Arthur Janov's Blog, page 47

Everybody Hurts

When I watch TV it seems like every commercial is about some kind of pain killer: Tylenol, ibuprofen, pills for stomach distress, headaches, high blood pressure and on and on. The best kept secret is that we are nearly all in pain but nobody says it; the emperor is really naked but we all are looking the other way; we are looking outward instead of inward. The distress is caused by this or that in the environment, we think, but never what is inside. That is obvious since few of us can look inside.

We are all hurting but in different ways; the hurt goes to where we are most vulnerable. That is the health crisis that no one speaks its name. So why is that? Because no one can see it! It was installed so early and so subtly, long before we had conscious-awareness, that it doesn't even have a name. So I give it a name: Primal Pain. And a location: the imprint: and the chemical means: methylation. But what we may not be aware of is that its one of the leading causes of death among us, more so than deaths in traffic accidents, according to a recent study. Some of us are in so much agony that we take far too much medication and threaten our lives. We use Xanax, Vicodin, Fentanyl, Demerol, Oxycontin and Soma; we are treating the wrong thing, and that is why we do not get relief. We treat the symptom and not the person; we treat appearances and not generating sources. That gap I call the Janovian Gap. It is between origins and our conscious awareness of them. So long as Primal Pain exists it will militate toward wherever it can. Worse, sometimes we have both headaches and back aches so we take pain killers for both and again risk an overdose. The medication normally will not kill us but when we take more and more it will.

And what are we really killing? As trite as it seems, it is lack of love. Not just hugs and kisses but any lack of fulfillment of need very early on is also a lack of love. You know, the child is hungry and we say sorry it is not time to eat; or I just don't have enough today. It is the equivalent of saying, "I know you need love. I do love you but I cannot show it; but you know I do." The body knows no such thing. It marks the event with a marker that says, "Pain." And we carry that pain for a lifetime. When the carrying mother wants to keep her figure and diets while pregnant the baby hurts. It is all so subtle and that is why we do not recognize it later on except what is obvious: a migraine, stomach ache or back aches.

And then there are more needs as we grow up that need fulfillment. When there is more deprivation there is more imprinted, enduring hurt. And it goes on and on. The migraines keep on coming back because the generating sources have not been touched; the same with high blood pressure or allergies. There is plenty of evidence now that a mother's unhappiness while carrying can end up as serious allergies in the offspring. So let's all understand what those TV ads really mean; and let's all agree what is really wrong. OK?

On the Need to Believe

Yep. There is a need to believe but not in the way you might imagine. There is a neurotic need to believe that comes out of pain, more specifically hopelessness. And in that kind of belief there is nearly always an element of hope—the deity will watch over you, protect you, love you and not let any harm come to you. You can name the hope of our choice but what we are exploring is the process of dialectics; how one thing mutates into something else, usually its antagonist. Dialectics is basically the interpenetration of opposites: here, hopelessness becomes hope. Hopelessness drives hope, and the more fervent the belief the deeper and more powerful the hopelessness; and of course, vice versa.

We are discussing the motivation behind beliefs. The brain doesn't give a hoot what's in the belief, just so long as there is one; otherwise we would have no defense against the unutterable pain of hopelessness. Yes, beliefs can be defenses, especially those that grow out of pain. So some can believe in God, others in Brother Bubba, still others in the Hinduism; and they all may derive from the same feeling. The choice of belief depends on life circumstance. You can see how useless it is to spend hours in therapy analyzing the belief when it is not the content but the very existence of it that is important. I have seen time and time again a patient coming close to a very terrible pain and switching into some kind of belief; "You don't understand. I know they don't like me and want to harm me." They switch into beliefs when the feeling tends to overwhelm the cognitive system. And the choice of belief emanates out of the feeling: something or someone(a feeling) wants to hurt me. We rarely allow an overwhelming feeling to come close to conscious/awareness. It usually means that a feeling/sensation is rising out of sequence and must be dealt with immediately.

It isn't always just a feeling; it can come from the deep brainstem where so many excessive sensations lie: the sensation of being crushed, pushed, suffocated, drowned, etc. All of these sensations and associated traumas can be imprinted very early in our lives, even while we are being carried in the womb or during birth. The hopelessness can derive from so many sources: a carrying mother drinking and smoking where the baby cannot escape the input and is suffocating. Or a birth process where the mother is given anesthetics which are far too much for a five pound baby, and again there is suffocation with no escape—hopelessness and helplessness.

Ordinarily, the biologic system tries to deal with the onslaught with a biologic shift of weight or force to counterbalance the deep feeling. The system tries to balance it so that it does not get out of hand. But still, if the sensation/feeling is very strong and the imprint is already sealed in, then the various high levels of brain function will try to deal with it, as well. The highest level will pitch in and offer up a belief as a way of counterbalancing the imprint. That is worth repeating: the newfound belief is a measure of counterbalance, of equilibrium. So first there are purely biologic efforts, pitching in with gate-enhancers such as serotonin, and later on, as the brain evolves, bolstering it with beliefs; all part of the same process of defense, all linked together. So for example, let's suppose that the baby's blood pressure goes up, which is the most she can do at the time. But later that blood pressure, heart rate and many other physiologic effects become part of the defense system. They have to be addressed as an ensemble, not simply separately as discreet entities. And now the defense system is sealed in. The beliefs are not just something to be changed apart from the system but are part of the personality. What someone believes is a part of her and is not just some whimsy or caprice. In our therapy we never just deal with strange and bizarre beliefs; we always try to get beneath them and find the driving force.

