Arthur Janov's Blog, page 20

What Do We Mean By, He's Damaged?

In the field of shrinks we usually mean his emotional makeup is askew; his views and perceptions are off,  and he can’t be counted on for stability and reliability.  He is damaged.

But do we also mean that he is physically damaged?  Do we take into account the physical aspects of the damage? Or does it find itself limited to the emotional?  In Shrinkdom never the twain shall meet; it is all rather ephemeral.  But we usually confine ourselves to the emotional.  But what about when the “emotional has physical effects?  And physical origins?  Usually it is a long leap from the emotional damage to the physical.  That  is why doctors spend their lives studying diabetes, high blood pressure, migraines and asthma, and it still eludes them.  It is as if the symptoms spring de novo apart from their roots and are taken as complete entities by themselves.  So we go on studying the minutia of the symptoms separated from their origins.  The result of all this study is to try to control the symptom not cure it.  Big Pharma is not so interested in cure when crushing symptoms is so powerful a choice; an incentive which can go in into infinity.  And sadly, patients who suffer so much are willing to accept the control of the symptom as the main goal of treatment.

There are many new studies on the physical and physiologic components of the emotional as to make them inseparable, which they are.  Oh wait  minute, are they twins?  Conjoined at the head with no chance of separation?  Not until we see them as a whole, can we see them as separate.  Oh  My.  Now we are getting complicated.  Not until we see the key feelings with both their physical and emotional components can we see them as two parts of the same damage.  Meanwhile we go on misplacing treatment onto the wrong damage.  That is, it is not that we are not treating the damage; it is that we are not treating the real damage and that is why the symptoms continue without cease.  We treat collateral damage and evade  the real target.  The target, well hidden, is the fount like a suppurating  wound that  constantly oozes its discharge, which we see as symptoms,  and call it THE  disease.  It is the result of the disease; terrible pain inflicted when we had no words to signal damage.  But there were physical effects on the immune system.  Thus, being drugged while in the womb has lifelong effects that trail us for a lifetime.

The real disease is so well sequestered that we cannot imagine that it even exists. Nor can we imagine the pain involved from imprints down deep in the brain.  It is ineffable in the true sense of the word.  Physical symptoms are more obvious; we can see an asthma attack or high blood pressure.  Tougher to see a carrying mother smoking or drinking.  She takes a cigarette and the damage begins. The baby/fetus begins his life of misery.  It is all so mysterious and worse, the damage may not show up for decades:  i.e, cancer or Alzheimers.  So, to make the link between two events forty or fifty years apart is asking a lot.  Meanwhile the grownup baby finds drugs that ease his pain and he is addicted.  It is tough to treat because we treat only the addiction to drugs.  We make it a criminal offense and we find ways to make it difficult to obtain.  And we think we have solved the problem.  We applaud those who stay off drugs and are “clean.”  They may pay for this kind of success with serious disease later on;  the pain below the addiction still remains and continues its damage.  That damage is both physical and emotional; they are one.  We go on to treat the obvious.

Research is closing in on early trauma and later disease.  A study at King’s College, London found long-term changes in the immune system as a result of: childhood trauma, sexual and emotional abuse, separation early from caregivers and general neglect.  All this proliferated in a myriad of illnesses.  Through  a study of biomarkers they found enhanced inflammation, far above the normal range.  (Valerie Mondelli.  Molecular Psychiatry, June, 2015).  Looking back at certain markers they could postdict trauma earlier on.  Here we note that early physical damage, a smoking, carrying mother, can turn into all kinds of symptoms both physical ,arthritis, or emotional, addiction.  These can be different effects from the same pain.  Some will search out strange ideas and beliefs, others will find drugs, some will find gambling and others overwork , still others overeat.  It is all ways to deal with the same early damage which no one sees.  We see the effects of the damage but not what cures:  the damage itself.  Too often the pain is so well hidden is that all we see is someone so shut down as to seem without feeling.  They are emotionally dead.

And what happens next?  We open Gambling and Alcohol Anonymous Clinics, Diet Programs, Self Esteem centers, ad nauseam.  And what do they treat?  Effluvia of surging internal volcano of pain.  We rush in to treat this or that; gambling or overeating with specialists in almost everything, who do what?  Suppress behavior and suppress the pain.  So they do the opposite of what is necessary: liberate the pain, once and for all.    Stop shutting down what cures:  feeling.    To do that we need to travel back in time slowly to reach the deepest reaches of the unconscious to open the gates of repression and begin to feel the real damage.  That is our target, the real damage.  Then the collateral effects seem to disappear.  How do we do that?  It is what I write about in many books and hundreds of blogs. It is not simple and took decades to figure out.  But now we understand the disease and what to do about it.  Why?  When we help patients relive traumas we see it in real time as the patient goes back to relive it exactly as it happened.  He is not discussing it; he is living and feeling it.  Elsewhere, I discussed a patient who moved out of town to avoid pollution until she finally felt the source of her pollution; her mother’s constant smoking while while pregnant.  There was nothing she could do about it as a baby.  Now she could keep on moving away from her perceived threats of pollution.  Her reactions were real enough but her behavior was anxiety driven from a time long ago.  She went to a cult to learn how to live in the present but she was still living in the past.  Her Primals began with “Help, I am suffocating."
 

How Do You Prove Primal Therapy?

I have been going on about my therapy for years that it is the cure. So what does that mean?

I have always been warned not to use the word “prove,” cause nothing is proved in science; it is supported, confirmed, strengthened but never proved.  So why do I go on with the word?  Therein lies the rub because ……first, let me lay out what I mean.

