Arthur Janov's Blog, page 27

The Unconscious As The Last Frontier

How come the unconscious is constantly neglected.  I know:  No one knows what it is or what it contains.  Best to let sleeping dogs lie, especially since we don’t know what kind of dogs we are dealing with.  One could be dangerous; but that cannot be true cause all we do is dredge up our own feelings; how dangerous could that be?  Well, let’s see:  no one likes or loves me.  Nothing will change.  There is no hope to ever be loved by two people  who cannot love.  I know those feelings and have relived them; they are painful but they cannot drive you crazy because you are feeling them. That means that your compulsive behavior, migraines, high blood pressure, epilepsy will go away for good because there is no residue of pain to drive the symptoms again.  What a relief; no recidivism.  The end of criminality.  But………but you need to feel a lot of the pain and not stop in the middle.  Otherwise, there is that residue.

So let me ask you this.  Why is all this love, this hugging and kissing so important?  Why is it the linchpin of primal therapy?  Because it is essential to our life, longevity and healing.  Nothing matters when we lack it and success means nothing without it.  Life is empty not because you don’t have it now but because the lack of love was imprinted even during gestation and overshadows everything in life.    So even when someone comes along who is warm and kind we cannot feel it because the imprint dominates and colors our lives.  And what happens? The person thinks it is others’ fault and seeks out love from others; alas, it will not happen.  What will happen is divorce.

So what really happens to us when there is no love, even during womb-life?  Your brain shrinks and you no longer play with a full deck.  I should add that most brain studies are on children but the results play an even more important role for the evolving brain of the fetus.  So how do we love a fetus?  Correct nutrition, careful behavior while pregnant; no very hot baths or sweat cabins, no flying, no extreme sports;  but most important you need to be normal. WHAT?  Janov is nuts, it seems. But if you are chronically anxious or depressed it seeps into the fetus and affects is functioning.  It will be either uploaded or downloaded; not normal.  And the physiology of the mother will be visited upon the baby.  He will end up with many of the maternal traits.  But wait a minute; how do we get normal?  Get rid of what makes us abnormal and that means imprinted pain.  Better yet, be born to loving parents.  Aah.

Look.  After we make for the best gestational life possible, we need to sleep with the child, hug and kiss him and help him feel wanted and welcome to this planet.  Talk to him, approve of him and lay off all the criticism.  Not so hard?  When it does not happen you have a brain that does not function well; does not remember well and cannot focus.  It is a smaller brain.  This is a brain that underwent serious neglect and abuse early on.  What they found is that the smaller brain has a right hemisphere, the feeling one, that lacks some essential elements.  The larger is nearly always the smarter one and the more socially adept.  When there is no close bond with parents, starting with gestation,  there will be faulty relationships throughout life.  But why do those with smaller brains seem smart?  Because they become intellectuals and that ain’t smart.  (For more on all this look up the Health Freedom Alliance. April 8, 2014, and also Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Early Edition). When we think about smart we need to think about emotionally smart, yet neglect causes the limbic structures to become smaller.  As they get smaller we find ADHD and lack of good focus.  Not surprising, there is diminished growth of the left hemisphere.  All this from lack of love?  Yes yes.

When scientists discuss this research why do they not follow suit and address those very early events that lay imprinted deep in the brain? Instead of using the higher level neo-cortex to suppress it?  Why do we need to plunge into the abyss of the last frontier?

When there is inadequate stimulation early on we do not get the full quantity of neurons we need; the half-full deck.  And, I might add, we lack the full arsenal of repressive chemicals we need to block pain; hence anxiety as a chronic state.  Chemicals such as serotonin get “used up” in the battle to keep the gates closed.  As a result the gates get “leaky”.  Pain passes through the porous brain, and we are very uncomfortable and can turn to drugs.

So where does addiction come from? Those in pain who need to kill it.  We usually address taking drugs and never “why”.  The key element is left out of the equation—pain.  And the rest of the equation is where does the pain come from?  Neglecting need, the most basic physiologic need to the needs of a growing child.  It is those very early needs we cannot see and never know exists.  If we leave those early imprints untouched we can sure addiction will thrive again.  Do-gooders help with higher levels but never the deeper levels.  Lo and behold; the one with the smaller brain is much more likely to be addicted.  And he will be violent. Why?  Because the early damage can exist on the deep brainstem level where violence is  organized and imprinted.  This means very early and deep damage.  We have found a way to go deep and we hope others will allow us to teach them and there abort so much suffering.  We need to travel where there are no words and even no tears; into our prehistory.  That is what this has made it all such a mystery.

On the Rationale for a Diagnosis

There is an article on attention problems in the NY Times (April 13/2014. “Idea of a new attention disorder spurs research.”; http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/12/hea...) There is the claim of an entirely new diagnostic category: Cognitive, Sluggish Tempo (CST). The brain seems not to be active enough to focus and concentrate; another facet of ADD.
 So what is wrong with that? A new category? Everything is wrong with it. .

