Why I Write and Reflect.

Why I Write and Reflect.

I started writing;

To develop/improve my ability to put into words/describe/narrate an experimentally, subjectively, perceived primal experience. The writing has mainly dealt with how I have re-lived imprinted pain from a deliberately caused, birth trauma.

In order to maintain verbal contact with my guide and friend, Art Janov, in the Primal Principle.

To document / distribute my experiences / opinions to those who may be interested in it. They would thus get inspired by following, for instance, The Primal Principle, to eventually experience a relief from their inner filter caused by repressed pain. That is dissolving the neurosis that, too often, distort our true needs.

Because, in pace with re-living pain and dissolving neuroses, my writing led to a growing search for complementary knowledge / truth from research and other individual perceived practical experiences.

And I could not stop when I, acting as a guide in a personal relationship with an experienced and respected female researcher and naturalist, experienced her dramatic improvement (cure). The cure evolved with the help of applying holistic experiences from The Primal Principle, Rolfing, nutrition, and not least by my providing advice.

Trivialization and denial of individual dynamic psychotherapy experiences.

For almost 40 years, my experience of re-lived pain and dissolved neuroses never had anyone, in my environment interested in what so obviously has changed me. (That including my attending neurologist in 6 advanced industrial countries!) All respectfully kept silent (no open criticism) and continued to repress their apparent anxiety. (Art Janov has incidentally, in a Reflection, testified that he too has never been approached by a psychologist in psychotherapy, who wished to share his experiences.)

How can we explain this trivialization or denial of experimental, changing experiences? The closest I have come to an explanation is that the traditional, deeply security based, opinion among researchers and analysts  rests upon the assumption that one studies classes, groups or things, not single things. This inhibition is a view that, slowly, is becoming confirmed within the classical impersonal, similarity-seeking science. The main business of classical science is generalization, abstracting what is common to all. The authors, of orthodox scientific textbooks of physics and chemistry, study classes of things, or interchangeable objects. Today there is almost no space to accept the individual, holistically perceived experiences that could lead to more knowledge of the human person.

However, it is not only a question of extending the classical impersonal science to include individual human-oriented science. A complicating factor is whether the researcher’s ambition is healthy or unhealthy, either neurotically defense-motivated or healthily growth-motivated. Science can be a journey to full self-actualization, but it can also be a neurotic defence.

As an example of my search for complementary skills, I want to present extracts from an article in SCIENCE of March 20, 2015, “Metabolic Control of Epilepsy”, by Helen E Scharfman:

“It has been assumed that anticonvulsant or antiepileptic drugs, now called antiseizure drugs (ADSs), act on the underpinnings of nerve cell firing. However, as epilepsy research has matured, our understanding of ASDs has also. A report of this issue exemplifies this trend. The study raises a surprising question: Should the focal point of ASD development actually be neurons? 

There is now considerable evidence that inexcitable elements of the central nervous system, such as astrocytes, the vasculature, and the immune system, play a far greater role than first thought. The observations point to epilepsy as a disease of energy metabolism rather than neuronal discharge, a strong shift in the neurocentric view of epilepsy. Epilepsy might be considered a type of diabetes, as has been suggested for Alzheimer’s disease, sometimes named “type 3” diabetes. In epilepsy, lowering circulating glucose concentration could be therapeutic.”

For me, who have combined The Primal Principle with Rolfing, homeopathy and nutritional experiments, the new research findings feel familiar. When I lived in Beverly Hills, LA, 1978/79, I bought and read homeopathic books, which regarded epilepsy as a type of diabetes. Sometimes, if not often, evolution requires enough lead time in order to get a breakthrough.

Jan Johnsson

A Small Therapy With A Great Revolutionary Idea.

A Small Therapy With A Great Revolutionary Idea.

Dr. Janov developed the Primal Therapy, and he explained, through books and articles, its dynamics. He demonstrated our evolutionary, lifesaving ability to repress early (before, during and shortly after the birth process) unbearable pain. The pain affects the reptilian brain and the body and is overloading the limbic system and creates a lifelong wear on our mind and organs. Our vital signs are distorted as is the communication between the triune brain when the neocortex gradually develop. Janov guided his patients, to re-live repressed pain (following the Primal Principle / Evolution in Reverse), and showed possibilities to regain full mental health and avoid premature death.

