Arthur Janov's Blog, page 46

On the Right and Left Brain. There Is No Cure Without Their Unity. (Part 1/10)

Nearly all of us know that our brains are split in two: the right and left brains. They are very different, like two separate parts of us. They have their distinct personalities and functions. One is more human/feeling than the other, as we shall see. When they don't work together there is conflict and we are in trouble. We may get sick early in life and die prematurely. Sounds like an apocalypse, and it is. Connections between the two brains can be life saving. They need each other desperately in order to establish our humanity; this is not just an intellectual idea. If we don't have them working together we are less human, as I shall show as we go along. The question is: what makes them not work in harmony? How do we get them to do so? And what does each hemisphere do exactly?

Let's look at each side and see what they do:

THE RIGHT HEMISPHERE

First of all, we should know that the right side came into being first and is primordial in every sense of the word. It is the feeling hemisphere. It helps store old emotional memories inside its orbit. It absorbs and registers our very early trauma while in the womb. The early experience has no words nor scenes to help us know and remember them. After all, life in the womb is wordless, nor are there scenes attached. It is all sensations and then feelings. The right brain has the key responsibility for integration of the two sides, but it cannot do it alone. It needs a partner. We will see who that will be. Clearly, the right is more "human." It cares about the living and it cares about feeling. It is more sensitive and caring. It senses nuance, honesty and insincerity. `

The right side is flexible and prefers a panoply of choices. It is no accident that creativity increases in those who have had a left hemisphere stroke. (The right controls the left side of the body, and vice versa). So many of my patients have discovered their artistic capabilities after therapy; they have been opened up not only to the pain on the right but also the creativity. Research has the shown a jazz riff (improvised solo) to be strictly right brain. In short, it is the feeling side that handles creativity.

One of the reasons for the right's flexibility is that it is better myelinated early on, meaning it has thicker myelin sheaths (a kind of fatty covering) around nerve cells that help them transfer information to other cells. It is more able to inform the top neo-cortex of what information, including pain that it is holding down deep. There is much to discuss on this hemisphere subject.

The right side is musical, it comprehends tone, and nuance, the subtleties of sounds. In therapy the doctor needs to be aware of shifting tone because it offers us the subtext of what is going on in the patient. The tone exposes the right brain while the left brain of the patient rattles on with sophisticated big words. We understand the right side pressure by the torrent of words the patient uses. If she is loaded up to the gills with feelings the words may rush out toppling over one another, and spill out under great pressure. A slight little wobble in the throat tells us that feelings are right there. Music helps us deal with patients; it helps bring up key feelings and scenes. It evokes a special time in their lives. It is the right brain expressing itself, its emotional self. And when patients recall scenes and events, sometimes we ask them to sing the song or hum along with the radio; up come feelings. We are addressing and giving voice to the right brain; very helpful in a feeling therapy.

To repeat: the right brain is the feeling one for good and bad. It takes precedence in our lives, gathering into its maw all the unhappy events of our early life, including life in the womb; the carrying mother's drinking cocktails, staying on a strict diet to keep her shape, a stressful job, and/or fighting with her husband. The right hemisphere is the keeper of the truth of our early lives and what happened to us emotionally. The right cannot sustain focused attention. The left can and does. The left is interested in what is going on exactly. The right maintains a more general vigilance.

The right lacks focused attention; just what is needed in class when the teacher gives an assignment. The right goes into panic mode and the person cannot learn.XXXXXXX Anxiety suffuses and suffocates the left's attempts to learn. It crosses the corpus bridge (explained in a moment), to upset the status quo. "You know," says the right, "my right hippocampus which is suppose to handle the memory of new events cannot do the job." It seems to be overwhelmed, and that is why anxiety cases have such poor memory of past events. The past is mostly a blank as the brain structures charged with memory have defaulted under the imprinted load. And information on the right cannot inform the left of its experience so the memory does not get embedded on the left, and the person later on can hardly recall infancy and childhood events.

