On the Difference Between Abreaction and Feeling (Part 10/15)

By definition, abreaction lacks connection, which is the sine qua non of Primal Therapy. Without connection there is neither healing nor cure. So, clearly it is crucial. If there is no connection to solidify the feeling there is no progress. So what is connection, after all? It means that while the patient is feeling and reliving she is connecting to the pain/fear/terror. Bit by bit as she relives and feels she is making a connection to something buried away for perhaps years. Connection means feeling something in context, comprising each different level or aspect of the feeling until the patient arrives where it all began. That is eventually where patients need to go. But a random scream or cry will not take you there. At each level, the feeling must connect with its context, which is different as we descend down the chain of pain. Each brain level contributes its specialty: ideas, feelings or instincts.

 On the other hand, abreaction is just a release of the energy of feeling without meaning and out of context. There is a great gap between reliving and relieving, and this is the mistake so-called mock therapists make all of the time. The mistake is easy to make because, again, abreaction looks like feeling but it is not. It should be noted that the patient is not deliberately faking a feeling. Abreaction can be a real feeling, but it is out of sequence, and therefore it is not curative because it does not allow for proper connection across all three levels in a natural, orderly way. The patient is pushed into the tributary feeling because the pain of the main feeling is too great. This heavy painful feeling does in therapy what it does in everyday life; it keeps us from focus and concentration. It pushes us away from the central feeling. So abreaction is going through the motions of feeling without its depth and history. And it requires that the person perform the sidetrack feeling over and over again—relieving not reliving.

 So again, connection means liberation of feelings in context. There are those who scream and writhe and cry out of context, as in an exercise. They make no profound change, but when the patient slowly descends to deep levels over time and reacts to the stimuli and events on that level with the neurological capabilities of that era, there is progress.

 The goal of our therapy is to retrieve memory, not only of the scene or the place but also of the feelings belonging to them; that is what has been repressed and held in storage, the pain and terror. When we primal, we are reaching deep down physiologically to a part of our history that has been sequestered for decades and will not give up its secrets easily. Sometimes, the patient is not yet ready for the experience so it remains a mystery, until the time is right. When patients finally experience those feelings in their totality, including physiological aspects, they become integrated. The neurotic split is healed and the person is no longer at war with himself. Now we can use the term “holistic.” The patient has become whole in every sense of the word. His feelings are integrated into awareness and into his neurophysiology.