Learning a new fact vs. understanding of a situation.

Learning a new fact vs. understanding of a situation.

For me, it is “incomprehensible” how Art’s long analysis “Hijacking Sex Revisited” can be neglected and has been neglected by so many of the millions of psychologists/therapists who exist around Mother Earth. There are far too many of these, at least traditionally, well-gifted men and women who have been swept along by the evolutionary determinism. 

Why? Why are not the majority of all therapists, through the use of proper techniques, guiding their patients to relive first line imprints to access the fountain of truth? The truth of Art’s these are impossible to reason away. It is, Evolution in Reverse, as old and established as Evolution. Art gives one excuse himself, for the cognitive method, saying: “Nature is a good protector -  memories shouldn’t be easily accessed, as the lower centers of the brain hold survival functions and adaption strategies that must be tampered with”. 

My conclusion: If cognitive therapists are not applying proper techniques, they do less harm reinforcing evolution, than trying to relive imprints the improper way!

My thoughts often go to the fact that extremely few are curiously, searching within themselves in order to fulfil their real needs. That strong is the eternal  power of evolution, a catch 22, that emotional repression, being infused into the present, causes the loss of objectivity. However, it is difficult to argue away the historic value of evolution and it’s roll in the survival of humanity so far. Art’s expression some time ago “Thank God for religion” is one of those survival facts, when evolution let the religion shadow the objectivity in order for us to survive.

Why do I, over time, no longer doubt Art’s Primal Principles? It is a combination that I had epilepsy, during a period when lobotomy (in my own home country) was a recently Nobel prized treatment alternative, and that I was lucky (with place of birth, having a young star neurologist, access to understanding people and contacts) and was equipped with enough talent. Being terrified by the lobotomy alternative gave me courage to find my own narrow path. I learned the hard way to avoid cognitive therapy (which was seizure-inducing) and looked for alternative treatments that gradually made me free.

Psychologic facts could not, for almost a lifetime, impress me. On the contrary, my brain did not assimilate the facts, and I had to feel my epilepsy instead of using psychological / neurological theories. However, reading most of Art’s literature, I could eventually understand my situation.

Jan Johnsson

PS

The Nobel prize for the development of lobotomy was later heavily criticized.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmVAWKfJ4Go&feature=related

Can Psychology Be Taught?

Janov's Reflections     (Click to access!)

Psychology and Ideology.  By Peter Prontzos (3/6)  

My comment:

Can psychology be taught?

In your 1/6 you referred to Daniel Kahneman (awarded the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics) and his fascinating book “Thinking, Fast and Slow”. In one chapter, he is describing experiments, which show that people will not draw from base rate information, which in turn may lead to the uncomfortable conclusion that teaching psychology is mostly a waste of time.

I will try to boil down the Kahneman chapter (which can be recommended in its full version!). In the renowned “Helping Experiment” each one of a number of participants was to talk in turn for about two minutes, over the intercom, about their lives and problems. A stooge said he felt a seizure coming on and asked for someone to help him, and he faked a fit.

Only four of fifteen participants responded to the appeal for help. The others felt relived when they knew that others had heard the request for help.

Videos of interviews with people who had participated, showed they were nice, normal, decent people with entirely conventional hobbies, spare-time activities and plans for the future. After watching the videos the students guessed how quickly the particular person had come to aid the stricken stranger. Using two test groups, one knowing the outcome of the original test (that 27% of the participants were immediately helpful) the other not, the predictions were identical. Both the test groups predicted that the interviewed individuals would rush to the victim’s aid. Please note that the second group knew both the procedure of the original experiment and its result. The interviewed people they had just seen had not helped the stranger!!

Students exempt themselves (and their friends and acquaintances), quietly, from the conclusions of experiments that surprise them. Being presented with a surprising statistical fact, the students managed to learn nothing at all. However, being surprised by individual cases - nice people who had not helped - they realized that helping is more difficult than they had thought and first then their guesses were accurate.