On the Frequencies in the Brain. How the Brain Learns About Feelings

In my book on life before birth I talk about the 3 levels of consciousness and how the imprint that is laid down deep in the brain while we live in the womb has spokes going higher containing that information which is integrated on the feeling level/limbic system, and finally on the cortical level where beliefs and comprehension lies. Through a process of resonance each level relates to the others in what I think is a matter of frequency. So suffocation even before birth when a mother is a heavy smoker or drug taker sends up antenna to the feeling centers where we manufacture a dream where we are suffocating and then finally to the frontal cortex where we believe someone is suffocating; "Leaves me no space to breathe." And what is reciprocal is that currently someone leaves me no reason to breathe, crowds me, and then the cortical brain sends antenna down to the lower levels where each level reacts in terms of its capacity. The feeling level adds emotions to the mix while the very low brainstem level enhances all physiologic reactions and provides much more charge value or energy.


That is why I say that primal therapy is neurosis in reverse. We use the same electrical brain networks going up and down. They are all related through, I submit (only a hypothesis), frequencies. Each level has its own contribution to the totality of a feeling—energy/force—feelings—comprehension/insight. Painting a feeling is not feeling; it is painting…..symbolic of a feeling. Not a total physiologic affair, and hence never curative or ameliorating. It is basically an act-out. Nor can you play your feelings and make progress. Of course, if you are close to feelings you can play more "feelingful" but it is not therapy. I know. I used to do music therapy with psychotics in a mental hospital. We would play jazz for the catatonics who could barely move, they had what was known as "waxy flexibility." We bent their arm to the music but it stayed there. I never saw any progress.


What they also found is that very high frequencies are not conducive to feelings and their connections. There is a feeling zone in my opinion, and when patients come into therapy with beta waves, very rapid waves, they are far above the zone.

It may be that a new patient will lock into a feeling for a moment and then skid off into an abreaction, because it is less painful. She has been detoured off the proper frequency; there is something "off" there and when one is tuned to feelings one can sense it. This is no more than to say that each synapse has its preferred frequency and may not accept any other. And the frequency is perfectly rhythmic. When the rhythm is thrown off there is less learning and less cohesion; less cohesion of feeling. What I think we do in our therapy is retune the brain, especially those who have imprinted stress. Once the pain and trauma is relived the brain normalizes; goes back to its proper tuning. And, lovely, we go back to the proper inner tune; we are finally in tune with ourselves: literally.

On Murder Again

I am going to explain what happens when someone "snaps" and kills. Specifically, regarding Scott Dekraai who killed eight people recently in Seal Beach California. He says now, some three weeks later, that "I know what I did." So how is that possible to know what you are doing and still do it? The catch is he didnt' know what he was doing when he did it, only later.


Is that possible to know one minute and not know the other minute? Absolutely.


Let's talk about the crackup. But before I do that let me offer a little reminder; There are three levels of brain function. The top level is the thinking, comprehending one; externally oriented. Lower down is the feeling brain that adds emotion to the mix, and still deeper there is the instinctive reptile brain that processes the same instincts as the reptile. It adds urgency and power to emotions and to beliefs. All three have separate functions and yet are interrelated. And they communicated with each other by chemical means and also by electrical frequencies. And when something happens in the present it resonates with similar feelings from the past and they join forces. When defenses are weak, something in the present can trigger off allied sensations and feelings and then we get a powerhouse response. All three levels are involved in a conjoined reaction. Normally, there is a good defense apparatus so that the resonance does not reach too far deep down, thus limited the force of the reaction.


Here is how resonance works in the domain of anger. Something in the present makes me very angry; my wife is divorcing me and trying to keep the kids. My money is running out and she still wants more. She refuses to see or talk to me. She turns the family against me. I have been let go at my job due to injuries and I have no prospects for a new job. All looks bleak and I have no alternative. All these are assaults on my defenses. And they weaken so much that it all crumbles and there is no barrier holding back deeper pain. The problem is on the feeling level there are powerful emotions, but as they resonate with still deeper levels, anger turns to rage and fury. Human mild emotion becomes murderous feelings as the deepest animal/survival levels move to the higher cortical areas, levels. In my lingo, the third line gives way to the first line reptilian brain where violent feelings reside. And for that moment the third line inhibitory brain is ousted by the first line instinctive brain and there can be murder. The deepest brain level becomes the highest one temporarily. There is nothing left of the top level of the brain whose main function it is to inhibit. But that overwhelming force may only last minutes. Once the rage is expressed the pain level diminishes and some of the third line thinking, reflective brain returns to function. And Scott can now say, "I know what I did." And he knows now but at the moment of crisis he did not know what he was doing: his rage machine took over and he became the reptile spewing out fury indiscriminately. After all, it is the top level that discriminates. It was usurped for that moment, the critical moment when he murdered eight people. It is not unlike orgasm. There is a heightened agitation followed by release and calm. In sex we begin to lose sensations such as hearing as the whole organism is involved in a non-verbal highly emotional response. For that moment there ceases to be high level intellectual capabilities.


I have seen this rage over and over again when very disturbed patients begin to relive a memory on the emotional, feeling level and suddenly are impacted by the lower levels. They begin to pound the mattress and the padded walls with an enormous fury that can go on for thirty minutes to one hour. In therapy they can direct the rage, connect with it and not be overwhelmed by it. Not so, on the street. I have filmed this rage, and those interested will see it when we release the film. The patient seems to be out of control because he is in the grip of powerful deep forces. But it is a therapeutic situation and is not acted out. It becomes acted-out when someone has no idea that he is in the grip of powerful feelings emanating from deep in his unconscious. He is helpless before them and has no idea about how to control them. His unconscious has taken over. And he kills.


