Evolution Will Keep CBT Only As Long As It Is Needed

Evolution Will Keep CBT Only As Long As It Is Needed

Why is Art constantly ranting about CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) and other “half-therapies”. Why! What is the deep lying reason? He is right (and I’m one evidence of that his Primal Principal is working).  However, he won’t get credentials easier for that reason due to missing scientific papers, which none has seen so far. The most important thing is that the holistic approach to the Primal Therapy must cover both psychological, physical and social complications/repressions in a free interdisciplinary mix.

Abraham Maslow, who also was a genius who was ahead of his time, tried, for decades, to justify dynamic psychotherapy and self-discovery. “ If we have a need for vitamin B12, psychotherapists can say, that we have a need to be loved or a need for safety.” He was, however, “cool” and knew that blind love for one’s subject leads to subjective conclusions and a missed divergent truth. “In the effort to achieve “scientific,” uninvolved, don’t-care objectivity, the anthropologist, for instance, may buy the whole package that he mistakenly ties to this kind of objectivity. He may become scientistic rather than scientific, may feel it necessary to drown his human feelings for the people he studies, may quantify whether necessary or not, and may wind up with accurate details and a false whole”.

Maslow referred to common phrasings as “science can tell us nothing about why, only about how”. “Science is not an ideology or an ethic or a value system; it cannot help us to choose between good and evil.” “The unavoidable implication is, then, that science is only an instrument, only a technology, to be used equally by either good men or villains.” 

I don’t know which buttons Art is pressing in my feelings. It hurts me when he is using/pleading/referring to his scientific proofs as a weapon against “half-therapies”. The realization of the Primal Principle that correctly, individually, applied may cure childhood traumas and resolve neuroses does not work in general. Evolutionary survival mechanisms are not only psychologically strong, they also form, together with physical and social factors a complex pattern of dead ends.

Within the 200.000 shrinks, Art (we) are usually ranting against, there are a number of bright people. Louis Cozolino, well known to Art and his pals, has written a book “The Making of a Therapist”. The book is being read by current and future therapists among wich several certainly CBT-related (and I hope Primal Therapy-related). A wonderful book showing the imperative of a “skinless” sensitivity both towards himself, as a therapist, as against his patient. The book fits my time with the Primal Principle and the way I learned to see, interpret and understand myself in my social interactions. I truly hope it will be a “must-read” at Duke University, Duke Integrative Medicine, in their Leadership Program in Integrative Healthcare.

There is now in my life, a woman, Eva, who worked as a researcher, leader and pedagogue in a well-recognized university. As the successor to her father and grandfather, she has led, lived and breathed research, in search for the truth. During their combined 100 years of research, they have in their environment, probably, seen more talents come on, develop and flourish to Nobel Prize candidates and laureates than there are patients who can stand up and say that they have been cured by PT.

Despite her compact research background, my friend Eva has become completely convinced about the possibilities of the Primal Principle/Evolution in Reverse. She knew me already when I was a charming (her words), headstrong teenager. Our paths parted among other things due to the consequences of my epilepsy. We did not see each other for 53 years, though, we had another in mind. As a result of our re-established emotional ties, due to my book about my epileptic journey and due to Art Janov’s Reflections, her approach to the mechanical truths of Science have been revised.

Eva has, over four years, using interdisciplinary methods, in a sensational way regained normal vital signs, throwing her diabetes and goiter medications and lost 30 pounds. She is very fond of Art Janov, possibly more than I.

You shouldn’t incriminate/nag at cognitive therapists, Art! Evolution will only keep them as long as they are needed!

Jan Johnsson