstein is on board to begin work. I wrote already on the work in general, but in the next few weeks we will expand our plans and publish them. I don't why the field misses out on our work 
but alas, it is so. Explain to me why. Art

From Bad to Worse

Janov's Reflections on the Human Condition

Once More on Attention Deficit Disorder

 (Click to access!)

My comment:

From Bad to Worse

Like an introduction of a new smartphone, the American Psychiatric Association will soon announce its DSM 5, the latest Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; the bible of the psychiatric profession. One of the expected consequences is that the new stigmatizing categories allow the pharmaceutical industry to follow up with new miracle drugs in an over-simplified, less thought-consuming marketing. Willing, profit hungry, psychiatrists will against embarrasing, perfectly legal, reimbursements promote anti-psychotic applications / drugs in the different categories, they have established, for the DSM 5.

Seen from our position in 2013, the Big Brother-tyranny, in George Orwell’s “1984”, were more than satirical fiction. However, we can just imagine what Orwell might have invented of futuristic horror fiction from knowing that 6,4 million American school-age children, now receive the diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.

Speaking in Orwellian terms, today the “Ministry of Plenty” and the “Ministry of Love” are satisfied knowing that the pharmaceutical industry is reaping net benefits of, at least, USD 14.600 million a year on anti-psychotic drugs alone. In this task, the industry is being supported by an multitude of respected, professional psychiatrists, many of whom it has turned from talk-therapy to drug-therapy in order to make 150 USD for three 15-minute medication visits, compared with 90 USD for a 45-minute talk therapy session. 

An average psychiatrist treated earlier 50/60 patients in once - or twice-weekly talk-therapy sessions. Now many psychiatrists treat as an average 1200 people in mostly 12/15 minute visits for prescription adjustments that are months apart. Then, he knew his patients inner lives better than he knew his wife’s, now, he cannot remember their names. Then, at least his ambition was to help his patients become happy and fulfilled, now, it is just to keep them going.

As long as marketing is fulfilling our real needs and is supplying us with improved quality of life with no hidden disadvantages, marketing is a blessing. However, marketing managed by calculating forces often create habits, which in the long term may be disastrous like tobacco, anti-psychotic drugs and sugar, just to mention 3 of the segments where the wrong side of marketing has been used in a ruthless way.

If just a fraction of the marketing resources, being put into quick fixes and fast satisfactions, had been put into a feeling therapy aimed at reliving repressed pain, we had now had universal access to information that an alternative to the present Orwellian situation actually exists.

Jan Johnsson,

- who was lucky enough to be an ADHD-case when the pharmaceutical industry and the psychiatric Corps still had not invented this category; my epilepsy and the Primal Principle “saved” me.

The Special One - Who dare to march to the beat of his own drum

The Special One - Who dare to march to the beat of his own drum

It takes a “special one” to, like Art Janov, tell ≈ 200.000 psychologists, psychiatrists and therapists in his own homeland that they are wrong about their understanding of how to handle imprinted pain.

Since the “special one”, besides, is one out of their own ranks, who has earned his official status and reputation by taking a PhD in psychology, they either see him as a famous loner or a lovable idealist and shrink without basis in reality and in both cases with multiple reasons to be located in Hollywood.

Radically to change a bunch of 200.000 left brain oriented, often pain propelled defenders of the present drug and psychotherapeutic treatment paradigm is a Herculean task. It will either need an innovative practical access to the code of the principles of evolution and/or a change of the way Primal Therapy can guide us to re-live repressed pain and make it more holistically professional and trustworthy.

Daily we can read about the absurd situation in the mental health sector in the NYT, the Guardian, etc.. Here follow a few examples: Mental illness is an established epidemic in America. 60 million Americans are according to PhRMA using mental tranquilizers. The US are less than 5% of the world’s population, yet it consume 66% of the world’s psychological medications. There is overwhelming evidence that the psycho pharmaceuticals are failing. 

All 30 of the avaliable antidepressants have suffered lawsuits with large payments. Two recent settlements set records for the largest criminal fines ever imposed on corporations. According to Dr. Jerome Avorn, a medical professor and researcher at Harvard: “When you are selling a billion a year or more of a drug, it’s very tempting for a company to ignore the traffic ticket and keep speeding.” 

Receiving payments for publishing articles written by drug companies is not illegal. Two doctors, Biederman and Wilens (responsible for giving children the diagnosis of paediatric disorder for which anti-psychotic drugs like Risperidal and Zyprexa are used) of Harvard UMS netted 1,6 million USD each from drug companies for recommending powerful anti-psychotic drugs for children! Profit comes first; that is why most psychiatrists have turned to drug therapy.

2009 was the first year when more people died of medicine-related problems than died in traffic accidents. How many more deaths due to medication errors shall we experience and how many young people must be misdiagnosed using heavy anti-psychotic drugs before the ongoing crazy epidemic can be reversed? This is part of the healthcare bubble that is bound to burst soon, it surpasses all the neurotic miscalculations that led to both the IT bubble and the housing bubble.

50 years ago I was deeply disheartened when I suffered from epilepsy. I realize now, after having been fortunate enough to benefit from Art Janovs ingenious invention of the primal principle / Evolution in Reverse that I from a historical perspective was lucky. I had to get to know myself, trust myself, take care of myself and, therefore, I understood more clearly that the world is full of deterministically programmed accidents if we overload the holistic human and material resources, we are equipped with when we are born.

If it weren’t for a few individuals who chose to go against the grain, then we wouldn’t have many of our modern inventions.

Jan Johnsson

Cat on the rat, rat on the rope...

Janov's Reflections on the Human Condition

On Killing Pain

  (Click to access)

My comment:

Cat on the rat, rat on the rope...

According to an article in the NYT, the PhRMA (The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturing of America) states that there are 60 million citizens in the US being more or less dependent on drugs to alleviate mental disorders and they remain strongly committed to the development of new drugs. This is fully in line with another article, also in the NYT, “Talk Doesn’t Pay, So Psychiatry Turns Instead to Drug Therapy” informing that many of the nation’s 48.000 psychiatrists no longer provide talk therapy; instead they prescribe medication after a  brief consultation and send the patients away to less costly therapists with unexplored and unresolved personal crisis/pain.

Robert Whitaker is in his book “Anatomy Of An Epidemic” giving a picture of how mental health care has developed over the last 50-60 years and turned into an established epidemic. From 1954, when Thorazine was introduced, it kicked off a psychopharmacological revolution and antidepressants, and antianxiety agents were discovered and represented another leap forward in the treatment of mental disorders. In 2007, the US spent 25.000 million USD on antidepressants and antipsychotics.

So when you in your Reflections are saying that there is no recognition of mental pain there are apparently 60 million patients more or less depending on mental painkillers, and a pharmaceutical industry which is laughing all the way to the bank - as long as their patens are in force. With a documented decline in the number of talk therapies and considering that painkilling drugs are just short term symptom blockers, the Primal Therapy ought to be in an exceptionally good position if managed with professional responsibility.

Because of that I was successful in following the primal principal, I have, sadly enough, through my blog over a period had some letters of concern. In a summary, they say: “Our years in Primal Therapy have been lost, those in charge have stolen our lives and money, which they have no right to. It was not what they promised.” These letters are an echo of your last sentence in your latest Reflection.

Even if I sense that heavy feelings are involved, there is a practical reality to take into account. Who is responsible for that assessment / evaluation?

Truth and democracy must constantly be conquered.

Jan Johnsson