I will use the example of psychosis to explain. Over decades as patients descend down into and back to their early past they begin to lose articulation and have trouble forming sentences; it means they are still on the emotional right level with twinges of left brain verbal skills which begin to diminish.  As they go back more they lose their capacity for words and if they should use complicated words to describe their feelings it is a false primal.  Why?  Because the more remote the Primal trip the less capacity for words there is.  A two year old does not have the capacity for sophisticated language.  If it is a true reliving it would be impossible and usually is.  Mind you, this is after a long time in therapy and after many lesser pains are experienced.

As the patient begins to drop into gestational life there is more pain than one can imagine, soon, it is a pain that does not hurt inside because it becomes a feeling that is being felt.  It looks like pain but it is a manageable one, unless the patient is led or forced into the emotional depths where experience is premature and out of the question.  Here, during this period where the brainstem reigns the pains are the most acute and they can be psychotic making.  How do we know? Some patients who have come to us from rebirthing therapy plunge down deep too early and begin delusions and hallucinations.  “I see the cosmos and shining angels,” etc.  The pain has mounted into the neo-cortex and drove it to manufacture defenses, including false perceptions and bizarre ideas.  It is a sure sign of overload and inundation of pain.

Down on this level, as the patient, over time, goes deeper into the past, the pain mounts, which is how we know where the deepest pain lies.  We see it and measure it; no guesswork.  And when we see it over and over in hundreds of patients over 50 years we  begin to get a good idea of our observations.  It is consistent and replicable.  It is not longer a theory but a precise observation which I call cure. Why?  Because when there are such deep experiences, always nonverbal, so much changes; the biology, the appearance, the feelings, the look and the sense of comfort, at last.  To say nothing of possibly diverting serious imprints from exacerbating into serious illness later on.  Gone are the migraines and high blood pressure and gone is a good deal of the compulsive acting-out, not the least of which is sex.

So here we see the dialectic interplay between memory, deep imprints, the pain and the symptoms it engenders.  It avoids guesswork.  They all converge into a  feeling; it is a unified event.  We are not working on this symptom or that; we are working on the whole system as it responds to the deepest and most devastating imprints.  Feeling them then radiates everywhere in the system so that the effects are systemic-- effects throughout the system.

We are not looking to conform a private theory; we are developing a theory out of our observations.  Experience first, deep brain observations first, then the theory and the hypotheses.  The patients’ experiences do not confirm the theory or the hypothesis, it is the theory that goes or changes or modifies.  I have no desire to hang onto some concocted theory that I adore. If it does not make the patient better then why hang onto it?  This is largely what happened to all those therapists who wanted to improve on our theory.  They added drugs to the mix, then hypnosis, then cognitive and so on ad nauseam.  All because they never saw the central truth of feeling.  And, I assume, because they never underwent their own feelings.

The Anti-Primal Solution: Meaning Ayayay

I don’t know why I read the NY Times articles which publishes grinders for me, (NY Times, May 17, 2015 see: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com//2015/05/16/no-longer-wanting-to-die/). They love Behavior Therapy and meanwhile I cannot get one of my articles in  their paper.  This blog is a follow-up to the one I just published called, ON BEING LONELY (see: http://cigognenews.blogspot.com/2015/05/on-feeling-lonely-again.html).  I hope to show the bankruptcy of non-dynamic approaches that leave science far behind; where therapists become a cheering section for the oppressed.  “You can do it;  But, you have to accept yourself first”.

Whaaat?  I sit here thinking, “How on earth can I do that?”  Let’s say I tell myself I am good, smart and warm.  But wait a minute I am completely unconvinced. I don’t feel that way.  My whole history makes me feel bad, dumb and worthless, which is absolutely true of my early life.  You mean I should deny who I am and take on another persona who is loveable?  Gee, I’ll try.  Darn,  I just can’t do it.  Now what do I do? I know… I will pretend and please my doctor.

This is about the patient who entered Behavior Therapy for suicidal depression.  He had shock therapy plus years of psychotherapy plus drug after drug; nothing worked.

The opening gambit finds the therapist informing the patient that to get well the first step has to be to “accept yourself as you are.”  These admonitions are throwbacks to early Gestalt therapy, which was “sold” by Fritz Perls.  After he told everyone what to do and how to live, the patient had then to kiss him to end the session.  This advice has no rationale whatsoever and has no basis in science; it is every man for himself. Caprice replaces science.

So let’s go on with his therapy, which has a major space in the NY Times.  This therapy was finally accepted by the patient, and by inference, the NY Times, as well.

The patient’s problems had a history but was again set off by a failed business deal.  He was known as “treatment resistant depression.”  The therapy was not in question; it was his resistance to it.  How neat.
Along comes a new therapy, or should I say a new label for an old treatment, known as Dialectic Behavior Therapy.  I assume they mean some kind of improvement on Behavior Therapy.  It is aimed at suicidal patients.  Dr Linehan, the founder, claims that Behavior Therapy couldn’t work for her so she developed a new approach.

What it does is help patients “identify and change negative and erroneous thoughts".  This sounds precisely like Behavior Therapy.  Dr. Linehan says that the problem with staying on this approach is that it treats the patients’ pain being all in the head, and that “belittles the patient.”  What has to happen according to her is that the patient, first and foremost, must accept himself and be accepted by others as he is.  She realizes that sometimes the person is also overwhelmed by emotions.  So she recommends some skills to stop the flooding of emotions.

