Saturday, January 15, 2011

A Look In The Rear Mirrors During My Journey.



After having presented more or less half of my Epileptic Journey during a couple of months, I feel a need to make a few conclusions of certain reactions and experiences. My need to comment on my reactions is based on the fact that a few small nuisances are leaking into my general satisfaction of having been able to make a presentation of my lifelong collection of memories and facts of my feelings and sufferings.
The biggest irritation is caused by the paradigm which in general is represented by the school of cognitivism. They try to develop a capacity to exercise cognitive control in their patients. The reason for my own negative reactions to cognitive control is because their repressive techniques provoked my leaky gates and stimulated my epilepsy. It did not take many meetings with cognitive therapists to become allergic to their kind of verbal, intellectual treatment and to their antidepressants. The cognitive therapist on their side responded by considering me as a hopeless case.
However, in a complex world I can understand that many suffering patiens can be helped, at least a short term, by both cognitive therapists and prescriptions of painkillers. The most cognitive therapist, I honestly think, are good. That is why I reacted negatively when Dr Janov said that “the psychotherapy of denial is one of the crimes of the century, not including holocaust and other disasters”. He is correct in that the patients become more repressed. They escape reality through medications and through insights and beliefs. However this is due to the existing Paradigm, which neither Dr Janov, nor others, over 30 years have been able to change.
Talking to other friends on the cognitive side, they blame me for being too fixated to the Janov Therapy, which has proven to work in my favor and to save my life. They think that I’m smearing the skilled profession of cognitive therapists. I’m not. I’m regretting the shortcomings of a paradigm within psychotherapy which nobody has been able to change. So far, too few have been willing to accept the new principles of “evolution in reverse” to establish a new paradigm. I’m sure the components for a change of paradigm are avaliable. We have to wait another time for an unselfish, entrepreneurial innovator to put the last pieces into place in this puzzle game.
I have been through a great number of 2-3 year periods of painkilling, euphoric projects of both professional and personal experiences. They have been exiting, both by their nature and because of the relative success they have yielded. I can certainly understand that most people prefer a repressive treatment with the help of painkilling insights, words and drugs instead of feeling pain over a long and uncertain period of time. If I had not had epilepsy, leaky gates, and if I had not had periods of horror and anxiety I would not have gone either to Primal Therapy or Rolfing. Even if I knew that my life would be shorter than normal. Success and painkillers of any kind made me, in reality, dumb, and it was possible to accept when I deluded myself because I thought during the anesthesia that I was intelligent. As Dr Janov says: “What a dilemma!”
One thing which funny enough has not been irritating me is that there existed, at times, frequent element of religious commitment among the comments on Dr Janovs Reflections. They try to bring up the best of feelings with a lot of friendly, positive words of love and support. However, not avoiding in a subtle way to express that Jesus will be with us. I like their support and need for Primal Therapy, but can smell the pain in their disguised cognitive approach to Primal Therapy.
Art’s Reflections is a brilliant source to own thoughts, and they give an excellent training in both feeling through my experiences and putting words on them. These processes, to act and react, give me ample opportunities to modify and straighten out murky thoughts before I publish my posts on the blogg.
A great joy during my presentations of my articles on my blogg has been the fact that I have signed up for a package of sessions in Rolfing, Structural Physical Integration. I have found a well trained and certified Rolfer, Jordi, who is as pure a Rolfer as I could have wished. Through my experiences from being Rolfed in Boulder, Col., 1979, having been through Primal Therapy during 40 years, I am now prepared to enjoy, understand and further to develop myself.
I’m writing small reports to my blogg after each session and that way I enjoy the treatment even more. I am as exited as Jordi (to whom I gave my “El Grito Primal”). We are never totally sure about the reactions and the development. As Ida Rolf once stated: “One of the things I’m trying to tell you is that there is only yourself and what you can learn to see and feel, that will give you a certain security. I want to give you the feeling that it’s all right to be insecure”!
Given enough lead time I have maintained my schedule...
Jan Johnsson, Jan. 15th., 2011.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vafrsflot3k

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