And we can say of these people who are sometimes out of control that they may be pre-psychotic. All that really means is that their defenses against the deepest level of the brain are very weak due to the constant onslaught of pain early on in their life. And what do so-called anti-psychotic pills do? They dampen the lowest brain levels from responding. They help hold back the first line. They do this by souping up the top level so that it is more active and effective; and at the same time there are inhibitory medications in it that block the lower level pain; thus, we get a more active cortex and a less active brainstem and limbic/feeling brain. And in this medication there are chemicals that we should produce ourselves, such as serotonin. But we don't because very early trauma has exhausted supplies, and we cannot make enough to blanket the pain. So when our inner pharmacy cannot do the job we need help from the external one. We can call it anti-psychotic medicine but all it is doing is making up for what we can no longer manufacture ourselves. Poor Scott had so many current assaults coupled with a lifetime of them that he could no longer inhibit nor defend. His defense system was not up to the job. Now when it is far too late he probably has a somewhat weak defense system that can inhibit. That won't do his victims any good.


The lesson we can take from this is that when deprivation and severe trauma exists while we are being carried, the first-line defenses are already in a weakened state. As a kid he may have had uncontrolled temper tantrums which evolved into murder. Was he responsible? Yes and no. But we can go a long way to avoid murderous rage by making sure there is as little trauma as possible when we live in the womb and of course, a good birth followed by a loving childhood. No drinking and drug-taking by the mother. No fights with her husband. No crazy diets while carrying. It is easy for me to say. I am only the messenger. It is up to all of you to listen to the message.

Serotonin and Anger

In my writings I have emphasized that early experience can deplete supplies of pain-killing chemicals that we produce, such as serotonin. And then we need to take medication that enhances supplies, medication found in many tranquilizers. Now there is a study of this in the journal of Biological Psychiatry (Sept 15, 2011). Here is one thing they found: reduced levels of serotonin make us more prone to aggression; something I have discussed for over thirty years. In other words, serotonin helps regulate serious emotions, especially those that can cause harm. And when there is very early trauma or adversity in the womb and at birth our ability to control our impulses is compromised, because our systems over a long time have evolved in order to keep anti-social impulses under control; otherwise we would all go around killing each other. Still it seems like all too many go around killing. Those, in my opinion, had very early trauma and neglect, and have diminished repressive capacities. Their brains are deficient. It might not show up for decades but they will be a danger.

What the research showed was that low brain serotonin made communication between certain areas of the brain more tenuous. Not any area of the brain but specifically in those areas dealing with feeling. Not just the feeling centers but their connections to the top-level control centers, the prefrontal cortex. So here we have confirmation that when there is diminished serotonin the prefrontal area has a much tougher time to control feelings. The researchers discuss the emotion of anger but I am certain that it applies to many of the deepest feelings we have, whether terror, hopelessness or helplessness. One way we know this is that we prescribe tranquilizers for depression, which has at is base both hopelessness and helplessness. When we suppress those feelings we tend to feel better. And when a carrying mother feels depressed there is a good chance that the offspring will also have a tendency to those feelings, as well. It all depends on later life experience.

We see again how the top level thinking area and feelings work in see-saw fashion so that the very active top level cortex can control the lower level emotions; or not. That is, when the top level is compromised the control evaporates and we have an impulsive individual. And we may have a criminal or someone who takes risk when he shouldn't. Or we have a volatile husband who beats his wife. And so they go to a counselor who encourages him to control himself—anger management. But the cortex cannot manage the fury that lies sequestered just below the surface. And no counseling will ever, ever, change that. Exhortation does soup up the prefrontal area a bit, and in so doing arrays the forces of thought and belief against feelings, but that is at best ephemeral. The faulty equation between feelings and control centers still exists and will continue to exist. And obviously, we must address that equation and normalize it, which can be done. No amount of talk and encouragement will achieve that. That is the trouble with anger management; feelings were never evolved to be managed. They exist to be expressed.

And now the investigators concoct a new nomenclature for this: "intermittent explosive disorder." (Now officially known as IED). Isn't that the same as blowing up every now and then? Again, we are trying to ape medical diagnosis, while the inventor of this new diagnosis bathes in glory. Oh my, that love of diagnosis with fancy sounding names that does nothing to enhance science. But the behavior/cognitivists hold sway today and so they continue to add this behavior or that to a long list of so-called neuroses. And they believe that behavior is indicative of neurosis, rather than what drives it. It is as if there is no unconscious. Everything for them is observable. They believe only what they can see when most neuroses are hidden and not observable. Can we "see" depression? Can we see anguish? Can we see rejection internally? These are not single behaviors; they are systemic problems that affect the whole system. The real culprit here is the psychiatric diagnosis manual, which has as many pages and afflictions as the Manhattan telephone book. It is that thick because the behaviorists control all this.

When professionals limit themselves to the here and now they have eliminated the time and epoch where and when they could understand origins and generating sources. They have cut away the elements that could offer understanding. And who suffers? The patient.