First of all the diagnosis should inform us, not simply describe. So OK the person’s mind works slowly, does that help tell us why? Which brain is sluggish and where? The same can be said for ADD. She can’t pay attention. OK. Anyone on the street can make that diagnosis: He muses; she seems too active, her mind is racing and she cannot sit still. So what? Is that indeed a separate category? In what way?

Description alone is not a proper diagnosis. The bacteria below infection is. So if I say, he sweats, has a high continuous fever, shakes and often seems to chill that is still a description; not a diagnsos…….no cause. If I say he is depressed, that is not a diagnosis; it is a description. What is depression? What is behind it? Oh, I see, he seems sad and down, has no energy and moves in labored fashion; is that any different from what the ice cream vendor could say about him? I doubt it. If we find that the vendor’s description parallels the doctor’s, throw them both out; no, save the vendor’s.

And there is then the other type of error in diagnosis. “His locus ceruleus is too active and there is an anomaly in his hippocampus”. In short, he is only a bunch of neurons and some seem deviated. No connection to his life, now or previously, no human touch; pure neurology. What’s wrong? It is a diagnosis in a vacuum. The same for biochemistry. We are not just cortisol; we are humans who respond to EVENTS with changes in biochemistry. No event, no real diagnosis. Unless we really do live in a vacuum.

And how about psychology?

Yes we have made all the diagnoses and see that the brain runs too fast and with far too high amplitude……he is therefore “”. And once we are certain of our diagnosis we rush to give drugs that are proven to slow down the brain? And they do achieve that and the person is far less anxious.
I forgot to ask, does he have a history? Traumas, lack of love, etc? Was there a key traumatic experience? Was there a trauma at birth or during gestation? When we have no frame of reference on the human level we are wandering in the dark, acting on half truths. …seeing only part of the brain and only part of the human.

We need a diagnosis, especially in psychology that is more encompassing; that goes below the obviously observable. That really explains and tries to find origins. It is not enough to find medicine to ease anxiety without ever knowing what it is and how to deactivate and decouple if from pushing our brain so hard. Until we do that we are forever in danger of recidivism; of it coming back again and again so long as the cause remains intact.

Worse, so long as the primal source remains intact there will be a need to drug the symptom and that is partially what this discussion is about: drugs for symptoms. Big Pharma at work. They have no incentive to find causes and put themselves out of business; so long as they dominate research and medication we become the losers. The source is what provokes the symptoms into life. The problem is that the source and origins are imprinted and can stay for a lifetime. And that is not just in the brain; the cells are found throughout the system, which is why cognitive therapy is lame against early imprints. It is not just ideas; it is in the lungs and kidneys, in the heart and blood vessels.

Let me tell you about a sluggish brain. In my earlier books I describe 2 kinds of birth; sympathetic nervous system dominance due to child successfully struggling to get out; and the parasympathetic birth where there was no possibility to move through the canal easily—a blockage. This describes the active person with an active brain versus a slugish person with a sluggish brain and that works more slowly….the sympath versus the parasympath. This is a complete systemic event and is not limited to brain function.

 There is more: a mother taking drugs or painkillers or tranquilizers while carrying can produce a down loaded baby who is very sluggish; I have seen it so many times during relivings. And that same mother drinking a lot of coffee or cokes can up load the baby and make him hyperactive. It becomes imprinted as a normal way of life, first for the mother and then the baby. The baby begins to adapt to his environment, which in this case means either too much stimulation or too little. It becomes “normal” and he adapts accordingly. So “sluggish” has very early effects. And a diagnosis needs to include that possibility.

 Oh my! Did I mention that this new diagnostic category is supported by Eli Lilly? That means financial support. They also pay him for speaking tours. It is good for them that a diagnosis requires drugs, but not so good for us. We need a real diagnosis not supported by drug companies.

On Dreams and Nightmares

Have you wondered why my patients have less nightmares and have dreams that increasingly become more and more real and present? No?  Oh dear, I had better explain.  What does it mean to dream?  It means that the limbic system is actively processing feelings as it does during the day when we are feeling something. Except at night it is going over feelings from the past and trying to integrate what? Not the dream: the feeling.  It may have been events from way back that were traumatic and could not be integrated at the time.  We were too young and fragile and perhaps non-verbal.  It is a mass of vague sensations and discomfort.  They bubble up when there is not too much external input and put pressure on the neo-cortex to do something with those feelings.  The cortex accommodates and provides images and thoughts.  The limbic system joins the cortex to mount a story to rationalize and  make the feeling coherent. This is what our therapy is about.  Dream processes lay bare the evolutionary path that we must follow in therapy; evolution in reverse.  We do not go straight to the emotional past; we anchor the patient in the present and focus her feelings in the present; from there the brain takes its own piste below.  Ideas, then go to meet their maker; they go to where the feeling is cemented in; where it began.  I dreamed for years about being chased by the Nazis and could not escape. The feeling? My father was unrelenting in his chastisement and would not let up.  He was always after me: sit up straight, don’t talk through your nose, why are you lying around and not doing something useful?  That dream disappeared with those felt feelings.

