Fire Watch

Fire Watch

The other day Art Janov, in an article (What is Primal Therapy?), used an interesting metaphor when he told us that his hair “caught fire”. This had happened due to the fact that a number of unnamed psycho-therapists in an unauthorized manner borrows the term “Primal” to deceive patients to their version of therapy.

The fire in Art’s hair sparked memories in my bald (which ought to make it fireproof) head. When I, 1971, for the first time read The Primal Scream in Danish, a, then, unconscious, pain-propelled neurosis guided me. The pain behind my neurosis proved one day to be my mothers pride over my siblings curly hair and her sorrow over my straggling hair growth. I became neurotically obsessed with Art’s hair (on the book cover), which now, 42 years later, “caught fire”.

In the Primal Scream, Art Janov explains how the invention of the Primal Principle was born. One of his patients had been to a different show during the 1960ies in NY with the renowned avant-garde artist Raphael Ortiz (incidentally a colleague of Yoko Ono) who experimented, with the audience, to find out more about the unconscious mind. The patient’s experience led to that Art Janov guided him to undergo the first emotional experience with the label “Primal”. The rest is history and the line of “prisoners of pain” from all over the world, which, more or less successfully have made a pilgrimage to LA to get free from their pain, is long.

The development has not stood still during the 47 years that The Primal Therapy has existed, but it has, on the other hand, neither meant that a secure universal psycho-therapeutic Primal method has been developed outside the domains of Art Janov if even there! Why? Why are there so many who want to help their patients with the miracle sign Primal?

Many therapists are apparently somewhat aware, however, not consciously, of the curative potential to re-live imprinted / traumatic pain. The Primal Therapy places enormous demands on both those who want to be therapists and those who want to be patients. It takes a long time to learn to become a patient. For those who want to become a skilled guide / therapist, they must themselves have made the journey as a patient; otherwise they will never understand that the patient is the one who is in charge and determining and that the therapist can only be a guide.

Personally, I made my journey in three stages of development - 10-15 year intervals - which has covered most of a lifetime. Art Janov’s guidance, his narrated patient experiences and my unconventional therapy experiments with my physique and my diet has been my indispensable guiding principles. Not to forget, I have been fortunate and selfish enough to acquire and allocate the material resources, of substantial size, which has been required.

Regardless of my own positive experiences, when I de-mystified my epilepsy by re-living my birth trauma and saw degrading neurotic behavior being dissolved, it is an experience that, during the past 2 years, has meant most to my understanding of the Primal Principle / Evolution in Reverse. Using my experience over 40 years, I have been able to guide a friend from childhood to  get out of a deep depression caused by a stroke and burn out after a long academic career. Her joy and enthusiasm can be compared to the experience I had during the years when I, when necessary, have been patiently guided by Art Janovs ingenious intuition. A practical, non-scientific, confirmation of the Primal Principle.

Together and separately we have made an emotional, interdisciplinary therapeutic journey, that has taken us from cognitive awareness to a truer consciousness.

Jan Johnsson

Social Equality.

Social Equality.

It is hard not to feel a pang of sympathy when Frank Larsson fights for his absurd idea, through a legal process, to achieve free access to Primal Therapy (FrankNovember 25, 2013 at 12:26 AM). It seems that his struggle is as intense as his deeply engraved primal pain. In the world, Frank is describing are those who are intellectuals, i.e., those who are locked up in their left, intellectual cerebral hemisphere, guilty of criminal acts since they do not introduce social rules of free Primal Therapy for all. The crux is only that all the intellectuals, which according to Frank, have a brain like a safe (with the key forever, self-inflicted hidden inside the safe), are dominating both the judiciary and all forms of treatments. This means that these key individuals, in Frank’s alleged entitlement process, themselves, logically, must first undergo Primal Therapy and eliminate the pain and neuroses that propelled them to their positions so that they blend in Frank’s world. This looks like a catch-22.

The table on which Frank’s case reasonably belongs is Social Equality, which includes Equal Rights under the law, with equal access to social goods and services. However, Social Equality is an ideal situation, that does not occur in actuality, in complex economics. The administration of our constitutions favouring the many instead of the few, this is why they are called democracies. To avoid getting into a legal witch hunt, Frank is recommended to choose the political path. Frank is not alone in his fight for a fairer world. Some (radical) feminists have opposed equality before the law because they think it maintains the weak situation of the weak.

