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Janov's Reflections Dislocation of the Mind
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My comments:
“Any Belief System Can Fill The Bill”
I have often wondered why I didn’t turn religious or became addicted to any other crazy idea. Deep in my brainstem and in the ancient parts of my limbic system, I had more than enough devastating imprints, which created a constant pressure to my cortical centers and forward to my orbitofrontal cortex. At a very early age, I decided not to believe my mother when she spoke in godly terms. I can still remember that specific moment in our kitchen, when my mom tried to indoctrinate / correct me with one of her religious quotes. I felt a stab of anxiety, which was close to the feelings, I later felt before an epileptic fit, and I thought; “I do not believe you, mom”. At this moment, a kind of anti belief was created.
When I read the “Idiot” by Dostoevsky, I enjoyed his description of his “flashes / glimpses of pleasure and wonder, on the one hand, and the unbearable pain and violence on the other, which moments led to an extraordinary intensification of self-awareness”. His description gave me additional strength. Dostoevsky mentioned also in his unique wording how “the epileptic Muhammad’s faith, during the second before a fit, slipped in before the pain and helped him survey all the dwellings of Allah!”
When I had developed epilepsy, I adopted within short a belief that one day I would find a remedy and discover the reason for my illness. This belief was part of my painkillers during many years until I in January 1980, for the first- time experienced how a grand mal seizure turned into a birth primal. My belief / conviction / idea, that had been part of my wrapping for my pain, finally provided real fulfillment, when the exact nature of my needs / pain was revealed, and the cover was no longer needed. I was lucky to have had a belief system that both helped me to keep my pain at bay and to take me to my pain.
I can understand if people in my surrounding consider that my ideas / beliefs / convictions about, for example, Primal Therapy and Rolfing have been “outlandish” / fanatic the way I spent my life in order to demystify my epilepsy and to relive my pain and experience how many of my neuroses dissolved when no longer needed. Now, I no more consider my original conviction to demystify my epilepsy as a belief. Today I feel satisfied and relaxed to understand that the reason for my fits was caused by my religious mother and her faith to give birth with pain.
Knowing the physical and mental languages of pain which I have experienced over a long life, I have no hope in general to unwrap those with religious faith or other belief systems. Slowly, I understand that I have been a “fortunate” patient with a pain / stigma which was as easy to identify as the epilepsy in my case. I have been favoured both to have had the talent and the resources to find someone with an ingenious idea how to reverse the evolution and capable and willing to communicate his findings.
The hope I’m left with is that the next generations will learn and understand the biology of love and respect the right of their offsprings from the day of conception. I think that part of my successful demystification is due to that, I during 18 years have been the father of a girl who, by her mother, has been given an excellent life before birth and a subsequent smooth entrance into an interdependent world. Her life has been dominated by the fact that her needs have had a very high priority. With that basic attitude / habit it has been / is easy and natural to correct errors, and we have both learned and felt good.
My daughter is an excellent example of the value of Art Janov’s literature, which is a source that I have thus been able to enjoy both as a patient and as a guide for my daughter, so that she in the future don't need a therapy treatment.
Jan Johnsson
Luckily, I seem to have developed that with my 9yr old daughter, though I struggle with her Mothers' beliefs and frequently wonder how better to handle them.
I might not face my struggles so well if it were not for Arts books, this blog and some of your contributions. Thanks.
Paul G.