I could not escape the Nazis because I could not escape the feeling; someone was after me and trying to harm me.  It was never the Nazis; they were only a symbol for my feelings.  See, a symbol for my feelings; and that is how we develop dream symbols; same process.  I never knew it was my father because my system only knew the feelings, not the source.  Until I had a developed cortex I could not know what was wrong.  The feelings predated cognition and were properly registered limbically.  We must pay attention to that evolution when we do therapy:  feelings first, long before our ability to think.  In therapy feelings first, long before insights.  There is no defying evolution.

  So how do we explain this?  The imprints form a prism through which we see the world; they distort reality and give us symbolic dreams.  The first distortion is from our true feelings and then it moves up the neuraxis to the neo-cortex which joins the distortion with ideas.  Hence, “They are out to get me”.  But it is not that just because we dream that they are automatically distorted and symbolic. It is because repression holds back the pain and produces distortions; awake and asleep.  As we experience the imprinted pain and lift the gating force that keeps pain locked away there will be diminished  distortion awake and asleep.  Neurosis is systemic, not sleep determined. We carry it around always. It won’t let go.

Patients have more real dreams because they are more real;  they are less repressed and more open.

And of course we can spot where dreams come from.  First line dreams rarely have elaborate symbols; they are direct and short—“I am stuck in a washing machine and I can’t stop it.”  “I am in a  dark cave and cannot find a light to show me the way out.”  Pre-psychotics are awash in first-line pain and continue to have first-line dreams and frequent delusions.

Second line dreams are more intricate have a more coherent structure, contain some but not a lot of words, but they are more difficult to understand. “ I went to see my old teacher and tried to talk to him but I could not make him understand me.”  The real feeling was, “I could never get through to my parents and could not make them understand me.”

So more direct, non-symbolic dreams is a good index of a patient getting well.  We corroborate with vital signs, cortisol levels, behavior changes and a host of other measures. We get well systemically.

Where and How Does Deep Repression (and therefore depression) Get Its Start?

There is a new research that sheds light on this problem;  (See http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131030125540.htm ) only it is not this problem of repression that they target. Their target is how pain in infancy alters response to stress later in life. They studied early life stress (prematurity) among infants who had undergone prenatal treatment, without anesthesia or painkillers. They were all patients in neonatal intensive care who had a number of invasive and painful intrusions. They found that when this happened, and when the pain was not dampened by medication the whole pain regulation system was changed and brain circuits were altered.

They found that when pain was not suppressed there was a lifelong change in stress and anxiety reactions so that later reactions to pain were lessened. In short, the pain reaction was repressed and not reacted to fully. So here we have evidence of repression of pain very early in life, and that this reaction set up a prototype for further reactivity.

The first thing that stands out is that doctors still treat newborns as unfeeling blobs that has allowed for physicians for the last many decades to operate on fetuses and newborns as blocks of flesh with no pain response. This was systematic during the beginning of the last century.

The infants who were studied spent an average of 25 days in intensive care with often undergoing 10 to 18 painful procedures. It is not surprising that the system becomes activated to suppress the pain response when he is assaulted over and over again before having a life on earth. This becomes a prototype and that means blocking input as an habitual response to any kind of assault later on. This immediate reaction can affect the development of severe and deep depression later in life; the blockage accumulates and occurs over and over again as the prototypic response. The point is that it begins so early which we have always suspected. What is new in their research is that when pain is blocked early on there is less of a prototype; the imprint is less forceful and the brain circuits are not so readily altered. The imprint is not so readily stamped-in to control later automatic behavior. In other words ameliorating a child’s pain with a hug, kiss, soothing words or painkillers might abort the depth of the imprint.

That is something new and important. After a surgical procedure the child needs physical support and caresses; just as we all do when undergoing a trauma.

Now we see why having a parent there immediately after birth is critical. Otherwise, it can imprint a basic loneliness and fear of being alone for life. When the parent falls ill on the arrival of the baby there is great trauma for him. If he then undergoes a time in an incubator we can imagine the damage being done…..all alone with no one to reassure and hug and kiss, no physical contact and support figure there. This on top of no parent to hold right after birth. The imprint is set and fixed. The researchers noted that in the children studied about 65 percent of them had procedures done without any analgesia.

The neuroscience department at Georgia State University studied rat pups who had a single trauma on the day of birth. There were site- specific changes in their brains. These changes determined how they responded to stress later on. Without medication to suppress pain, they call it unresolved pain, children under-reacted to pain later on. May I add? They were deadened because they already had so much assault that they could hardly react any longer. I think this is the missing link in the research; they show what happened but not why or what it really meant. There was no broadened implications, no wider context, of the research. Still it is damn good.

On Mental Resistance

A confession:  a year ago I was recommended to a naturopath for stem cells.  He was even near my house.  But I never went to him because “naturopath” didn’t sit right with me.  I was resistant; had mental reservations, and was prejudiced.  And then a few weeks ago my old MD called me and re-recommended anew this same stem cell group.  So I went just after going to Cancun for adipose tissue stem cells which did nothing and cost a fortune.  So now it is 2 months into the new stem cells and for the first time in 45 years I talk and am out of pain.  And this is a naturopath.  What does this tell me?  Stop with mental prejudices and resistance.  It kept me from getting well for over a year.