An Examination of Psychoanalysis (Part 13/13) ... The End

  
  Let us use an example. A young man does everything he can think of to please his therapist. He tries to be an exemplary patient, admits readily to all resistances, produces insights with great mental clarity, shows concern for the therapist's own feelings, finishes early to avoid being boring, and so on. Clearly there is an underlying feeling. Now therapist and patient could sit and discuss what is going on between them. They could even uncover the fact that the young fellow never could please his father and is, through his relationship with the therapist, still struggling (symbolically) for parental blessing. Further, the young man might wind up with insight into his relationships with men in positions of authority.
From the Primal perspective, however, we feel that he has still only shaved the issue. His behavior represents an act out of a need. Until it is felt no amount of insight is going to eradicate the motivating force behind it.
In Primal Therapy we may use a head-on confrontation of the behavior. "You seem to want to please me and impress me," the therapist might say. Since the therapist has so openly put his finger on the sore truth, the patient might admit it with words like, "Yes, I want you to think I'm a good patient." The next step depends largely upon the patient, but one course open to the Primal Therapist is to request that the patient say exactly what he does want from the therapist. He would be encouraged to use words that really express the pleading displayed in his behavior: "Please think I'm a good patient. Please think I'm a good boy. See how much I do for you. Give me a word of praise. Say you see how much I do just to please you. Please like me." And so on. The therapist doesn't choose the words. The patient finds the ones which help to evoke what he is already feeling. And the words usually become that of a young child as does the tone of voice.
This type of direct speech serves a number of purposes. It gives direct, succinct focus to the feeling, expressing it without distance or elaboration. It enhances vulnerability to the feeling and thereby helps to diminish the time barriers. The patient finds himself a child pleading for love. The time dissolve is not complete but it has begun. Often at this point the patient is swept into deeper feeling (which means deeper into his past), without any additional interaction with the therapist, who now sits back and watches quietly. At other times the dissolve into the past can only occur after steady probing by the therapist. "Who did you want to please so much?" might be asked, along with similar questions which lead to previous experience.
Through his response to the therapist the patient now may find his father clearly and vividly in his mind's eye. The symbol (the therapist) has faded into the real person. The Pain and need previously transferred onto the present is returned to its original target. It is no longer the therapist the young man is trying to please, but his father. He is right back in the old situation. His body and mind are beginning to respond with all the reactions he sat on for so long and which he rechanneled into a never-ending struggle to please.
At some point it may be appropriate for the therapist to interject an instruction for him to speak directly to his father. "Tell him what you need," might be suggested. With the emotion welling inside him, the patient speaks to his father. "Please see how good I am, Daddy." He might repeat it, or try several different ways of saying it, as the feeling moves him. The feeling will put the words into his mouth if he gives into it. He will not have to search for words. They will literally come to him, riding on the waves of Pain which now engulf him. "Daddy I need you, can't you see. Please love me Daddy, please." There is a simple, heart-wrenching quality to the expressions of grief which rush through and out of him. This finding of the real voice can be one of the most moving events to observe.
I do not suggest that one such experience will cure transference. The needs which promote and sustain it are strong; they have been there a lifetime, embedded in the body and bound by defenses of all kinds. But this "inside-out" experience of the underlying Pain does in time fade the filter of symbolism so that the patient comes to see the therapist much more as he really is.
It is not the place of the therapist to provide any corrective emotional experience. He is there to help the person liberate his own innate corrective processes. Sometimes it is helpful if the therapist reveals an aspect of his own life. For example, one therapist tells of a patient who was recounting how he never did anything with his father. The therapist remarked how much it had meant to him that his own father had often taken him to baseball games. This contrast opened some inner door; the patient broke into tears and was able to feel his own loss.
Does this mean that a Primal Therapist be himself totally? Obviously not. The session does not have the equality of a social setting. The therapist implicitly agrees to keep his personal business out of the way. He agrees to be there for the patient, using his skills, sensitivity, and the intuition honed through his own Primal experiences to help. In real life there are no guarantees against being exploited or threatened by the reactions of others. The formality of the therapeutic setting provides those guarantees. Knowing that there is someone competent in charge makes it safe to give in, be little, and feel the Pain of a suffering child.
The authentic corrective experience is the correct experience. It means a "matching up" takes place on all levels of consciousness. Thought, emotion, and sensation realign, not separately but wholly and simultaneously. The patient now not only thinks he needs a father to love him, he feels it and succumbs to the sensations which are inherent in that feeling. This is the vital point. He is not just aware of the sensations, nor simply made uncomfortable by them, he is overtaken by them. Sensation and cognition meet at the point of emotion.


In sum, modern analysis departs from traditional methods in several basic ways:
Although early life experience and repression of trauma are seen as causative of ongoing psychological conflict, therapy is centered around the patient's functioning in current life situations.The neo-Freudians downplay Freud's theories on infantile sexuality and libidinal drives while focusing on the patient's present intellectual (ego) defenses, interpersonal relationships, and particularly on his interaction with the therapist, which is seen as the key to providing a "corrective emotional experience."A therapeutic course is typically much shorter, because a) it aims for observable change in "adjusting" to current circumstances, and b) much of the past, and particularly repressed experiences, are excluded from therapy. There is less free association and more "directed talking." The neo-Freudian therapist is more active in guiding and evaluating the patient's thoughts and words and in supplying "insights."Therapists are more apt to encourage patients to explore what they feel, but only up to a certain point. Freud and early post-Freudian theorists better saw the importance of both uncovering "forgotten" memories and of permitting memory's feeling component to surface simultaneously.  Overall, in steering clear of the patient's traumatic past in favor of the here and now, neo-Freudians ensure that their therapy remains in the realm of talk and ideas and that it will gloss over what causes and continues to fuel neurosis. When feelings do surface, the analyst usually encourages the patient back into a cognitive mode, in search of insight and understanding, not realizing that it is not insights but Pain that is curative. The patient is not sick because he lacks insights; he is sick because he needs to feel his Pain.
Thus, like hypnosis and traditional analysis but in contrast to Primal Therapy, modern analysis is non-dialectic and non-curative. Analysts do not see that it is in feeling utter, abject hopelessness that the patient can finally achieve real hope for himself. That in feeling his fears he can become courageous, in feeling rejected he will no longer have to isolate himself. In feeling small he can finally grow up and leave the past behind.

An Examination of Psychoanalysis (Part 12/13)

