How Pain Can Be Translated / Intellectualized Into Beuty / Feelings / Emotions.

Why Don't We Know We Are in Pain? That is today's question in Janov's Reflections. Yes, it is certainly interesting that the lack of awareness / consciousness is a fact. It demonstrates the rational intelligence in the process of evolution, which maneuvers the majority of us through life, with success, though, at the price of suffering. Most of the works in our daily life, like arts, politics, business, etc., are screaming out their statements about the pain that are inprinted in us, all the time without a break.

Bach, Picasso, and Janov are outstanding people who are among those who are / were in pain, suffering something they didn’t know much about. However, they used their pain to “intellectualize their feelings” and in art, music and literature express the dilemma of the human tragedy. They do it with a beauty and sensibility which gives our lives a meaningful experience. It takes different beliefs, not only religious, to survive in a cold, negligent and often loveless world. The aforementioned, pain propelled, beautiful spirits are special through their ability to capture, to counterpoint / interlace the beauty and tragedy of our short lives. Their neuroses give us satisfying experiences, while evolution grinds on. 

Johann Sebastian Bach came from a musical family, was orphaned early, but got through his sibling's help, first-class musical education. Throughout his life, he used, in the fight against tradition / zeitgeist and religious control his ingenious musical talents to express his own inner beliefs despite the fact that the church and the established powers were his superiors. He developed his creativity, musical talent and knowledge of music to the point where it grew out of the protestant church's religious possession and became everybody’s emotional musical heritage of today. Although - thanks to - being discouraged and criticized, he used the church / contemporary official worldview to show the tragedy of all our pain propelled / bloated complacency.

Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born into an established family of artists and devoted almost 90 years to drawing and painting and fascinated his surroundings with a never-ending ability to express his naïve capacity. A severe trauma, a violent earthquake, combined with the sister's complicated birth in Malaga when he was 2-3 years old characterized left imprints, in the work of art, which his artistic talent expressed. Picasso's success became prolonged due to the constant renewal of his pain propelled symbolism and thanks to the exponential / absurd growing economic valuation of art in the last century. Picasso, who was registered communists into his death, is probably the artist, all categories whose works brought in the most money. Again, a reflection of the beauty and tragedy of the neurotic human trauma.

Arthur Janov was an unloved son of immigrated Russian peasants. He was an “asphalt-flower” from a metropolitan ghetto, who with the Navy’s / WW2’s help became prepared for a work / life, in various mental institutions with people with repressed pain. We needed him to understand / access information about the difference between a good or bad life before, during or after birth. It has required an extraordinary amount of repressed pain / empathic intellect to create an economic wealth / independence that was invested in the explanation of the lifesaving ability of evolution to repress what threatened our lives. He took us on a tour beyond our and his own belief.

No pain, no gain!

Jan Johnsson