On Psychological Medicine

Here is what I think is proper medicine in psychotherapy:  it must be always a collaboration between patient and doctor.  It is not something done to the patient as if she were only a research subject. It means that her input has to be considered as a leg of the diagnostic procedure; and that is what seems to be missing in so much psychotherapy today.  The patient is “done to.”  There is a certain set of procedures, which is fixedly applied to the patient without her input whatsoever.  Therefore, a critical leg of the diagnostic procedure is missing and the diagnosis is faulty.  It has to be since a critical input is not there.


The problem is that there is a certain set of assumptions that are decided before the patient ever enters the room, which are then a priori draped over him, and the therapy begins. I use the word, “draped,” because these assumptions then sequester the real patient before them, and she can no longer be seen.  All they see is the image decided on helter-skelter.  And the patient must fit into this image, rather than vice versa…getting all the facts and seeing how they lead to a diagnosis.  How the theory fits the patient; how the diagnosis emanates from those facts and data.  There is rarely a diagnosis that can be changed to fit the new information.  So she is squeezed into a diagnostic category to make it all fit.

So here we have, “got the tools to be applied and don’t let the facts interfere with their use.“  Well don’t we do that, as well?  We try to change our hypothesis when necessary but our hypotheses and theory derived from decades of research and observation.  It wasn’t a decided on procedure irrespective of the facts.  In brief, the facts led to an ever-changing diagnostic approach.  Not so loose as to be a sieve but rather something with a key structure that leaves room for change.  It is a fine line.

How does that work in practice?  One simple point:  I originally never believed in birth primals at the start and told patients it was ridiculous.  I took my lead from a university neurology department who advised me how impossible it was.  So I eliminated the idea and took it out of my diagnostic armamentarium.  But the facts kept piling up; patients who came from many different countries did in fact relive birth, and then we did research on it, testing brainwaves and biochemistry. Reliving birth was filmed and measured, and the results were inescapable.  It not only was possible but major biologic change resulted from the reliving.  We never shut down the idea totally; we waited and studied it to see what it was and what it did.  And it did exactly what the patients insisted what it did.  It changed them; lowered their blood pressure and body temperature.  It was a collaborative process, which included the patient’s input. I cannot imagine it being done without that input.

Reliving stopped anxiety attacks. Then we needed to know why. And we were off and yet another study of panic and anxiety attacks.  What were they and where did they come from?  The result of our work is found in the World Congress of Psychiatry (Spring 2013).  Our work evolves exactly because we leave room for the new.

Now let us turn back, (and I do mean “back”), to the “rebirthers”. They saw something dramatic in it and decided world-wide to practice it randomly. They saw a cure-all, done in an afternoon, some done in swimming pools, other done without the water.  And what did that “I have the tools and will find patients to fit in,” idea accomplish? Many patients completely broken down and coming to us for help to re-establish their sanity.  It is now a predictable result because these patients were victims of the “tool box.”  No studies or research, no seeing if patients can go deep with impunity.  And they cannot.

In fact, I have yet to see, among all those mock practitioners any serious research to accompany their work.  They found a name, Primal, and a technique, Rebirthing, and off they went, using well-researched ideas as their own. Who suffered?  Patients.  Even Steve Jobs was fooled into thinking he was going to a legitimate primal center. There are those who see the title “doctor,” and cannot imagine that a “doctor” would engage in chicanery.  Alas, they can and do.  Few want to put in the years of study again to learn a new approach, so they make off with the name and voila! They are primal therapists.

The hypocrisy goes on:  there is a man in Sweden who has spend decades denigrating primal therapy, all the while practicing it in secret,  Tomas Videgard.  Here is a letter in part from one of his “patients“: “It is difficult to know what he did to me.  Pressed me down to a painful trauma and refused to take me out of it. He told me that he was chosen by you to become a primal therapist.  But he skipped the whole thing (the training).  It was a nightmare.”

I cannot vouch for the letter’s accuracy but it sounds a lot like other reports I have received.  And it highlights the danger of those using the term Primal to practice a so-called primal therapy.  I am often asked, “Why don’t they use some other name?”  The answer is that with the name goes years of research and practice, which they take as their own, giving them a cachet they have not earned. And worse, it allows them to damage patients in our name.  Since there are literally hundreds of so-called primal therapists advertising the therapy, it is not surprising that those who are hurting and need help can be fooled.