Pain and Ego Disintegration


Psychoanalysts tend to view intense outpourings of emotion as a threat to the ego. The ego must be protected against "disintegration" -- against being overwhelmed by unconscious forces.
Of course, patients do cry in analysis. Some analysts even encourage crying. Most stop it short, however, when it nears Primal intensity, because they fear the patient will "fall apart." It is seen as an episode bordering on hysteria, and the patient will be given anything from tranquilizers to shock treatment to calm him, particularly if it goes on for any length of time.
I believe that one reason analysts cannot tolerate Primal feelings is because of their view of the unconscious, and more importantly because they are defending against their own repressed feelings. From my own experience doing conventional therapy, I rarely if ever saw the intensity of feelings we see in Primal Therapy. For a therapist to have one primal is to know the force of primal trauma. It is also to stop being afraid of powerful feelings. In addition, the therapist would never again have to guess or theorize about the unconscious. Paradoxically, because analysis does not go directly to the unconscious, analysts are forced to theorize about it.
We all know that the expectations of the therapist can have a tremendous impact on the patient. I believe that when the analyst distrusts intense emotions as dangerous and disintegrating, the patient picks up and internalizes this distrust. Then, what might have been a solidly intense experience becomes a fearful, hysterical one -- not because the emotions are disintegrative, but because of the distrust and suspicion inherent in expressing emotions.
Psychoanalysts fear Pain also because they do know what to do with it, and do not see that there is any permanent way to relieve it. We might all agree that neurosis starts with repression; we might agree that repression is necessary because we could not bear to fully experience something at the time it occurred and thereafter. Yet psychoanalysts cannot see that reliving the trauma -- or actually living it fully for the first time -- would in itself resolve the neurosis. Feelings and neurosis cannot co-exist. Concepts and neurosis can.
In many ways it seems that analysts equate the ego with the constellation of neurotic defenses. They do not want the defenses to disintegrate because they perceive their task to be that of reorganizing them into a strong ego. The paradox which analysts do not grasp is that it is the perpetual containment of Pain that is disintegrating. This great reservoir of agony weakens the defense system year after year.
In Primal Therapy, we aim for the controlled disintegration of neurotic defenses; we want a "nervous breakdown," a breakdown of the repressive defense system. This does not mean inviting psychophysiologic chaos, as our critics assume. We guard against the collapse of the whole neurotic structure all at once, working instead toward a gradual dissolution of repression both in specific instances of re-experience (a primal) and as an overall aim of therapy. The dialectic to which Primal Therapy conforms is that "falling apart" (of defense---if appropriately handled) leads to integration. Otherwise there is disintegration where one level of consciousness is alienated from another, thus ensuring the fragmentation of the individual.
People suffer because they are in Pain and cannot feel it. Primal Therapy provides an environment in which the Pain can be felt; not looked at, not understood, not analyzed nor even "felt" about, but felt as and for what it is. It is not disintegrating. We can measure the integration with our brain maps. We can measure integration in the slowing of heart rate and lowering of blood pressure. The person is becoming whole again.
I can understand how intense feeling might appear disintegrative. If it is abreactive in nature and not properly connected to the past it will be. The defensive impulse to rush in with one sort of anesthetic or cognitive smokescreen or another is very strong and is supported by an entire culture that is very heavily geared to the suppression of Pain. The trainee in Primal Therapy often has to learn not to intervene, not to try to close off the patient's feeling; he has to learn how to avoid satisfying his own need for control. If healing is to occur, losing control is crucial: not in the sense of mindless abandonment to insane impulses, but in the sense of a total (yet survivable) loss of repression so that the rage felt is enormous, the terror really terrifying down to the bones of personality structure. Losing control over one's neurosis is the way to rediscover the natural self-regulation which exists within any organism.
It is not up to us to define the so-called "ego" and then make our patients fit themselves into our concept of its well-adjusted version. That makes the patient's reality subordinate to the analyst's concept. Our job is to allow patients to define themselves and to discover their own health, which they will do if we do not constantly get in the way of that process.

Transference and the Corrective Emotional Experience

In analytic theory, the patient develops what is termed a "transference relationship" with his analyst. This means that the patient's unconscious reactions toward his parents are projected onto the doctor. The patient then encounters the difference between the analyst's reaction and his parents' past reactions and theoretically experiences a "corrective emotional experience." Psychoanalysts believe that experiencing neurotic behavior patterns from childhood in relation to the analyst now will aright the neurosis by showing the patient that his reactions are no longer suited to adult life. So important has the corrective emotional experience become that Franz Alexander, who coined the phrase, called it the "central therapeutic agent" in the psychoanalytic procedure.[1]
If, for example, a patient's parents were strict disciplinarians, unjustly harsh and critical, then a good experience with a different kind of authority (one that is understanding, accepting, and reasonable) should correct the old neurotic view. The idea is that the patient displays all his neurotic patterns toward the analyst. He can't take it when the analyst is nice because he never had it. He may even get paranoid about it, believing that the analyst is trying to trick him or manipulate him. But when he gets permissiveness and acceptance from the analyst, he should begin to understand that not all authority is harsh, unyielding, or unfair. He begins, according to Alexander, "to experience intensely the irrationality of his own emotional reactions."
It seems to me that the analysts have stood the process on its head! The problem with their corrective emotional experience is that:
the trauma is old while the ending is new;the focus is on irrational behavior in the present when it should be on Pain; and, the real problem is with the parents, not with the analyst.  No present relationship, even one with a skilled and compassionate therapist, can in itself resolve irrational behavior. It can be deterred, redirected, but not resolved -- because it is not irrational. It is logical behavior given the antecedent circumstances. One needs to match the behavior with the original context in order to make it rational again. People experience the truth of this every day. A person who feels worthless because he was made to feel that way when very young can be told repeatedly by teachers, friends, and colleagues that he or she is really worthwhile and successful, all in vain. The old, worthless feelings are prepotent because childhood experience has engraved them throughout the person's entire system. So a person can be praised to the heavens yet hear criticism and that is what sticks. That is what matches the underlying feeling.
Even in apparently happy circumstances the neurotic will act neurotically. An example is the neurotic who marries a compatible, cheerful, and understanding person, and yet continues to suffer from chronic depression. Why doesn't that love alter the depression? Is a corrective emotional experience limited only to someone with a title "doctor," or can it apply to other lesser souls, as well?
If we are trying to change a viewpoint, then the analytic method may achieve it. The corrective emotional experience may well enable people to mentally separate past from present and to identify what is "irrational" in their present attitude. But such activity occurs at the most refined mental level, with emotion regarded as nothing more than a point of reference.
The premise of a corrective emotional experience might be expressed as follows:

Analyst to patient: You feel that people, especially those in authority, don't care. I'm here to help you see where that thought comes from, and to demonstrate by my behavior that that is a false assumption.

