The Body Always Tells The Truth

On a few previous occasions, I have pointed out that my two years, intended for Primal Therapy, in LA, 1978 and 1979, passed without something essential, from psychotherapy viewpoint, occurred. The only thing, of value, that I became aware of was that I, at age three, was dethroned by my sister. This trauma caused lasting neurotic effects on my relationships with both women and men/authorities. Otherwise, I experienced the two years in California and Colorado as a profound refreshment. I had lived the first, close to, 40 years of my life in a fast pace and under abnormal pressure. The time in the western United States gave me a new start in life in many respects.

However, during my “two years in Primal Therapy” I started, from a therapeutic point, another couple of processes that I, first much later, have understood the profound and crucial value of. 1978, I wrote from LA to my parents in Sweden and expressed my anger about the abuse and the insensibility, which they subjected me to during my childhood. This marked a decisive break from the untruthful picture of a “happy childhood” I fought with in order not to feel my pain. My distorted image was wishful thinking, and a result of that I came from a religious home where the Bible and the commandments were prevalent. This especially applied the fourth commandment: “Thou shalt honor thy father and mother.”

The effects of my correspondence appeared in two steps. During a trip to Sweden in the spring of 1979, I met with my father. Our meeting was brief and did not last very long. When I was to leave my parents house, my father began to cry and asked if I still hated him for what he had done to me 30 years earlier, when he recklessly had beaten me. I was so confused and influenced by the situation that I spontaneously replied; “No”. We hugged, and I returned in a few days to LA. A month later my father died, in his sleep, of a heart attack. I broke the practice and did not go to his funeral. He had ruined too many years of my life. I, finally, let my body decide.

Step two occurred in January 1980, when I returned from 2 years in LA. My mother, who was now a widow and lived alone, had changed and was less inhibited and religious. When, for the first time in long, we met in her apartment, she was suddenly eager to open up and talk about my birth. During the years, she hade repeatedly told me that she had not caused that I developed epilepsy. Now she wanted, suddenly, to tell me what really had happened. In tears, as in a painful primal, she told me heartbroken how my birth had been. The birth process had been very difficult and had lasted 48 hours after the amniotic fluid had gone. The reason, she told me remorse filled, had been that she had been possessed be a religious idea, she had got from the Bible; to give birth with pain. My mother realized finally that she had contributed to that I developed epilepsy. This was a truth that both my body and soul understood, and it was a giant step towards a cure.

For me, these two, albeit delayed, occasions of unfiltered truth direct from my parents mouths, meant that I have not been able to avoid attacking the untruthful, moralizing filter that the fourth commandment for thousands of years has developed. From an early age, the fourth commandment is engraved deeply in us through religious messages from our churches, via the highly diversified influence of our religions, which has gone hand in hand with educational and political needs. The implications of the commandment have served as the spiritual and secular power seal on the evolutionary pain relief for us to survive, those to a fetus and child overwhelming early physical and emotional traumas. Please remember this process takes place when our brains become structured.

I have not fully understood my successful demystification of my epilepsy and my neurotic life pattern until I started reading Alice Miller (i.e. “The Body Never Lies”, etc..). To a crucial part, it has been successful through my refusal to adapt to different consequences of, often complex, truth corruption on the effects of a traumatic birth and childhood, caused by loveless and insensible parents. The direct and indirect impact of the fourth commandment and all the related moral aspects in which we live and breathe have been the cause of virtually all therapeutic failures that I know of in and outside the Primal Therapy. 

Both Alice Miller and Arthur Janov advocate the importance of unconditional love. The lack of love, touch, attention and affirmation leads to that the communication between the intellect and the body / emotions, is distorted to  extent equivalent to the effect of the physical and / or emotional childhood trauma. By taking us out of the neurotic lie, which represses the encapsulated pain and by re-living it, we can recover our real self.

Arthur Janov, motivated by his innovation the Primal Principle / Evolution in Reverse, advocate a therapeutic guide that allows the patient’s feelings to determine a treatment process with no, traditional psychotherapy, 50-minute limitations. Art Janov stresses, nowadays, always the importance of a scientifically supported method of treatment, without for that reason to have managed to communicate or distribute this scientific method outside the Primal Center. I personally, for 36 years, did not follow any other scientific methods than the personal guidance that I intuitively sensed from Art Janov.

