It Is Easy To Criticize What Is Missing.

It Is Easy To Criticize What Is Missing.

During several articles, I have let out my disappointment that the Primal Therapy is too narrow and is lacking a holistic partner-ship. I have based my criticism in that PT is without modern management, is negligent to   Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and to the fact that it is very common that  patients, who are seeking therapeutic help, also are suffering a physiological imbalance.

I’m still convinced that a holistic partnership between the Primal Therapy, Rolfing, an individually tailored diet and physical exercises (enhancing breathing, endurance and circulation) in which patients are being offered a long-term career counselling, will be a necessity to break the monopoly of the psychiatric medications in the ongoing neurotic rat race.

However, based on my 40 year journey, with many highs and lows, to treat epilepsy / birth-trauma and neuroses, I have for a couple of years followed a case that has reinforced my views about the value of a holistic treatment. The last three weeks I have had the opportunity to evaluate my experiences and to my surprise, my conclusion is not, which could have been logical, more criticism to Janov, but rather the opposite.

It is easy to criticize shortcomings in PT because so many line up on the criticism of re-living repressed pain. But do we value PT as a still experimental treatment that works, against all odds, against the wind in a true neurotic society, then a different picture appears. “Evolution in Reverse” is a cure, which is naturally opposed to the repression of our mental and physical pain established by evolution in order for us to survive unbearable pain. As a consequence, Janov, The Special One, with his ambition to guide his patients to re-live repressed pain has not only his patients feelings to fight with. He has also the cognitive-dominated psycho-therapeutic paradigm and all educational institutions and their preferred literature to fight against.

Belive by all means not that I feel sorry for Art Janov in his seemingly futile efforts to get us to understand The Primal Principles / Evolution in Reverse. Part of his genius lies in that he does not give up facing the opposition from the present paradigm and the profit- and psychiatrist-propelled pharmaceutical industry. He has been captured by the famous Kantian image of the dove that is not hindered but, on the contrary, is carried by air resistance! He has a belief, call it courage, bordering on arrogance, to believe himself to be totally independent.

To write and disseminate messages about feelings and love, in a time of neurotic lifestyles, he would hardly have embarked on if he did not believe to be master of himself. He has also been favored by the circumstances, during 47 years since he made the discovery that clearly stabilized his telomeres so that in an advanced age he is still fit in his Reflections and messages. No external constraints have forced Art to change his direction. He has been doing his experiences, expressed his thoughts and been able to devote all his time to it. Much of existence setbacks have been obscured by his good luck.

It is Wiser To Gratefully Appraise What Is Available.

Jan Johnsson

To Open Pandoras Box And To Free The Hope.

To Open Pandoras Box And To Free The Hope.

As an apology and explanation why, during 47, years, it has proven more difficult than expected to cure massive early traumas, Art Janov says: “We never put in the pain, someone else did. As Primal Therapists we are charged with taking it out.” 

Then a logic question must be: Is it correct to charge your patients when you cannot take out what you promised to take out?

Primal Therapy (PT) often peels off layer after layer of repressed protections and filters, often without, successfully, being able to peel off / re-live considerable, unknown parts of the traumatic pain. PT opens the Pandoras Box and eliminates an important part of the, often leaking, protection which evolution created. PT is making the patients aware of their, often, unbearable pain, however, it has neither cured them nor fulfilled the hope and confidence that the patients dearly had put in the therapists hands, when they let them open their Pandoras Box!

In too many cases, The Primal Therapy has been a painkiller, a hope. Like drugs, cigarettes, sugar, sex and other neurotic behavior, PT has helped the patients act out their hope. Simultaneously they realize that they are over-taxing their minds and organisms, which abuse eventually is bound to take its toll. When a certain treatment time, short or long and often misjudged, has expired, and resources are becoming scarcer, the patients are often caught in no man’s land in a situation where no advice is offered and where money, family, work, anxiety, depressions and neurotic behaviours etc., in a complex mixture, are inhibiting factors. The practical solution often leads to the traditional psycho-pharmaceutical rat race.

Too many of the patients have been blind for the risks. However, propelled by their pain, the dream of the final cure became neurotic and worked in the same way as a religious obsession. That’s why I once used the aphorism that Art Janov is the, psychotherapeutic, one-eyed King in the Kingdom of the blind!

The Primal Therapy with its psychotherapeutic approach has a tendency, contrary to its origin, to lean to the intellectual branches of Neuroscience which is more and more dominated by the pharmaceutical industry. If that could be changed, Rolfing, as a natural therapy developing physical balance guided by the principle that the body has to be in balance with gravity, could form a natural partnership with the Primal Therapy. 

Primal Therapy (the Primal Principles) could explain and bring a new level to many of the amazing psychological changes that appear, often unexpectedly, in Rolfed individuals. For that to happen an intellectual iron curtain, that prevents free exchange of ideas, must be teared down. As in politics a new generation of leaders, dominated by a new set of habits and unconscious pain, is necessary.

“Hope is the last thing to die.”

Jan Johnsson