“It lies in the pivotal  moment between experiencing the feeling and acting on it.”  So she finds a way:  take ice from the fridge and hold it on your neck.  Distract yourself. Snap a rubber band on your wrist.  Etc, ad nauseam.  In other words, never feel the feelings but treat them as intruders and enemies to avoid.  The only thing that could help healing, feeling one’s feelings, becomes an anathema.  It is anti-healing and anti-Primal.  Which has been given a big boost from an august newspaper.

This so-called new therapy is a simple turn on the usual Behavior Therapy. No scientist need apply because science is not welcome here.

So the therapist believes there is improvement because the distraction (is that really therapy?) lowers anxiety. Is that measured or still part of the booga booga approach?  After a lifetime of being criticized and belittled by parents she argues it can be undone by talking to yourself.  Ayayay.  It is still all in her head and now in the patient’s who thinks he is better.

So every time a feeling comes up, instead of feeling it and improving she asks patients to do the opposite and stop feeling.  Stop getting well, for no matter what she says, it is still “in your head.”

Where are earth does she get her ideas about feelings?  Where does she think they come from?  Do they come from space or are they the results of our experience? What experience?  Does the patient have no history, no previous neglect, or trauma?  This is exactly and only Behavior Therapy.  It is not new, does not make any improvement and treats the patient as ahistoric.

A slight postscript:  what does Dr. Linehan think is the role of feelings?  Does she know that they are guideposts, that they warn us of threat and danger?  That they signal illness and problems internally. That they lead to love and caring and empathy?  That they lead us to make good decisions that are salutary for ourselves?

So why are feelings there? To allow us to love and be loved, to help others, to sympathize with others’ plight and to help us establish good relationships.  They are not our enemy; they help save our lives.  Above all, even though we all have feeling centers, not all of us have access to feelings.  Some of us are so shut off that we are basically unfeeling.  What makes us really human are feelings; why on earth do we want to suppress them?
I think my departing point from Dr. Linehan is that when  she sees emerging feelings, she rushes in to divert the patient away from them.  When we see feelings we help the patient into them in slow methodic fashion, so that he becomes a feeling, sensate human being.  This is the way he becomes human, learns to love and be loved and gets rid of his Primal Demons that have plagued him.

Since we are historic beings how can we get well in an anti-feeling way?  We can’t.

On Feeling Lonely Again

There is a news story today about a writer who says he has always felt lonely, and no one has been able to solve it:  he is at wits end.  I will try to help understand it.

I have to take him at his word and believe what he means to say by lonely is feeling all alone.    But feeling all alone, lonely, is not just a temporary state.  It is something that never seems to stop, no matter what he does.    So, I say to myself, “what makes someone feel lonely all of their lives?”  Since  I have been down to the lowest level of brain function, I have a good idea, and I shall share it.  Left alone a lot during infancy and childhood certainly more deeply embeds the feeling and compounds the pain. But it is not always what makes it linger.  It makes the feeling worst and more unbearable but the provenance is earlier, often much earlier.  I know this from experience, as well as from observation.

So what could it be?  What could make us feel so alone?  It could be just after birth.  When we enter this world, we are all alone, terrified in such a strange place, and no one is there; no one comes to soothe us.  We feel isolated and ALONE.    When you need a loving hand, when it is basically life and death; when it is as urgent as life itself.    The baby cannot see a kind, caring face because he is being weighed, and “handled” by white coats done too often with a slight indifference.  All is cold, unfeeling.  He needs his mother’s closeness NOW!

But mother is sick and cannot attend to him.  Or hospital rules demand that the baby not be placed right away on momma.  They have to perform all sorts of ablutions first.  Or that baby is soon put in some sort of basket or “holding cell.”  When he needs touch and kisses.  So what do we have?  A room full of crying babies.  And why do they cry? Because they are lonely and/or in pain.  Babies are humans. Do we cry for no reason?  Neither to they.
It is like asking if a crying baby should be picked up?  If a friend were in pain would you hug and hold him?  Of course.

I mention life and death because if the baby is immediately taken away for a time after birth, and placed by himself, the terror he may feel from the birth experience can be overwhelming.    Then at 6 months of life he is put to bed, left alone in the dark with no parents around and the “all alone” terror mounts again.  It is the compounding: feeling alone and terrified at birth reawakens the terror, and the system can’t take it.    Death sometimes follows; it is all far too much…….  Crib Death.  Crib death tells us the power of terror inside.  Or if he is placed  in an incubator, again all alone and terrified, he will carry the terror and aloneness for a lifetime.  Why for a lifetime?

Won’t he get over it?  No.  The feeling went on for so long and unrelenting, is so great and devastating that it cannot be fully repressed.  It lingers as a pure state, gaining heft later on due to missing parents who work or party all of the time.  He runs from being alone and makes up reasons why he needs to be with people and to keep busy.  He needs distraction.  He phones all of the time.  He needs connection to others, and this again, comes from the continual lack of connection early on to himself and to parents.  I mention “to himself” because terror during gestation already lays down the basis for disconnection from aspects of oneself.  That means alienation from the pain.  Those defenses are already in place in gestation.  He no longer has all of himself.

The critical period for fulfillment is the neuro-biologic time frame when needs must be fulfilled.  It is biologically circumscribed and allows for no deviation.    Fulfillment is urgent to calm and soothe the newborn child.  If not, then the feeling is imprinted for life because the child is becoming overwhelmed with the need for and lack of, hugs and kisses: but no one comes.