Alice Miller, talks about the necessity of a companion with deep personal experience of a healing journey in order to know the truth of the body and to be familiar with the consequences of inadequate forgiving life lies (including medicines etc.) which overtaxes the organs and shortens our lives. In her literature dominates the need to sensitize the treacherous effects of the fourth commandment, in both the patient and his surroundings. Our bodies remember until we dissolve our neurotic distortions and lies that plague our body and mind until we no longer allow ourselves to be influenced.

Are there any differences between the two? There is of course a lot that separates them and one thing that spontaneously occurs to me is that Alice Miller reveal herself in a more uninhibited and convincing way. I get a sense that Alice Miller has a deep personal experience when I read her books. This colors also her patient observations, and her analysis of the fate of several famous writers and artists.

Art Janov has only exceptionally and timidly described his own background. He has limited himself, in a fascinating way, to narrate the experiences of his patients. As interdisciplinary coordinator, educator and informer, to his patients in psychological, neurological and psychotherapeutic issues, Art Janov is outstanding. The tendency to dilute his ability, between therapy development, research and writing, probably had an inhibitory effect on the development of the purely practical Primal psychotherapeutic treatment. Hes need for scientific acceptance has taken an increasing share of his time and ambitions. This might be interpreted as a need to prove how wrong his unloving parents were and / or a need, posthumously, to win their, nonexistent, love. Just like Steve Jobs in Apple Inc., Art Janov would have needed a companion, a Steve Wozniak, to lift Primal Therapy to the level it has / had the potential for. 

Had Alice Miller still been alive, I had asked her to edit the following more modern advice instead of the old fourth commandment:

“Love your Child from the moment of conception, that her / his days may be long and less fear filled. Love is the elixir of a healthy body and mind and makes your Child a sane guide / companion for future generations!”

Jan Johnsson

Who is Art Janov?

A leap from fearful suffering to feeling love.

A few times, you have timidly, let your fear filled childhood, drifting along with unfulfilled needs, shine through as an example of parental behavior that was inappropriate and destructive. All the way through your childhood and adolescence you met a harsh and insensitive attitude from your parents. Although, my story was somewhat different, the result was the same; a fear filled childhood with unfulfilled needs. So I certainly believe you when you are saying “that is no way to be”. (The Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics)

Then, ironically, it was the U.S. Navy that discovered your talent and gave you the opportunity for a personal development, which in combination with other circumstances, eventually, would lead to the discovery of the Primal Principles / Evolution in Reverse. So thanks to the U.S. Armed Forces, I have, during 40 years been able to enjoy your invention. You have during half a century, successively, in an undeniable manner shown what trauma before, during och immediately after birth result in. They may result in later irreversible damages, when love no longer can make a big difference.

However, in spite of the fact that you so compelling convince me / us “That is no way to be, believe me”, your aggregated life’s work and experience have helped thousands of us, understand what happened to us, yes, even to be able to feel sane and loved.

Through your discovery, you have had an increasingly reliable instrument tirelessly to work with while research, in various fields of neuroscience, toil to catch up. Here, The Primal Principle / Evolution in Reverse has served as an applied interdisciplinary focus. Probably, the Primal Principle is far more appreciated even within psychology and psychiatry, than they dare to admit by neurotic, prestige, economic and power-related reasons. More and more doubt and reject the short-term cognitive treatment paradigm.

Hopefully your fearful suffering has been a necessary, pain propelled, detour that leads to that love can make a great difference to most future generations.

Jan Johnsson

The Primal Enigma Machine*.

As I have said before, I, sometimes, interpret your texts, like when the devil reads the Bible. So when you are saying: “and here lies the enigma” (More on the Meaning of the Act-Out), I read it as “in this aspect the enigma is lying/misleading”. 

The perplexity when love has failed to fulfil my needs and has become painful has caused me a lot of doubts over decades. My interpretation of the impact of love has been somewhat restricted. Your message about the importance of love I have, intellectually, interpreted too literally, although, I within me had reasons to hesitate.

My mother caused me a traumatic birth, which eventually led to epilepsy and a neurotic life pattern. She breastfed me for more than two years, and transmitted, in her modest way, love to me as long as she lived. Her love solidified my neuroses and my hyperactivity, which among other things led to my relationship with my father never developed into more than an unemotional, practical and administrative ritual.

