Demystification Of A Plane Crash

Demystification Of A Plane Crash

During a week, top politicians, in three of Europe’s largest countries, have had a legitimate reason to reduce their respective domestic political infighting. They have, with the help of effective news media, turned unemployment, corruption, economic imbalances and current political oppositions to news / issues of secondary importance. 

A tragic plane crash, which claimed 150 human lives, has news-wise and emotionally completely dominated in particular Spain, France and Germany (and to a lesser degree the rest of the World). In the media, several hundred million people, around the clock, have been able to follow every step of the dramatic process. From an aircraft reported lost, via the finding of the black boxes, to the girlfriend’s reported stories about the content of the co-pilot’s recurring nightmares about plane crashes.

After the revelation of the co-pilot’s misdeed, there have, from Germany, welled up revelations about his mental imbalance, vision problems, relationship problems with his fiancée and his dependence on psychiatric medications. Eg, the co-pilot, took a time-out, a few years ago, for psychotherapeutic treatment and was, according to the press, at the crash moment, hiding a sick leave. The pilots problems have been known for years. He has, however,  apparently managed to keep secret his health problems, for his airline. That this concealment of human problems has been possible for several years in an industry that prides itself, at least technically, on the most rigorous safety regulations in the world is incomprehensible / indefensible.

It  is amazing that no one; including psychologists, therapist, doctors, parents or other close relationships, probably of false loyalty, have understood / dared to report the co-pilot’s mental deficiencies. This passivity in spite of the fact that he had 100s of human lives in his hands. I come from a country which, fortunately, protects all small children from kindergarten age. The legislation has imposed kindergarten teachers an obligation to report to the police if they as much as suspect parents / carers exposing a child to physical or mental punishment. This natural obligation to protect children in Sweden is, by citizens of other European countries, sometimes, considered as disloyalty to the parents.

I think that the airline and the psychologists / doctors have the greatest responsibility. If the psychologists (who probably worked with cognitive therapy techniques) had had sufficient experience, they should have known that the process of mental pain is propelling depressions repeatedly / constantly. Painkillers / pharmaceuticals, with no guaranteed certainty, is the only long-term solution. Those responsible should therefore never assess a patient of this category as fit for a position as a pilot. There must exist an unconditional liability,  reporting / coordinating data, for all parties who treat, educate and interact with practitioners in extremely demanding sectors with responsibility for countless lives.

The type of symptoms, nightmares, and depressions, which the co-pilot showed, often are rooted in traumas from before, during and just after birth. Our organism represses and encapsulates pain of an unbearable nature as a memory / imprint. Later in life, the hidden / repressed pain wearing our body and mind consume large portions of the body’s natural painkillers / serotonin. When the body and brain become exhausted, the pain may leak out. This leakage propels persistent nightmares, depressions, neuroses and can lead to tragic act-outs. A distorted mind can then execute horrific actions like the conscious crash in the French Alps.

In the US, the promised land of cognitive psychotherapists and the DSM-5, the air safety authorities have realized that one cannot depend on the psyche of the individual. Over there, they have already set up a rigorous requirement that two pilots must, constantly, be present in the cockpit. Hopefully, the tragic accident in the Alps mean that the human, psychological development and monitoring will be given the same priority as the one devoted to the technical development in and around the aviation sector. As long as we need pilots to fly, they are part of the safety chain. A chain which is only as strong as its weakest link.

Jan Johnsson

A Prisoner Of Pain; It Takes One To Know One.

A Prisoner Of Pain; It Takes One To Know One.

Whenever I thought about my loops around the Globe, I was mainly filled with positive and good memories. However, since I became involved in PT, I have now and then thought that my memories (with the exception of my epilepsy), was a neurotic / unreliable misinterpretation.  My positive memories have, though, never hidden the sad fact that I, through pain-propelled act-outs, certainly made many people (especially I’m thinking of my first two kids) sad and disappointed. In my pre-primal life pattern, I was driven, every 3 - 5 years, to change partners, work, and culture / language in my search for my inner justice. 