All the mélange of feelings involved in the imprint remain thrusting  toward the  top level consciousness for connection.  Why do they move forwards and upwards?  Connection means ultimate surcease and resolution.  The brain knows that.  Why don’t we?  Alas, it is not to be because the pain/terror is so great that it cannot be repressed. Nor can it be felt, integrated and be done with.

We carry it along for a lifetime; even in a crowd one feels lonely and all alone.  We find ways to handle it, and what does it involve?  Pushing it back and down.  The person often feels alienated, and distant.  He looks and acts as if he lives in another world.  He does, only he doesn’t know it.  He lives in a world of aloneness and loneliness.  He is dogged by those unrelenting feelings.  The feeling, so devastating is unyielding.  It is imprinted and embedded and has a life all of its own. It has hegemony even over what  is going on in current life.  So even in a happy feast he feels down.  He cannot feel happy until he really feels.  What? What is dragging him down: the imprint.

Why hegemony? (Hey if I never use good, big words, I will be dumbing down everyone, including me).  Because it is so purely gated due to its load of pain that it is ever-present, even when no one knows what “IT” is.

We need to know about one of my primary concepts; that once the brief critical period is over, no fulfillment can fill the gap.  No jollying him.  Every single fulfillment becomes symbolic and unfulfilling. And hence requires more and more attempts.  And then the person goes to therapy and gets hugs from groups members and feels soooo goood.  Alas, sadly,  it cannot last.  The system allows no substitutes.  It is either the real thing, a warm hug at the critical time, or nothing.

Yet, wow,  hugs to stop the aloneness feels so good; it is addicting.  Oh yes, so are drugs that ease the pain.  I reported on one of my patients who needed constant sex; nymphomania.  Only it was not that all.  She was not sex-crazed.  She was “being held” crazed.  She was obsessed as she should have been because she desperately needed touch. Not a cause for opprobrium.  (Oh my, those big words).  It was all compounded and made urgent because in her childhood she was never held or touched.

So years in therapy this woman was trying to feel loved.  Holy Sh…., is that the job of therapy?  The warm and fuzzy doctor is to no avail because he deals in ideas not emotions.  Besides, no one can love neurosis away.  Why? Because we can never abrogate the critical period. (Jesus,  Janov. stop with the big words!!    OK,  aj).
You see, biology knows little of compassion.  It says, “I know you need hugs but it is far too late.  Sorry.”  The critical period is attached to and depends on, the duration of the critical need.  It is often a short time.  A newborn does not have a great margin of error.  He needs love right away.  When he is hungry he needs to eat, and when he is lonely he needs love.  It cannot be given on our timetable; only on his.

We have found that any lingering feeling may have the same origin, or often, deeper.  Some patients feel empty or unfulfilled as a chronic state.  Look again at early life.  Because unlike most other feelings, those occurring so, so early stay with us for life.  That is to say, the memories are there to remind us what lies deeper, and needs to be resolved.  They are poorly gated, and therefore haunt us.

You know about my concept of resonance; how there is a linkage among all strata of levels of consciousness that ties similar memories  together and ties the ensemble to higher levels of brain function.  That is why feeling down and lonely in therapy, over time, can drag the person back to the times when it was traumatic.  Then begins the process of Primal Therapy; the voyage to the deep interior….where freedom and surcease lie.

What seems to rise for connection in therapy is the raw unadulterated feeling, bereft of its context and origin,  That is why it is such a constant mystery.  It has no adorned accouterments loaded with key information as to what it really is.  “I feel so alone all of the time.”  This is what I mean; no idea of where it all comes from.  And that  is why with connection the whole panoply of the feeling arises and helps us know what the feeling is all about and how it got started.  So what does connection mean?  As the patient descends to deep levels of consciousness over months in therapy he will arrive (add “she” if you want), at a weird sensation of being all alone, especially if he came in depressed and feeling all alone.  That feeling, when he has deeper access, will  carry him back to origins and will be resolving.  That takes time.  But the feeling is finally felt and is integrated; no longer hanging out there like some alien force cause damage.    Remember,  feelings carry us back, not admonishments from a therapist.  If we obey the doctor we are done for.  He can never know what is our unconscious.  He is not a fount of wisdom despite the warm and fuzzy demeanor, drenched with a security of his knowledge which too often is absolute.

Why resolving?  Because it is the raw feeling that climbs the chain of pain to bug us incessantly for life.  Feeling it fully over time, months, finally lays it bare, and puts an end to and depression.  Remember, it lingered because it could never be successfully repressed due to its load of pain.  Its time has come. Aah!

We need to dredge up the original trauma and all of its original reactions within the early time frame and within the critical period, and then we find resolution.  There is no other solution except to go back in time;  back to our early history where feelings will come up raw again, but now we know what it is and can make the final connection.  It needs conscious awareness, at last.




 

On Incipient Dementia

I am going to depart from science on this one and tell you about my intuition and instincts.  As I grow older, and I cannot get a whole lot older,  I see memory loss among my friends.  It is often considered a sign simply of old age but maybe there is something else.

We have to go back a long way in our lives to see the brainstem imprints but are often there but are surmounted by defenses and busy work and ignorance and denial.  But there is no denying an imprint; it is locked-in and deeply embedded exerting its influence deep in the subconscious without our knowing it ("à notre insu").  But what seems to me is that it rises as a resonant wave, not as a specific memory (unless there is full access), and floods the cortex imperceptibly.  It goes on with the flooding, pervading memory cells which barely register the influence but register it does.  As the decades roll by and we are also flooded with other traumas, divorce, deaths, loss of job, etc., so that the input is compounded until some neural cells give way and memory falters.  Then we scramble to find solutions: vitamins,  exercises, special learning and memory classes, and so on.  But the causes need to reach back to the dinosaur brain which does not offer up its secrets carelessly.