The right is often so loaded with feelings and pain that it cannot pay attention to the present; that is, it cannot focus on the present when the past is demanding attention, as well. When the past is full-up with terror and anxiety, memory vanishes. It is no accident that the right hippocampus is involved in emotional memory, and not the left. It always sees the bigger picture, and is always looking for patterns of behavior that would fit into that whole. There is a poverty of detail on the right which the left can supply. The left side loves detail. The right can't be bothered. If instructions say, "pour out exactly two tablespoons into a saucepan," all goes blank. The right goes by "feel" and guesses how to do it. Precision is not the right's forte. That intuitive side is necessary in a feeling therapy, (but a little science is also helpful).

A patient can explain how afraid she is all day long but when she gets down and feels it in past context, it is another story. The left hemisphere senses terror but only the right has access to it; it can feel it in all its strength. When there is a breakthrough of feeling to the left side there can be a panic attack; the right is purging itself.

To repeat: all of the very, very early traumas are mostly processed on the right side, even before the left side comes into maturity; before it exists as a force. And those early experiences are imprinted and engraved in the system. And since the original experience is non-verbal the reliving must be non-verbal. And since the original experience was accompanied by a blood pressure of 170 over 115, the reliving must duplicate that exactly. The imprint cannot lie; it is remembering in its own way--neurobiologically. And when there is a reliving of the birth trauma there are very high vital signs throughout the process. It is our way of verifying the reliving is a true event. Therefore, no therapy that is intellectual at its base (cognitive/insight) can work on this. There needs to be a different kind of language to get the patient back there.

No level of brain tissue can do the work of a different level of brain function; the left can never do the work of the right. We need to address the painful feelings on the level at which it occurred and in the hemisphere that holds it. We cannot use words to get us to preverbal times. This is the basic mistake of today's psychotherapy. Trying to verbally comprehend that which has no verbal rationale; that which cannot only be understood in non-verbal ways: that must be relived without words, words that had no part in the original imprint. It makes as much sense as getting the right limbic, feeling brain to engage in complex mathematics. That is not its job. You cannot talk complexity to it but you can sing to it. And because there are no words you can hum to it. Now you know why those who stutter or suffer cross dominance of the brain can stop stuttering if they sing. You can actually pinpoint the cause in this way. When we take words out of the equation things get simpler.

The close colleague of the right hippocampus, is the right amygdala, the agent of fear and deep feelings. This is one of the key structures to limbic area feeling. The amygdala is also involved in overall emotional processing. When deeper level terror in the brainstem comes up to join feelings of fear in the right limbic area there can be an out-of-control panic. When the right amygdala is loaded with feelings it seems to engorge waiting to get rid of its load. New research indicates that the offspring of depressed mothers have enlarged amygdalas. Among other functions it scans the environment for threats and sends signals of fear so that we may react appropriately. These people become adults who might be supersensitive to threats, and when the valence of it early on was enormous we have the soil for later paranoia, someone who sees threats everywhere. This is particularly true of those long time pot smokers where the right side defenses weaken and become more and more of a threat to the left. Then the left has no choice but to produce more and more strange ideas, essentially paranoiac in character. Those ideas tell us clearly that feelings are threatening and defenses are crumbling: beware! As the years go on those ideas become fixed and unassailable.

(Science: "How Sad Moms Change A Child's Brain. Aug 22, 2011).

A carrying mother's deep depression makes a change in the baby's brain; there are no words or scenes to express it or remember it. It is remembered organically. There is a tag on it, a mark made by a process known as methylation which labels the experience and alters the expression of genes and influences behavior. The genes are often interpreted wrongly by the nervous system but the addition of the chemical methyl group to the cells marks it for a lifetime. It creates an epigenetic event which changes how the genes unfold, or at least how the brain interprets those genes. When a gene changes is "face" it sometimes cannot be recognized. This change not only affects later behavior but also the propensity for certain serious illness including cancer. And these traumas are heavily right brained. So later in therapy when we address the patient and have her explain what is bothering her she simply does not know; the left brain wasn't in the loop at the time, and the right brain is not talking, literally. Yet she is depressed and doesn't know why and cannot seem to get out of it. Meanwhile, the event is tagged and waiting for connection. Until there is that connection—the hook-up, there will be damage. It is clear that only an organic, systemic therapy that can reach preverbal events can change things and help the patient get well. And that means not using the left brain primarily to accomplish it. The left brain is in secondary position.

