Mysterious, sublime and surreal.

Mysterious, sublime and surreal.

To me the Primal Principle, at times, has been like a surreal resemblance of a dream I had 54 years ago; when I had developed epilepsy and “decided” to do my utmost to demystify it! Having spent some time, lately, criticising Art Janov for instinctively protecting his discovery and not allowing intrusions on his territory, I will once again give a very condensed version of “my way”.

1974 I met Svend Möller-Andersen a skilled management consultant of a rare kind. He knew, had met and plagiarized Rafael Ortiz in N.Y.. The same Ortiz, who’s experiments a few years earlier had caused Art’s discovery of the Primal Principle. Svend told me to read the Primal Scream, which I immediately did and got a new view of life and my Tegretol-lobotomized brain / epilepsy. Since my job was long-term planning and changing of companies, it was natural that I made “the demystification of my epilepsy” into a pervasive long-term project.

21 of Sept. 1977 I signed an agreement with Vivian Janov in Santa Monica to come to PT early in the spring of 1978. I began in March 1978 and stayed through December 1979 while living on Veteran Avenue in Beverly Hills. I did my tree intensive weeks, but little happened and the same can be said of the group-meetings, during which I had the opportunity to meet the charismatic Doctor Janov himself. 

I was only able to connect to feelings regarding my father and my tree years younger sister who had dethroned me. My epilepsy seemed far away kept at bay by Tegretol and the marvelous weather in California and its lovely beaches.  Add to that, that I brought a young beautiful wife with no interest in PT who studied art in Pasadena and Santa Barbara. 

A life without work, with daily walks and swims was unusual for me, so to support my work neuroses, a couple of days a week, I flew to Boulder / Denver, Colorado and did consulting for a biotech company.

November through December 1979, in Boulder, I had 10 Rolfing sessions (pressed into a very short period of treatment) of the old fashioned model, conducted with the therapist’s knees and elbows as working instruments during my painful moaning. 

Back to Swedish midwinter in January 1980, I experienced for the first time how a potential grand mal seizure developed into my first primal / re-living of my birth-trauma. This meant the turning point in my PT, and the Primal Principles stood shiningly clear for me. Even though, my epilepsy still scared me, it was an explanation of the WHY? my life had been distorted for 20 years. During the same month, I told my three siblings (after 20 years delay) that I had epilepsy. This plus additional head-on information to my mother caused her repressions to break open. She told me crying (which was a new experience to me) about how she, inspired by the Bible, had followed  the advice to “give birth with pain”, which caused a very traumatic birth process lasting more than two days.

From 1980 and over the next 16 years I made an excellent career, strengthened by my new attitude to my body and mind. However, dependent on Tegretol, I was able to develop a great deal of my potential. PT and the Primal Principles were always in the back of my mind and this career period coincided with the best I’ve experienced in the Primal Therapy, namely the international retreats. They were held in e.g. Switzerland, France, Denmark and Norway, where I had the privilege of personal help from Art Janov to re-live my birth-traumas. At the same time, he turned in my less neurotic psyche, from a guru on a pedestal into a sympathetic therapist.

In the mid 90ies, I had over-taxed my body / organs, and my mind and I decided to go “all in” to re-live my pain after having been categorized a “burn out”.  I added homeopathy and diet to the Primal Principle / Rolfing. I threw Tegretol away after 35  years of consumption, and I refused any kind of psychiatric medication. Slowly, over a few years, I succeeded in helping my less pain propelled brain to establish a new level of wellbeing. 

2009-2011 I wrote my story about my epileptic journey / Evolution in Reverse which put it all together and was of big importance for my mind with its high dependence of memories.

When I in the fall of 2011 contacted Eva, an old friend from my childhood and reestablished a 53 years old relationship I could feel how my brain responded both in its tree vertical levels and in its right-left / left-right connections putting many of the millions of neurons in the corpus callosum at work.

A 54 years old surrealistic dream has come true. I did it “may way” guided by the Primal Principle / Evolution in Reverse as a deterministic lead star. If Salvador Dalí had been a patient of PT he might have used one of his famous expressions to describe the Primal Principle: “The existence of reality is the most mysterious, most sublime and surreal to be given!”  

Jan Johnsson