And they were recommended by a "proper" medical doctor.  The same is true of most medical doctors who cannot see and adopt the new.  This is especially true for shrinks, several hundred thousand of them in America.  After my 17 books, published in 26 countries, not one has come to us and wanted to know more about our work.  Thousands of scientists downloaded my scientific articles in the World Congress of Psychiatry (It is considered one of the most downloaded pieces in their history),  yet not one has contacted me.

I have found that most MDs stay in their groove and never seek out other alternatives.  And the question is, why?  One answer is, "I have the tools and will use it hither and yon, whenever I have a patient."  This is true in psychiatry where "I have the shock machine, the favorite pills, the rigid adherent to one single therapy often with no basis in deep science".  And what is wrong with that?  It is therapist oriented, not the patient.  It is he who has the power and the magical therapy; he is the holder of all the secrets.  And we the patients remain powerless.  Their "tool" is applied to all kinds of patients with no acknowledgement of individual differences.

So what is wrong?  Doctors are doctors, without a broad perspective.  They are rarely inclusive, mostly exclusive.  My prejudice came from the fact that when I grew up there was nothing else. Our MD was the be-all and end-all of status.  So therefore I began to suspect anyone who was not a "real" doctor.

On the other hand, the "natural" healers I have known, whom I call booga booga merchants, were not high on science. They were more loosey-goosey.  Which is not a bad thing; they were open to everything; sometimes too open so that they lacked the discipline needed.  Their open-mind became a sieve.  And they used every vitamin in the book to treat patients.  They purveyed received wisdom.  And they too often say, that you have to believe to make it work; a bit of circular reasoning.  So if you are slightly skeptical it won’t work and they say, aha!, you see. So that field attracts believers and people who through wish fulfillment think they are doing great and say they feel wonderful.  Who can argue with that?  Nevertheless,  my current naturopath is curing me which 40 previous MD’s could not do over many decades.  They lacked the essential curiosity and willingness to look at all kinds of solutions, not just their bag of tricks.  So when I had surgery, and when it did not work the doctor washed his hands of my case.  He never explored about what others might do for me.  Why?  Because they do not know what others in the field do, and mostly, they are not interested.  This is what I call medical rigidity.

So here is what happens:  as we mature the zeigeist and all its ideologies, perpetuated by the medical establishment spin a web of ideology inside us which then takes charge and directs our choices.  We are now driven by inner forces.  And I for one, avoided the one thing that could cure me.  How tragic.  What is even more tragic is that the Big Pharma and the health institutions prevent them from even using the term stem cells. So what cures is banned. Not because it can help but because they flouted the regulations of “real” science:  double blind studies with plenty of subjects, and plenty of controls,  done at reputable science centers, blah blah.  The top guys don’t even want to look at the actual people who have been cured; they want statistics and proper procedures.
Following the rules is the summum bonum.

Why all this?    Because they can keep a monopoly on the whole business of science.  And extracted from their feelings, what they see and feel does not count.

In my field,  no one who has spent 10 years on his studies is going to say, Oh yes, I get it. I will start to learn something new all over again.  So it is not mental resistance so much as pocket resistance and energy resistance.

Let me diverge for a moment: today in science they reported that children who suffered emotional neglect were more likely to suffer stroke later in life.  Now if those researchers were to read a bit more they might stumble on my work and the notion of enduring imprints that lead to stroke. They lack curiosity. They remain in a medical cloister about what is out there; about what more there is to learn.  They lack a broad frame of reference, so what has been known for fifty years is ignored.  This is typical; everyday there is a new study stating the obvious. Researchers could not feel what was right because they lost touch with that baby inside of them.  They should guess that early neglect would lead to disaster, and they should say to themselves, “maybe I should follow up on that?”.  First, you need to feel what is right.  Living in your head for too long robs you of the innate sense; feeling.

Maybe it is not lack of curiosity? Maybe it is just indifference?  No matter, science and humanity will suffer from it.

You Think You Feel But You Don't

All the things you think are feelings are just that - thoughts. What you think are feelings: self-esteem, a sense of importance, feelings of confidence and strength. Are Nada.  Niente.

Now just think of what a feeling is.  You do not have to cogitate about it.  It just FEELS.  Importance, esteem are cerebral.  They have a different origin in the brain from real feelings which emanate from deeper down.   But when you think you feel it often feels like feeling, so the confusion is not surprising.  But we are discussing different brain regions with different functions; and the neo-cortex is in charge of self deception.  It is its ancient function—often, to keep from feeling the depth and horror of our pain.  One of its functions is as a structure of defense.