This is all well and good but misses the mark. It ignores the fact that the patient's idea that no one cares is a statement about his life (no one did care), not just an item from his private thought collection. It is the tip of the psychophysiologic iceberg. What if the person feels better and is relieved to learn that his feelings are irrational, out of tune with current reality? So much the better. That is helpful, not curative.
There is nothing wrong with changing an unrealistic view of authority, but it does not happen by telling a patient how irrational his feelings are. Feelings and irrational conduct toward the analyst are only symbolic substitutes for the original Pain. Why bother with substitutes when the original experience can be recovered via feeling?
Changing a viewpoint is well and good, but it is not enough. The irrationality of present feelings is only half of the neurotic picture. The other half that contains the seed of healing is the rationality of those feelings in their original context. A parent who is constantly harsh with a child forces the child to be defensive and "tough." Given the early context, this defensiveness is logical. The only way to experience that rationality is to relive the original event, not with a new ending in the present, and not in relation to the analyst. It must be relived with the very ending it actually had before repression set in, the ending that meant great suffering. Then the therapist will not have to convince the patient that it is irrational to be terrified of the waiter, the postman, or the doctor. The patient will simply no longer be terrified because he has finally released the original terror belonging to the original trauma. Once this occurs, he will automatically treat current relationships rationally and appropriately. This is not simple theory. This is what we see in our patients after a course of Primal Therapy. Neo-Freudian analysts have made important modifications in the stance of the therapist from the strict "blank screen" neutrality of the Freudian model. That is a good thing. The aloofness of the traditional analyst promotes transference because the patient can so easily project all his needs and repressed feelings onto the therapist. If this "blank screen" is inviolable, then the transference is maintained at the instigation of the therapist. When this is done deliberately it is because transference is seen as one way to unearth the subconscious.
What we are really talking of here is a trick. The blank screen tricks the patient into delivering up the repressed, unresolved conflicts of childhood. It is a device because the analyst is not being himself. The analyst hides so that the patient may reveal himself. But we have found that you really don't need tricks. In spite of their defenses, most people are willing to tell someone what is hurting them. Furthermore, it can be a hindrance if the therapist is forever neutral and aloof.
While discarding the barrier of the blank screen is a good thing, we must not regard the more human interaction of the therapist as fundamentally therapeutic in and of itself. Though it helps, the genuineness of the therapist is not the key to health except to the degree that it supports and encourages the real key, feeling, to have its way. It must be tied to the dynamics of the disease under treatment. The more human relationship is to be supported because it enhances the feeling process. It is easier to let go in front of someone you feel you know than in front of a detached figure who reveals nothing of himself. Total detachment may be appropriate for analyzing transference but it does not provide an atmosphere for full emotional expression.
In Primal Therapy, we recognize the inevitability of transference, but we do not make it the center of therapeutic attention. We do not try to enhance it or diminish it. All deprived people symbolize onto others. Unmet need attaches to whomever may seem likely to fill it. There is no doubt that the therapy situation lends itself to an exaggerated transference, particularly because it is an unequal relationship. The therapist is inevitably an authority, the one in the know. The mere fact that he is in a position to accept trust and provide help has a lot to do with the patient's symbolization. The patient reveals much more of himself than the therapist does, which may make the patient feel small and the therapist appear big or grown up. So transference exists willy nilly. The question is what to do with it.

[1]Alexander, Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, p. 42.

The Music in Us

Shakespeare said of a man who seemed all repressed and unfeeling, "that man hath no music in him." How true it is because music lies down in the limbic system; and if you cut off the top level cortex you can still respond to music….and feeling. You wonder why we remember songs from our youth and still know the words? Because we still did not have a fully functioning, repressive neocortex; because we still responded to the music out there and in us. There was music in us until it got crushed out. It was feelings that sealed in our memories of the music and words, and they meant a lot to us, expressing our lives at the time. It all lies down below our later development which covered over the essentials, the guts of our lives. Then was when our emotions were strong, everything was new, including love. Our reactions were strong, often exaggerated but they engulfed us and gave big meaning to our experiences. Some keep that music alive, keep the access to feelings, while others let the music die and lose access. Having to struggle in life, with children, with job or school all help dampen our music and as time goes on we listen less and less to it, outside and in,particular, inside. Music helps keep our feelings alive, and vice versa. They are companions in life.

We can tell who has that music still; there are those with no warmth, no kindness, no concern nor empathy who understand so much and feel nothing. And it shows in their demeanor; in their dry unemotional relationships, in their lack of perception of the feelings in others. It is a solipsistic world for them. In the absence of music they relate to themselves bereft of song and harmony. They have no sense of emotional harmony in the way they relate, dress, furnish and make choices. Their friends are also bereft and are chosen for that manqué. Their philosophies of child rearing; their "Weltanschaaung" are similar because they hear the words but not the music. They can't dance but they move to the unseen and unheard music of their lives. Beware a president who can't dance. We need a human president just as we need a human parent. Someone may move too fast to that unheard music and therefore does not take the time with his thoughts and decisions; nor do we want someone who dances too slow and who cannot make up his mind. We need something between a waltz and rock and roll.

"I'll Have a Cup of Enlightenment, Please." "Will That Be With or Without Feelings, Sir?" By Bruce Wilson

Mindfulness meditation is the current zeitgeist in psychotherapy. Not surprisingly, it fits hand-in-hand with the other dominant therapeutic modality: cognitive behavioral therapy. In fact, there is now a hybrid of the two called MBCT - mindfulness-based cognitive therapy. Both techniques are based on the same mechanism—detachment from feelings and thoughts. The "how" of mindfulness meditation can be summed up simply: sit still for 30 or 40 minutes, keep your eyes slightly open, follow your breath, and pay attention to whatever is going on in your mind and body but don't do anything about it. Just sit there. When you catch your thoughts drifting, get back to the breath. There are variations on this theme, such as walking meditation and meditation while doing yoga or manual work. In a word, meditation is about paying attention. Be here now! Nothing more, nothing less.