There is ample information now that when the carrying mother is under stress she is spilling stress hormones into her placenta; it impacts the fetus who is thereafter under stress, as well. It is now an imprint that will endure perhaps for a lifetime.**

**("Prenatal Programming of Human Neurological Function." C.A. Sandman et al., International Journal of Peptides, Vol. 2011)

We must remember that most all of the very early traumas are processed on the right side, even before the left side comes into maturity; before it really exists as a force. And those early experiences are embedded into the system. And since the original experience is non-verbal the reliving must be non-verbal. And since the original experience was accompanied by a blood pressure of 170 over 115, the reliving must duplicate that exactly. The imprint cannot lie; it is remembering in its own way, neuro-biologically. And when there is a reliving of the birth trauma there are very high vital signs throughout the process. It is our way of verifying the reliving is a true event. Therefore, no therapy that is intellectual at its base (cognitive/insight) can work on this. There needs to be a different kind of language to get the patient back there.

Both the feeling/limbic structures (hippocampus and amygdala) are part of the feeling aspect of our being and are principals in dealing with emotion. Discussing one's fear is left brain; feeling it is right brain; think of the difference between psychoanalysis and primal. Explaining one's feeling without the actual experience is invalid, as we shall see. It cures nothing. Discussing feeling after having relived the imprinted memory is valid. The evolutionary cart is not before the horse and the system says, "Each his turn. Mind your manners; feelings first, thoughts and insights second.

When the right side is saturated with painful feelings it becomes overwhelmed. This shows in later life as the inability to do several tasks at once because the incoming input on the left is vying for space with the internal right side activation. It becomes all "too much." Then begins the avoidance of any task that would overwhelm the already filled-to-the-brim container. The left is not sure why it is doing this avoidance, and indeed, it remains mostly unconscious. It just acts-out, and the act-out is as unconscious as the feeling. The person is simply easily overwhelmed, seemingly by the input from outside but in reality, from old remote imprints from long ago. They surge forward and keep us overloaded. So when the husband gives orders to do this and the wife blows up and scorns his constant demands, she just "can't take any more." So there is constant information coming from the lower levels of the right brain telling the left of its troubles but it doesn't want to hear. The right is saying, "Listen, there is something that I have to tell you that will save our lives." And the left says, "Try later, I'm busy right now. I have projects to finish." And the right responds, "You don't understand. I have a connection to make and you are so distant; you need to welcome me."

On Rearing Decent People: How the Imprint Works

A kid acts up and acts out and we ask, "who does he take after, his mom or dad?" Maybe his grandmother? Or maybe none of them or all of them. I will need to explain. The point I am going to make is that we are pretty much driven not so much by our genes but by our epigenes; that is, what happens to our genes as we mature. Because experience, especially while we live in the womb, channels those genes into diverse circuits, turns them on or off, and generally, controls their behavior. Is it nature or nurture? It is what happens to nature through our nurture, and that is not a play on words. What happens to us early on doesn't change our genes but changes how and when and if they are expressed. And there are chemical processes that help explain all this, as well. I won't make this complicated but it helps us understand ourselves and others if we take a little effort to suss out how this all works.

So it is not surprising how signals from the environment change the expression of our genes. What may be surprising is how early all that takes place; from the earliest months after conception on. The fetus (and embryo) changes according to its environment; we are too used to thinking about environment as what happens on the playground, in school or at home. But what is crucial is that the mother is the key and only environment for the fetus in the womb. What happens to the mother happens to the baby, as well. When she is anxious her stress chemicals are dumped into the placenta and affect him. He is born into a world of stress; he anticipates a stressful environment throughout his life, and it doesn't take much later on to set him off. His latent stress level is already very high. When the mother is depressed the fetus can be down-regulated so that many of his biochemicals are also depressed. He will be in the "hypo" mode where his vital signs are low and there may not be enough key chemicals, such as thyroid, produced. His physiology duplicates his mother's. He is a reticent and diffident child with little aggressive, little energy and drive and little enthusiasm for life.

