Waiting for Godot

http://www.activitas.org/index.php/nervosa/article/view/157

(click to access Dr. Janov's paper)

Waiting for Godot

• Waiting for the final demystification of depression

I don’t know why, but after having read Dr. Art Janov’s unique and exquisite scientific paper “The Mystery Known As Depression”, I spontaneously got the Nobel, Samuel Becket’s “Waiting for Godot” (after Beckets own original French version “En Attendant Godot”) on my mind. In Waiting for Godot, Becket tries, through two vagabonds, to show us life and what is not yet decided and settled. The play invites to all kinds of religious, philosophical, psychoanalytical and biographical suggestions. 

The two vagabonds, Vladimir and Estragon, are often played with Irish accents, which possibly is due to the fact that the involvement of another couple, Pozzo and Lucky,  seems like a metaphor for Irelands view of mainland Britain where society has ever been harmed by a greedy ruling elite keeping the working classes passive and ignorant by whatever means. Anyhow, over the years Becket realized that the greater part of Godot’s success came down to the fact that it was open to a variety of distinctive interpretations, as, for example, the theory that it was based on Sigmund Freud’s Trinitarian description of the psyche in “The Ego and the Id”... which tempted my thoughts that Becket could have had Maclean/Janov’s triune brain in his modernist mind...

Over four decades I have repeatedly read much of what Dr. Janov has written about his invention, the Primal Therapy, so when reading his latest masterpiece I can feel every paragraph, every sentence and every word on my own body and in my triune brain. The strong impact is of course due to the fact that I practiced Primal Therapy during 35 years guided by Dr. Janov. One could say that I have taken the exams several times in this principally extremely simple, yet so subtly difficult-executed theme. How do I measure and explain my success? Having re-lived my traumatic birth process, I have demystified my epilepsy, dissolved most of my neurotic behavior. With much reduced mental pain, I’m now free from depression and from thoughts of suicide. Add to that my vital signs (blood pressure, pulse and body temperature) are excellent!

So why is it so difficult in general to follow Art Janovs principles and “to lay back and feel the stab of anxiety”? I can of course only answer for myself. 

I was “helped” by my epilepsy, which with its erratic presence was a reminder that my repressed pain was alive. It was only hidden occasionally and would appear later in more painful ways.

First I spent almost 10 years to create a strategy to earn the necessary economic resources (including time) to go to L.A. Without counseling my two years in L.A. was a master example how a patient can be made to feel patronized, even if he has a good time in the sunshine on the Santa Monica Beach and does exciting excursions to Boulder, San Francisco, New Mexico, Las Vegas etc., etc.. If it had not been for my disobedience, to the rules at the Primal Institute, to go and see a Rolfer in Boulder 1979, my Primal Journey might have ended when I went back to Sweden.

Then followed 15 hit rich career year, gilded by a number of European Primal Retreats. Things went, at times, very well because I thought I had the hidden pain under control. However, logically, I worked myself into a burn out when the pain propelled my ambitions in a maximal risky way. 

25 years after I read the Primal Scream, I realized that I could not both enjoy and abuse my pain propelled neuroses and at the same time re-live and expect them to dissolve and disappear (historically a very common problem amongst Primal patients). I had come to a point where either I worked myself to death, or gave up my non-real ambitions to achieve conditional love/appreciation by working 60-80 hour weeks. The Primal Principles, Arts charisma, four experiences of grand mal seizures turning birth-primals (including retreats in Bern in Switzerland, Bergen in Norway and Chantilly in France) and the fact that I had seen through the career fury gave me courage, where the risk of death was a reality, to go all in into PT.

I was lucky to have a good team around me in Sweden. I had access to a neurologist, a psychiatrist, a homeopath and the long-distance e-mail access to my guide Art Janov. (Attempts to bring in a cognitive psychologist failed due to me being allergic to her attitude). I can still remember the moment in the office of my Danish psychiatrist when I - figuratively - made up my mind to “go through the eye of the needle” and change my life. The local members of my “team” supported me even if they for years shook their heads when I explained my experiences, which I, by the way, kept a diary over.

The Primal Therapy, / The Primal Principle, became a lifeguard and a philosophy of life, which has saved me from a too early death. Art Janov’s innovation gave me eventually a high quality of life, both physiologically and mentally. The fact that my epileptic trip took a whole life doing, however, made me understand how difficult the primal principle is to apply and implement when the distorting powers that the pain sets in motion has been developed for too long. The neuroses then create a personality, which involves too great a sacrifice to eliminate not only for the victim of the pain but also for people in his / her surrounding, which in turn are suffering from their own repressed pain.

The master plan of Evolution was, after all, on the survival of the species, which many of our neurotic posturing leads to. There are 7.1 billion of us at present. If enough people read Dr. Janov’s books and understand his message of our need for unconditional love, touch and acceptance, there is a hope for the future.

Jan Johnsson