To a greater extent than the actual therapy, the principle of Evolution in Reverse has meant a new meaning of my life. The Primal Principle embodied by Dr. Janov became the guide and motivation wich governed my decisions. During the last 40 years, I have made an epileptic journey, which during its processes has meant a holistic education in Evolution, genetics, and molecular biology. My journey has been bumpy. It consisted of endless practical experiments and a constant search for supportive facts in fiction and  scientific literature. My ability to assimilate / understand the theory rose as I re-lived pain and changed my lifestyle as the neuroses dissolved. Gradually, I experienced myself, my history and those around me like an ongoing, mutual / reciprocal evolutionary process over billions of years.

The trust / hope for a solution which my traumatic birthing, after all, imprinted into my organism, made me a self-starter. Theories that had no roots in my experiences, I skeptically filtered out. I have intuitively been oriented towards a holistic experimenting with psychotherapy (PT), physical therapy (Rolfing, etc.), nutritional knowledge, self-actualisation (Maslow), family relations (Alice Miller), etc.. With and without these experiences I have had the good fortune to have experienced a very diverse and qualified career in some nationally and internationally renowned companies.

I have always had an ambiguous feeling toward Primal Therapy. The Principle I believe steadfastly in, but the applied treatment I see as too narrow and restricted. With more counseling, complementary therapies and supplements of more talented employees with background and experience from “nonneurotic” / healthy environments, PT might well have become the Apple of Psycho Therapy. 

My feelings towards Art Janov and PT have a previous parallel in my life. My father, a straight, talented and honorable man became during my childhood too depressed and pain-imprisoned for us to develop a positive relationship. With my mother’s emotional support, I searched my way. “Through a Glass Darkly” / as in a mirror, Art Janov, and my father, at crucial moments in my life have been my role models. I criticize them happily, but I love both.

Art says, in his latest Reflection, that PT do not advise their patients how to live, if to get married or divorced. 1982 Vivian Janov advised me how I should act to tackle a neurotic relationship / marriage. The solution was painful, what seemed like a quick fix took years to get through. However, the pain healed, neuroses dissolved and, today, I thank Vivian for her courage to open my eyes and give me advice.

Evolution in Reverse means, as far as is possible, to re-live repressed pain. That requirement, I can verify. PT today gives the impression of being a “light” version of the previously applicable. The consequences of this, which I do not belittle, had hardly helped me.

Jan Johnsson

Arthur JanovApril 24, 2015 at 5:21 AM

Thanks for the letter Jan. Vivian may give advice but I live by the principle of
chacun sa vie, everyone his own life. If I give advice it is because I do not trust you. You feelings will advise you much better than I can. I never want to sway anyone to my view; it is your view that is important. And it is far too easy for us to fall into the Guru mold and tell people how to live; that is what is wrong with psychotherapy today. art

Dear Art,

Advice / Counseling That Makes A Difference

Semantically I interpret advice / counseling as a guidance or recommendation, typically given by somebody regarded as knowledgeable and authoritative. To sway somebody and expose him / her for leverage is outside of my vision of advice / counseling. However, I can understand that people with low self-reliance can be and feel deceived to follow advice that they should not have done. A skilled advisor has thus an extra responsibility to judge the individual recipients of advice. Of course, I assume that PT, in contrast to many others within psychotherapy, would take such a responsibility.

The following advice which are well synchronized with my feelings, (and “qui m’a donné une vie propre") may be worth mentioning. All have their roots in an evolution process kicked off by Ortiz / Janov.

Svend Møller-Andersen advised me, during a creativity course in Copenhagen in 1974, to read the Primal Scream, if I had real ambitions to change myself and my work situation. He did not need to sway me. He opened the gates to a latent need (and my pain). He had seen something I needed and with which I was unfamiliar. 