I have been writing about the imprint for over forty years. It is how early experience becomes engraved in our system and endures, driving behavior and symptoms for years to come. We now know a bit more about that imprint. It is a chemical signature, actually two of them. One is methylation, and the other is acetylation. Very early on when there is stress, the carrying mother and father are arguing all of the time, there is the release of part of the methyl group which attaches to the DNA of the baby. It is like a "stop" or "caution" signal that says, "go slow." "hold back," "do not express yourself." It "speaks" in biochemistry but it still speaks; it just has not words for it as yet. There will be words for it years later. Meanwhile, when there is serious trauma while we are being carried the genes are being methylated; and once that happens there is a greater tendency to depression and suicide later on. In the brain study of suicide cases there was a much greater incidence of methylation of the genes that turn off stress than those who died of other reasons. It would seem that in stressed babies there may not be enough steroid chemicals to overcome the methylation, and then there is overt anxiety. The stress system is in overdrive and cannot adjust properly. It may be that there is insufficient serotonin secreted to bind or gate the stress. Higher levels of methylation adversely affect the output of serotonin. . We need serotonin to help in repression and gating in order to keep us feel comfortable. What analysis of serotonin often reveals is not only trauma but the fact that it is unresolved. I believe we have found a way to resolve pain.



In early loss of a mother or in early abuse there is increased methylation. And I wonder if when we resolve those pains we also decrease or reverse methylation. It is true that genes and epigenes change us but it may also be true that we change them. And then they are visited upon our offspring. One thing has been found. If deprived babies are later licked a lot by their mothers there is a reversal of methylation.

In short, methylation is one major factor in the imprint that I have been putting forth, lo these many years. It endures and can cause major serious symptoms as we go through life. Not the least of these is cancer. Cancer cells most often have changes in the epigenomes which become abnormal; that is, there seems to be trauma to the cells that may cause them to go out of control. Cells that ordinarily prevent the appearance of cancer are heavily methylated and less efficient while the genes for cancer cells themselves seem to be less methylated. So we have a reverse function; cells which shut off are not, and cells which should be functioning are not. We do not want a "go" in developing cancer cells.

There is also a "go" signal that can attach, as well. It is called acetylation, and the genes are infused with acetyl chemicals. The "gates" are more open and there is greater expression, for the moment. That is, activation is enhanced. So we seem to have repressor activity (methyl), and activating processes (acetyl). Love, or positive rapport, tends to enhance acetyl production (animals who were licked a lot after birth by their mothers). And it can sometimes overcome an excess of methylation. The point in all this is that early life trauma can change the baby for a lifetime. It puts an indelible tag on the cells. We are thereafter programmed. It is now a memory trace; an embedded memory that affects so many aspects of our neurophysiology. This methylation is a record of our past, our history of adversity. Remember, it is not just a tag affecting recall of early life circumstance, impacting only the top level cortical memory processes. It is neurophysiologic, with its effects everywhere in our system. When we remember trauma it needs to be physiologic, as well. And it is that kind of memory that is resolving and curative. Because it is the embedded memory we are after, not the detached, disembodied, eviscerated, devitalized, etiolated memory that is never resolving. How we behave, in short, gives us clear clues to what happened to us very early in our history.

We behave according to the imprint; and we will not make major changes until we revisit the origins of that imprint. It can be done.

On Why They Kill Themselves at the End

Almost every week now, there is a story of a mass killer that fires on many people, kills a few, then turns the gun on himself and commits suicide. Why do they do that? Why not just kill? Because then, the neurologic sequence would not be run off. Let me explain:

I use the sequence of my patients in their reliving as an example. First they feel amorphous pain and suffering, then they attach a scene to it such as "they don't love me. " "You bastards, why don't you love me (fury) ?!" Then the patient begs, "Please love me." And finally, "It is all hopeless." If we think of the gunman who seems to follow the same sequence. Often the wife has left and taken the kids who give him love. He is furious and wants to kill (in Primal) but actually does kill in real life. Then there is the ultimate hopelessness and giving up (in therapy the truth is finally felt and sets the patient free) but in life the gunman stops at hopelessness and kills himself. He has gotten rid of his anger but there is nothing left, nowhere to go with his feelings and no resolution. Life has lost its meaning.

