Denmark and Axiology. (Article 12 of the history of my epilepsy.)

The Road to Primal Therapy and into my epilepsy has on some decisive occasions passed through Denmark. Denmark became in a way early my mental Free State. The reason for this lies in the fact that I as a child between 1943 and 1945, during World War II, had the opportunity to know a Danish family, including two sons, Leif and Hans, who were 1 respectively three years older than me and with whom I played daily. The family background was Jewish and the father was the owner of a big farm where my father worked as head of its dairy herd. With its Jewish background, the Henckel family avoided the nazi possessed Denmark.

During 2 years’ I had thus an opportunity for an early indoctrination in the Danish language, which about 15 years later would prove useful and practical when I after receiving epilepsy and quit my previous job in Malmö moved to Copenhagen for a couple of years to work with Stetson. In a few months, I then learned to speak Danish without any significant accent, which was rather unusual. It was my very early everyday Danish language exercises in a higher degree than my language talent which meant something in this surprising transformation.

During my 10 years in the corset industry (which, moreover, ceased to exist in the early 1970s due to new technology / a paradigm shift made tights possible) in Spirella on Davidshalls Street in Malmö as a correspondent, finance and sales manager I held for several years a special eye on the Danish subsidiary. The reason for that I had been given this responsibility was based largely on my emotional weakness for what was Danish.

During my adult life, I have as well read books in Danish as in Swedish, I have many Danish favorite writers of whom I have already mentioned Henrik von Pontoppidan. The Primal Scream, I read the first time in the Danish version and the background to this is worth a separate section which I will return to in another context.

During the years 1972-1977, I lived again in Denmark and this time I worked for the Swedish toy manufacturer Brio as responsible for its Danish subsidiary. Our specialty and main products (at least seen from a Swedish perspective) were wooden toys for preschool children, which were produced in an almost artisanal way. In the Danish operation, we had factories for the manufacturing of paperboard games, wooden games, and we invested heavily in making life difficult for the Bonnier-owned Alga in the Nordic region. Our local Danish ace up the sleeve was the Matador Game which was a pirated copy of Monopoly which Alga licensed for the Swedish market by Parker Brothers in USA. We had, in addition to our wooden and board games, agencies for many of the great international toy brands as The Barbie Doll, Tonka, Fischer Price, Scrabble, etc.

The Parent Company of the Brio Group had its base in Osby, Sweden and was chaired by a member of the second generation of the family which was the main owner and the company had for some years been recruiting fresh blood to its management team and several of its new Swedish members came from American consumer giants. According to what was in the vogue Brio was organized in business divisions, each with its strategy to become a market-leader, a fact which would eventually fill the factories in the woodlands around Osby in southern Sweden with orders of new dimensions. This happened before Asia had woken up. The future looked bright in spite of the oil crisis in 1974, which really only had caused a transient shock which just led to higher prices for plastic toys.

This happened, as I mentioned earlier, in the beginning / middle of the 1970s. To analyze business ideas, to reorganize, establish recruitment criteria and to make tests of key staff were innovations as part of a new wave. Personal effectiveness, time management and therapies were other tools in the development of a future, dynamic market economy. We had survived the 1968 student revolts and the first major oil crisis in the early 1970s with anxiety and fear and was later surprised to find that life went on with some dimensions inoculated. We were many who were prepared to follow the acquisition’s gurus, the new diversification era gold diggers.

Said and done. We would investigate and take stock of our human resources to identify our potential leadership talents. Without remembering exactly how it happened a rumor spread that all in managerial positions were to be tested. It would not be any test but the Company had chosen Axiology. This test was licensed and was managed by Evert Schildt. He was originally medics and had practiced gynecology. Ironic, discriminatory and sexist jokes based on Everts professional background probably helped someone's concern for the upcoming test, but not mine.

Already some years earlier I had witnessed the start of a new era of staff testing in Spirella. This was a traditional test of a psychologist in connection with a reorganization and a radical change in my career (in the corsetry industry which from both product and customer point of view had the future behind itself) so I should have been well prepared for the test and changes which took place in Brio. My slightly bantering and sweeping description of the realities was a reality many organizations went through in the 1970s - and '80s and the fact I in no way was adversely affected by the tests and the changes I went through would have meant that I was in an ideal situation. So I was in terms of both career and economic conditions. However, there was a constant underlying threat and a deep fear and pain in my future scenarios. I was carrying a hidden fault.

The Axiology test, modified by Evert Schildt, had been developed before the war by Robert Hartman, a German, who fled to the USA during the Nazi era. The test consisted of 90 questions on values in different situations. Responses were sorted into six dimensions, three from an external perspective and another three from a personal perspective. When Evert presented my test results for me I remember that I felt depressed. Although he pointed out my exceptional ability to judge situations and get a grasp of my surroundings, and he mentioned that I was potentially highly gifted, I was very disappointed when he mentioned my uncertainty to judge and look at myself as a person. This contrast between my high capacity to judge the world and my inner existential uncertainty created an unpleasant sensation, which would last for decades.

My internal restriction seemed directly related to the word “potential” in Everts expression potentially gifted. I felt inhibited and unable to get out of my disability. There was a link between potential, never realized talent and my limited ability to trust myself at certain times and from particular perspectives. I knew all too well the cause even though I tried to do everything possible to suppress it. My epilepsy!

For a long time, I tried to rationalize away Everts assessment as inaccurate and unrealistic. Deep in my heart, in an intuitive, repressed level, I knew that was not the case. His statement was on point! My epilepsy (and all that it represented) was a ticking bomb, the uncertainty which acted as a brake in my mind. By developing, often with skill, my ability to evaluate, judge and manage the world around me, I kept my anxiety caused by my epilepsy and birth at bay.

After the Axiology test, I was further reinforced in my conviction that there was only one way for the future, and it went through LA and The Primal Institute. The next 2-3 years I was obsessed with the idea to create the conditions to get there. My split feelings about Everts test had its roots in the fact that it was the first time anyone had successfully proven that my epilepsy and repressed pain was linked to my existential anxiety, and limited my opportunities to develop my ability. After two years, 1978 and 1979, in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, I moved back to Brokamåla, Blekinge, Sweden. After a few years, I met Evert Schildt again, now in the Perstorp Group, and underwent a new axiology test. Almost the same results as last time, but with an improved ability to judge myself. This time I knew that outcome of the test was correct because I was now much more aware of my epilepsy and its causes, although I was still far from a cure and solution.

Although I later worked with a person who did research work around the Axiology in his doctoral work, I was not really interested in becoming involved in this test instrument. The analytical potential could not meet my real need to be healed from epilepsy. However, its detection ability has been a constantly irritating while stimulating information about the relationship between my anxiety, my existential insecurity and my neurotically driven ability to judge and manage the world around me. My post-humus thanks go to DR Evert Schildt. As a gynecologist, my mother would have needed his help, the 7 October 1940, so I had not had to wait another 2 days...

The truth is always revolutionary. Poul Henningsen