In the literature and in the fairy tale are several examples, that resembles Frank’s ambitions. The Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes, in his classic and influential work “Don Quixote”, described the impossible dream personified by the knight Don Quixote of Mancha and his squire Sancho Panza. Don Quixote tries, despite his own idealism, to teach Sancho Panza that: “Those who believe that the state of things in this world can be changed, think something they should not believe”... Sometimes, when I read Art Janov’s and Frank Larsson’s argument shifts, I start involuntarily to think of Cervantes.

H.C. Andersen’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes” is a tale about a couple of weavers who promise an Emperor a new suit of clothes that is invisible to those unfit for their positions, stupid, or incompetent. When the Emperor parades before his subjects in his new clothes, a child cries out; “But he isn’t wearing anything at all!” It does not take much imagination to hear the scream of H.C. Andersen’s child when Frank is commenting his indignation over the intellectual masquerades of the rulers.

Jan Johnsson

Remark about Mindfulness (One of the factors of enlightment).

Remark about Mindfulness (One of the factors of enlightment).

Daniel Goleman, author of the long-lived bestseller “Emotional Intelligence”, published in 1995, broadened the view of the narrow-charged word intelligence. In business, life became more human. It suddenly became easier to talk about feelings, and emotional reactions in cooperation as well in change situations and even the logically limited technology specialists had easier to admit that emotions were part of the general intelligence.

Goleman gathered during his ph.D. studies at Harvard knowledge and inspiration from Indian Mindfulness. Later after his successful establishment of the new intelligence-paradigm, he has this year in collaboration published a book: “Working with Mindfulness: Research and Practice of Mindful Techniques in Organizations).” All of Coleman’s production and exercises are based on scientific research in an ambition to keep his language demystified and free from gobbledygook.

Mindfulness is a readily available technique, accessible to an insignificant cost. It can help those in need through stressful situations. “If you want to have a human moment, which is when everything really happens, you have to set aside what you’re thinking about, turn off your iPad, turn away from your screen, stop your daydreams about whatever is pulling you away, and be fully present with the person/child you’re with. I think we need more and more help having those human moments.”

If that mindful attitude, whether it comes from MMP, could be combined with / linked to, the Primal Principles; “to lay back and feel the stab of anxiety” the human race would be less dependent of DSM 5, and it’s drug-initiating categorizations.

Jan Johnsson 

Bridge of Asses (Pons asinorum)

Bridge of Asses (Pons asinorum)

To create a new frame to understand the Primal Therapy.

I have often found it difficult, in an easily understandable way, to explain how, using the Primal Therapy and its principles, I was able to relive the imprinted pain from my terrifying and traumatic birth-process. It has taken four decades of my life to feel at home, “confused on a higher level”, in that potential new paradigm of PT.

Art Janov writes for instance in his article series “The Mystery Known as Depression”: “It is a new paradigm. If we try to understand it, within the old frame of reference, we will fail. What is difficult to accept is our assertion that re-living traumatic experiences, including birth, is the way to reverse depression, Exploring the mind has been like exploring the world to prove it is round; it often cannot be believed until somebody actually makes the journey. In the development of Primal Therapy, we have always let ourselves be guided by one unassailable truth - the experience of our patients.”

The above quote by Art Janov caused me, during my long, unusual and eventful Epileptic Journey, often to come across a “Bridge of Asses”. I had  need of a metaphor for an explanation or justification which could pass a critical test of understanding to, for myself and others, explain the experiences, I physically and mentally underwent. That meant, not infrequently, especially in the beginning, deductions / syllogisms of extremely subtle, sophisticated or deceptive neurotic symptoms.

The documentation available on the principles of the Primal Therapy has its predominant source in Art Janov’s vast literary lifetime achievement as books and articles. I have often made it easy for me by, relatively unsuspectingly, swallow the truth from other sources, which Art referred to. Although, I have informed me of inaccuracies in both McLean’s model of the Triune Brain as in Hæckel’s theory of recapitulation “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”, it has not interfered with my “worldview”, and I have found no reasons to doubt.