Maybe I am putting all those booga booga centers out of business, although I don’t think for a moment that it is possible; they are businesses built  on deceptions by those who know better, and for those who are so blinded that they cannot know better.  One reason is that this nonsense is in the zeitgeist. And secondly, it is much more comfortable to believe that we can feel importance or change our self-esteem with a few exhortations, or mumbo-jumbo; or that we can feel important when one’s entire early life was composed of those in charge of us, issuing orders and denigrating our every effort.  And this nearly always occurred when the imprint was the most forceful and enduring. It stuck in our system and controlled our lives; it determined a feeling of unimportance. It was lodged in the limbic system and made us feel unimportant … for life.  No exercise later on will change that. People or therapists later on, assuring us we are wonderful and important, will change nothing.        

Those early feelings live in every cell of our bodies; they are now systemic and organic.  Esteem is an IDEA, not a feeling, just like self-hate is an idea, not a feeling. Yet we can act like we hate ourselves but where does it come from?  All major ideas are cortical not limbic.  Our parents hated us and so we feel hated and not worthy of love.  That was an early experience. How do we raise that low self-esteem?  We feel how the parents treated us and make us feel like worms… worthless… not worthy of love. This is not a mystery.  Our feelings of low esteem, for example, derive from our environment even before we were born.  We were never treated as separate and cherished human beings; so we responded to our environment.  And we feel unimportant.  Because it was our reality — we were unimportant.  A child completely loved never has any use for higher self esteem. Oops, those booga booga workshops are screaming their lungs out.   Do I mean that being loved as a child stops anyone from being transported to some unreal state?  Yes. Why would anyone loved and felt important to his family  search out a center to make her feel important?  So clearly, it is for those who feel unimportant, and that comes from reality and is not neurotic.  It is a real reaction to real life events.   And once the imprint is locked in, there is only one way to change it; go back to the imprint. If you don’t, then you get such games as having people fall back into others’ arms to learn how to trust.
How about feeling hopeless? Again it can set up during birth when every effort failed to give us hope of not dying.  The hopelessness was imprinted systemically.

So were do we get hope again?  From dialectics;  from feeling utter hopelessness when it was imprinted early on.  Does anyone think a therapist or guru can change that and make us feel hopeful again?  We can fall over backwards into some guide’s arms but will that change a deep hopeless feeling? Imprints are predominant; they do not accede to anything or anyone.  They have endured for our lifetime.

Remember that anything that emanates from "on top" is not a feeling.  "On top" can trigger feelings and if we are not neurotic they will be real feelings.  So here is Janov’s law: we can feel higher, better by feeling again those early negative inputs that made us feel bad, but we cannot feel better by aiming high, reaching for self-esteems.  The dialectic rules.  History made us feel a certain way, and returning to history is the only way to change our feelings.  Those feelings were imprinted during our vulnerable history and allow no escape.

L'Wren Scott Is Dead

Ms Scott, designer and girlfriend of Mick Jagger hanged herself yesterday in her apartment in New York.

The question is, “Why?”  Could anyone have seen it coming?  Mick, maybe?  I doubt it.  Here is why.

She had just about everything in life; although she was in debt, she lived well and lived high with Jagger.  Yet she took the trouble to go through the machinations of hanging. Why not the simpler “out”, pills?  I will explain: the way in is often the way out.  The same imprint that produced deep hopelessness—depression—is also what led to her to choose hanging.  This bespeaks of the enduring life of the imprint. This all has to be surmise but I am not limiting my discussion to Ms Scott but to all of us.

The reason no one could see it coming is that it was coming from deep inside, thrusting its head through the defensive layers into conscious/awareness, where she felt so hopeless and “down” despite her current surroundings.  As I have written a mainte reprise, many times over, we respond primarily and firstly to inner imprints and much later to external life and outside circumstance.  The body and brain are busy reacting to what happened decades earlier during womb-life and birth. Those are the events we continually react to because of their remoteness, something that occurred when we were vulnerable and easily and heavily impacted.  A mother taking drugs or drinking, heavily depressed herself.  These lay down engraved memories and last a lifetime and show themselves when we are alone, in a weakened state or otherwise too open to events.  And why doesn’t she run away or go to parties and distract herself?  She cannot; the imprint confines her.  She lives within that primordial memory and cannot imagine or think about other solutions.  There were no alternatives originally, thus there are none while living in the imprint.  And the imprint forces her to remain on the same route all over again. Her hopelessness (depression) is all consuming and completely channeling.   She cannot stray outside its bounds. The stabs of depression she suffers from is the stab of the mounting memory that periodically surges upwardly toward awareness. Being alone for a short time can set it off.

When there are later circumstances of neglect and lack of love the deep imprints become compounded and cemented in, defended and long lasting.  Those later traumas (lack of love) increase the repression and force unconscious acting out…..cutting oneself (to try to get at the source, hopefully, yet unconsciously).  But suicide is still a long way off.  It is amazing how so often people cut themselves, unwittingly digging out the source without even knowing what they are doing.