Now, the second aspect of this compounding is any long-term anesthesia (over 3 hours) where the brain is shut down for protracted periods. I have seen enough of this to see memory problems lasting months and years. If there is any way to avoid this please do. There is a spinal or other options that avoid cortical brain cell suppression.  Perhaps there is no alternative in special cases, but this is a warning sign.  We are shutting off the function of a key organ, the brain, and we need to do that with caution.

Oh yes!  Did I leave out something critical?  Yes I did?  A lifetime of drinking, smoking and drugging all of which suppress aspects of cortical function.  Now we add  this to the mix and we can’t miss; memory deficit and incipient dementia.  But let’s call it what it is: a lifetime of fooling around with the brain, especially alcohol, and expecting the brain system to go on working just right.  Nope.  It won’t and it can’t. It suffers but it cannot scream. The person will do that when we comes to our therapy.

OH my!  Did I leave out something else? Yes I did.  Any suicide attempt compromises limbic/feeling function and cortical efficiency. Shutting down the brain again. And what does a lifetime of taking tranquilizers do? Shut down oxygen supplies and eventually damage nerve cells; I mean, how much can they take?  And don’t forget, the pain that is wafting up is from archaic traumas often involves oxygen deprivation.  A mother smoking, for example.  Ayayay.  How can we win? We can’t.

So we now have a mélange of factors; a constant input of activation from stored pain deep in the brain, plus a repressive input from anesthesia, together with compounding from various adult adversities.  Put them all together they don’t spell MOTHER, they spell brain dysfunction.  Let us not always look for immediate causes (proximal) to long-terms aggravations but consider history, first, last and always.

On My Rants Against Cognitive Therapy

I know I seem to rant against what I call “Half-therapy,”  or “almost therapy,”  that is, a therapy that encompasses only a piece of us and neglects the feeling-human part.  But there is a reason for my rant,   I read yesterday in science journal about a complex study of sleep problems.  And they plunged and plunged into neuronal circuits and came to bizarre conclusions, which seem quite rational to them.   “It was because of overactive cortical function, activated limbic circuits,” and on and on.  And that may be entirely true.  It is too technical to go into except that it is almost impossible for a non neurologist to understand.   Ok so what they say might be true, so what is wrong with that?  It is a half-truth.  You can’t get well half-way.

Therein lies the rub, as I often say.  All that is missing are causes; ultimate causes.  What made those circuits detour and over-react?  Why does various  chemicals seem too high?  Is that the cause?  Well,  we could go on guessing and batting down associated symptoms, until we actually see causes at work.  How do we know they are causes?   For many reasons; one important one being that the problems seem to disappear after reliving the key factors and imprints that drive the neo-cortex later on, into a frenzy that cannot seem to be turned off enough to let us sleep.  And not surprisingly, he was a hyperactive child who, according to his teachers, could not sit still.  Always in motion; the same drive to produce a hyperactive mind that cannot relax and fall asleep.  Still driven, but now also mentally.

Wait a minute.  Is there a correlation?  It is what we have found because we look at history.  If you don’t you will always get only half the information you need.  Cannot continue to investigate de novo each new case of sleep problems and still think it is a matter of displaced neurons.  You may think that it is all in your mind but where?  Could it be way down deep, reflecting trauma to the brainstem?  Yes, but who looks there?  Who sees the connection between gestational life and sleep problems at age thirty?  You cannot until you go there ; that is, until patients go there, a “there” the few recognize even exists.  Most doctors seem to work as if there is no there, there.  So why even think about going there?  For patients, too, it seems dangerous and mysterious, reinforced by the doctor who also has no idea what is down there; except something to be avoided.  And when the therapist has no idea about the brainstem all is lost, including the patient and the doctor.  Therapy becomes a muddle, each feeling rumbles around in the dark for some way out.  Alas, the way out is the way in, and that is where we part from other therapies.  One reason is that the way in, takes months, who has the patience to go there and take one’s time?  Anxiety waits for no man.

Isn’t it strange that we give pills for deep anxiety and sleep deprivation that work on the lower depths where origins lie, yet we miss the fact that maybe there are origins of this mess way back there and way down there?  All we have to do is go there!  But how?  I have written many blogs on the subject, 16 books, and now there is a precise video description coming out by Dr, France Janov, called the Primal Legacy.  It is detailed and gives readers a thorough description of the Primal Process.  Who can ask for any more?  I doubt it has been done before, mostly because the series is based in science and not haphazard musings.

We will not find answers to many perplexing psychologic problems until we stop the almost-therapy and turn to the real meaning of holistic therapy; which includes all of us, absolutely all of us.  We are not just a thinking brain; we are above all, a feeling brain that helps us treat patients, relate to others, have empathy and compassion. There is not a lot of that in a  disembodied neo-cortex.

You Mean the Brain is an Orphan?

 There is a picture in a new science magazine of a doctor holding a human brain declaring that she was going delve deep in the brain to find answers to so many maladies.   (This is the year of the brain, after all). Wait a minute:  what if the answers lie not in the brain but in the parents' brains who affected and infected that brain?   Don’t we want to know what environment that brain grew up in?   Was it an orphan?  Then almost for sure there will be brain impairment later in life.   And looking the brain cells will tell us nothing of this.  If that brain had no loving and warmth in the first weeks and months of life the brain will suffer but it won’t declare it.  All I am saying is that life in any form lives in an environment and is shaped by it, so how could we leave it out of the equation?