Patients feel that way along the route to full feeling but they do not stop there, and if they do leave therapy too soon they will be stuck with those feelings forever. What gives the kick to those feelings is very early trauma that digs up rage plus a lifetime of no love from the parents and then finally, the loss of love in the present. The stalker cannot stand the feeling and checks up all of the time on his wife. The killer is more emerged in the feeling and kills. Both cannot stand the loss of love; the difference is, I assume, that the pre-birth and birth traumas add a layer of extreme feelings to the mix, which cracks the defense system and places the person out of control. And it is those early traumas that compromise the part of the cortex that controls feelings and create the out-of-control sequence. This happens very early on when the cortical cells are just being evolved and proliferating.

This analogy isn't theoretical; I have seen this run off in patients, and the more unloved and deprived they were earlier on, the more violent the tendencies. Happily in therapy it all remains internal and benign. Outside of therapy it is a catastrophe.

On Pain by Inadvertence

You know I read a lot of case histories of abuse, sexual and otherwise and other terrible events visited by parents on helpless children.  But I was thinking that in my case and in many others the pain wasn't overt and obvious.  It was the subtext.  Let me explain:     As you know we all have needs that change as we grow up and evolve.  And parents, when caring and loving, fulfill those needs.  Natural and normal.   But suppose they don't.  Then you grow up unfulfilled, but you don't know it since you never had your needs fulfilled in the past.  You don't know you should be hugged and adored.  You don't know that you should be cherished and protected.  You don't know that you should be talked to kindly with care and asked about your feelings.  So what happens?  Since you don't know that should be the end of it.  Ahh, not so, because the body knows better than our conscious/awareness; it registers pain and it stays and drives us even though we never know it is there.  Isn't that amazing?  So you cannot get on with your life.  I never knew there were needs that had to be fulfilled until decades later when I felt them; either that, by some accident, someone fulfills a need or two: a stray hug or pat on the head, and are suddenly aware that something is amiss.       I have already accounted how I went to a friend's house when I was twelve and their mother was in the kitchen, leaning against a butcher block discussing life with them. I ran home and told what I had seen at dinner.  My dad yelled at me and I never knew why; it was a rebuke against them that I wasn't aware of.      Then two years later I was walking out of a café and it was a circular glass affair where a mother and her young daughter were going in.   I
 heard her say, "You know people are not perfect , and you have to learn to accept other humans sometimes with their flaws. "   Five or ten seconds, at the most. That's it.  But I never forgot those words, nor the faces of  those two people.  Why? Because I never knew parents could talk to their kids. It was an epiphanic moment, not conceptualized as yet but it had a great impact. Later, I realized it was pain by inadvertence.  It was not what my parents did, but what they did not do.   It was missing and that is why I never knew about it; until I saw it and learned something that stayed with me.   And what they did not do left my needs unconscious; in the oubliette.  Yet, I was a mess, could not learn, could not sit still or concentrate.  I was driven by unfulfilled needs; i.e., pain.  This was a pain that no one could see, yet I was sent to doctor after doctor for a constant running nose (my tears found another route).   You cannot deceive those needs nor forget them because the body won't let you.   The title of my next book ought to be "death by inadvertence."   This is not a joke because those needs we don't know about are killing us; they give us heart attacks far too early and also cancer.   You see, it happens because the needs not fulfilled are pain and that calls into being repression.  It is that repression pushing back feelings that will kill us.  And all that goes on without our knowing it. Those are the needs we are never aware of.  We have to read books about  "attachment theory" to get a hint about it.  Imagine, we need to read a book and theory about holding your child, looking at her in the eye with love and talking to her a lot.  It is like reading a book about the tribes along the Amazon.  It is so alien.   You do not get over those needs and "get on with life."  They cut short your life so you cannot get on with it; oh yes, for a while you can but you can't fool mother nature and she will get you while you are not looking. 

What Does the Brain Do When Attacked?

