Obsessed With The Unconscious.

I have slept a few nights at Art Janov's claim that “the unconscious is constantly neglected”. For my part, I maintain that I’m obsessed / spellbound by our unconscious. Getting there has gone for instance by the insights Art has brought me on the Primal Principle and Evolution in Reverse. Countless other writers exemplified by Dostoyevsky, Proust, de Beauvoir, Miller and Gladwell have shown me how boundless comprehensive our unconscious is in its ability to draw from pain, repression, truth, lies and create fantasies / symbols and identify human characteristics when they are at their best and worst.

When our parents do not meet our basic needs for love, hugs and kisses, Evolution provides us with necessary talents to compensate for shortcomings.  It’s fascinating and horrifying that these compensatory talents become both physical and intellectual intoxications that must be repeated to keep the painful lack of love repressed. This agonizing struggle comes at the price that we over-tax our internal organs, which shortens and degrades the quality of our lives. Health Care and the pharmaceutical industry, each with their intellectual backups are the two visible, grotesquely inflated symbols of our endless symptoms of the diseases.

The interesting and hopeful is that our, often vital, compensating talents have taken us to the point where we, in fortunate circumstances, can learn “to lean back and feel a stab of pain” caused by the lack of love and attention and / or  early traumas due to neglect or stupidity. I have personally experienced how neuroses, compulsive behavior, high blood pressure and epilepsy have reduced dramatically when there is much less residue of pain to drive the symptoms.

Through my dreams, I have over the years gradually developed a trusting relationship with my unconscious. Over many years, my life was dominated by nightmares, and when these were not satisfied to let me fall freely or to be tortured and suffocated, they sparked fits and grand mal seizures. I can now, after patiently for many years re-living my birth trauma awake, remember, interpret and re-live the pain in my dream. These processes occur in connection to that I experienced something during the day that had a symbolic connection, often to my birth trauma.

My latter years sleeping routines have taken me to the point where I in my dream decide to defy the fear, to lay back and feel a stab of anxiety. Often I wake up relieved, enlightened and refreshed. Memories of the nights experiences give me a reason and sometimes content to a blog / comment.

Jan Johnsson

Replies

1. 
   PaulApril 30, 2014 at 12:12 PM

   Hi Jan & Art,
   
   Carl Jung also said the unconscious was the last frontier. But he was still immersed in the world of symbolism and that is what keeps his followers endlessly interested. Trainees in Jungian Psychology get to qualify by also developing an art of one kind or another. Indeed developing some kind of art is seen by the Jungians as a prerequisite to healing. After all, the symbols are just so fascinating aren't they? They are a mystery and like our hunter gatherer forebears from the ancient world we keep on hunting them out as if they were a matter of LIFE or DEATH. Each new discovery a 'kernel' of truth and some 'nourishment' for our soul. . .
   
   Anyone who describes themselves as a priest today or a thousand years ago is just milking the hunt for those old 'chestnuts'. . . Sequestered by those 'squirrels' in our minds, living in the 'winters of our discontents', waiting for the 'spring of our youths'. . .
   
   Had enough yet? Or shall I carry on "waxing lyrical"?
   
   Fortunately for the real world, people like you Jan can tell us how those symbols really 'fit' into our lives.
   
   Thanks Jan for your great posts. I must read up Gladwell. Sounds like a pragmatic kind of person.
   
   Paul G.

Fortunately “We” Don’t Remain Powerless!

In the same Reflection, at almost 90 and still going strong mentally, Art Janov makes two unusual and sensational concessions, which feels like a kind of an oxymoron. The concessions made in connection with the pleasing bulletin that he, after 40 years, can speak without pain due to that he finally gave up his mental resistance against naturopath treatment. The two concessions I speak of is 

A.; that after 17 books, to be published in 26 countries, none of the world's many hundred thousand shrinks has come and wanted to know more about the revolutionary work that Art has done. 

B.; The therapist oriented therapies have the power and we the patient remain powerless. 

Is Art saying that he finally understands, which is how I interpret it, that he has not been approached by other shrinks due to a mental resistance similar to his own?