On November 14, AnttiJ (AnttiJNovember 14, 2013 at 9:27 AM) commented on Part 3 of “The Mystery Known as Depression” in an intelligent way about the danger of using metaphors of dubious up to date scientific value. The readers / target groups of articles do not consist only of patients (potential and those who are in treatment) but hopefully they consist of knowledgeable, critical scientists and neuroscience experts of all categories.

I agree with Antti that Art Janov’s mainly practical / experiential-based conclusions of the Primal Therapy should be anchored in facts that include current, impeccable scientific terms to create interdisciplinary respect. It is crucial that both simplified and complicated transcriptions from therapeutic experiences take place in a proper manner so that neuro-scientific and psychotherapeutic circles do not expose a sensitive treatment like Primal Therapy, with unique potential to cure depression, to floccinaucinihilipilification (the act or habit of describing or regarding something as unimportant, of having no value or being worthless).

Primal Therapy is challenged by a two lane Bridge of Asses, one for patients and one for the intellectuals and scientists.

Jan Johnsson

Attention to the Placenta!

Attention to the Placenta!

The powerhouse of Art Janov and the Primal Principles.

For me, Primal Therapy is synonymous with Art Janov. WHY? Because of  trust and confidence he has communicated to me about the Primal Principle.  This was done first by his books and was confirmed subsequently through hands-on treatments and guidance on a number of retreats under unique circumstances (in Denmark, France, Switzerland and Norway) and has later been followed up for many years through his Reflections about the human conditions. With his charisma, Art Janov radiates a total conviction about how our lives and personalities are shaped from the moment of conception, through our life in the placenta, through the birth process and through the unconditional love, touch and attention we need during our first years of sensitive development. 

Over the decades when I, figuratively and literally, have followed Art Janov, I have both emotionally and intellectually developed my ability to understand, re-live and integrate my pain from my birth trauma. The radical learning process to re-live repressed pain occurred during three periods of intensive therapy when I relieved pain that my horrific birth trauma had engraved in my brain, mind, senses and body. The intensive periods of therapy were the starting point for many neurotic (non-real) behaviors to dissolve and / or change. 

Between my three peak periods (with about 15-year intervals) Art Janov’s books and articles stimulated me and my memories. Such a process can start by, for example, a Reflection of Art Janov that captures my interest and evokes memories. My reactions take place both immediately and / or within a few days. My triune brain then stimulates emotional and physiological processes, which always, in some way, are connected either directly to my birth trauma or to the neurosis I developed, over many years, to kill my pain. The combination of total trust in the powerhouse of Art Janov’s expertise and to my own confirmatory life experiences concerning the Primal Principle is the basis for the trust in my own ability that I have developed concerning feelings and emotions.

Reading Art Janov has always meant that my memory processes have triggered parts of my birth trauma / pain that I “forgot” / repressed. After every such process, a new piece of the compressed pain, which has been engraved in my mind and body, has been erased. These experiences have for every time and over the years become more spontaneous and is now part of a natural self-healing process.

The powerhouse of memories

Art Jano’vs recent Reflection The Role of the Placenta, “the powerhouse of chemistry”, which is our home during our first nine months, began an extensive process of memories, which I had not completely repressed, but kept at bay for almost 40 years and which culminated this morning by triggering a “forgotten” birth primal of very profound character.

1975, the year after I read The Primal Scream, I moved hastily together with a very young woman (“Q”). I had just gotten divorced, moved to Denmark and taken up a post as COE in a consumer goods company. I carried a Janus face, one that looked into the future and showed a well-trained, resourceful workaholic and another face that looked back into the past hiding a chemically lobotomized epileptic with constant anxiety of losing control and being exposed. “Q”, who fell for my forward-looking face, was very beautiful and attractive. However, it quickly turned out, behind the beautiful façade there was a bottomless anxiety of a woman who early lost her mother. Because the father was a bohemian and addict, she had grown up, with conditional love, with an aunt. Stimulated by “The Primal Scream” I dug quickly up her life story and made her fast dependent on my well-intentioned, but limited “insights”. We established fast, especially socially, a, seemingly, good life together. The visible problem was “Q’s” jealousy of my former wife, which was manifested every other weekend when I had custody of my two children from the previous marriage.