Could we ever understand ADD by looking at the brain in isolation?  Leaving out the events that were at the origin of the cause.  Could a kidney specialist know that his sick patient drank for thirty years?   Just by examining the kidneys?  Sometimes.  But not always.  That is precisely what is wrong with the Behaviorists; taking behavior as the sine qua non.  And worse, trying to change behavior without reference to what those behaviors were, and how they shaped us..   So we confine our field of inquiry to a vary narrow space that lets no new related information in.  They take an isolated brain without parents and try to figure out why patients have those compulsions or obsessions, and then try to change behavior into some “wholesome” idea of how it should be.  They force a behavior detour even against the biology of the patient.  His whole system moves to the left when it should move to the right.   It militates to the thinking cortex instead of the feeling one.  And he tries to obey; thinking before he feels so he is not impulsive.  Looking at full ashtrays to get over the urge to smoke and many other ploys that never look at causes. Above all, not understanding the imprinted memories lodged in the lower reaches of the brain that are deeply embedded, which force and drive behaviors.  There are roots to attitudes and behaviors. We are not decorticates rummaging around the world. But some therapies act as though we were; extracting the lonely brain for study without regard to its history.  Psychotherapy cannot be a-historic unless we are doing brief YMCA Counseling:  “You know you need to exercise more.”

Would we treat heart disease without knowing how tense the patient is or how he never exercises? We would be roaming in the dark.  When we say we are social animals it means we are affected by social events; we do not live in a vacuum.  We must study the total interplay of our physical self with outside events.  How can anyone get over his depression without knowing the originating events?   Yet that is exactly what we do.  Give pills for depression and if that does not work we give more powerful pills and then surgery for the brain and maybe electroshock, all without digging deep enough to observe those forces “alive.”  Going on blindly without seeing the brain at work deep down. Yes we can do that.  We see the brain live, meaning alive and living.  We see the pain memory and what it does and how strong it is; finally we see how it drives behavior.  Did I say “behavior”?  Yes I did. We see origins; no more guesswork.  Aah.  

The Mysteries of Some Behaviors

One of the great mysteries escapes most of us:  why is this child so anxious and out of control, so incapable of doing school work, and mostly hangs out with the wrong people?  Gets in trouble all the time,  several auto accidents,  takes drugs and cannot be counted on.   Recognize him?  He is your neighbor, the guy down the street or the person who works next to you.   He is unstable  and cannot do anything , any project or task, for any length of time.  He is anxious and skittish and very unreliable.   He, and less often she, flits around and cannot be pinned down.  Often leaves a trail of destruction everywhere he goes.    He can be charming on the surface but when it gets deeper he is a mess.   Cannot keep a relationship for any length of time.  Never count on him; cause his word means nothing.

Yet he had stable loving parents who continue to blame themselves. 

So what is wrong?  He suffers from ineffable damage so early as to be unimaginable.   It is ineffable and inexplicable for a reason: it is damage done before we were verbal, and before we had language.  The mind of this person seems like a cesspool of inputs that drive him hither and yon.  What inputs?  The damage inflicted by an unsuspecting mother who drinks many cups of coffee a day, or is highly anxious, keeps on an unhealthy diet, drinks alcohol, etc.   Each piece of damage is imprinted and sends its message through the system that there is impairment there.   It keeps the mind busy dealing with all that information, which is ultimately distracting and plays into ADD, attention deficit disorder.  It is like a phone operator sending the top level brain unending messages which overwhelm its  possibilities for integration.  It is, ultimately, the imprint. It is covered over, repressed, hidden, but its energy sprouts everywhere.  And it is the energy component that cannot be stopped.  We give tranquilizers to block its spread but that is only a temporary measure.  Energy is now free-floating; traveling to the top level thinking area and also to deeper levels of the brain.  It agitates and aggravates. It is the signal left behind that warns,  "danger, ahead."  And believe it or not, the closer we get to it, the more danger it signals; higher blood pressure, body temp and heart rate, all activated against the danger: of what? Terrible pain ahead, lying in wait; a danger so volatile and impacting that seems life-endangering, which it was and is.   It is again, the memory, the imprint that frames the damage lying in wait to be fully felt.  And why all those complications?  Because liberation lies just on the other side; freedom to be out of pain and no longer driven incessantly.  

He is often labeled a psychopath because on the way in the womb towards life on the planet, his limbic/feeling system has been damaged and he no long can feel for others nor empathize.  The imprint impairs the limbic/feeling system from keeping feelings alive and expressive because it too is flooded with damage information.   It keeps him from being stable and being able to maintain a long-term emotional relationship.   The damaged limbic system won’t allow long-term emotional commitment.   And the developing brain begins to lose its adaptability and plasticity in infancy so that the earlier damage cannot be changed.  Any intervention to be effective at all must occur during the brain’s most dynamic growth, just after a trauma occurs.  After that not much can change.   The cure lies at the spot and time of the damage; and that is often during brainstem development and inchoate limbic evolution.  That is why it is all a mystery; its origin is so remote as to be unbelievable.  Yet there it lies with methylation traces signaling damage.  And those memory imprints are traceable and knowable, not in the language of our culture but of the archaic language of our remote ancestors. We are going back to meet them millions of years ago, communicating in their language of grunts and physical signs.  We don't have to travel back a million years because that time is imprinted in our nervous system.  We go back there through a descent through ontology, the evolution of our species.  And when we are down at the beginnings of brainstem evolution we arrive at a time when sharks ruled.  And we must learn to recognize the shark influences and talk their language; and never approach too quickly and abruptly for fear of evoking great terror.  That animal and his simple brain is easily disrupted and rendered dangerous.   If we want psychosis to appear we do rebirthing and then see the flooding, and inundation of the neo-cortex at work, creating delusions to avoid the real pain.  Then "he is one with the cosmos," and other fabrications as the cortex is devilishly busy concocting ideas to fend off the brainstem terror and pain.  He has now risen above the pain and lives in a schizophrenic world where all is wonderful.   It is easy to see that here psychosis is a good defense, and perhaps the last one on the road to serious psychosis.   

