Today I want to discuss the importance of theory not in an abstract way but in terms of what can help us humans.
There is an article in the New York Times today about a study of those with high blood pressure who took medicine for lowering it. Later, it seems there was a slight increase in the appearance of cancer. Why should that be? “Lowering” means ultimately repression. Basically, pushing down the symptom, keeping it on hold and putting pressure so it won’t rise again. In my view there is most often an imprinted force pushing blood pressure high to compensate for the unwanted intruder—an imprinted traumatic memory. So the blood pressure is high, let us say, because of a mother who was totally depressed while carrying, and had to be given heavy anesthesia during the birth process. The newborn suffers. The result may be a tendency toward a rise in blood pressure in the offspring. Let us not be simplistic. The pain goes to the areas of vulnerability. Perhaps there is an inherited tendency. But the high blood pressure will be permanent so long as the imprint remains engraved in the system and is not resolved. So the system is reacting normally due to an abnormal intrusion. The disease is not high blood pressure but what caused it to rise. Of course the blood pressure is pathologic and must be addressed. But we are attacking a normal response to an abnormal input.
Now for the theory. I have written many times over about how each of us will die. Some cancer, some strokes and heart disease. We have found that those with massive repression beginning in the womb and extending into infancy and childhood are more prone to cancer; the hypothesis here is repression without any outlets. It can lead to epilepsy and/or cancer. Those are by and large the withdrawn, introspective, depressive types whom I call parasympaths, those controlled by the parasympathetic nervous system. (see my Primal Healing). Others are the anxiety types, those whose carrying mother may have been highly anxious and tense. These are the externally driven types, the on-the-go individuals. It is when these individuals are forced to stop being on the go, running here and there, that they run the risk of a stroke or heart attack. If they fall ill and cannot act out they are in danger of a heart attack. The engine is racing but it has no place to go.
Cleary, in my scheme, anything that increases repression thereby increases the possibility of cancer. So sleeping pills, tranquilizers and blood pressure medication to lower the reactions to the imprint can induce cancer. Is that not obvious? Those who push down pain enhance repression. And that puts the system under great pressure. So all the efforts to change the symptoms come with a price. It is the symptom that is normal; it occurs for a specific reason; however, the reason is rather recondite and therefore not obvious. The underlying imprint forces the system to deviate; that is, to react abnormally, at least in the eyes of the treating doctor. And when the doctor focuses on the behavior or symptom he is treating the ostensible problem but not the real one. And that is why his treatment will ultimately fail. And if the doctor is predominantly left-brain the treatment is almost guaranteed to fail. For she, the professional, cannot see beyond what the patient says, cannot see the underlying feeling because she cannot see her own. She is forced to skim, both in her life and in her practice of therapy. And unfortunately, skimming won’t fix anything, which is fine for an actor but not scientists.
Primal Therapy addresses feelings, that is why a person who does not openly suffer, who has no access to feelings rarely chooses to come to us. She wants to go on skimming, going through the motions of cure without its content., She secretly wants to remain neurotic. In our patients there is usually too much access to feelings; there is active suffering. It is why we may be called the therapy of last resort.
I don’t think many of us would suffer high blood pressure if not for experience beginning in the womb. Of course I am not excluding genetics, at all. But I don’t’ think genetics accounts for the almost universal appearance of high blood pressure. Our research on high blood pressure in our patients resulted in an overall 24 point decrease in diastolic readings. And the appearance of cancer in our patients after a year of therapy is very low.
Let us not forget that repression is highest the earlier a trauma exists because the trauma is life-threatening, so womb events and birth trauma account for massive pain and therefore heavy repression. That is why I think first-line traumas that exist from womb life and infancy lead to life-threatening illness. That is, life threatening imprints result in life threatening illness later on.
So how do we know that the high blood pressure is normal given the trauma? Because when we address and resolve the trauma the blood pressure changes radically……it goes to real normal.