(I am taking part of this from somewhere but I lost where? Part from Shirley Ward)

The brainstem takes care of sensations and vital functions such as breathing, heart rate, hormonal output, the alimentary canal, digestion and urinary processes. Interestingly, during the zygotic period after fertilization of the ovum, the first organ to develop is the alimentary canal and digestive system. Bodily sensations of fear, such as stomach 'butterflies' or pain, originate in the alimentary canal and digestive system.
After fertilization, an embryo develops from the 3rd week, the primal brain structures (the spinal cord, midbrain) developing simultaneously with the organs and limbs. The brain/body architecture morphs into recognizable form by the 11th week of womb life. The first three months of womb life are ostensibly the most critical period of human development, because this is the time when all internal and external brain and bodily structures develop. During this critical period, the exposure of an embryo to certain agents such as chemicals, drugs, alcohol, nicotine and or cortisol may cause major congenital malformations. and safety are of paramount importance.
The period from the beginning of the 3rd month to the birth is known as the fetal period. The main characteristic of the fetus in this period is the rapid growth of the body and the brain and the maturation of the tissues. The brain functions in a partnership with the body and early embryonic memories are stored in the cellular structures of the body as well as the brain.
The zygote, embryo or early fetus has primary needs which can be met by the parents. These primary needs require the mother and father to be nourished in the healthiest way, to be fit and not have toxins in their bodies. The mother needs to be calm and contained, in other words, happy and contented. She needs to know that her partner will support and help her. The father of the baby needs to be involved and taking full responsibility for his paternity. It is best if each member of the couple loves each other and that they exist in a peaceful society. This state of affairs creates the best possible conditions for the tiny being to develop in the womb.
Very early experiences of stress or traumatic events in the womb , such as lack of oxygen or nourishment, or increased cortisol levels when a mother is exposed to prolonged or severe stress, will affect the brain stem. Neuro hormonal and chemical receptors and pathways of the brain are permanently affected by stress in the early period of brain development of the embryo A state of war, food shortages, famine, violence, conflict or loss will induce severe fear and anxiety in the parents, and particularly the mother, affecting the neuro-chemical development of the unborn child.
When, as adults, we experience inexplicable symptoms for example, sweating, increased heart rate and respiration, it may be that our primal brainstem memory is being triggered. Many people experience adult anxiety, panic attacks, fear, depression and other so called psychiatric symptoms, which may well be related to the very early months of womb experience.

A zygote and early embryo holds cellular memories of womb events in the body. No information is ever lost. Think about this. In terms of trauma it means that whole groups of people may be carrying memories of trauma that many generations ago and echoes of which are stored in the body and particularly in the brain stem. Unfortunately, because these memories are not easily retrieved, humans tend to act out their traumatic imprints on others and the world around them.
It is encumbrant (spelling?) on us to prevent unnecessary trauma occurring to our offspring, and therefore recommended that each one of us, both individually and collectively, become conscious of our own traumatic imprints and commence a healing journey, both alone and with others. This link to Shirley ward's article describes how people feel when they are assisted to relive their early conception experiences. http://primal-page.com/ward2.htm
Love, the way humans feel love, is the greatest force in the universe. It is love that will help us heal and reassemble our past and our future. It is love that will help us to educate, to guide and to show others how to conceive in love.

How to Measure Progress in Psychotherapy

Look, we all agree; we have a triune brain--3 brains in one, each with different functions. So one brain can be sick and the other two not so. Or two brains can be sick as a result of compounded early trauma. So isn't it silly to measure progress in therapy and leave out half or two/thirds of the brain? This is what is going on in psychotherapy today. We do followup studies with paper and pencil tests of mood, attitudes, comprehension and other intellectual/cognitive tests. And what do we get? A one third appraisal. So the mind works but the body is a wreck. The engineer functions very well at work while his body is preparing itself for cancer. Or the mind does not work, as in attention deficit disorder, but the body still gets migraine; or the ......you get the idea. Part of us can be more damaged then the rest of us. But all three parts need to work well and in harmony for us not to get seriously ill.

Can you imagine an MRI specialist studying only the cells in the kidney but not the mind? Not a good idea because the sickness starts up there. And we need to cross-reference all parts to see how they interact. We need to get out of the fragmented approach, taking the head and muscle cells to understand migraine, when all we will understand as a result is how those cells work, not how the system works together with other systems., and how that interaction produces symptoms. Again, I am pleading for a unified field theory of illness; illness of all kinds. Yes we need specialists who know more and more about less and less, know how the muscles in the neck work, how they contract and what happens to the blood vessels, but not anything about headaches, their cause and sudden appearance. Yes, they say the vessels contract and this or that happens to them but never why; never the ultimate cause, and certainly never the demise of the symptom and how we can achieve it.