The Primal Institute, maybe Vivian, connected me, 1979, with a couple of primal patients in Boulder, Colorado, where I, two days a week, did consult jobs for a biotech company. From one of them, who is still my friend, I rented a room in his house. The other (a Fritz Perls follower) gave me interesting advice when I asked him for the address of a skilled masseur. He then introduced me to the Rolfing Institute in Boulder. Rolfing or Structural Integration, with its soft tissue manipulation and movement education, is a therapy that organizes the body in gravity. An intensive ten-session Rolfing Treatment, in Boulder December 1979 kicked off my first primal in January 1980, when I was back in Sweden.  A potential grand mal seizure turned into a revolutionary primal experience that dramatically made me understand the meaning of Evolution in Reverse. That was the first time I experienced my birth trauma instead of suffering an epileptic attack.

In Bern, Switzerland, January 1982, Vivian advised me when I revealed repressed emotions during a session. I sat listening to a discussion between Vivian and a patient who did not love his partner but didn’t dare to end the relationship. “Killing softly” suddenly flew out loud of my mouth. Shortly afterward Vivian came up and spoke to me and during our conversation, it became clear to me that I was in a relationship that I did not dare to leave. During the following group meeting, you, Art, came in, and in a overpowering way said that you were “pissed off” with those, who did not dare to bring up important feelings during our sessions. You turned then to me, and my being revealed felt painful but fair. During the 33 years that have passed since then, I have tried my best not to press down unresolved feelings.

Last but not least, during the spring of 2009 I got an email from you: “Jan, your letters are much appreciated. You should do a book”. I followed your advice and wrote a book and material for three books more. It never became a bestseller. It became more than that; it became my liberation, and it helped me to re-establish the connection with my childhood soulmate and love Eva. Can you ask for more from advice?

Jan

Plastic Ono Band

My comments to Janov's Reflection:
Who Do We Lie To When We Tell Ourselves Not To Do ...


Plastic Ono Band/God

(“I don’t believe in Jesus, I don’t believe in Kennedy, etc., I just believe in me”.)

In an interview in 2000, about primal sessions with John Lennon in 1970, you are quoted to have said “people in pain usually seek out religion”. To that Lennon, according to you, answered, ”Oh, God is a concept with which we measure our pain”. If we go back 45 years, Lennon said: “Primal Therapy forced me to have done with the God shit… Most people channel their pain into God or masturbation or some dream of making it… Instead of facing up to the reality they always look for some kind of heaven.”

John Lennon’s “THIS IS IT” about Primal Therapy was, according to Vivian Janov, something Lennon said about everything, for which he felt. Vivian reportedly said that, Art may have represented the new brilliant father he never had. (By the way Vivan was the therapist who, at a retreat in Bern, Switzerland, helped me understand, and to do something about that I was living, pain-imprisoned, in a neurotic relationship.)

John Lennon was, within two years, back in the worst possible frame of mind, doing drugs, drinking. However, his interpretation of how imprinted pain propels all kinds of beliefs is, close to five decades later, still valid, not to say reinforced.

It feels like an unsteady step when Art now in 2015, somewhat ironically (“charming”) fumbles among excuses with God, or different Gods, to cover up neurotic pleasures among people he knows. I don’t think that Art needs to channel his remaining imprinted pain into a God. However, he must, unconsciously, be influenced by the fact that he is living in a country, where so many minds are controlled by God and the Commandments. Based on scientific studies, I have mentioned a few times that 88% of the US population think that evolution should only be taught if the creationist (Book of Genesis) alternative is mentioned simultaneously.

Every public speech by a president or official dignitary ends with “God Bless America”. In this way, they may consciously trigger the release of the hormone oxytocin in most of the listeners in order to reduce any national political disagreement within the American “family”. A recent president even used “God Bless America” to get a lie, to start a war, blessed.

As to the title of your Reflection, “Who do we lie to when we tell ourselves not to do it”, I would mention “Thou shalt not lie” is missing among the commandments!!! 

