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