However, we didn’t have to remain powerless. We could contact a curly shrink in LA and enroll in his Primal Institute. There we could pick up tips about the Rolfing Institute in Boulder. That way we could get the stones rolling and back in Europe we could ally ourselves with a homeopath and get help to provoke our unexploded childhood infections. Well into that journey we met on different occasions a couple of female diet- and health-gurus, Alma Nissen and Julia Völdan. They were of the same stature as Art Janov, Ida Rolf and Alice Miller and during their lifetime they saved many more lives than they ever got credit for. They were both so good that several doctors with speciality in cancer, endocrine disorders etc., in sheer despair turned to them to seize the last straw.

Even if most of the above geniuses / icons in natural cure of childhood traumas and neurotic abuse of unlimited nature and extent, now, are dead and / or far from their prime, new free spirits will develop. They will be driven by personal “10.000 hour” experiences, like Ida Rolf and Alice Miller, which are registered in their subconscious, transmitting guiding health signals “bottom up” to their neocortex to be forwarded “to whom it may concern”.

I have already met a few of this new breed with a natural talent for feelings emanating from deep down. I hope only that they like Art Janov can hold out and find enough informed patients, who have gone tired of the Big Pharma and the part of the health institutions which are solely driven by a neurotic, too short term and capitalistic approach.

Jan Johnsson

I knew my thoughts, my imaginary esteem, were Nada!

I didn’t believe my thoughts of self-esteem and confidence. I knew they were fakes to save my neck. However, the more I got to understand how self-esteem, a sense of importance and “feelings” of confidence / strength work, the more I’m impressed by the role of the neocortex (the 3rd line) as an illusionist and director of our lives. In a way, it has an intelligence of its own and it, easily,  deceives most of us in the present cognitive paradigm. Even when we try hard not to be deceived. It is an evolutionary reflex for the human species’s short-term survival.

Without epilepsy, caused by a religiously misled mother, I would never have been able to make my journey through the different brain regions. To live with my epilepsy, although I was chemically “lobotomized” with Tegretol / Carbamazepine, I had to walk a constant tightrope between thoughts and feelings. was forced to develop all sorts of survival neuroses and created a hollow facade of “self-esteem”, “confidence” and “strength”. However, messages bottom up informed me that I was unable to fool myself. I was constantly conscious of my forceful epileptic stigma, which with careless living could explode and erase every ounce of cerebral esteem. 

From the beginning, I did not know that my epilepsy was an imprint of repressed pain. I could though feel it, smell it and my thoughts created many lies about it. I was a good actor and I could pretend desperate feelings of “self-esteem”, “importance” and “confidence”. I could never lie to myself about my inner truth. I was a hostage of my birth trauma = pain = imprint = epilepsy.

Please remember an epileptic stigma consists not only of convulsive symptoms. It has a corresponding negative psychological effect through the degrading disgrace it meant (especially in the past) to show epileptic symptoms. Often  epileptics were placed together with mentally severely disabled. It took 40 years for my parents to get over the shame of my epilepsy when I, after two years in PT in LA, dramatically broke the silence and began my recovery.

Early repressed feelings live in every cell of our bodies and in my case with the birth trauma which turned into epilepsy they even had influences of systemic and organic nature. Not only did my cortex create ideas / neuroses, prosthesis for my survival, my whole body became rigid, fingers and toes did not develop fully and I lost my sense of smell. The whole of me was in a state of cramp. I developed allergies not only to cognitive therapists and Cipramil, but to a number of food substances in my daily environment. In combination with the Primal Principle, Structural Integration and Rolfing has accomplished miracles with my body, my movements and my physical / mental sanity. I had the good fortune to first be treated in Ida Rolf’s center in Boulder, Col., in 1979 and I have later found a talented Spanish Rolfer. He is also a professional cellist who has a deep understanding of psychotherapy (he is a natural primal therapist!). 

Since I passed the critical number of hours re-living repressed pain and dissolving my neuroses, I understand how crucial these neuroses have been for my survival. My lifestyle and my attitudes have changed and since the latent threat, that my imprint / epilepsy previously constituted has been eliminated, there is no pain that produces energy that propelled the former neuroses. I need them no longer, so they have stopped developing their automated stagings. This can sometimes surprise me (eg that I am sincere straight out) and my realization that I cannot manipulate my feelings brought me immense relief, which, certainly, is beneficial for my vital signs, and a consequence that I cannot delude myself meant that nor can I delude others.

Jan Johnsson

Arthur JanovApril 9, 2014 at 12:47 PM
Very well explained Jan. Bravo! art