Jan Johnsson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bu9GMFxvWiE&index=10&list=PL-02XgJl1g2S21cn2HmZgVhasEHkLYXS 

Demystification Of A Plane Crash

Demystification Of A Plane Crash

During a week, top politicians, in three of Europe’s largest countries, have had a legitimate reason to reduce their respective domestic political infighting. They have, with the help of effective news media, turned unemployment, corruption, economic imbalances and current political oppositions to news / issues of secondary importance. 

A tragic plane crash, which claimed 150 human lives, has news-wise and emotionally completely dominated in particular Spain, France and Germany (and to a lesser degree the rest of the World). In the media, several hundred million people, around the clock, have been able to follow every step of the dramatic process. From an aircraft reported lost, via the finding of the black boxes, to the girlfriend’s reported stories about the content of the co-pilot’s recurring nightmares about plane crashes.

After the revelation of the co-pilot’s misdeed, there have, from Germany, welled up revelations about his mental imbalance, vision problems, relationship problems with his fiancée and his dependence on psychiatric medications. Eg, the co-pilot, took a time-out, a few years ago, for psychotherapeutic treatment and was, according to the press, at the crash moment, hiding a sick leave. The pilots problems have been known for years. He has, however,  apparently managed to keep secret his health problems, for his airline. That this concealment of human problems has been possible for several years in an industry that prides itself, at least technically, on the most rigorous safety regulations in the world is incomprehensible / indefensible.

It  is amazing that no one; including psychologists, therapist, doctors, parents or other close relationships, probably of false loyalty, have understood / dared to report the co-pilot’s mental deficiencies. This passivity in spite of the fact that he had 100s of human lives in his hands. I come from a country which, fortunately, protects all small children from kindergarten age. The legislation has imposed kindergarten teachers an obligation to report to the police if they as much as suspect parents / carers exposing a child to physical or mental punishment. This natural obligation to protect children in Sweden is, by citizens of other European countries, sometimes, considered as disloyalty to the parents.

I think that the airline and the psychologists / doctors have the greatest responsibility. If the psychologists (who probably worked with cognitive therapy techniques) had had sufficient experience, they should have known that the process of mental pain is propelling depressions repeatedly / constantly. Painkillers / pharmaceuticals, with no guaranteed certainty, is the only long-term solution. Those responsible should therefore never assess a patient of this category as fit for a position as a pilot. There must exist an unconditional liability,  reporting / coordinating data, for all parties who treat, educate and interact with practitioners in extremely demanding sectors with responsibility for countless lives.

The type of symptoms, nightmares, and depressions, which the co-pilot showed, often are rooted in traumas from before, during and just after birth. Our organism represses and encapsulates pain of an unbearable nature as a memory / imprint. Later in life, the hidden / repressed pain wearing our body and mind consume large portions of the body’s natural painkillers / serotonin. When the body and brain become exhausted, the pain may leak out. This leakage propels persistent nightmares, depressions, neuroses and can lead to tragic act-outs. A distorted mind can then execute horrific actions like the conscious crash in the French Alps.

In the US, the promised land of cognitive psychotherapists and the DSM-5, the air safety authorities have realized that one cannot depend on the psyche of the individual. Over there, they have already set up a rigorous requirement that two pilots must, constantly, be present in the cockpit. Hopefully, the tragic accident in the Alps mean that the human, psychological development and monitoring will be given the same priority as the one devoted to the technical development in and around the aviation sector. As long as we need pilots to fly, they are part of the safety chain. A chain which is only as strong as its weakest link.

Jan Johnsson

A Prisoner Of Pain; It Takes One To Know One.

A Prisoner Of Pain; It Takes One To Know One.

Whenever I thought about my loops around the Globe, I was mainly filled with positive and good memories. However, since I became involved in PT, I have now and then thought that my memories (with the exception of my epilepsy), was a neurotic / unreliable misinterpretation.  My positive memories have, though, never hidden the sad fact that I, through pain-propelled act-outs, certainly made many people (especially I’m thinking of my first two kids) sad and disappointed. In my pre-primal life pattern, I was driven, every 3 - 5 years, to change partners, work, and culture / language in my search for my inner justice. 

