Friday, November 29, 2013

Social Equality.


Social Equality.

It is hard not to feel a pang of sympathy when Frank Larsson fights for his absurd idea, through a legal process, to achieve free access to Primal Therapy (FrankNovember 25, 2013 at 12:26 AM). It seems that his struggle is as intense as his deeply engraved primal pain. In the world, Frank is describing are those who are intellectuals, i.e., those who are locked up in their left, intellectual cerebral hemisphere, guilty of criminal acts since they do not introduce social rules of free Primal Therapy for all. The crux is only that all the intellectuals, which according to Frank, have a brain like a safe (with the key forever, self-inflicted hidden inside the safe), are dominating both the judiciary and all forms of treatments. This means that these key individuals, in Frank’s alleged entitlement process, themselves, logically, must first undergo Primal Therapy and eliminate the pain and neuroses that propelled them to their positions so that they blend in Frank’s world. This looks like a catch-22.

The table on which Frank’s case reasonably belongs is Social Equality, which includes Equal Rights under the law, with equal access to social goods and services. However, Social Equality is an ideal situation, that does not occur in actuality, in complex economics. The administration of our constitutions favouring the many instead of the few, this is why they are called democracies. To avoid getting into a legal witch hunt, Frank is recommended to choose the political path. Frank is not alone in his fight for a fairer world. Some (radical) feminists have opposed equality before the law because they think it maintains the weak situation of the weak.

In the literature and in the fairy tale are several examples, that resembles Frank’s ambitions. The Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes, in his classic and influential work “Don Quixote”, described the impossible dream personified by the knight Don Quixote of Mancha and his squire Sancho Panza. Don Quixote tries, despite his own idealism, to teach Sancho Panza that: “Those who believe that the state of things in this world can be changed, think something they should not believe”... Sometimes, when I read Art Janov’s and Frank Larsson’s argument shifts, I start involuntarily to think of Cervantes.

H.C. Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes” is a tale about a couple of weavers who promise an Emperor a new suit of clothes that is invisible to those unfit for their positions, stupid, or incompetent. When the Emperor parades before his subjects in his new clothes, a child cries out; “But he isn’t wearing anything at all!” It does not take much imagination to hear the scream of H.C. Andersen’s child when Frank is commenting his indignation over the intellectual masquerades of the rulers.

Jan Johnsson

Thursday, November 28, 2013

Remark about Mindfulness (One of the factors of enlightment).


Remark about Mindfulness (One of the factors of enlightment).

Daniel Goleman, author of the long-lived bestseller “Emotional Intelligence”, published in 1995, broadened the view of the narrow-charged word intelligence. In business, life became more human. It suddenly became easier to talk about feelings, and emotional reactions in cooperation as well in change situations and even the logically limited technology specialists had easier to admit that emotions were part of the general intelligence.

Goleman gathered during his ph.D. studies at Harvard knowledge and inspiration from Indian Mindfulness. Later after his successful establishment of the new intelligence-paradigm, he has this year in collaboration published a book: “Working with Mindfulness: Research and Practice of Mindful Techniques in Organizations).” All of Coleman’s production and exercises are based on scientific research in an ambition to keep his language demystified and free from gobbledygook.

Mindfulness is a readily available technique, accessible to an insignificant cost. It can help those in need through stressful situations. “If you want to have a human moment, which is when everything really happens, you have to set aside what you’re thinking about, turn off your iPad, turn away from your screen, stop your daydreams about whatever is pulling you away, and be fully present with the person/child you’re with. I think we need more and more help having those human moments.”

If that mindful attitude, whether it comes from MMP, could be combined with / linked to, the Primal Principles; “to lay back and feel the stab of anxiety” the human race would be less dependent of DSM 5, and it’s drug-initiating categorizations.

Jan Johnsson 

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Bridge of Asses (Pons asinorum)


Bridge of Asses (Pons asinorum)

To create a new frame to understand the Primal Therapy.

I have often found it difficult, in an easily understandable way, to explain how, using the Primal Therapy and its principles, I was able to relive the imprinted pain from my terrifying and traumatic birth-process. It has taken four decades of my life to feel at home, “confused on a higher level”, in that potential new paradigm of PT.

Art Janov writes for instance in his article series “The Mystery Known as Depression”: “It is a new paradigm. If we try to understand it, within the old frame of reference, we will fail. What is difficult to accept is our assertion that re-living traumatic experiences, including birth, is the way to reverse depression, Exploring the mind has been like exploring the world to prove it is round; it often cannot be believed until somebody actually makes the journey. In the development of Primal Therapy, we have always let ourselves be guided by one unassailable truth - the experience of our patients.

The above quote by Art Janov caused me, during my long, unusual and eventful Epileptic Journey, often to come across a “Bridge of Asses”. I had  need of a metaphor for an explanation or justification which could pass a critical test of understanding to, for myself and others, explain the experiences, I physically and mentally underwent. That meant, not infrequently, especially in the beginning, deductions / syllogisms of extremely subtle, sophisticated or deceptive neurotic symptoms.

The documentation available on the principles of the Primal Therapy has its predominant source in Art Janov’s vast literary lifetime achievement as books and articles. I have often made it easy for me by, relatively unsuspectingly, swallow the truth from other sources, which Art referred to. Although, I have informed me of inaccuracies in both McLean’s model of the Triune Brain as in Hæckel’s theory of recapitulation “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”, it has not interfered with my “worldview”, and I have found no reasons to doubt.

On November 14, AnttiJ (AnttiJNovember 14, 2013 at 9:27 AM) commented on Part 3 of “The Mystery Known as Depression” in an intelligent way about the danger of using metaphors of dubious up to date scientific value. The readers / target groups of articles do not consist only of patients (potential and those who are in treatment) but hopefully they consist of knowledgeable, critical scientists and neuroscience experts of all categories.

I agree with Antti that Art Janov’s mainly practical / experiential-based conclusions of the Primal Therapy should be anchored in facts that include current, impeccable scientific terms to create interdisciplinary respect. It is crucial that both simplified and complicated transcriptions from therapeutic experiences take place in a proper manner so that neuro-scientific and psychotherapeutic circles do not expose a sensitive treatment like Primal Therapy, with unique potential to cure depression, to floccinaucinihilipilification (the act or habit of describing or regarding something as unimportant, of having no value or being worthless).

Primal Therapy is challenged by a two lane Bridge of Asses, one for patients and one for the intellectuals and scientists.

Jan Johnsson