"The New Primal Scream"

-by dr. arthur janov
1991
Sigh. Am i just an embarrassingly credulous ninny in the end, like everyone else?
I set myself up as a paragon of humanist skepticism, out to expose all the hokum and bunkum (don't forget the bunkum!) that our deeply ignorant, superstitious culture cooks up...and then, when some fringe ideology happens to push my own elusive buttons, reinforcing some reality in which i WANT to believe, i go running off to Loonyville just like any other believer/member/voter/patient/sheep?
My apologies to sheep, who are a thousand times more dignified and sensible than any human i know.
Primal therapy has endured for five decades, attracting endorsers (non-celebrity and celebrity) who scream about its stunning healing powers, yet is always kept at arm's length (or worse) by the psychiatric/medical establishment - indeed, it couldn't be easier to find voices, some of them quite legitimate, who are happy to discredit or debunk primal therapy.
And yet...when you read janov's work, you can be swept away by the intuitive force of his arguments, and the scientific methodology underpinning them (including measurements of pulse, temperature, brain waves, and blood pressure). Does anyone out there really think that our current psychiatric/medical establishment has any kind of comprehensive understanding of human health, and the proper ways to maintain/restore it? I promise you, it is only conceit or wishful thinking to imagine that we are beyond the "guesswork in a white coat" stage. Does current psychiatry do more good than bad? I think the answer is at best a weak maybe. According to janov, one of psychiatry's primary failings is that it seeks to make everyone "normal", blindly assuming that's a good thing (the most pernicious example i myself can name being those cash cows known as "marriage counselors", who refuse to accept what every other branch of science has long since embraced - that humans are not monogamous). According to janov, the greatest failing of psychiatry is that it isolates mind from body...and correspondingly, the greatest failing of medicine is that it isolates body from mind. Establishment psychiatry operates on the cognitive level, but that's not where the problems lie, says janov. The central tenet of primal therapy is that sickness, neurosis, and addiction are all the result of a lifetime's worth of repressed pain, and that only by reliving and integrating those pains can we heal. A whole lot of crying is involved (the "primal scream" image). We use our cognitive abilities to deal with and contextualize pain, so the younger we are, the less our brains are able to understand or rationalize painful events, ergo an unprocessed trauma from infancy can be the most crippling event in a person's life, re-emerging years or decades later in neurosis or disease. Janov offers research into how pain affects the nervous system, and the coping methods by which our minds shut down and compartmentalize traumas too profound (or inconvenient or "unacceptable"). Janov claims 100% effectiveness in patients who see the process through. The only major independent study found that number to be closer to 40% - but that discrepancy doesn't bother me, as i think even 40% success, when dealing with deep-seated neurosis, is little short of stunning. I think i understand the context in which janov made his 100% claim, but the one reality that both primal and establishment psychiatry tend to side-step is how essentially dysfunctional our society is, in terms of human health. We live in a fear-based culture of profound touch deprivation, emotional/sexual repression, psychological alienation, and varying degrees of sociopathic violence (both emotional and physical, and both outward- and inward-directed)...as the NORM. Even if you were able to "heal" someone, the minute you let them out the door, the damage would begin re-accruing.
Janov warns of the industry of improperly-trained primal therapists which has existed over the years, and that primal done wrong can do more harm than good (the sort of self-serving claim that normally triggers alarm bells in a good skeptic).
So is it all quackery? Cult nonsense? The notion that daddy was abusive and mommy never rescued us, so decades later we get cancer, can feel like a stretch. He does acknowledge the genetic component in disease...yet to that i would add that we are only beginning to understand how genetic development is affected by experience. We are not born with an immutable DNA blueprint - our genetic expression is constantly evolving, through gene clusters that either trigger or stay dormant (see "The Agile Gene", by matt ridley). Am i the first to suggest that janov may not have needed make so unqualified a concession to genetics?
He does go on and on about birth being the core human trauma, yet i find part of myself leaning toward those researchers who flat-out deny the ability to recall or relive infant experiences. Plus, how can something as natural as birth cripple a child for life? And yet...the way we conduct birth in our culture is not especially "natural", particularly in regard to drugging the hell out of the mother. Whatever enters her system goes to the baby's more vulnerable system as well, so how many newborns have been forced to enter the world (perhaps the most profound moment of human existence) completely whacked out of their minds and unable to respond normally? What, we think that won't have any effect on a child's development? Or that mutilating a newborn's genitals won't have some deep psychological resonance? Or nearly being choked to death by an umbilical cord?
Critics cite a lack of rigorous protocols or controls in the extant research, and that's hard to dismiss. And janov's claims of "curing" homosexuality are troubling...but perhaps within context, not asinine. Homosexuality is such a hot-button issue, it can be nigh-impossible to view it objectively, so let's use a more benign example. Suppose janov claimed that he could "cure" women who like to be spanked. Is it ridiculous to propose that any predilection toward "rough stuff" might have childhood psychological origins? In that light (and given what we're learning about the malleability of genetics), is it entirely spurious to propose that homosexuality might not be so easily explained by simply stating people are "born that way", or not?
Two trainee therapists who left janov's institute and took many patients with them, reported that most admitted to "faking their primals". And yet...for the past couple decades, the psychiatric establishment has embraced the hell out of "repressed memory". And a parallel, far less controversial school of therapy has existed since the seventies, called "primal integration". It was founded in Canada, and takes a holistic/educational approach that differs from janov's medical approach, but rests on the same basic principles.
When all is said and done, did i fall for this because i think lennon's "Plastic Ono Band" is his most brilliant album? Maybe.
Read the book for yourself, and get back to me.