Subject’s unwillingness to deduce the particular from the general was matched only by their willingness to infer the general from the particular.

The test of learning psychology is whether your understanding of situations you encounter has changed, not whether you have learned a new fact.

Most of us think of ourselves as decent people who would rush to help in such a situation, and we expect other decent people to do the same. Even normal, decent people do not rush to help when they expect others to take on the unpleasantness of dealing with a seizure. And that means you and me too!

Jan Johnsson

The Land of The Free?!!?

Janov's Reflections FRIDAY, MAY 25, 2012

The Aim of Cognitive Therapy  (Click to access!)

My comments:

The Land of The Free?!!?

Over the last many weeks I have, stimulated by own experiences and writing and by Reflections of Art, used the words FREE / FREEDOM to express the new liberating feeling which emerges as a consequence of being able to feel / reexperience pain and to enjoy a reduced dependence of neurotic filters to cope with reality.

As a Swede and foreigner, though a friend, to the US, I have always been  impressed by the so-called American Freedom. However, I did that without asking what the concept of Freedom meant. In my metaphors, I never saw any link between the American Constitution (and its Bill of Rights) and my “enemies” for those being responsible, for my “prison of pain” / repressed state. In my world cognitive therapists, drugs, painkillers, maltreatment during my life-before-birth and no-curing treatments, were but a few of the reasons that my anxiety and not-feeling-free had such an impact on me.

My thoughts often go to why so extremely few are looking, searching for help to find their inner freedom in themselves in order to fulfill their real needs. I have the impression that emotional repression, like technological development, is determined by evolution, which is turning us into unfree creatures. Technological Development = Emotional Repression.

The Constitution is being changed accordingly! The new law signed by the President on New Years Eve of 2011, the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) robs all Americans of many principles and rights afforded all Americans in their Constitution and Bill of Rights, which were given by their founding fathers. Many Americans have given their lives to protect these basic and fundamental rights. This new law explicitly creates a police state in America. It strips away any rights the American people thought they had including but not limitied to free speech, free press, free access to information and the right to protest, assemble and bear arms.

Every cloud has a silver lining, and with that I refer to the new limitation to assemble and bear arms... However, the real price is and will remain: Not being FREE!

Jan Johnsson

http://ppjg.me/2012/01/25/america-no-longer-the-land-of-the-free/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TarrSrx4v0

A Feeling of a New Dimension.

A feeling of a new dimension. A new step in the transformation/refashioning of my brain and life.

Yesterday, Eva (who I met after 53 years) asked me for a collage of photos I have of us, covering 57 years. (See enclosure!). She was overwhelmed over the result and said that she could feel the memories down “into her marrow”. With the help of one of my Jewish favorites, Barbara Streisand, I also felt the 57 years as a memory-fusion, euphoria (New Latin, from Greek, from euphoros, healthy)   without intoxicating effects.

Today, after a long and relaxed day - driving back and forth to the Mediterranean - I came home, read Eva’s mail about the photo collage. My thought went to my pal in L.A. making all these new wealth of real feelings come true, and I decided to send a copy to him and thank him. However, I first decided to take a short, relaxed nap during the Spanish siesta. After an hour, I woke up having a feeling on it’s way. I decided to go with it. It turned out to be a new way to experience my birth feelings.

As always, the feeling involved pressure over my mouth, eyes and forehead going deep into my head. This time I had all these feelings being/feeling my fully adult body. The wordless feelings took place, but that I was feeling retarded to a baby’s body. I went through all the moments I usually do when I manage, fully, to feel, and the completion brought the deep repressed scream/cry that often explodes out of my throat and guts.

I normally recover within half an hour after my feelings. This time I recovered instantly after the final “death” cry. It is as my feelings have been allowed into my old, adult body, now less scaring than ever, more real and with a feeling of being easier to explain. One day my experiences should be the right of every woman and man!

Jan Johnsson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78Ruh0ewBVo&list=LPs-z409g1yak&index=4&feature=plcp

1 to 2% Of My Thoughts.