So we treat a drug addict and we measure him afterward. And she feels great; all those great meals, massages and lectures. They work to drown the fish. But we measure the biology and there is a raging cauldron down below; the cortisol level is chronically high and can be life threatening. So much for self-awareness. Or vice versa: we are strict medical scientists and we measure cortisol and the person seems OK but he still feels terrible.You see what I mean? There are parts of us that need to be examined. It may take a combined crew but it will be more accurate. We have been fragmenting the patient, dissecting her because it is easier to study than the whole system as an ensemble. And we get a full blood panel, and we read the numbers and they tell us whether the patient is sick or not. Not much interpreting going on. We become bean counters, so much of this, too little of that and voila, you got diabetes. And of course it is worse in psychology because we do not have enough precise measurements to give us a precise diagnosis. So we ape medicine and imagine we do. We don't.

What Did You Do in the War Daddy?

This!

On Being Crazy and Creative at the Same Time. How Come?

There is an article in the May/June 2011 Scientifc American Mind on creativity. Here is what they propose: Creativity flows best when barriers are down. (Good). Creative people do not fit in very well socially. Both creativity and eccentricity are the result of genetic variations. (Not Good). That unfiltered information reaches conscious awareness in the brains of people who are highly intelligent and can process this information without being overwhelmed, leading to creativity and exceptional insights. Creative individuals are more likely to believe in past lives and other mystical and mysterious unsubstantiated notions. That they all have what is known as cognitive disinhibition. That their mental filters do not work properly. They may suffer delusions and hallucinations, which I think is another form of creativity where we create scenarios that come out of our deep-seated feelings.

If we can indeed create a mysterious scenario we may avoid cancer, in my opinion, because it means that there are leaky gates which allow feelings to push upward forcing new ideas. We need to study to see if creative people die of cancer versus the more likely possibility of strokes and heart attacks, because lack of creativity in my opinion often indicates massive repression and therefore great pressure on the cells.

And of course when you have leaky gates it means massive first line trauma and damage that can lead to strange and mystical ideas….unidentified flying objects, for example. The more unidentified the better. Vagueness allows all kinds of kooky interpretations. Leaky gates, you may remember from my writing means broken defenses and unfiltered input. What we have in the author's schema is a group of correlations; they then try to put them together to draw scientific conclusions. But correlations do not delve deep down where generating sources live; and that is what we need in order to understand the phenomenon of creativity.

I use myself as an example. I always was interested in music but I was never really good. When I play in a mental hospital band and played alongside a great but crazy trumpeter I realized that I was never going to be as good as him. I was too anxious to learn properly. My gates were more than leaky; they were flooded. I was totally right brain where the origins of creativity and nutty ideas and beliefs reside. Later on, much later on, as I developed an intellect I could see and feel feelings and how they drove behavior. I had creative insights mostly because my gates were still leaky. And I also needed and finally had a working intellect. I could think and feel, and think what I felt. And that is one reason it led to primal. I had basically illiterate parents so I never had to be smart for them. And I wasn't. They lived in their own world so there was no way I could be to get love from them. The good part is there was no neurosis I could adopt that would work. I was an anxiety case completely.

Creative people focus on their inner life. Non-creatives focus on the externals. They effectively lack an inner life, an internal access to their feelings. They are blocked off from their feelings and from creativity.

On the Origins of Comedy and Other Neuroses

There was a story in a paper about the French comedian Dany Boon, famous over there and genuinely funny. But where did it come from? He says it: "My mother was pregnant with me at 17. " She was then disowned by her father because her husband was a French North African. (Black). His mother cried all of the time because she was totally rejected by the family. Dany tried always to cheer her up. He needed a happy mother, and he did his best. He had no father, of course, who took off early on. So he was reared by a young kid was neither ready for motherhood and had no support. Dany shifted from child to parent; he found he could make her laugh by acting funny and telling jokes. He elevated his neurosis to an art form, which is what a lot of us do, perhaps not so successfully but we try. We get smart in school in order that one's parents have an intelligent child. We all try to get love in the way that parents point us, even unconsciously, both them and us.