Buddhist meditation, such as that practiced in Zen, strives for a combination of concentration (such as counting the breaths) and open awareness (listening to sounds, noticing things in your environment, etc) The goal is the same—to be attentive to whatever is going on within you and without you, as the Beatles song goes. Vedic forms of meditation usually include a mantra or phrase that is to be repeated over and over while keeping the eyes closed. The intent is to create a state of bliss, which some people call transcendence but I call spacing out. TM, à la the Maharishi, is a form of Vedic meditation.

Today's popularity of mindfulness in psychology stems from the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn, famous for his stress reduction clinic, established in 1979 at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. You could say that Kabat-Zinn made Zen Buddhism scientifically respectable by stripping it of its religious trappings and subjecting it to clinical research. Over the past 30 years, mindfulness meditation has swept throughout the medical world and is used to treat patients suffering from cardiac disease, terminal cancer, chronic pain, drug and alcohol addictions, and a host of other conditions. Indeed, the research shows that mindfulness meditation can bring a lot of benefit. Practiced diligently, it can reduce the stress response, lower blood pressure, improve immunity, ease depression and anxiety, and even thicken areas of the cortex involved in the regulation of emotions.

So if meditation is so good for you, what's the problem? The problem, as Janov states, is that it is based on suppression of feelings, or rather, dissociation from them. Meditation is often not calming at all; in its more intense forms, it is practically guaranteed to bring up feelings. Humans are just not made to sit still for hours or days at a time like some sessile creature on the bottom of the sea. We are born to move and to feel, and when feelings do come up in meditation, they can be intense. Serious meditators often experience extreme anxiety or depression—even panic—but rather go into those feelings to find out where they originate, as one does in primal therapy, the meditator is told to sit still and observe them as one might observe clouds floating across the sky. Feelings are neither here nor there. They are to be regarded merely as sensations that arise from nowhere and go back to nowhere—ahistoric, meaningless, even delusory. Over time, the capacity to feel is attenuated as one's consciousness becomes increasingly rooted in the moment. Here and now. Here and now. Here and now….

Truly dedicated meditators—those who meditate for hours a day and attend frequent retreats—often get to a point where they feel disembodied. Their sense of self diminishes as they advance toward the ultimate goal of enlightenment, where one transcends space, time, and life and death itself to become one with the universe.

Beyond Life and Death? How Real is That?

Admittedly, meditation can make you calmer, more focused, resistant to stress, and more functional, but it must be done daily. In that sense, meditation is like an addiction that requires its regular fix. Stop doing it and your feelings come rushing back. Meditators often report feeling more peaceful—even joyful—after years of practice, but at what cost? Where did the trauma go? What access to feeling has been sacrificed? I know meditators who seem more like animated pieces of wood than feeling human beings. Others may smile beatifically, but exude an aura of passive aggression under the peaceful exterior. Despite the dozens of studies reporting positive results, despite the brain scans showing thicker cortices and lower vital signs, one is led to wonder what happened to the pain. Does it just vanish? Is it true that mindfulness can heal trauma, as its proponents say? Or has the pain just been driven deeper into the body, leaving an appearance of being healed?

My hypothesis is that mindfulness meditation encapsulates those painful feelings and keeps them dissociated from awareness, much as an oyster encapsulates an irritating grain of sand within a pearl. And one must keep them encapsulated with daily meditation for the rest of one's life. Therapists who specialize in treating PTSD say that mindfulness can help someone examine their traumatic feelings – look at them from afar so to speak – so they can be "reprocessed." Reprocessing usually means "reappraisal" – i.e. rethinking your feelings rather than taking them at face value. Once again, it is an attempt to control feeling with cognition, in direct contradiction to the affective neuroscience principle that feeling (affect) always trumps cognition.

Personally, I've found mindfulness meditation to be useful for dealing with present-day stress. It can and does provide strength during those times when you need to keep things together but I've never mistaken it for healing. It is only an adjunct; a tool to help with difficult feelings and situations until one can resolve them through action in the present or through primaling, whatever is appropriate to the situation. Without attention to feelings, mindfulness meditation is little more than a virtual lobotomy.

Bruce Wilson

All You Have to Do Is Lie Down and Feel It. Really.

All you have to do is lie down and feel it.....REALLY.

I was reading Arthur Janov's blog about MBCT...: Mindfulness - whatever that is , and Cognitive therapy : Just ignore patient's history and treat the RESULT of history, mix both and you have a new therapy.....REALLY ?

So : we are going to talk forever about what ails us. We are going to look at the crazy miserable person we have become - we are going to talk about it for hours, days, months, years, try to understand it, forgive and move on... REALLY ?

.......And we are never going to go to the origin of our behavior : all these arcane reasons : why we do what we do and how we become who we are : our history : all these minutes, hours, years of misery, of registering day after day that we didn't matter to the most important people in our lives, all theses instants when we needed a feeling of tenderness that told us we were OK, all these moments of silence when we needed THEM to be interested in us, their children, all these moments of utter despair for not being looked at with a smile, listened to with genuine interest, laughed with, accepted as a child human being, all these seconds of wretched pain for not being loved by the two most important people in our lives, day after day during all the years spent with THEM as we developed into adulthood....

..and none of it mattered ??? Or we can ignore it for ever and just deal with the surface result ?? ?

So, the surface, who we are now, isn't the result of all these seconds of agony, of our need for love, of the agonizing pain for not being loved ?

Yes of course it is , but since it is all buried, covered, deeply entrenched in the past, let's leave it there and not go back to it. It is the PAST after all. Let's deal with the present...

