On a few previous occasions, I have pointed out that my two years, intended for Primal Therapy, in LA, 1978 and 1979, passed without something essential, from psychotherapy viewpoint, occurred. The only thing, of value, that I became aware of was that I, at age three, was dethroned by my sister. This trauma caused lasting neurotic effects on my relationships with both women and men/authorities. Otherwise, I experienced the two years in California and Colorado as a profound refreshment. I had lived the first, close to, 40 years of my life in a fast pace and under abnormal pressure. The time in the western United States gave me a new start in life in many respects.
However, during my “two years in Primal Therapy” I started, from a therapeutic point, another couple of processes that I, first much later, have understood the profound and crucial value of. 1978, I wrote from LA to my parents in Sweden and expressed my anger about the abuse and the insensibility, which they subjected me to during my childhood. This marked a decisive break from the untruthful picture of a “happy childhood” I fought with in order not to feel my pain. My distorted image was wishful thinking, and a result of that I came from a religious home where the Bible and the commandments were prevalent. This especially applied the fourth commandment: “Thou shalt honor thy father and mother.”
The effects of my correspondence appeared in two steps. During a trip to Sweden in the spring of 1979, I met with my father. Our meeting was brief and did not last very long. When I was to leave my parents house, my father began to cry and asked if I still hated him for what he had done to me 30 years earlier, when he recklessly had beaten me. I was so confused and influenced by the situation that I spontaneously replied; “No”. We hugged, and I returned in a few days to LA. A month later my father died, in his sleep, of a heart attack. I broke the practice and did not go to his funeral. He had ruined too many years of my life. I, finally, let my body decide.
Step two occurred in January 1980, when I returned from 2 years in LA. My mother, who was now a widow and lived alone, had changed and was less inhibited and religious. When, for the first time in long, we met in her apartment, she was suddenly eager to open up and talk about my birth. During the years, she hade repeatedly told me that she had not caused that I developed epilepsy. Now she wanted, suddenly, to tell me what really had happened. In tears, as in a painful primal, she told me heartbroken how my birth had been. The birth process had been very difficult and had lasted 48 hours after the amniotic fluid had gone. The reason, she told me remorse filled, had been that she had been possessed be a religious idea, she had got from the Bible; to give birth with pain. My mother realized finally that she had contributed to that I developed epilepsy. This was a truth that both my body and soul understood, and it was a giant step towards a cure.
For me, these two, albeit delayed, occasions of unfiltered truth direct from my parents mouths, meant that I have not been able to avoid attacking the untruthful, moralizing filter that the fourth commandment for thousands of years has developed. From an early age, the fourth commandment is engraved deeply in us through religious messages from our churches, via the highly diversified influence of our religions, which has gone hand in hand with educational and political needs. The implications of the commandment have served as the spiritual and secular power seal on the evolutionary pain relief for us to survive, those to a fetus and child overwhelming early physical and emotional traumas. Please remember this process takes place when our brains become structured.
I have not fully understood my successful demystification of my epilepsy and my neurotic life pattern until I started reading Alice Miller (i.e. “The Body Never Lies”, etc..). To a crucial part, it has been successful through my refusal to adapt to different consequences of, often complex, truth corruption on the effects of a traumatic birth and childhood, caused by loveless and insensible parents. The direct and indirect impact of the fourth commandment and all the related moral aspects in which we live and breathe have been the cause of virtually all therapeutic failures that I know of in and outside the Primal Therapy.
Both Alice Miller and Arthur Janov advocate the importance of unconditional love. The lack of love, touch, attention and affirmation leads to that the communication between the intellect and the body / emotions, is distorted to extent equivalent to the effect of the physical and / or emotional childhood trauma. By taking us out of the neurotic lie, which represses the encapsulated pain and by re-living it, we can recover our real self.
Arthur Janov, motivated by his innovation the Primal Principle / Evolution in Reverse, advocate a therapeutic guide that allows the patient’s feelings to determine a treatment process with no, traditional psychotherapy, 50-minute limitations. Art Janov stresses, nowadays, always the importance of a scientifically supported method of treatment, without for that reason to have managed to communicate or distribute this scientific method outside the Primal Center. I personally, for 36 years, did not follow any other scientific methods than the personal guidance that I intuitively sensed from Art Janov.
Alice Miller, talks about the necessity of a companion with deep personal experience of a healing journey in order to know the truth of the body and to be familiar with the consequences of inadequate forgiving life lies (including medicines etc.) which overtaxes the organs and shortens our lives. In her literature dominates the need to sensitize the treacherous effects of the fourth commandment, in both the patient and his surroundings. Our bodies remember until we dissolve our neurotic distortions and lies that plague our body and mind until we no longer allow ourselves to be influenced.
Are there any differences between the two? There is of course a lot that separates them and one thing that spontaneously occurs to me is that Alice Miller reveal herself in a more uninhibited and convincing way. I get a sense that Alice Miller has a deep personal experience when I read her books. This colors also her patient observations, and her analysis of the fate of several famous writers and artists.
Art Janov has only exceptionally and timidly described his own background. He has limited himself, in a fascinating way, to narrate the experiences of his patients. As interdisciplinary coordinator, educator and informer, to his patients in psychological, neurological and psychotherapeutic issues, Art Janov is outstanding. The tendency to dilute his ability, between therapy development, research and writing, probably had an inhibitory effect on the development of the purely practical Primal psychotherapeutic treatment. Hes need for scientific acceptance has taken an increasing share of his time and ambitions. This might be interpreted as a need to prove how wrong his unloving parents were and / or a need, posthumously, to win their, nonexistent, love. Just like Steve Jobs in Apple Inc., Art Janov would have needed a companion, a Steve Wozniak, to lift Primal Therapy to the level it has / had the potential for.
Had Alice Miller still been alive, I had asked her to edit the following more modern advice instead of the old fourth commandment:
“Love your Child from the moment of conception, that her / his days may be long and less fear filled. Love is the elixir of a healthy body and mind and makes your Child a sane guide / companion for future generations!”
Jan Johnsson
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