I had no absent mother. I was my mother’s favorite until she died, and I was then 56 years old. She killed a lot of her pain with religiosity. She defended me without hesitation at least four critical occasions, when I between 5 and 10 years of age, made pranks. 

My mothers two big blunders; A: She subjected me, at my birth, to a lengthy, horrendous trauma in her ambition to fulfill the Bible’s recommendation to give birth with pain. B: She did not dare to intervene when my father, once, lost his temper and beat me hard, due to a playful misbehavior when I was nine years old. My mothers (contemporary) subservience combined with sheer respect of my father was too strong. I know that her heart was with me, and her passivity disappointed me.

My father, like my mother, was always present physically for me. Early on, I realized that my father carried on painful memories from his childhood. A pandemic, about WW1, when he was 3 - 4 years old, snatched away his mother and a pair of siblings. He became over the years increasingly depressed and on a few occasions, he lost his temper and exploded. On one such occasion, when I was a child, I happened to be the sacrifice for his act-out, which unfortunately eliminated all future emotional relationship between us. He tried to compensate this by helping me out of sticky practical situations (often of a financial nature) during my teens but I asked for it. One month before his death, 30 years too late, he took courage and talked with me. My father asked me if I still hated him for the assault, which he had done to me when I was 9. My answer was, fortunately, no. Within me, it took, however, several more years before the hatred of the assault ebbed.

The above trauma examples caused by my mother and father are dramatic “accidents”. They led to my suffering for decades, which I had never been able to overcome without the guidance of Art and understanding of his innovation the Primal Principle. And last but not least the driving force from the restless pain propelled curiosity of the Prisoner of Pain within myself. 

Often, when I read Art’s descriptions how an imprinted pain propels act-outs, I get the feeling that he avoids positive aspects associated with act-outs. A contradictory feeling emerges when I note that Art’s life has been unjust to him. His long and creative life has led to the development of the Primal Principle. In my case this innovation, based on Art’s unjust life, made it possible to demystify my epilepsy. It also made it possible to obtain redress, from my parents, for my childhood’s two most dramatic trauma, which propelled my neurosis during decades. The evolutionary intelligence makes the individuals’ unconscious pain valuable not only for the human species’ reproduction but also for his / her development.

Can we, as seen from the species’ development, then say that Art’s life was unjust? This unconscious injustice has helped countless patients to a better life. It has propelled the production of books / documentation of the significance of our right to be loved, touched and get attention, from the day of conception, during our critical and most formative years. 

It seems that the Evolution is consciously supporting that it takes one Prisoner of Pain, Art, to know another, for example, me, Jan. Or vice versa.

Jan Johnsson

Replies

Arthur JanovMarch 23, 2015 at 1:10 PM
Very good letter Jan. art

"As In A Mirror"

"As In A Mirror"

“Funny” enough, reading about Act-outs in Art’s Reflections I got a feeling that my life raced past. The memory process is fascinating in the sense that many interpretations that I had, during decades, of old memories, I now revise. I’m able to do that because I have re-lived much of the imprint that propelled my neurotic behavior and values.

During the first half, I was often quick to distort and create erroneous interpretations of symptoms, events and situations (both of my own and other’s). My need to “confidently” impress those around me, was was an unconsciously propelled process, which was deeply confusing for myself because of its lack of harmony with reality.

During the second half, having lived the Evolution in Reverse / the Primal Principle and demystified my repressed pain = epilepsy, my understanding of act-outs and act-ins has improved and continue to do so. (In this connection it is worth mentioning the unique fact that I spontaneously got liberating and dramatic confessions from both my parents about my two devastating childhood traumas.)

Having read the act-out-Reflections a couple of times, I got a feeling that I saw my life in a mirror. Inside the mirror were additional mirrors reflecting episodes from my life. Suddenly I remembered a film of Ingmar Bergman, “Through a Glass Darkly”, which 1961 received an Oscar. The Swedish title of the film was “Såsom i en spegel” which, in a straight translation, means “As in a mirror”!!!! The film left a deep impression, like all Ingmar Bergman’s movies. The fact that Max von Sydow, who plays the husband Martin in this family drama, came from the same school, and it’s theater, which I belonged to, added another dimension to my experience. 

