INTUITION

INTUITION

Several of my best decisions in life, privately and in my career, had been when I’ve followed my intuition, i.e. when I subconsciously knew, without me formally knowing. Consequently, I had made some of my worst decisions when I did not follow my intuitive gut feelings, but gave in to logic and conventionality. My life as a series of good and bad intuitive decisions looks pretty much like my book “Evolution in Reverse / Demystifying my Epilepsy”. The treatment, that this trip meant, is not established anywhere in any medical and or therapeutic practice, in the world. However, it fitted into the Primal Principles, and I had discreet guidance over 35 years of Art Janov without him ever having uttered what was best for me and what or how to do. He transferred his confidence in the process to me to trust my feelings and my subconscious. The best 15 years of my professional career were based on the elevated confidence of my intuition, which I got from my first experiences in the Primal Principle and what it meant to be pain propelled.

Art Janov’s books motivated me gradually to understand his interdisciplinary neuropsychological explanations. He became the gateway for my growing interest in the explosion of knowledge that has occurred within the domains of the brain and the behavior, especially during the latest 10-15 years. Gradually, I have gained knowledge through many existing researchers, scientists and writers; Damasio, Kahnemann, Kandel, Miller and Gladwell just to name a few well known. To my opinion most of them have sharpened the point which Art Janov has made in his books. Although most psychotherapeutic treatments still generally fail to get out of denial and treatment of symptoms, the brain research has made the influence of the subconscious to an area of interest for a growing number. It is just the beginning of a  liberating wave that will roll on. 

I often, mainly from his Reflections, get a contradictory feeling about Art Janovs intuition. What he says is based on unilateral information from his patient’s experiences and not from his own. By transliterating the patient experience through new research discoveries, Art Janov struggles obsessively to turn his unique intuitive skills, represented by The Primal Therapy, to a new general psychotherapeutic paradigm. However, he needs the current establishment to get his Primal Therapy affirmed in order to establish a new paradigm. To make the problem bigger; it seems that the establishment has the repressive forces of evolution on their side. According to Art Janov, all of the established scientific community who have connections with cognitive therapy are questionable, and Eric Kandel is not the only prominent brain researcher who have been queried by Art Janov. They are all on the wrong train; cognitive therapy, as well as all of the many spin-offs out of his own Primal Therapy... Art Janov is a hard master with so unique rules that very few will find his station.

Disputed treatment results in Primal Therapy, have over the years been explained with the fact that the duration of therapy is uncertain depending on the age of the patient, his / her background and (quite naturally) the nature of the accumulated, unknown / repressed traumas. What once was a quick fix has evolved into a lengthy, often next to life-long treatment process. Art Janov deliberately ignores the importance of a general counselling on issues related to social relationships, career and finances. This sounds like an overlooked, blocked, relic of the happy, golden period when the patient imagined that the entire, expensive, however, quick treatment was supposed to complete in 4 months.

A likeable and logical conclusion, in the ongoing word swap, within the Primal world is;  if the fetus’s need for love, touch and attention are met and if the fetus is not damaged, we will avoid the majority of the staggering number of mental sufferers in the health care. That advice seems to be a safer bet to provide a new psychotherapeutic treatment paradigm, than to believe in a further refinement of the unique intuition that has borne Art Janov’s hallmark for nearly 50 years. We will have to wait for some young revolutionary genius / entrepreneur  - a body / mind pragmatist - within neuroscience who can act interdisciplinary, within the confines of our health care.

Till then, those of us, who want to go beyond the treatment of symptoms, will have to rely on those psychotherapists / guides who know, without knowing and can make snap decisions like one Art made 30 years ago in Bergen, when he turned a grand mal seizure into a birth primal. However, It’s one thing to acknowledge the tremendous power of intuitive snap judgments, but quite another thing, generally, to place our trust in something which is still so seemingly mysterious.

Jan Johnsson