I had no absent mother. I was my mother’s favorite until she died, and I was then 56 years old. She killed a lot of her pain with religiosity. She defended me without hesitation at least four critical occasions, when I between 5 and 10 years of age, made pranks. 

My mothers two big blunders; A: She subjected me, at my birth, to a lengthy, horrendous trauma in her ambition to fulfill the Bible’s recommendation to give birth with pain. B: She did not dare to intervene when my father, once, lost his temper and beat me hard, due to a playful misbehavior when I was nine years old. My mothers (contemporary) subservience combined with sheer respect of my father was too strong. I know that her heart was with me, and her passivity disappointed me.

My father, like my mother, was always present physically for me. Early on, I realized that my father carried on painful memories from his childhood. A pandemic, about WW1, when he was 3 - 4 years old, snatched away his mother and a pair of siblings. He became over the years increasingly depressed and on a few occasions, he lost his temper and exploded. On one such occasion, when I was a child, I happened to be the sacrifice for his act-out, which unfortunately eliminated all future emotional relationship between us. He tried to compensate this by helping me out of sticky practical situations (often of a financial nature) during my teens but I asked for it. One month before his death, 30 years too late, he took courage and talked with me. My father asked me if I still hated him for the assault, which he had done to me when I was 9. My answer was, fortunately, no. Within me, it took, however, several more years before the hatred of the assault ebbed.

The above trauma examples caused by my mother and father are dramatic “accidents”. They led to my suffering for decades, which I had never been able to overcome without the guidance of Art and understanding of his innovation the Primal Principle. And last but not least the driving force from the restless pain propelled curiosity of the Prisoner of Pain within myself. 

Often, when I read Art’s descriptions how an imprinted pain propels act-outs, I get the feeling that he avoids positive aspects associated with act-outs. A contradictory feeling emerges when I note that Art’s life has been unjust to him. His long and creative life has led to the development of the Primal Principle. In my case this innovation, based on Art’s unjust life, made it possible to demystify my epilepsy. It also made it possible to obtain redress, from my parents, for my childhood’s two most dramatic trauma, which propelled my neurosis during decades. The evolutionary intelligence makes the individuals’ unconscious pain valuable not only for the human species’ reproduction but also for his / her development.

Can we, as seen from the species’ development, then say that Art’s life was unjust? This unconscious injustice has helped countless patients to a better life. It has propelled the production of books / documentation of the significance of our right to be loved, touched and get attention, from the day of conception, during our critical and most formative years. 

It seems that the Evolution is consciously supporting that it takes one Prisoner of Pain, Art, to know another, for example, me, Jan. Or vice versa.

Jan Johnsson

Replies

Arthur JanovMarch 23, 2015 at 1:10 PM
Very good letter Jan. art

"As In A Mirror"

"As In A Mirror"

“Funny” enough, reading about Act-outs in Art’s Reflections I got a feeling that my life raced past. The memory process is fascinating in the sense that many interpretations that I had, during decades, of old memories, I now revise. I’m able to do that because I have re-lived much of the imprint that propelled my neurotic behavior and values.

During the first half, I was often quick to distort and create erroneous interpretations of symptoms, events and situations (both of my own and other’s). My need to “confidently” impress those around me, was was an unconsciously propelled process, which was deeply confusing for myself because of its lack of harmony with reality.

During the second half, having lived the Evolution in Reverse / the Primal Principle and demystified my repressed pain = epilepsy, my understanding of act-outs and act-ins has improved and continue to do so. (In this connection it is worth mentioning the unique fact that I spontaneously got liberating and dramatic confessions from both my parents about my two devastating childhood traumas.)

Having read the act-out-Reflections a couple of times, I got a feeling that I saw my life in a mirror. Inside the mirror were additional mirrors reflecting episodes from my life. Suddenly I remembered a film of Ingmar Bergman, “Through a Glass Darkly”, which 1961 received an Oscar. The Swedish title of the film was “Såsom i en spegel” which, in a straight translation, means “As in a mirror”!!!! The film left a deep impression, like all Ingmar Bergman’s movies. The fact that Max von Sydow, who plays the husband Martin in this family drama, came from the same school, and it’s theater, which I belonged to, added another dimension to my experience. 