Even with his parents, who soon learn that they have little influence on him or his emotions .  We may blame his parents as they may blame themselves but the damage is done before he was born, and they could even touch him. He is behaving as though his parents made him suffer constantly, which they did, only inadvertently.  They certainly did not mean to but their own pain made them act in deleterious ways toward the baby; taking drugs, or drinking or smoking.  And it happened during the critical period with the wide open critical window; which according to very recent research, demonstrates that the fetus is more open to pain and feels it just as strongly, if not more-so, than us. When the damage from an anxious mother, or one who smokes and drinks or fights with her spouse, is deeply embedded, inaccessible and practically irreversible, it is always the imprint.  Therein lies the mystery; an arcane memory lying in the antipodes of the mind out of reach and out of touch.  Who could possibly imagine that a 20 year old college kid cannot concentrate because of damage to his archaic shark brain?  Or that  thirty year old man is hooked on heroin because of damage that occurred when he was just beginning life?   It seems beyond comprehension; and yet there is where real cure lies, and often only then and there.  How we do know?  Our patients go back there and relive the damage and solve so much of it, including heavy drug addiction.  They never do it in a day or weekend; rather it is accomplished over many months.   For that we need patience and a bit of science and a lot of evolution.   
So we therapists have been taught to reassure our patient that it is not her fault. Relieving her of any blame but maybe it is; maybe it is fault by default; not in her control, at least not in her awareness.  It happened when the baby could not scream, or complain, just silent suffering which shows up in force later on when he can behave. And he does.   Do not try to control him because he is not in control, or rather, he is controlled by powerful forces sending out messages of constant pain.  It continues to drive him in every direction possible.  He cannot pay attention.  What do we do?  We drug him, not for what we think is wrong but to cool the imprint which has gone awry.   What is controlling him is far more powerful than any control by teachers or parents, who complain that he is out of control.  We drug his neuro-biologic reactions to calm him down. Sometimes it works for a short time, but not for long.  

My God!  What is the solution?   To attack the origins of it all; I know of nothing else to do but to relive the trauma fully, as painful as it might be.  To relive in small feel-able bits over many months.  That, for me, is what we must do.   Otherwise,  we have to keep pushing it back, an endless affair.  And we cannot just approach the imprint quickly; we have to feel many other feel-able  memories first, and over months before we can approach the deep imprint.  There is where the deep pain lies, we have measured it in many ways, much higher blood pressure and heart rate and changes in brain frequency and amplitude.   That level of pain won’t let us attack it directly; we need to approach it with great caution.   If we don’t we will get the effects of rebirthing: greater damage and more irreversible pain.   This happens because we dredge up great pain which arises out of sequence and is overwhelming and can never be properly integrated.    The unconscious is no place for charlatans who decide they know what to do and they don’t.  Let us never lose sight of our shark brain.  It is ready to pounce at the slightest intrusion. Let us approach with caution.
 

What Is More Important Genes or Epigenes?

Now with the new work on epigenetics we have to ask the question which has the most impact on influence on us, genes or epigenes (what happens to the genes when they meet experience?).    So maybe it is not either-or but both at once.  That is how does the gene affect experience, epigenetics?   It is obvious that genes affect the brain; affect our thinking, reasoning and understanding.   But the genes and how they behave are dependent on experience.  The genes interact and affect each other, as well.  And they mix with epigenes to merge and drive symptoms and behavior.

The new article on this is reporting a survey of Swedish students, over 1300, of them, re: family history, sexual abuse, delinquency, quality of rapport with parents and many other factors. (see http://www.newsweek.com/new-study-identifies-genes-interact-environment-increase-antisocial-behaviour-291937)
One thing they found, is what we find; those females who had an abusive childhood have a high activity variant of the MAOA gene. That translated into enhanced ant-social behavior.  The MAOA gene is a brain enzyme that breaks down certain elements (serotonin) and releases energy.    Those who carry low serotonin variant and who had bad childhoods were likely to be more aggressive.  This is the result of the admixture of genetics and epigenetics.

What the genes do is not cause certain behaviors but form a crucible for living experience to play on them in order to induce behavior. If there were a loving environment then those genes will not supply the susceptibility to delinquency.  So we begin to see how experience interacts with genetics to produce who we are and what symptoms we will suffer.  It is not that we didn’t already know about this, but we now begin to have research evidence to confirm it.

So is criminal behavior genetic?  Yes, in part, and no, in another part.  If we leave out experience then we only have half the story.  And if we confine our research to one part we will go off-track.   When we hear that something is genetic we need to hear the whole story.  In our therapy we get the whole story because we see the whole person reacting.   And when we extract a load of pain from him or her, we see what is left.  It gives us a better view of what is genetic and non-genetic.