Thanks (!) to that my birth trauma developed into epilepsy, I was able to find my way to The Primal Principle / Evolution in Reverse. I did it with the help of Carbamazepine / Tegretol and the ability, of a neurotic act out, to win the confidence of the surroundings. After 40 years of trial and error, I have begun to understand the enigma / perplexity. Closeness and love was always too much to my encapsulated birth trauma. “The ugly head” of the trauma, the epilepsy, showed up at, among other things, too much touch and love and I escaped both figuratively and literally, when my leaky gates and my hyperactivity became too difficult to control. Several of my female relationships told me sad and irritated that I was afraid of closeness, which each time filled me with painful feelings of inadequacy that threatened my inner control.

I have often, in my environment, seen and experienced cases with similarities of my own enigma / perplexity. In these cases, a child, with repressed pain, developed into an abuser in the relationship with a parent, who, unaware of his / her own repressed pain and unfulfilled needs, easily give in to pressure of neurotic character.

An encapsulated and repressed birth trauma, propelling distorting neuroses, can with too much love be provoked to leak pain, as well as hyperventilation can cause the chemical imbalance and produce dizziness, blurred vision, muscle spasm and until unconsciousness. If all our needs from conception are satisfied, love, to a healthy mind and body, is as important as oxygen.

Jan Johnsson

*Alluding to the military enigma machine used by cryptologists to deciphering secret messages.

A Life-long Strangelhold.

During the last 40 years (calculated from the reading of The Primal Scream), I have learned to understand the principles and the process to re-live my birth-trauma. That way, I have been able to understand my weakness in emotional contacts, in my relationships and in my childhood, and how my neurotic life pattern was developed. This, eventually, led to a demystification of my epilepsy. In summary, my epilepsy can be described as a compressed short circuit / reaction to my organism’s 48 hour traumatic struggle for survival after the amniotic fluid was gone, to come out of the womb. The horrific struggle had many, for a fetus unbearable, complex events such as squeezing, choking, anesthetics in different forms, turning the fetus and strangling by the umbilical cord when being pulled out. Just recently it’s been 34 years from my first experience of how a normally short, however, shattering grand mal seizure developed / turned into a 1-2 hour long, integrating birth primal.

Having, during three intensive periods (10-15 years apart), re-lived most of the encapsulated pain from my birth trauma, my life has become pretty “normal”. My life pattern, although influenced by my history, has been liberated from the filter of neurotic actions that were previously necessary to reduce the leaking pain I, for most of my life, have been distorted by. A unique, but not totally illogical effect of my liberation from inhibitions and repressed pain, has been my initiative to connect with my teenage love Eva. Our contact ended when I, at age 19, developed epilepsy and was chemically lobotomized.

The resumption of our contact, after 53 years, has been and is a unique restoration of the friendship between two soul mates. The Primal Principle / Evolution in Reverse is the catalyst of that success. We have been able to let 53 years pass in review as a script under constant development. An infinite number of undeveloped and / or hidden scenarios well up out of our, increasingly less constricted, minds. This happens in spite (or perhaps it is thanks to?) there being complications in both of us that require solutions and changes. Eva e.g. had a long, and for traditional values, very success-filled academic career as faculty manager and board member at a prestigious university. These successes were achieved at the price of an emotionally impoverished life. “Free painkillers” such as coffee, sugar, cigarettes and workaholism held an emotionally disturbed childhood, with a bipolar mother, at bay. The pain propelled neuroses overloaded her organs and represented the price for academic success. The symptoms for Eva’s success; hyperthyroidism, hypertension and diabetes culminated 6-7 years ago in a burnout and stroke without other visible symptoms than a corrupted working memory and depression.

Over two, years, I have guided Eva into new habits. Through diet, physical exercises and Rolfing, Eva has made great progress and has been able to eliminate significant portions of her medical treatment and regained a functioning working memory. Eva’s long-term memory and her intellectual and emotional abilities are set in relation to her deep repression, surprisingly intact from our youth. Eva has a deep-set, natural drive to free herself from her inhibitions, and she makes daily small steps forward in her fight to pull herself from these neuroses that have kept her away / filtered from her true feelings. Eva has embarked on a stimulating and exciting, but, long and difficult journey of no return.