Except for : Every pain has been buried, by and in our brain. our physiology : There is repression" in and with every part of our bodies ( and we aren't going to feel it ").

All this unconscious burying, rerouting, denying, which built us into who we are, the result of which is taken at face value and dealt with forever....If we lived two thousands years it still wouldn't be enough to dig out every strand of the rerouting of the pain in our system, -all the defenses being mostly unconscious- that we had to erect in order to protect ourselves from the abject pain of not being loved.

So why bother, why even try ?

To this day, I don't even understand why people don't see that and why they persist in wasting their time, their lives really, trying to figure out, talking ABOUT something they don't have access to . How can we understand something we really don't remember ? ""Intellectual understanding of buried feelings "! It would be funny, if it weren't not so tragic...

It is tragic, because we have only one life and we are going to spend it trying to figure out, trying to understand, trying to explain, trying to forgive...WHAT ? What we cannot figure out (it is all buried), understand ( the millions of rerouted neurons in our brain), forgive (our parents for not loving us) etc.....But what about the rage and despair that they didn't love us, what about the impossible task to understand that they destroyed our real chance at our lives, the one and only one we have, and forgive.

Yes, in most cases, it wasn't their fault : they weren't loved either. Yes we can still understand and forgive. But so what ? What about the imprinted misery/ neurosis : the rerouting of the Pain into all theses automatic defenses : mirrors inside mirrors, blocking our past, rerouting all our feelings and our thoughts, keeping us unaware of our original needs, our history, who we were, who we were supposed to become and who we became, : unconscious, neurotic, lost, hurting, looking for something, always.... But looking for what : ourselves ??

This sounds like a tragedy, doesn't it ?

But the real tragedy is all this group of very important people, all these scholars representing a whole profession, parading onstage and telling the people, : we are going to help you have a better life with MBCT : We have concocted a little cocktail of a bunch of theories, ideas of what ails you and we are going to fix you : a little bit of this and of that ( if you talk enough, and understand enough, never mind the part that is unconscious : your history). We promise you luminous days, full of words, understanding and forgiveness.

And the tragedy is that all these poor lost souls, will believe it, buy it, go for it and lose their only chance at life..

Yesterday I had a Primal : What is that ? Feeling the hurt, the helplessness , the hopelessness of not being loved, the anger, the despair, the need... to be loved...by THEM, as a child.

I was in pain yesterday, so if I wanted to feel better I knew all I had to do was : Go lie down and feel it it.

..and once again: the miracle happened : after 2 hours of crying, becoming that hurt little girl again, being with THEM, looking at THEM as if they are with me now, talking to THEM, begging THEM to love me. I understood new things, new strands of my life that have been pulling me forever in some unreal behavior"", I understood a new piece of "Why" "All my life".......

Why all my life, again, another huge piece. ...

Why ..I have been who I am, why I react in this way each time, why I get hurt so easily, why I could never do this, why I always did that, why I couldn't love, why I pushed love away, why I couldn't feel good, why I didn't sleep well, why life was miserable and so why I didn't care about it, why the sun on my skin left me indifferent, why beauty didn't touch me, why others misery didn't mobilize me , why, why, why my life could be so meaningless at times....,.,.

WHY : and it is so incredibly simple really : Today as I am writing this, I marvel at the miracle it is : I can go back there, not in thoughts, not by some exercise, not by talking a pill or chanting : but having "access" : whenever I want I can go back there, go back to the moments, the images, the sensations, the memories, the needs, the despair that little girl felt. It is all there, buried in me : all I have to do is let myself FEEL IT.

I still marvel at how my brain, my body have kept pristine, alive and real, all these instants where I felt I wasn't loved, how the memory of each second was buried but stayed in me.

How I had to NOT TO FEEL IT to be be able to go on, and so repress this unacceptable fact that the people who should have loved me most, nurture the best part of me, whose love should have made me grow, develop, allow me to feel joy and warmth, feel that all was well in this world, DIDN'T.

Who I was ? : Tragedy : my one life, : miserable, drugs, drinking, failed relationship, successful, so what ? .... a life that belonged to someone else ...literally..So why live : suicide attempt : five minutes later : over....

No, a reprieve, New York, a book :
"We are creatures of need"
I have needs ? I should have been loved ? It is not all my fault ? THEY just couldn't ? I am not bad, doomed, crazy forever. I can kiss my psychoanalyst good bye ? There are no reason for anything and certainly, no more reason to try to follow the myriad of ways I have been rerouting all this pain that made me a stranger to myself. ? You mean it is possible to undo all this misery, not to be stuck in my past forever ? You mean I can have a life, MY life ? it is all in a book.

........ I will know who I am, I will BE whom I really am, I will feel good, I will sleep well, I will be able to love really and may be to be loved. I will be able to feel my life in the present because the past will be gone, I will remember it but it won't pull the strings all the time..I will be free from it ...ENFIN, at last ?..

You mean, it is possible ? ... I left my job, my car in a street in Paris, left my key with a friend, flew to Los Angeles..

...and yes it is possible...It all happened and it is even better that I could have imagined : When I hurt, the past is always more powerful than the hurt in the present, so all I have to do is :

LIE DOWN AND FEEL IT

Each time, I go back there, that little piece of me, repressed, buried, comes alive, I feel what happened, I become that little girl hurt again, I understand one more piece of who I am. I come out of this incredible trip in the past, and then : I am completely in the present light, happy, alive, myself at last .

I still marvel at the fact that once I feel that old pain, my old needs, all the different ways I unconsciously denied them, avoided them, all this tortuous behavior to keep them away, all becomes clear : How my unconscious becomes conscious, and how I know now and forever : who I was, and who I had to become, and now finally : who I am.

...and I want to thank the man who figured it all and put it in a book . I thank him for my life.....forever.

So what I don't understand is why would anybody want to waste their life doing : What is it called : MBCT ?

France Daunic Janov