After only a few months together, “Q” became pregnant even though she used the barrier method (IUD) for contraception. I was anguished but pushed  those feelings aside, and we established a situation that had several elements of seemingly happiness. This, however, rested on a foundation which in both cases was under varying influence of anxiety. The first seven months of pregnancy went well and without incident. During the last two months “Q” started to feel bad which showed in dizziness and high blood pressure. Regular visits to one, as it later proved careless female doctor assured us that the pregnancy proceeded normally. In early summer 1976, the birth would take place and everything looked OK except “Q”, who normally was physically strong and fit, was very tired.

Suddenly, one morning I woke up very early and found “Q” unconscious by my side. Her face was swollen and bluish, like after a seizure. I called the ambulance which arrived within 15-20 minutes. The local hospital reacted very fast and the doctor concluded immediately that the fetus was dead and that it most likely died of eclampsia (fetal poisoning). The local hospital had insufficient resources to save and cure “Q” and a special transport was arranged to Copenhagen. By fortuitous circumstances, Copenhagen’s largest hospital, “Rigshospitalet”, arranged an international gynecologist conference and an American gynecologist with the speciality in placenta got a unique opportunity to both save “Q’s” life, remove the dead fetus and to demonstrate his skills before his international colleagues.

Eclampsia - An imbalance in the powerhouse of the placenta

Pre-eclampsia is a medical condition characterized by high blood pressure and significant amounts of protein in the urine of a pregnant woman. If left untreated, it can develop into eclampsia, the life-threatening occurrence of seizures during pregnancy. There are many different causes for the condition. It appears likely that there are substances from the placenta that can cause dysfunction in the maternal blood vessels of susceptible women. Blood pressure elevation (severe pre-eclampsia involves BP over 160/110) is the most visible sign of  the disease. BP elevation involves generalised damage to the maternal endothelium (the thin layer of cells that lines the entire circulatory system), kidneys, and liver, with the release of vasoconstrictive (contraction of the muscular wall of the large arteries and small arterioles) factors being a consequence of the original damage.

Pre-eclampsia may develop at any time after 20 weeks of gestation. Pre-eclampsia before 32 weeks is considered early onset and is assosiated with increased morbidity and most cases are diagnosed before labor typically would begin. Apart from Caesarean section and induction of labor (and therefore delivery of the placenta), there is no known cure. Pre-eclampsia affects approximately 6-8% (!) of all pregnancies worldwide with the onset of symptoms in the late second or third trimester, most commonly after the 32nd week. It is much more common in women who are pregnant for the first time, and its frequency drops significantly in second pregnancies.

The pre-eclampsia syndrome is thought, in many cases, to be caused by a shallowly implanted placenta which becomes hypoxic (deficiency in the amount of oxygen reaching body tissues), leading to an immune reaction. The shallow implantation results in an immune response against paternal antigens from the fetus and its placenta. In some cases of pre-eclampsia, it is thought that the mother lacks receptors for the proteins the placenta is using to downregulate the maternal immune system’s response to it. This view is consistent with evidence showing many miscarriages to be an immunologic disorder where the mother’s immune system “unleashes a destructive attack on the tissues of the developing child”. The current understanding of the syndrome is a two-stage process, with a highly variable first stage which predisposes the placenta to hypoxia, followed by the release of soluble factors, which result in many other events in the origination and development of  the disease.

Many studies have suggested the importance of a woman immunological tolerance to her baby’s father, whose genes are present in the young fetus and its placenta and which may pose a challenge to her immune system. As the theory is further investigated, researchers are increasingly studying the importance of a woman’s continued exposure to her partner’s semen as early as several years before conception. One study published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology involved several hundreds of women and found “women with a short period of cohabitation (less than 4 months) who used barrier methods for contraception had a substantially elevated risk for the development of pre-eclampsia compared with women with more tan 12 months of cohabitation before conception”. Continued exposure to a partner’s semen has strong protective effect against pre-eclampsia, largely due to the absorption of several immune modulating factors present in seminal fluid. “Although pre-eclampsia is a disease of first pregnancies, the protective effect of multiparity is lost with change of partner”.