After an attempt by Eva, in writing, to describe a traumatic family situation that I received by email and read last night, I was hit by a strange empty feeling of hopelessness. Eva had “scientifically”, objectively, described the trauma over 2 A4 pages and only peripherally touched on the feelings that she had not wanted or been able to feel. I went to bed with Eva’s repressed, undescribed, emotions. At 3 o’clock in the morning, I woke up deep in the middle of a birth primal. At first I was painfully numb in my head, arms and legs, which meant feelings which I have experienced many times before. More unique feelings followed that I was dehydrated and chapped in the mouth, tongue and throat. After violent twitching of the legs and the body, I was ripped out backwards with the umbilical cord in a stranglehold around the neck. Indescribable gurgling sounds welled up from my chest, and I could keep myself conscious throughout the process.

Out of the hopeless feeling when I went to bed, something extraordinarily positive had emerged, and I had been through another liberating, wordless re-experience of my birth trauma!  “My Primal Journey will not end. There is no way, the way turns into reality while I travel. It is the journey that is the labour’s worth, not the goal of the path.”

Jan Johnsson

In motion

The sated day is never first.

The best day is a day of thirst.

Yes, there is a goal and mening in our path -

but it’s the way that is the labour’s worth.

The best goal is a night-long rest,

fire lit, and bread broken in haste.

In places where one sleeps but once,

sleep is secure, dreams full of songs.

Strike camp, strike camp! The new day shows its light.

Our great adventure has no end in sight.

Karin Boye (1927)

A Merry Christmas and a Happy 2014

An Invaluable Primal Dialogue.

An Invaluable Primal Dialogue.

The Primal Principle (Evolution in Reverse) and the process of re-living repressed pain are, unfortunately, still so unique, unknown and in some circles discredited that, basically, there is only one source, with whom to keep an undoubted dialogue; Art Janov. In the Reflection “Does Plenty of Infancy and Childhood Love Undo Early Trauma?”, Art mentions his own experiences from childhood and adolescence and the importance of loving experiences. This form av reflective dialogue lights up my world and associates emotions and memories that further enhance the image of the Primal Principle.

Although both the traumas and their outcomes may vary, the principle behind is the same. Non-perceived pain, i.e. for a fetus unbearable pain, which has been encapsulated, distorts our reality in many respects. The pain lives on, repressed, a whole life and propeles us to neurotic, superficial successes and to over-taxing our organs leading to strokes, heart attacks, ulcers etc.

My life has consisted of 73 years dependent on my birth trauma. The last 35 years have been an improvised “tango dance” in Evolution in Reverse to eliminate the accumulated pain and to dissolve the protective but at the same time degrading and backbreaking neuroses. Gradually I have understood my life-pattern, and eventually I could change my life and behavior better to suit my real needs.

After a traumatic birth, both for me and for my mother, I had three years alone as my parents’ beloved prince until I was dethroned by my first sister. Parallel to that I developed a pain-driven hyperactivity my father became increasingly sensitive and nervous. He did not lack emotional traits but, he was eventually unable to demonstrate it. He was marked by a difficult childhood (his mother and two siblings died of the Spanish flu during the second decade of the last century). Our emotional relationship became with the years more and more disturbed; however, he was always on hand when I practically needed him. He could not cope with my hyperactivity, but he let me largely keep on with annoying pranks and constant absence from home. My mother was not very emotional, but, during a lifetime, I felt her unconditional sympathy and love.

I was always fortunate, from a very early age, outside my home to meet people who liked me and helped me, which temporarily relieved / stunned my pain. The same thing happened up through my career. I formed teams / collaborated with executives of both male and female background until my life pattern pushed me on. (A company boss supported e.g. my years in LA). My relationships and marriages followed the same pattern.

Unlimited love was not enough to eliminate my pain. I managed temporarily to keep it down and use it to propel energy for some time. For a project, a marriage, a new culture / language, etc. Looking back in my life, I have many scars of love that I had not managed to receive before the pain started to leak and I became epileptic suicidal. Neurotically engaging projects were together with Carbamazepine / Tegretol my main painkillers. I have been on a long term escape from my birth trauma, and solely love was not able to cure the pain that my mother’s religious idea, “to give birth in pain”, created.