Ingmar Bergman's film 1961, had the same motif as Art Janov's Reflection, 2015, concerning act-outs and act-ins. The theme elaborates the consequences of what happens when our parents deny us love, attention, and touch during the first and most critical stages of life. Bergman understood, intuitively, to visualize our unconscious pains and hold up a mirror for us. (The film ends with the following, tragically revealing, words from Martins 17-year-old son Minus: “Papa spoke to me!” ).

Janov has, through his development of The Primal Principle, taken us a step further and guides us, by re-living our pain, into the unconscious. For me, it feels like magic, to read Art's brilliant description of his own and everyone's tendency to act-out our unconscious. I can feel how I got it all together, 55 years after I developed epilepsy and saw “Through a Glass Darkly”.

Fascinating and satisfying to follow how Art, after the age of 90, just like another of my favorites, Picasso, did, continues to be productive and inspire the world.

Jan Johnsson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIKZ5dpA5KU

Replies

Arthur JanovMarch 18, 2015 at 2:01 PM
Jan: Ingmar Bergman was one of the great people I knew. He brought me to Sweden to see one of his films. I got there in this dark room and I said to him, Hey I do not speak Swedish. He said not to worry. The room goes dark and suddenly a man appears behind me and starts whispering the dialogue in my ear. Within minutes it was as if I was watching the film in English. He visited me at the clinic and afterwards said, with all this chaos there must be a lot of creativity going on.
Thanks Jan for the kind words. I think your case is important because there is something we can do with some epilepsies. art

My Conscious Working Class Hero Art!

My Conscious Working Class Hero Art!

I also had a dream last night. It was a sweeping lifelong primal. I stood on my childhood railway station in southern Sweden, and I saw a long train with  an impressive American locomotive rolling in. The train came from Gothenburg, and I felt intense; this is the right train. It was, symbolically, the train I had boarded when I had decided, after only four months of employment (May -August 1974), to leave a management position in a Union Carbide company. The train / my decision had freed me from a job with tempting material wealth that would have risked my, via The Primal Scream, newly awakened ambitions to demystify my epilepsy (= birth trauma). Feelings of varying character filled me while I, for a long while, looked at the train. I thought about Art’s metaphor; a person who boards the wrong train, he / she is bound to, continuously, arrive at the wrong station.

Given my usual curiosity, I know astonishingly little about Art Janov. Even though, he calls me a friend and has been my reliable guide out of a horrible pain / repression. Art’s, as I thought, aristocratic anonymity, diminishes and turns over to a fellowship of proletarian dimensions when I read his emotional stories of his historyless and in many respects ruined childhood and adolescence. How has Art managed to become who he is? From his Russian proletarian background to the unconscious Honorable Ph.D. Arthur Janov, back to a conscious Working Class Hero Art!?

Despite their inherited / imposed insensitivity, Art’s parents have transferred some unique qualities of life. Through their son, those have blossomed into a historical documentation and guidance about feelings and the importance of love, touch, and attention. In Art’s case, it looks as if the Evolution has developed the necessary repressions / gates between the unconscious and the conscious. His unsatisfied unconscious has propelled psychic energy / motivation to understand / develop the Primal Principle, which has become a crucial survival reality for many of us, in order to, eventually, become more conscious.

Often we act as if Evolution were an instrument in a human controlled process, when it, in reality, relates vice versa. Evolution is full of seemingly temporary results in a continuous process that constantly searches / creates its meaning and balance. A process that we reflect and seek to influence, each according to his / her interpretation or the standards that are fashionable.

Jan Johnsson

PS

I am aware that my remaining eventual working pals hesitate about my opinion of a working class hero. However, having done a class trip and having used the looking glass inside out, I have realized that a Working Class Hero can live in Malibu Beach.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njG7p6CSbCU