The Act-out and More

The truth needs no defense…except…not feeling it causes a myriad of defenses.  Feeling is the opposite of defenses.

There is a certain paradigm in Primal which one blogger, Frank,  alluded to.   Truth needs no defense except when that truth is more than the system can integrate; then it requires defenses. That is why in booga booga land they live inside their defenses and imagine all kinds of things like freedom, liberation,  being one with the cosmos, etc.  They no longer feel the truth of their pain.  No longer know they live inside a defense. They grab onto  a strange unreal idea and ride with it; just so long as it keeps the truth away:  I hurt.

That is why after patients have deep feelings they come up with many truths about their lives.   It is buried and defended along with the pain.  Thus no one has to give anyone insights; they are already there just waiting for the exit.  And how do they get out”?    They hijack and ride along with the pain.

Let me give you an example from my own life.  Early on,  I had to go out to coffee all of the time first thing in the morning.  I just did it without thinking twice about it. Then the Primal: stuck in the womb, could not get out and I acted it thereafter for decades.  The hidden feeling drove me and I had no idea I was driven.  And if I drank or smoked to keep the pain down, I would still have no idea why I did those thing, which I never did.    But…I had to get out, and if I had been smart or primal enough I would have traced my obsessive ritual back to its source by asking: what am I trying to do…Why silly, I am trying to get out! Pre-primal I would say I need freedom and I want to feel free, but that would not have made any sense.

I had a patient who had a different obsession: she had to fuck all of the time.  (not a dirty word, just an accurate one).  It turns out…..  What are you trying to do?  She said she needed to relieve her tension.  And why?  Because if she did not fuck, her body temperature and blood pressure went through the roof:  she was in danger of dying.    So why fucking?  It was the most basic and deeply rooted instinct.  Its buildup put the body into tremendous stress.  She had to find release through the act-out because she never knew she had an imprint embedded deep down and she never knew that it engendered all that tension.
Hi, I am your doctor.  Any stress lately?  Not that I know of but I think there was a stress event 50 years ago not sure what it was but it raised my body temp and blood pressure a lot:  to this day.  “How would you know that”?  An instinct I guess. I mean why else would I have those chronic  symptoms?  Dunno,

Oh, what is this act-out?   Our  symbolic way to deal with an unconscious concretized memory.  It is like a blind person with no knowledge of his unconscious, trying to shake off a terrible trauma.  He does the best he can, and he comes close, symbolically,  just like my having to go out for coffee every morning.   Surely that obsession meant there is something buried down below.  Even knowing exactly what it is would not change one thing because the insight lives on top of the brain,  while the feeling resides at the bottom.  They are far apart.  Isn’t it amazing that the deep-lying feeling sends messages from below to approximate the trauma without ever saying what it is?   And why is that?   Because if it sent up the whole package; the whole truth, we would be in agony all over again.  And so our merciful brain has found back-up ways to protect us.  It keeps the truth from us even when we go on searching for the truth.  The longer the search the less we discover.  Aah, that dialectic again.   Those poor philosophers; in a constant search that will never be finished because……oh no, wait,  the search is really for pain and it is only the pain that can liberate.  Us.   Does that mean they are looking for pain and  don’t know it?  Yep.

Jesus, Janov, you are so arrogant and sure of yourself.  Is that wrong?  It is better to not be sure when I have lived it?  And when I relive it and my act-outs disappear?    The truth lies in that deep pain, not in the higher level cortex where the search seems to be concentrated.   That is why it cannot be found.   We are looking for results, not causes, and like so much work in psychology, focusing on results cannot reveal arcane causes.  Oh my.  It seems so hopeless.  Nope,  because real hope lies in reliving that very hopelessness that drives so many depressions. And what do we do instead of feeling hopeless and finding causes; we run from it, keeping busy, keep working  and run and run……away from ourselves.  You cannot find your salvation nor yourself that way.

One last note on my act-out.  Why did I choose the trumpet for my instrument?  I was playing in a band, the psychopathic syncopators and I was hitting a high note and it felt like I was screaming……and it was, screaming in the only way I could.  Every week I went to the local mental hospital and played in LA.  With the best musicians around.   We went out for gigs in different venues and all the sax section who had lobotomies  had to hold hands so we wouldn’t lose them.   And all the girls from the area came and danced with the patients on Thursday nights.  One night from the dance floor I heard  “Art.  Art.  Arturo.”  A patient came up and hugged me and we talked.  “What happened to you?”(Hector Acosta)  ! pleaded.  He told me the story.  First of all he was a Mexican so that during battle he had to go down below and secure all the hatches with him inside so if we torpedoed,  the water could not flow into the rest of the battleship and sink us.   Hector was locked inside.   Why?  Cause he was a Mexican.  After months of this he cracked up and spent a long time in mental hospitals.  But it was no different while the blacks on our ship were fighting for their freedom, they were not allowed to touch a gun, and most of what they could do was cook and clean and wear white uniforms to serve the officers.  No one thought that was strange.

To this day I think the girls who came and danced with some psychotics were heroic.  They wanted to help the war effort and us sailors.   And it was wonderful.  I learned more about mental illness playing with my pals then I ever did in classes in school.