Reflections on Leadership In The Psychotherapies.

The Idea / the embryo of The Primal Therapy was born in the 1960-is in New York by, the then young, avant-garde and “destruction” artist, Raphael Ortiz. He drew the audience’s attention to the links between art, history, human development / evolution / rituals and connections between mind, body and spirit. At one performance attended the young man, who later at a therapy session with Art Janov, re-lived the first documented primal. On Janov’s request, the young man / patient repeated that which occurred during Ortiz’s seance. The young man’s re-lived feelings became the source of Art Janov’s innovation; The Primal Therapy, which spread like wildfire across the world through the bestseller “The Primal Scream.”

Ph.D. Arthur Janov, with a classic psychologist / therapist background, took care, skilfully, of Ortiz’s intuitive leadership vision of our potential to develop the mind, body and spirit. A curiosity, bordering on a demand, to get answers to WHY the psychosomatic symptoms occur, with which doctors and psychologists diagnose their patients, was one of Janov’s strongest, stated, incentives. The Primal Therapy became all too hastily a fashion trend that promised “quick fixes” and the therapy was quickly adopted by, more or less serious, therapists and psychologists. Many dilettantes / mock therapists caused, for lack of leadership and management, more harm than good in the healthcare sector where short-term solutions, in the initial phase, are valued too highly, not least by the patients themselves.

Lack of visionary leadership in the staff of The Primal Center has curbed Art Janov’s ambitions firmly to establish a coordinated Primal Therapy as an accepted psychotherapy and, despite innovative methods and, seemingly, well-documented patient experiences, become a serious alternative to the prevailing psychotherapeutic paradigm; CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy). Cognitive therapy is bureaucratically micromanaged and lacks, like PT, visionary leadership. By tradition and routine, CBT dominates research, education and health care and has a strong economic interdependence with Big Pharma. Janov’s skill as a psychologist, guide and an interdisciplinary author had, early on, had to be influenced by visionary leadership to develop, in partnership with other innovative partners, the potential inherent in the Primal Principle.

There are no visible leaders to take over from Art Janov, which is especially sad because research in different areas of the multifaceted Neuroscience is now beginning to prove a number of answers WHY? different symptoms, such as Alzheimer, cancer, depression, distorted vital signs etc., etc., are connected to repressed birth and childhood traumas. Simultaneously, other sectors of society, outside the health-care and psychotherapy, acquire knowledge, like Janov from Neuroscience. The authors behind “Primal Leadership” and “Conversational Intelligence” have applied this type of emerging modern science.

I believe that America’s 200.000 shrinks would be several levels better, relatively quickly if they dared to introduce / test Daniel Goleman’s “Primal Leadership” and Ruth Glaser’s “Conversation Intelligence”. Questioning diagnosed symptoms and seeking an answer to WHY? would change and modernize / democratize their working methods. Thinning out the high doses of medications and bureaucratic management, with its official manuals, would meet the latent need of 60 million consumers (in the U.S. alone) of psychotropic drugs.

If 200.000 shrinks embraced the above vision of the future, millions of leaders in business and administration could hopefulle simultaneously be stimulated to ask to be introduced to the Primal Principle / Evolution in Reverse in order to gain a deeper understanding of emotions, depressions, neurosis (and their causes) of their fellow employees.

According to a Daniel Goleman article in HBR; “what most influences our operations bottom-line performance: it’s leaders mood and state-of-mind or emotions.”

The statement could be applied everywhere where people have influence over others; in homes, schools, associations, politics etc., ect..

Jan Johnsson