According to the theory, the fetus and placenta both contain “foreign” proteins from paternal genes, but regular, preceding and coincident exposure to the father’s semen may promote immune acceptance and subsequent implantation, a process which is significantly supported by as many as 93 currently identified immune regulating factors in seminal fluid. An Austrailian team has also investigated to see if men who have fathered pregnancies which have ended in miscarriage or pre-eclampsia had low seminal levels of critical modulating factors. The team has found that certain men are several times more likely to father pregnancies that would end in either pre-eclampsia or miscarriage. Among other tings, most of these males seemed to lack sufficient levels of seminal immune factors necessary to induce immunologic tolerance in their partners.

Attention to life before conception

My dramatic experience, 38 years ago, has, thanks to Art Janov’s Reflections of the placenta, caused a shattering experience in my feelings (relieve of pain) and increased my knowledge and understanding of the human condition. Additionally, my views on how to achieve a healthy, robust new generation of people expanded. They now include facts, before conception, to provide the right, non-polluted, conditions, in the placenta, to the fetus. These conditions are, at least, on the same level as no smoking while pregnant, to live in a non-polluted milieu and to eat properly.

Jan Johnsson

Catch-as-catch-can

A lot of Catch-as-catch-can out there!

“Cognitive therapy is learned catch-as-catch-can,

while Primal Therapy is learned deeply and thoroughly through the daily rigors of Survival.”

It took 70 years of rigors to succeed in understanding that only “one thing works to reverse the imprint and to resolve the engraved feelings of a birth-trauma to resolve health and relieve suffering”. And then I had established enough of a clue, helped by favourable circumstances, to be able to guide my own life out of a myriad of risky treatments and categorizations (e.g. DSM) which with accelerating speed causes an ever growing general dependence of psychopharmaceutical (to name but the mental aspects of how our organs are being over-taxed by repressed early imprinted pain...) or worse.

Of course, I do not have all the answers to Dr. Janov’s question “WHY? it out there” is so much nonsense in the treatment of mental illness. (See: The Looking Glass is Inside Out). My own journey took more than 70 years and even if I credibly can boil down and explain my experiences in a compressed paper they will just be my own subjective interpretation, as unique as my own fingerprints. My no-nonsense paper will never be a formal scientific proof of repeatability. However the definition of the scientific law: “A phenomenon of nature that has proven  invariably to occur whenever certain conditions exist or are met”...

A recurring pattern in the search for my own truth / pain / cure was that I was repeatedly misled by neurotic (pain propelled) actions, both my own and others’. The strength of our neurotic, often subtly distorted reality, is extremely strong and hard to penetrate. The strength of neurotic, distorted reality is not surprising given that this process is the most important ally to evolution in the survival of the human species. In cooperation with evolution, the American DSM has eliminated the category of “neurosis”, reflecting a decision to provide descriptions of behaviors / symptoms as opposed to hidden psychological mechanisms as diagnostic criteria. So there seems to be  some consistency in the nonsense “out there”.

It was only with the conscious awareness of death as a travel companion that I realized that my neuroses kept me alive. When I was willing to risk making the company of death, the neuroses which eventually were produced and developed in my triune brain as a result of my birth trauma (on life and death), gave way after hours, months and years of re-living the engraved pain.

By discovering and understanding my treacherous but vital neurotic behaviors  (interacting with myself, my family and other social settings which I depended on) during my curative process, I have, in recent years, had the advantage of my invaluable insights when I, at times, act as a mentor to someone who ask for my help.

Jan Johnsson

Waiting for Godot

http://www.activitas.org/index.php/nervosa/article/view/157

(click to access Dr. Janov's paper)

Waiting for Godot

• Waiting for the final demystification of depression

I don’t know why, but after having read Dr. Art Janov’s unique and exquisite scientific paper “The Mystery Known As Depression”, I spontaneously got the Nobel, Samuel Becket’s “Waiting for Godot” (after Beckets own original French version “En Attendant Godot”) on my mind. In Waiting for Godot, Becket tries, through two vagabonds, to show us life and what is not yet decided and settled. The play invites to all kinds of religious, philosophical, psychoanalytical and biographical suggestions. 