Is homosexuality genetic?  We have successfully treated it, which makes the assumption that it is a disease.  Let me clarify:  in every neurosis there is a detour or a dysfunction of certain biologic and neurologic elements.  Sometimes it feminizes the man.  I have cited many animal studies to support this view, and the fact that with no special intent we have altered this tendency in only some patients.  As the sexual apparatus begins to mature, there can be experience  that changes the sexual orientation.  Yes, but my patients say, but I have felt this way all of my life. And I say, I agree but the dysfunction may largely predate memory and verbal explanation.  In other words the changes can begin in the womb and accumulate during the birth process and for a few years afterwards.  I have no stake in whether it is genetic or not, but experience dictates to me the experiential factors that may play a role, and only in some cases.  After all, we do not treat every homosexual patient for his or her sexual orientation; most do not want to change sexual orientation at all, but simply want to get rid of their depression, anxiety or anger.  We do not dictate what aspect is to be treated. The patient dictates and we follow. In the cases of change we never started out to change any orientation; it came as a surprise.  When this happened I asked a female patient what will you do now with your lover?  She said we won’t be lovers but we will be close friends, just as we always have.  I should add that without descending down deep in the brain where the imprinted culprit lives, it is most often impossible to change anyone in any profound way.

All this is a way of saying "chacun sa vie",  everyone his own life and chooses how she or he wants to live it.  I have no grand scheme for anyone, and no special style of life for anyone.  If they want to start college, that is fine.  If they don’t, that is also fine.  It is their life and not mine to direct it.  I never tell them they should get married or divorced.   When they get themselves back they will decide, usually wisely.   What a relief for me and my therapists, and what a relief for patient who does not need to follow anyone’s dictates.   Not to have to live up to anyone else’s values or desires.   Everyone relax!

Let's Pay Attention to Evolution to Find Out Who We Are

I have been looking over some animal research on evolution.  There are literally thousands of studies but two stood out for me.  The first, done in the early twentieth century, and the second very recently.

In Russia, mid 20th century they took a group of wolves who generally remain wolves throughout their lives and do not change easily into pussy cats, and selected out those who were most gentle when approached.  They were raised with care and gentleness as you would a dog. Guess what happened in one lifetime?  They became dogs.  They had a different coat, many different colors and shades, their hormones and bone structure was different, their behavior tame and playful, and above all,  they looked like dogs with the same hair and faces.  They had changed biologically in every way.

Second research:  they took a group of fish and lowered the water level for them until they needed to walk rather than swim.  They became almost bipeds.  Their feet and bone structure changed and little by little they could live on land. They already had some capacity for breathing, however.  But in both cases we can see evolution at work, and at work rapidly.

Now let us look at us.  Early life in the womb begins to inform us about the world we live in, and more importantly, the world we can expect to live in.  And what do we do?  We begin to adapt; we change in every way.  If the mother is highly anxious and fearful, the boy can expect fear in his life and adapt to block  too much input.  He could be hyper to deal with that fear and danger and be wary and cautious at all times.  Other factors during that time will shape who he is.  If the mother who is carrying is highly depressed, the child may expect a sullen world, absent of joy and enthusiasm, who needs much stimulation to get going and seems motivation-less.  His physiology is low and slow, low body temp, blood pressure and heart rate.  He has been transformed into a biologic parasympath. (The parasympathetic nervous system will change its function and come to dominate). He will not be a self-starter; not because of heredity but because of what very early experience has done to change him.  It is the same principle with the fish and the wolves. Early experience does change us in many ways.  We become different.

Evolution should tell us that the same early experience that made wolves into dogs can make us into different kinds of human beings.  It governs our future behavior, our ideas and our possible illnesses.  Those rare humans reared in the jungle with no human contact do not learn to speak and react as we do.  We are pliable early on, so when the mother is a certain way while carrying, the child changes to adapt to this key early environment.  And that adaptation remains in force for life.  We are learning how to get along, how to live with others, whether to be afraid or suspicious, whether to approach or retreat.  We have learned what kind of world we can expect and be ready for it.  Only that may not be the way the world really is; only a different version of it. And so one maladapts, living out his past world in the present; also called “neurosis”. He misinterprets because his view of the world is very skewed.  And his physiology becomes neurotic too, to accommodate his early warped life.  Allergies, high blood pressure, migraines are some of the results we see; and we change when we return to those early months.  We don’t necessarily have an awareness of these depths but they are dredged up as we plunge deeply into the brain and its depths; a process known as resonance. Where each brain level is connected to a higher level, each level sharing information in its own "patois" to levels above.  That is how feelings become transformed into ideas.  Feelings await the development of the neo-cortex before provoking ideas, just as happened in ancient evolutionary times. Once ideas are in place that can be suffused and altered by feelings.  We don’t speak English, we speak feelings that long ago predated English.  We give those feelings a name.

My point in all this is that pain and healing are one.  We cannot have healing without the pain laid down very early in the development of consciousness. Those who have never had that experience, which is most of us, will never know who lies deep inside.  That means that those doing psychotherapy will never plumb the depths necessary for healing. If we want to be whole we must bring all levels of brain function, all levels of consciousness together.  I am not sure that we can make dogs into wolves again, but happily, we can go back and be what we were meant to be if we visit ancient times and ancient levels of consciousness.  Despite Mindfulness and other such nonsense, the neo-cortex alone can never get us there.  It wasn’t designed to reach deep into our biology.  Mental tricks are just that, tricks to fool our system. They do not endure  and make no permanent changes.  They are games perpetrated in lieu of proper scientific therapy.  It is not the memory of pain I am discussing, but the experience of it. That experience is deep inside us.  It will not come to us, except for the use of LSD; we need to meet it; to travel downward and feel what lies there waiting to get out and be liberated.  And the minute we experience it we at the same time liberate it.  What a relief!