The fact of the deep imprint also can lead to hanging for if she were strangling on the cord she is most likely repeat the act.  It was the closest she came to death and the trauma and its consequences remain.   That is why I state, the way in is also the way out.  And years ago when I took notes and studied the problem I found this was almost a universal law;  we attempt to die in the way our birth was threatened.  Those who were over-drugged try pills, those who were mangled at birth try jumping in front of a train, those who were strangled on the cord will try hanging.    Those memories, that of trauma during gestation, last a lifetime and lead to same attempt years later to die in the way it might have happened at the beginning.   In other words, as the memory of the early trauma rises so does the early result mount, as well.  Thus early strangle leads to later strangle. The logic of the system.   It is confirmation of the imprint and its effect on the system.  It drives behavior ineluctably. So the imprint includes the probable outcome…..death.   It channels behavior despite exhortation and encouragement; the sense of approaching death.  What is often articulated for those who have no idea about the imprint is, “I don’t want to live anymore.” And even that is not fully articulated; it is usually a vague thought or sense.  It is often not, “I am in so much pain I don’t want to go on.”  It is just a vague sense of hopelessness and helplessness that leads to an attempt.   It all remains vague and aleatory; A constant rumination inside of a black cloud descending.

That is why cognitive therapy cannot touch it.    Cognitive tries to re-channel behavior but the imprint will have none of it.   It is far stronger than any re-direction or insight.  That sense of approaching death is what remains marked within us and controls our behavior later on.  Nothing special had to happen at the time; just nothing to do and no pal around can do it; all by oneself with no current distractions.  This is the exact replica of her feelings in the womb and becomes the trigger for suicide;  utter loneliness, no one to help or rescue her.   She could not articulate this in the womb but now she can; and she is interpreting her feelings during life in the womb.  They are utterly compelling.  They lead to the outcome that was in the offing originally.  Let me repeat:  her current life mirrors the original milieu of her current feelings.  They draw her back to the primal imprint, and force her to repeat the situation again; the feelings reactivate the imprint and lead to where they would have originally—death.  

L’wren’s suicide could not be seen coming except by her. She must have had an inkling, a deep down unease and hopeless feeling that would have warned her but she had no idea about imprints or deep-lying trauma/memory.  That is the reason our theory is so important; not so they can come to therapy (although preferable) but so that they can be aware of what is going on inside and  understand what is happening.  This may avoid needless deaths.  How tragic and unnecessary all this.  And now you understand our mission: not money nor fame, but the lives of us humans.  We have a basic right to a full-length life.

The Real Role of the Neocortex

So what do you think it is?  I submit that its primary is to keep us from feeling.  And that allows us to slay our enemies with impunity.  If this were not the case, ordinary Germans would not have stood by and watched them shoot Jews in the back, or gas them in caves.  If this were not true then it would have been impossible for Whites to stand around and watch Southerners lynch Blacks as if going to some kind of celebration..  In other words, the neocortex’ job is shut down feelings and allow us to be swallowed up by ideas and propaganda and beliefs that paints others as killable.  Now we know one key function of ideational therapy; like the Germans, fill their heads full of so many ideas, the more convoluted the better, that feelings no longer have any place.

So tell me.  Why are we doing psychotherapy that lives in our heads, that confines ideas to the intellectual and that suppresses feelings?  Since it is clear that neurosis is a disease of feeling how can we ever get well while neglecting and repressing them?  Well, you say, I practice meditation and that relaxes me.  I think you believe it relaxes you.  Not quite the same thing.  I mean how can you neglect feelings and be relaxed when it is imprinted pain and tension that prevents relaxation?  Otherwise, how could it be that my patients drop many signs of pain permanently after months of feeling pain?  Lower cortisol, lower blood pressure and heart rate, etc.    And the one thing that cannot be faked, radical changes in the amplitude and frequency of brain waves.  

Here is the problem.  If we agree about imprints, that bad memories are stored deep in the brain and agitate us all of the time, then how can we really relax in a “head” therapy…a therapy that rides above the imprint?  And all new neurobiologic information confirms for all time the veracity and the impact of the imprint which now inhabits the primitive genes and cells.  How can we relax when we enter a therapy whose ancient, prehistoric role is to push back feelings?  If you don’t believe it look again at the Nazis who were ordinary Germans, after all.  Marlene Dietrich never spoke to her sister again after she learned that she lived across the way from a death camp.  How could she? She could because many of the Germans’ minds had been filled for years about the inferiority of Jews, and those ideas occupied most of their neo-cortex, which allowed them to watch and tolerate killing without any feeling.  So now we know that dental scientists can drill on your teeth with no pain so long as they explain to you that their hypnosis (ideas) will take care of the hurt.  And mostly it works.  Excuse the expression but it is all a “mind-fuck”.  It is cognitive manipulation, which shows how susceptible it all is.  And  of course when you fill a child’s head with ideas early on they tend to stick.  Those first impressions are powerful and they endure.

Hitler could feel for his dog because his head left a little space for other beings but not much space.  So again, how can any therapy that specializes in ideas and insights get you well when the real problem resides far deeper in the brain.  So any therapy that includes beginning with ideas,beliefs and notions does not penetrate to where it has to go.  Think of it this way:  any therapy where the therapist directs you, even “do this and then do that,” is most often a detour.  Therapy has to be inner prompted.  If it comes from some else it is her ideas not yours.  We have all enough manipulation in our lives but the problem is that we get used to being manipulated and told how to think so we just slip into being directed.  Ayayay.