Ingmar Bergman's film 1961, had the same motif as Art Janov's Reflection, 2015, concerning act-outs and act-ins. The theme elaborates the consequences of what happens when our parents deny us love, attention, and touch during the first and most critical stages of life. Bergman understood, intuitively, to visualize our unconscious pains and hold up a mirror for us. (The film ends with the following, tragically revealing, words from Martins 17-year-old son Minus: “Papa spoke to me!” ).

Janov has, through his development of The Primal Principle, taken us a step further and guides us, by re-living our pain, into the unconscious. For me, it feels like magic, to read Art's brilliant description of his own and everyone's tendency to act-out our unconscious. I can feel how I got it all together, 55 years after I developed epilepsy and saw “Through a Glass Darkly”.

Fascinating and satisfying to follow how Art, after the age of 90, just like another of my favorites, Picasso, did, continues to be productive and inspire the world.

Jan Johnsson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIKZ5dpA5KU

Replies

Arthur JanovMarch 18, 2015 at 2:01 PM
Jan: Ingmar Bergman was one of the great people I knew. He brought me to Sweden to see one of his films. I got there in this dark room and I said to him, Hey I do not speak Swedish. He said not to worry. The room goes dark and suddenly a man appears behind me and starts whispering the dialogue in my ear. Within minutes it was as if I was watching the film in English. He visited me at the clinic and afterwards said, with all this chaos there must be a lot of creativity going on.
Thanks Jan for the kind words. I think your case is important because there is something we can do with some epilepsies. art

My Conscious Working Class Hero Art!

My Conscious Working Class Hero Art!

I also had a dream last night. It was a sweeping lifelong primal. I stood on my childhood railway station in southern Sweden, and I saw a long train with  an impressive American locomotive rolling in. The train came from Gothenburg, and I felt intense; this is the right train. It was, symbolically, the train I had boarded when I had decided, after only four months of employment (May -August 1974), to leave a management position in a Union Carbide company. The train / my decision had freed me from a job with tempting material wealth that would have risked my, via The Primal Scream, newly awakened ambitions to demystify my epilepsy (= birth trauma). Feelings of varying character filled me while I, for a long while, looked at the train. I thought about Art’s metaphor; a person who boards the wrong train, he / she is bound to, continuously, arrive at the wrong station.

Given my usual curiosity, I know astonishingly little about Art Janov. Even though, he calls me a friend and has been my reliable guide out of a horrible pain / repression. Art’s, as I thought, aristocratic anonymity, diminishes and turns over to a fellowship of proletarian dimensions when I read his emotional stories of his historyless and in many respects ruined childhood and adolescence. How has Art managed to become who he is? From his Russian proletarian background to the unconscious Honorable Ph.D. Arthur Janov, back to a conscious Working Class Hero Art!?

Despite their inherited / imposed insensitivity, Art’s parents have transferred some unique qualities of life. Through their son, those have blossomed into a historical documentation and guidance about feelings and the importance of love, touch, and attention. In Art’s case, it looks as if the Evolution has developed the necessary repressions / gates between the unconscious and the conscious. His unsatisfied unconscious has propelled psychic energy / motivation to understand / develop the Primal Principle, which has become a crucial survival reality for many of us, in order to, eventually, become more conscious.

Often we act as if Evolution were an instrument in a human controlled process, when it, in reality, relates vice versa. Evolution is full of seemingly temporary results in a continuous process that constantly searches / creates its meaning and balance. A process that we reflect and seek to influence, each according to his / her interpretation or the standards that are fashionable.

Jan Johnsson

PS

I am aware that my remaining eventual working pals hesitate about my opinion of a working class hero. However, having done a class trip and having used the looking glass inside out, I have realized that a Working Class Hero can live in Malibu Beach.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njG7p6CSbCU