Psychology and Ideology. How Could Anyone (Except ...
By Peter Prontzos (2/6)     (Click to access!)


My comments:

1 to 2 % of my thoughts

The fact that 98 to 99% of our thoughts and emotions are unconscious according to Lakeoff’s and Kandel’s estimations and guesses, makes me feel good about how I over 50 years have been unconsciously convinced that I eventually would find a way out of my prison of pain. It, certainly, was not achieved in one giant step or through a quick revolution, but by countless number of small steps and continuos (often painful) adjustments. 

It has been a lifelong rehabilitation process, in which the fact that I, basically, was being "emotionally nourished" by Art Janov’s Primal Principals, gave me the knowledge, technique and confidence to refashion my life and brain. It has certainly been a complex and dialectical journey which has been determined by both nature and nurture.

There have been opinions that I have been a “prisoner” of Art Janov, who is so fortunate to have a genius’s access to our emotions and unconscious. To demystify my epilepsy and my neuroses, Art’s genius has been as indispensable as oxygen and the serotonin founding sunlight for my survival.

So contrary to what people might think, Art guided me out of my prison of pain and made possible, although delayed, my healthy emotional development into freedom! 

Jan Johnsson

Why are we fooled in such great numbers?

Psychology and Ideology. How Could Anyone (Except ...

(Click to access!)


My comments:

Why are we fooled in such great numbers?

Wonderful to read someone having both the knowledge, honesty and guts to present an in-depth-analysis to “why we are fooled in such great numbers”, over and over again. The three levels of unconscious influences in your essay will make a fascinating and a most needed intellectual connection to my life-changing primal experiences from Art’s Evolution in Reverse.

To my comments, to Art’s Reflections on “The cost of neuroses”, the other day, I would have loved beeing able to add your last sentense:  “The new field of neuroeconomics is showing why so many “calculations of value” are not rational.  Our decisions are determined by an almost endless number of factors, such as risk aversion, fear, wishful thinking, endowment effects (from ownership), lack of information, pre-conceptions, biases, and cognitive dissonance.

Looking forward to your next article!

Jan Johnsson

Cost vs. Income of Neuroses, an example.

Janov's Reflections on 

The Cost of Neurosis (click to access!)

My comments:

The Cost vs. Income of Neuroses

Your economic scenario regarding the drunken driver in your neighborhood sounds, at first sight, very specious. However, it is based upon a logic with so many contradictory consequences, that my human sympathy, will turn out to be the widow’s mite, left for you.

I’m sorry, Art, but the income made by neurotics are tremendously much bigger than the cost of them. The old, neurotic, American “dream” to make a fortune / become a millionaire and then become independent and (due to the unending nature of neuroses, even richer, etc.) has for generations had the cost of “your drunken driver” as a non official, slightly annoying surcharge in its general spreadsheet. I could go on writing so much about the importance of alcohol and neuroses as a source of income, that your famous fish would drown many times in its deluge of “wealth” creation. 

The enclosed statistics, over the proportion, of the US population, by education, who used alcohol in the previous month, speaks for itself. Looking at the statistics there seems to be evidence that the more being stuffed into our left brains, the more painkilling alcohol we need!

Proportion of US population by education who used alcohol in previous month:

Collage graduate               67%

Some collage                     60%

High school graduate        55%

Less than high school        37%

An interesting fact is that, in spite of the high American alcohol consumption, the US has dropped 23% since 1990 and that abstention is much more common in the US than in any other Western Country. 35% of all Americans are abstainers. A large number of states continued their own state prohibition after 1933. There are also millions of Americans who currently support the concept of prohibition. 

However, I think that PT, in spite of its curing potential, will have a hard time to compete with religious revival movements and Alcoholics Anonymou’s bodies. Their method, like cognitive therapists, to repress the alcoholic’s pain, “forgive” him and to reestablish him within their own often strong an well established organizations, creates a subjective well being supported by the majority. Some even become presidents...

Jan Johnsson