It started with a desperate / urgent naivety.

It started with a desperate / urgent naivety*.

I, myself, like thousands of other patients had been in a desperate / urgent situation when we, tormented by anxiety disorders, neuroses and depressions, applied for Primal Therapy during the last 40 years. We (I supposed guided by our right brain) did it, more or less, only based on a unique story, “The Primal Scream”, of how Art Janov inspired by a famous destruction artist, made an ingenious discovery, how evolution, with the help of repression saves us from unbearable mental and/or physical pain. 

The “business idea” of The primal Therapy became to cure its patients of pain imprinted before, during and after birth due to neglect, abuse or unmet basic human love, when they got old enough to handle / endure the once unbearable pain.

I have been a professional crisis and change expert (often guided by my left intellectual side of my brain) with versatile experience and training. I had spent 10-15 years of studies and practical application in different positions before I was good at what I did. Eventually, I had, according to employers and mentors, 20 good active years, when I was regarded  a reliable change expert.

During these years I would, professionally, never had considered bringing in an expert to any of my employers who could not, convincingly have proven:

Experience of patients, successfully being treated.

Having done interviews with or obtained references from patients.

Being convinced of the existence of a functioning organization with access to the expertise we considered needed.

A treatment / responsibility plan, including introduction, procedures and how and when the treatment / patient was followed up by the expert.

That the contract we signed was reasonable from the legal, financial and medical point of view and took into account how the potential conflicts / differences would be resolved.

So how can and will I now explain my (successful) Primal Therapy experiment? I saw it as a unique private project to attack my epileptic stigma, which so far only chemical lobotomy / Tegretol had been able to find a, what I considered, unsatisfactory solution for. During many years, which added up to decades, I noticed, within the Primal Institute / Center, the shortcomings in both success rates and organizational professionalism, but, I was not affected by the, in my eyes, irresponsible complacency. Work-wise successful, but, pain propelled and neurotic, I took a calculated risk and could with my background keep away from those I considered intellectually obsessed patient colleagues.

Suggestions, to establish a partnership with i.e. Rolfing, was by Art Janov met by an argument that avoiding this cooperation was a unique condition for the recovery process to take place in the brains own pace (which may last 40 years...). My own use of Rolfing and the guidance of Janov, in a successful combination, showed how hard it is for a genius to change his habits. Also, The Primal Therapy is subject to an evolutionary development. 

The Primal Principle and Rolfing, both have the ambition to uncover  repressed pain, which evolution introduced for our survival. I am fully convinced that a skilled Rolfer and Primal Therapist could work wonders in a partnership. If I had sufficient funds and resources, I would not hesitate to set up such a clinic.

Jan Johnsson

*naivety=credulousness, gullibility - tendency to believe too readily and therefore to be easily deceived.