The two vagabonds, Vladimir and Estragon, are often played with Irish accents, which possibly is due to the fact that the involvement of another couple, Pozzo and Lucky,  seems like a metaphor for Irelands view of mainland Britain where society has ever been harmed by a greedy ruling elite keeping the working classes passive and ignorant by whatever means. Anyhow, over the years Becket realized that the greater part of Godot’s success came down to the fact that it was open to a variety of distinctive interpretations, as, for example, the theory that it was based on Sigmund Freud’s Trinitarian description of the psyche in “The Ego and the Id”... which tempted my thoughts that Becket could have had Maclean/Janov’s triune brain in his modernist mind...

Over four decades I have repeatedly read much of what Dr. Janov has written about his invention, the Primal Therapy, so when reading his latest masterpiece I can feel every paragraph, every sentence and every word on my own body and in my triune brain. The strong impact is of course due to the fact that I practiced Primal Therapy during 35 years guided by Dr. Janov. One could say that I have taken the exams several times in this principally extremely simple, yet so subtly difficult-executed theme. How do I measure and explain my success? Having re-lived my traumatic birth process, I have demystified my epilepsy, dissolved most of my neurotic behavior. With much reduced mental pain, I’m now free from depression and from thoughts of suicide. Add to that my vital signs (blood pressure, pulse and body temperature) are excellent!

So why is it so difficult in general to follow Art Janovs principles and “to lay back and feel the stab of anxiety”? I can of course only answer for myself. 

I was “helped” by my epilepsy, which with its erratic presence was a reminder that my repressed pain was alive. It was only hidden occasionally and would appear later in more painful ways.

First I spent almost 10 years to create a strategy to earn the necessary economic resources (including time) to go to L.A. Without counseling my two years in L.A. was a master example how a patient can be made to feel patronized, even if he has a good time in the sunshine on the Santa Monica Beach and does exciting excursions to Boulder, San Francisco, New Mexico, Las Vegas etc., etc.. If it had not been for my disobedience, to the rules at the Primal Institute, to go and see a Rolfer in Boulder 1979, my Primal Journey might have ended when I went back to Sweden.

Then followed 15 hit rich career year, gilded by a number of European Primal Retreats. Things went, at times, very well because I thought I had the hidden pain under control. However, logically, I worked myself into a burn out when the pain propelled my ambitions in a maximal risky way. 

25 years after I read the Primal Scream, I realized that I could not both enjoy and abuse my pain propelled neuroses and at the same time re-live and expect them to dissolve and disappear (historically a very common problem amongst Primal patients). I had come to a point where either I worked myself to death, or gave up my non-real ambitions to achieve conditional love/appreciation by working 60-80 hour weeks. The Primal Principles, Arts charisma, four experiences of grand mal seizures turning birth-primals (including retreats in Bern in Switzerland, Bergen in Norway and Chantilly in France) and the fact that I had seen through the career fury gave me courage, where the risk of death was a reality, to go all in into PT.

I was lucky to have a good team around me in Sweden. I had access to a neurologist, a psychiatrist, a homeopath and the long-distance e-mail access to my guide Art Janov. (Attempts to bring in a cognitive psychologist failed due to me being allergic to her attitude). I can still remember the moment in the office of my Danish psychiatrist when I - figuratively - made up my mind to “go through the eye of the needle” and change my life. The local members of my “team” supported me even if they for years shook their heads when I explained my experiences, which I, by the way, kept a diary over.

The Primal Therapy, / The Primal Principle, became a lifeguard and a philosophy of life, which has saved me from a too early death. Art Janov’s innovation gave me eventually a high quality of life, both physiologically and mentally. The fact that my epileptic trip took a whole life doing, however, made me understand how difficult the primal principle is to apply and implement when the distorting powers that the pain sets in motion has been developed for too long. The neuroses then create a personality, which involves too great a sacrifice to eliminate not only for the victim of the pain but also for people in his / her surrounding, which in turn are suffering from their own repressed pain.

The master plan of Evolution was, after all, on the survival of the species, which many of our neurotic posturing leads to. There are 7.1 billion of us at present. If enough people read Dr. Janov’s books and understand his message of our need for unconditional love, touch and acceptance, there is a hope for the future.

Jan Johnsson