Why do I Mistrust The Intuition By Cognitive Therapists? By Jan Johnson

Why do I Mistrust The Intuition By Cognitive Therapists?
Because I sometimes get asked how I dare to be so sure of my judgmental attitude to Cognitive psychology, I have tried to identify my basic reasons, guided by the Primal Theory and critical thoughts from Kahneman’s “Thinking, Fast and Slow”.

Having been involved in Primal therapy during four decades and having worked in various positions with human resources and recruitment experts in my career, I have met and gotten to know (even privately) a number of psychologists. Most of them have been ambitious and genuine professionals, whether they have worked in the therapy context, or if they worked as selection or test psychologists. I had, according to a female friend, since my teens a psychological aptitude (whatever that is?), and I can say that I have mostly had a positive relationship to this profession.

However, my attitude to the psychologic corps has over the years become increasingly split as my knowledge of the brain and the feelings has deepened when I experienced a fascinating demystification of my problems caused by an epileptic stigma which was caused by a painful and horrific birthing process. During the years, it took to be cured, Primal Therapy and the understanding of the evolutionary process played a crucial role.

The more I hear about Cognitive Therapy treatment from different contexts, the more skeptical I have been. The lack of cure causes an intellectual, short term attitude to reason and to medicate depressions away, instead of feeling / reliving the cause of the underlying anxiety and pain. My frustration is all the greater that the alternative to Cognitive Therapy, for example, Primal Therapy, for various reasons do not seem practically capable of filling the endless need to be met.

Add to that the fact that many sufferers / patients choose Cognitive therapy / medication as a delusion and a quick fix. By repressing their anxiety / pain, they think they have found a rapid solution, but in most cases, they may soon find another quick solution, etc., etc., an eternal recurrence. All this, of course, plays into the hands of the Pharmaceutical industry that develops and markets painkillers, by the name of science, that patients in the absence of natural solutions are forced to eat at an accelerating extent to enable society to function.

An experienced psychotherapist is skilled in working out what is going on in her/his patients mind and has good intuition what the patient will say next. Why? Because the shrink and the patient are having a left brain oriented intellectual / verbal communication. As a consequence it is tempting to the shrink to conclude how the patient will do in the next near future. However, this conclusion is not equally justified. Why? Because the medium / long term forecasting is a different task dominated by deep lying (2nd and 1st line) feelings which the shrink has not had the opportunity to learn. This is the main reason why psychologists in spite of certain skills in their tasks, mainly fail.

They have not learned to identify the unpredictable situations in which intuition will betray them. These situations are due to unique 2nd and 1st line experiences / imprints, from early childhood and from life before birth, in their patients. This shortcoming to identify the patients history is further confused / enhanced by the shrink's own, unidentified, unique and unresolved imprints. The shrink and the patient can share and draw conclusions from intellectual reasoning and agree on short-term solutions. However, prediction of long term cures, based on intuitions about not relived feelings / imprints, both on the shrink’s and the patients’s side, always ends in a betrayal. To claim correct intuitions in an unpredictable situation are self-delusional at best, often worse.

In the absence of valid hints, intuitive “hits” are either due to luck or lies. If you find this conclusion surprising, you have a stubborn belief that intuition is magic. Remember the rule that intuition cannot be trusted in the absence of stable regularities in the environment. For example, in Primal Therapy a number of hints, to follow your development in the therapeutical process, are being used. The most important of these hints are the vital signs (pulse, blood pressure and body temperature), which can be measured regularly before and after sessions. The more repressed, imprinted 1st line pain the patient can relive the more normal and stable the vital sign. Mainly a cured Primal patient has healthy vital signs which is one of the prerequisites for a long and full life. How often can that be said of patients undergoing Cognitive therapy?

I’m not looking for one right general truth of existence. What I am looking for is the individual human right to our own inner truth, which, if it becomes clouded by the repressed pain due to lack of love or neglect, leads to a distorted and neurotic personality. Moreover, if  people with these shortcomings under the cover of psychiatric expertise treat other people according to standard manuals, how can we ever get a healthy society?

Jan Johnsson