I have had patients, many, who after months of Primal suddenly are aware of the egregious mistakes they made with their kids.  This, after we liberated the pain and feelings.  As a result of feelings they were now aware, not like before, aware in their heads but consciously aware due to feeling feelings. Yes feelings provide real conscious awareness, not cognitive awareness which rides about them.  Suddenly one sees that he ignored the child’s drawings leaving his son feeling a it less capable.  Or spanking his daughter cause he learned about “tough love. “  Never once imagining the consequences of their actions.  But feelings make you conscious and aware and finally about to see, really see.

Historically then, shutting down served many functions, not letting feelings interfere with what had to be done.  And above all, permitting us actions of which we could not feel.  Thus the origin of the neo-cortex, very important for connection to lower level  feelings but remaining able to shut them out when they become dangerous (my mother does not love me.  I cannot live without love.).  So if we ignore the pain it will always be there and we cannot ever really relax.  How could it be otherwise, unless we live in a world of denial where we never acknowledge it?  We cannot have it both ways;  we cannot be feeling humans and ignore feelings.  We cannot relax without brain surgery to cut out memory.  We can never relax as long as ideas and beliefs occupy feeling space?  And so, following evolution, as I have noted a myriad of times, ideas and insights must come to us in evolutionary sequence: after feelings, as they did for millions of years.

What Did I Do to Deserve This?

- Well my friends, it is not what you did but who you stood next to.
- You mean I could get neurotic just standing next to my father or mother?  
- Yes, yes.  But allow me to explain.

People exude who they are from every pore of their being.  I mean that literally.  An uptight, tense mother radiates her repression.  An angry father radiates his anger. They don't have to “do” anything; just be.  But it is worse than that.  When their underlying feelings show themselves we sensed we were right to avoid them or be very careful around them.  They distort our words, detour our natural movements and disapprove almost everything we do, not by words but by those looks.  And worse, when they show no emotion, a child next door almost drowning,  we know that feelings are what we keep to ourselves.  The point is that even before we have words a child is undergoing a lifetime of experience.  And the earlier the more impactful.    It should be obvious; those early experiences that directly affect breathing, digestion and elimination are going to do a lot of damage and will last a lifetime.

Secondly,  those experiences that lie on the feeling level will certainly inhibit later access to our feelings.

But now look at this:  Our genes form the matrix of later life; that much we agree on.  But there are epigenes, severe experiences that build a new “genetic” base called epigenetics and they get imprinted and compounded, change or distort the evolution of our genes.  They then become “inherited.”  We too often distort this with our genetic heritage, but those experiences are long duration  and largely impervious  to later events.  They become a meld of genes and epigenes.  Instead of saying, “she looks and acts just like her mother,”  we need to say, “her mother was “infected” with neurosis, which got imprinted into the system of the offspring.  And now…..she is just as hyperactive and ADD as her distracted and hyperactive mother.

In other words the infant who is being carried has caught what could be a fatal disease: neurosis, the same one lying inside the mother.  The baby will reflect the internal life of the mother and that is what will be imprinted inside him and last a lifetime.  Why? Because this is what had been  learned in order to adapt and adjust.  No words, no reprimands, no social neglect; just who she is,  does it all.  Look at the work of The Association for Psychological Science.  (Feb 3 2014). (see http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/news/releases/for-infants-stress-may-be-caught-not-taught.html)  They discuss emotional synchrony.  The baby is learning how to manage the incoming stress of the mother.  They did studies of several different mothers who gave a talk with a different audience—one approving, one neutral and one not approving. Guess what?
The 14 month old babies reflected what happened.  Differences in heart rate and a greater stress response in those children of mothers who had disapproval.  The children “learned” through some kind of osmosis.  The were inculcated by the mother’s emotional state.  Now imagine that the baby and mother are one, where the baby lives inside the mother. The influences are far more impactful.

You see, you do not need to yell at the child; all you need to do as a mother, is be around the child and the damage can be done.  Picked up early that my parents were emotionally removed. So I never even thought to tell them that a wave hit me and I almost drowned but someone saved me. Those vibes get picked up very early in our lives.

So what gets transmitted?  Odor, facial expression. Lack of feeling,  body movements and on and on. All of the parent is transmitted to the child.  And the child never says to himself, “I guess that’s the way it is, “ cause that is the way it is.  Too often we are completely unconscious of it all.  We live as we always have in a state without acknowledgment of that is just the way it is.

All this to say that our early environment weighs heavily on this and can drive our behavior.  In an article by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, they found that unique experiences in the womb may give a more profound effect on epigenetic factors that influence health later on.  And though fraternal  twins share a womb there is also the difference in the structures of the umbilical cord and placenta which play an important role.  They found that even in identical twins there can be great differences in the methylation patterns between them. (see a preview of a Scientific American article on this topic: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-makes-each-brain-unique/)

So you say to yourself,  “Did I inherit my mother’s craziness?”  and the answer could be, “Yes.”  But not in the usual sense of inheritance.  Rather,  who she was, hyperactive (or depressed and down) while carrying, left you with a neurotic inheritance which still shaped your life.

