Proust, Janov and Eva!

Again, we have had a tragic example of, the thousands of years of repeated persecution of the Jews, this time in France. France is said to be the country in Europe with the largest Jewish population and a president, Nicolas Sarkozy, whose father was a Greek Jew. This was one of two impacts that occupied my mind when I went to bed last night. The second impression was the final sentence in Art’s Reflection about 

The Chemistry of Depression (How Memory Is Inscribed) : “Jules distressed to intellectualize and beat around the subject endlessly never getting to any point. In our last group, I said to Jules one sentence: “The bottom line, Jules.” He hesitated a split second, fell into my arms and shouted: “Help me - I hurt!” “.

My dreams last night have been about Jews in my life and the literary world that I am interested in. Anne, the little girl from my early childhood, whose parents came from German death camps in Poland, Art Janov and The Primal Therapy that changed my life, Abbe Bonnier my employer who made my years with Janov in LA possible, Marcel Proust whose life and written production currently enrich me. Other Jewish representatives like Freud, Madhoff, etc. swept by. As it happens in my dreams, I tried to understand. Often it’s about my epilepsy, my neurotic behavior (actions that do not correspond to real needs) and to understand how pain propels the neurotic actions.

In the background it is always my personal life story. For decades I lived as a prisoner of my pain which produced neurotic deformations and painkillers, in order for me to survive. My life was not understandable until I was introduced and connected to Art’s principles of “Evolution in Reverse”. Through a combination of talented genius and favourable circumstances, Art turned his youth filled with pain and lack of love and recognition, into an opportunity for us to understand the consequences of unmet needs and loveless fetal toxicity in both the literal and the transmitted sense. He has led us to a new therapy paradigm.

Marcel Proust takes presently very large space in my world of thoughts and then I’ve only just started reading him, and analysis on him. His short, brilliant literary life was to the brim full of symbols that represented his bottomless pain and unmet needs. I can best summarize the insights I have so far received by a quotation from Proust: “In reality, every reader is, while he is reading, the reader of his own self. The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument which he offers to the reader to enable him to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have experienced in himself. And  the recognition by the reader in his own self of what the book says is the proof of its veracity.”

The value of Art’s books and Reflections cannot be better expressed than by using Proust words. It is by reading about  other people’s anxiety, pain and trauma that we can become aware of and feel our own anxiety and our unmet needs that goes back to our early childhood or even to our life before birth.

Intellect, thoughts and words are often a major obstacle to accessing our feelings and nonverbal traumatic memories. However, with more than 70 years of my own memories of physical and mental anxiety and pain, coupled with 40 years of application of Art’s principles and generous guidance on how emotions can be relived, Proust’s intellectual pain sublimations can be extremely rewarding. Add to that I’m having the opportunity to discuss my impressions with a woman, who for more than 50 years ago made an indelible impression upon my young mind. That makes at least part of life intelligible although last night’s dreams were partly initiated by a tragic event in France. The joy is represented by the fact that Jules took his first step toward health!

Jan Johnsson