Is Primal Therapy, At No Charge, A Proof Of Love?

Is Primal Therapy, At No Charge, A Proof Of Love?

Instinctively, I didn’t like or agree with the last paragraph of Art Janov’s Reflection “Can we learn to love”. This paragraph is about Primal Therapy at no charge. As an example Art mentions how his “campaign,” among several governments, was ended by his 12 year old son in a meeting with a fellow pipe-smoker, the English Minister of health, who had raised a legitimate question. Maybe his son had his doubts both about the therapy’s curative ability and the possibility, to give a treatment (those days estimated at four months) free of charge.  A therapy which, in his parents Primal Institute, commanded a price of thousands of dollars without providing any guarantee that the patient could be cured.

During the following decades, after the senior and junior Janov’s exodus from the British Ministry of Health, I know people who have invested tens of thousands of dollars in Primal Therapy without being free from mental suffering. They did not receive an adequate counseling, which possibly could have made their therapy journey less cumbersome. To demand Primal Therapy, at taxpayer’s expense, how well intentioned and sympathetic it may sound, may indicate a lack of reality and insight in both the therapy’s success rate and how a health care economy works.

Please note that I am from Sweden (in United States often equated with being a socialist) where we have very high expectations of what health care ought to cover, and I had to fly to the super-capitalistic United States to seek, expensive therapy. A Primal Therapy, which with the help of my qualified planning skills and Rolfing, eventually, saved my life. A variation of the original American success dream, almost on par with a house in Malibu Beach.

Art has during his practical career in psychotherapy focused on human suffering, which must have influenced his view of how an economically just society should be built. All those who, during the same period, have focused their best efforts to get a reasonably healthy society work, they have, indeed, accumulated different opinions and experiences. One would only have hoped that Art Janov’s ingenious insights, about the origin and consequences of repressed pain and mental suffering, had been paired with a better capacity, preferably in a team with peers with supplementary knowledge and experience, developing the Primal Therapy, eventually, to become every man’s property.

Perhaps a comparison with Steve Jobs, the legendary former Apple-founder and PT patient, may give a hint as to where I am aiming; Steve Jobs was a fan of The Beatles. He referred to them on multiple occasions. When asked about his business model on 60 minutes, he replied: “My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each other’s negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts. Great things in business are never done by one person, they are done by a team of people.” 

Art Janov is also a fan of The Beatles, but he was content with John Lennon, whose stardom gave a time-limited, major status impact on Primal Therapy. Great things, whether it be in business, research or therapy etc, are never done by one person. They are done by a team of people!

Jan Johnsson