So is it life-long?  I believe we can  reverse some of it in our therapy and we shall test it soon, but I also believe that the earlier and stronger the imprint the less likely it can be reversed.  The best we can do is love and hold the child right after birth and thereafter.  The best way to reverse the imprint is through the slow, methodical process of therapy where the least pains can be integrated first.  Finally descending to the great early traumas and the measuring the results.    In other words, we need to trust nature and all its processes;  chemical reversal is far too general and non-specific to each trauma.  It is a shotgun when we need a scoped rifle.  We need nature as a reference. It is when we leave nature behind that need the reference of statistics; never as good as nature itself.

All those childhood studies that think it is early childhood that is to blame, which it is, in a sense, need to convert their work to earlier times if they want to be accurate.

A Bit More on Depression Again

So let’s get it straight. When we show a symptom such as depression there are two aspects to it:
1. The cause; 2. The reaction.
We need to keep this bifurcation clear because they are two different animals and must be treated differently. Nearly all approaches today are just that; approaches, the therapy of reaction. So the cognitivists try changing your reactions—attitudes and thoughts, aiming at more wholesome ideas. Neurologists try changing how the brain reacts, i.e., interfering with brain function. And there are others who put wires in the brain to block deep brain reactions. Remember these are responses, not causes. Causes seem to be forgotten in all this, and why? Because the fields have despaired of finding causes and so focus on reactions. Why the despair? Because without a therapy of deep brain processes they will never find causes. It will all remain a mystery; they will turn away from origins and just focus on blocking or changing reactions. And that can be endless because we need to change the biochemistry, the neurochemistry, neuron signals, overall brain function, psychological responses and on and on. All because causes are avoided.

In the NY Times are two articles; one in the Sunday June 30, magazine section, and the other in the Tuesday Science section, July 2.

The Science section deals with brain function, namely transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) (See http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/new-approach-to-depression/). There are magnetic pulses to the brain from outside that stimulate those parts of the brain that are involved with depression. Powerful magnets are placed on the frontal area of the head. Those pulses seem to help many people and are often more effective than medication. But….it is attacking the responses while the generating sources are left intact, only to rear their ugly head again. How could it not be? It is a therapy of reactions not causes so we cannot expect to be rid of the originating sources. It is a good amelioration and that is OK. We do not help, but there is a way of getting to those generating sources, why is it paid no heed? They have no theory for it, no therapy for it, and no psychological readiness for it. Easier to tinker; and tinker they do, tweak this and then tweak that. Ayayay.

Now the Magazine section has a different twist. It is called, “Uncovering the self-destructive impulses that many people hide from themselves.” (See http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/30/magazine/the-suicide-detective.html) Hmmmm. Self destructive? What self might that be? I guess it is the hurt one, the one containing all those painful imprints from years ago. Are we trying to destroy it? Wouldn’t that be terrible?

They point out that more die of suicide than murder: world-wide there are one million suicides each year. It is an epidemic. They want to figure out how to figure out who might kill himself? What are the signs? And they add, “We have never gone out and observed, as an ecologist or biologist would go out and observe the thing you’re interested in.” (page 24). But wait! That’s what we do, and we find the answers when patients get to feelings, deep pain that makes them want to kill themselves. And they say, “My god. That’s why I wanted to kill myself; all to avoid that feeling.”

So what did the researchers do? They called up soldiers and asked them to explain why they wanted to kill themselves. They hoped to shift through the transcripts to find answers. The problem is that they never knew really. How could they when the imprints lie so deep in the brain. This is basically the cognitive. Ideational approach. It stays on the level of ideas. They say that they have had theories of suicide but they want to work on the other end…data. OK but data from victims? Most of ten they never know. I have seen many depressives over the years and they almost never know where it comes from.  Some of them resist counseling because somewhere they understand that it cannot work. Then they are labeled “resistant”. “They don’t really want to get well.”

Finally further in the piece they say, “brain cells that regulate the stress hormone cortisol, leave the brain in a chemical state of increased alertness that causes a person to overreact to stress.” I am not sure that tells us what to do about it but the direction is right. There is acknowledgment that depressives often suffer abuse as children. But what from there? Do we attack and/or address the abuse? They go back to faulty thinking. And they tout the Association test which is again mental operations. They are looking for biases against being alive by the victims. It all came to naught as these tests were not so hot at predicting future suicide attempts. How could they be if they avoid the key low brain-level imprints that are at the origin of it all? So what do they do? They are tweaking it so they combine several cognitive tests together to refine what they do. It is over and over again intellectuals focusing on thoughts and attitudes ignoring a big part of the brain and its function. They are after changing patterns of thinking. The cognitivists are ruling the roost; yet they are the very ones who can never never never find answers.