But we see here how what happens to us as young kids has a lifelong effect. Some of us have the means to please the parent and others don't. When we do we don't suffer as much; we transmute in this case depression into humor. We no longer feel the hurt of not having a normal, loving mother; we are too focused on pleasing them at all costs. Dany later bought his mother a house that made both of them happy. He became what parents usually do; help out the child, and she was a child.

This cannot happen to everyone. Another child might work hard in business to support the child-like mother. Dany perfected his neurosis. Anyone else would have had to find another way to get the mother to love him. His way of trying would become a template or prototype that would follow him throughout his life. He would go on doing his schtick everywhere and for others as well. His behavior would become fixed and enduring. It starts with a parent and ends up as a lifestyle.

Dany might take drugs later and never know why. He would not know that he hurts too because he was too busy attending to his mother. All of his life would involve taking care of her so that he could finally have a loving, happy mother; something that will never happen. She was and is an unloved child. She needed a father much more than being a mother. Her need became his life. Isn't that true of so many of us. A failed athlete like Andre Agassi's father became Agassi's life. A failed actress becomes the destiny of her daughter, and so on. Parental need becomes our destiny. My father felt stupid and the only way he could feel smart was to make me stupid, which he did at every turn. Later, I would never consider college because I felt too stupid to do it. I would ask him something like the meaning of the word, which he never knew, so he would say, "Look it up, dummy." That feeling stayed deep inside and colored all of my life. Until…….I was sent to college as part of going to flight school, and I got "A's". For the first time I began to feel not stupid.

So to reiterate; your parent's needs become your destiny; not only any parent but the one where there was some possibility of love to be had. That is the one that sets you on the struggle. Once the prototype sets in it applies to everyone and everywhere. It becomes your personality. All to handle a pain when you were very little.

On the Abuse of Xanax

In the NY Times of Sept 14, 2011, there is a front page piece on Xanax and its abuse. It is an effective medication for anxiety. And it can be addictive. Indeed, any drug that reaches down deep to suppress pain and terror will be addictive, by definition. It is addictive if it works. So what do the chiefs want to do? Eliminate it; not exactly eliminate it but not write scripts for it. And they want to do that because there is a great clamor for it. In short, it helps. So of course, they want to stop it. In the accompanying photo is a woman who has debilitating anxiety attacks. For those whose defenses work they cannot imagine what that is. But it is terrifying and no one seems to know what to do, except push it down. But what it if we finally know what it is, and instead of pushing it down we let it up in small doses and be done with it? We can do it and we do do it. And it is pure imprinted terror set down in the first months of life, and by that I mean during gestation and at birth. Once we know what "it" is we can start to find a cure. We have done exactly that and it is no longer a mystery. The earlier and deeper the imprint, the more pain, and the stronger the pain medication needed to quell it. Of course, it is addictive, meaning sufferers want more and more. Why not? If you have leaky gates you would want it too. The original terror and pain weakened the gates holding it back and when that pain and terror was compounded later in life by a tyrannical shrieking mother, for example, then the gates are under assault. The result are panic attacks and bouts of anxiety (the same thing) that seem to come out of nowhere. It seems like nowhere because the origins are so deep and so remote. It is not an abuse of xanax. It is the proper use of it, given the level of pain and terror involved. If you're the chief doctor and your gates are solid as a rock then of course you cannot sympathize with all this.

If we are so worried about all this why not try to find out what "it" is and find ways to deal with it; maybe put it under some kind of control so that the users can be watched and helped. Then we don't have to waste time pushing back all of those forces in the unconscious. Dr. Scott Hedges seems to think we don't need Xanax at all. He thinks there is trouble in paradise because the patient habituates to it and needs more and more. Of course it needs to be supervised, but no eliminated. The chiefs are worrid about withdrawal which is a legitimate concern but here again we can control withdrawal with so many new drugs (have they looked into oxytocin spray?). Let's not stop the pain killers that ease the suffering of so many. Let's work around it in order to control adverse reactions. If we learn what "it" is we will have a better handle on it. Making it an opprobrium to take something that eases hurt seems to have it all backwards. Let's get it straight.