Slowly over 40 years, Art Janov and his psychotherapeutic, Primal Principles have, aided by Ida Rolf’s liberating physiotherapy principles, made me re-live my birth trauma and discharge the pain that my body and mind were trying to limit with neurotic filters and tricks in a seemingly unreasonable proportion.

I am convinced of unconditional love from the moment of conception, but accidents, follies, etc. can create situations in which love becomes painful. The fact that I with natural methods have been able to take me out of such a trauma and understand my destiny, it is neither more nor less than a miracle. That I, moreover, after 53 years have been reunited with my childhood love will, eventually, be the subject of a separate documenting in the history of Primal Therapy.

It has been an amazing journey through life, epilepsy and pain. I hope that those I left sad and confused along the way will understand and forgive me. I saw and had no choice if I wanted to survive.

Jan Johnsson

A new Reference-frame of life

Art-destruction (and Art Janov) created my new reference-frame of life.

After a horrific birth trauma which almost cost me my life, I was born with a voluminous, engraved repressed pain. My unconscious pain was, during my youth, predominantly expressed in the form of hyperactivity, physical and mental. Later, when after excessive energy efforts my leaky gates to my pain were left unprotected, I would for a short period of time be depressed, which ended in suicidal thoughts. This short (2-3 days) suicidal state was always followed, by my decision, to give me another chance. I was soon on my way into a new hyperactivity period of 3 - 5 years. (This ongoing life pattern turned later during Primal Therapy into birth primals when I re-lived my fight for life and death to get out and by being strangled by the umbilical cord.)

During my hyperactivity, I developed a collection of neuroses / unreal needs in order to be accepted, get attention and be loved. Some of these neurotic behaviors showed in the form of crazy ideas. An example is when I, guided by ignorant and insensitive parents, was told that I, being the first born of 4 siblings, always ought to know best and be responsible. I interpreted this message my own way and thought that I was stupid and cheated when I was reading homework during my time in junior-secondary school. These neuroses increased my often humiliating activity to capture knowledge and achieve a lower school certificate without opening the books. This neurotic madness along with social neuroses caused me to avoid secondary studies during adolescence. Only when I, at 19 of age, developed epilepsy and became medically lobotomised I managed, with several years delay, to repair my lack of studies, to graduate and pursue a career, my hyperactivity-neuroses turned to a commercial career.

In spite of a full time job, advanced evening studies, a relation that led to marriage and two children, I needed a lot of physical exercises and sex to  consume all the pain-propelled energy that was pouring out of me. I rarely slept 5 hours a night. My career was dead straight, and I was seen early to have a unique ability to judge external factors, business and staff assessment. However, I had a poor understanding of myself, though, literally, I could feel my prison of pain. It was my epilepsy, which constantly kept me aware of the existence of my pain. It would take 40 years to bit by bit re-live most of my engraved pain and to dissolve the neurotic, survival-filters between my cortex and the other two brain systems in the triune brain. When the filter dissolved I saw the same world as before, but now motivated by different, more real needs. A new way of living, a new way of valuing events and actions and a new set of attitudes, own and others, which I had to show and to accept.

Sometimes, when I, nowadays, talk with someone, I can for a fraction of a second feel tempted, by residues of my old habit, to give a neurotic response. However, now my answer instinctively matches my real needs even if it may put me in a less favorable position. It is pleasant to have been freed from the humiliating needs for political, tactical and prestige-related short-term games l often felt pain-propelled into.

Very often paradigm changes take more than politicians, scientists and psychologists can handle out from their locked in positions. We need sometimes, figuratively, to destroy a lifestyle which has run into a dead end and then we need a Raphael Ortiz and an Yoko Ono to show us the way and if we are lucky an Art Janov will appear and create a new frame of reference. Maybe a new paradigm.

Jan Johnsson

Raphael Ortiz and Yoko Ono closing, in Oct., 2013, the circle from a Destruction Art Symposion1966. (When The Primal Therapy was born...)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZH2IUBwFu4

https://youtu.be/B0U37pia7xw

“The world is your mirror and your mind is a magnet. What you perceive in this world is largely a reflection of your own attitudes and beliefs.” M. LeBeuf