Sunday, May 3, 2015
You Mean the Brain is an Orphan?
There is a picture in a new science magazine of a doctor holding a human brain declaring that she was going delve deep in the brain to find answers to so many maladies. (This is the year of the brain, after all). Wait a minute: what if the answers lie not in the brain but in the parents' brains who affected and infected that brain? Don’t we want to know what environment that brain grew up in? Was it an orphan? Then almost for sure there will be brain impairment later in life. And looking the brain cells will tell us nothing of this. If that brain had no loving and warmth in the first weeks and months of life the brain will suffer but it won’t declare it. All I am saying is that life in any form lives in an environment and is shaped by it, so how could we leave it out of the equation?
Could we ever understand ADD by looking at the brain in isolation? Leaving out the events that were at the origin of the cause. Could a kidney specialist know that his sick patient drank for thirty years? Just by examining the kidneys? Sometimes. But not always. That is precisely what is wrong with the Behaviorists; taking behavior as the sine qua non. And worse, trying to change behavior without reference to what those behaviors were, and how they shaped us.. So we confine our field of inquiry to a vary narrow space that lets no new related information in. They take an isolated brain without parents and try to figure out why patients have those compulsions or obsessions, and then try to change behavior into some “wholesome” idea of how it should be. They force a behavior detour even against the biology of the patient. His whole system moves to the left when it should move to the right. It militates to the thinking cortex instead of the feeling one. And he tries to obey; thinking before he feels so he is not impulsive. Looking at full ashtrays to get over the urge to smoke and many other ploys that never look at causes. Above all, not understanding the imprinted memories lodged in the lower reaches of the brain that are deeply embedded, which force and drive behaviors. There are roots to attitudes and behaviors. We are not decorticates rummaging around the world. But some therapies act as though we were; extracting the lonely brain for study without regard to its history. Psychotherapy cannot be a-historic unless we are doing brief YMCA Counseling: “You know you need to exercise more.”
Would we treat heart disease without knowing how tense the patient is or how he never exercises? We would be roaming in the dark. When we say we are social animals it means we are affected by social events; we do not live in a vacuum. We must study the total interplay of our physical self with outside events. How can anyone get over his depression without knowing the originating events? Yet that is exactly what we do. Give pills for depression and if that does not work we give more powerful pills and then surgery for the brain and maybe electroshock, all without digging deep enough to observe those forces “alive.” Going on blindly without seeing the brain at work deep down. Yes we can do that. We see the brain live, meaning alive and living. We see the pain memory and what it does and how strong it is; finally we see how it drives behavior. Did I say “behavior”? Yes I did. We see origins; no more guesswork. Aah.
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ReplyDeleteVery clearly written and even with a touch of humor for me in the statement of absurdities practiced in some forms of therapy today.
Great post Art.
Art: In response to your post about your forthcoming book on rearing healthy children, I would consider that one of the most important books in history and consider it an honour to advertise it on my forthcoming website (details later date). I can recall in fact not a single person outside the primal world who "gets it" regarding how to treat children. However, when waiting for the library to open in the mornings here in Portugal, there is a youngish man who carries his 3 - 4 year old son lovingly and calmly and places him in his car before driving off to work. In two years, not once have I seen any trace of anger, irritation or impatience. He talks to him without trying to control, override or bully in any way and kisses him lovingly. The boy is always calm and alert. If only all parents were like that all the time. I hope your book becomes na international bestseller. My God, does the world need it. Gary
DeleteWell,
ReplyDeleteI just finished listening to Stefan Molyneuxs 'Bomb in the Brain' video Part 3 and stumbled over his 'Cure' section.
Seeing as he quoted so many studies on epigenetics and referred to his 'friend' Gabor Mate, I was rather hoping he would have made a statement about more than just 'talking psychotherapy' and (good grief), CBT.
What a terrible shame that Stefan's epigenetic & evolutionary rhetoric ends with a vindication for CBT. . . It's as if he's ultimately working for the zeitgeist. . .
I have to say that as soon as I saw the 'proliferation' of his opinions on line and the degree to which he likes to talk and lecture and monologue (way more than me - and that HAS to be a LOT)! - I was a little bemused by him PERSONALLY.
What a shame he could not offer feeling therapy (Primal) even a mention in his MASSIVE dialogue. . .
Paul G.
My outlook:
DeleteStefan Molyneux's work is useful to the end of bringing attention to some serious problems, and he quite well describes them from an empirical-finding outlook. But his solutions show a lack of understanding, of course.
He's an intellectual who has over-elevated the value of intellectualism. They all do it. They glorify their own defense systems rather than see them for what they are.
He believes he's mastered his pain but he hasn't. You can see it in his face and his manner - he's got an intellectual lid locked down on a (still) high-pressure pot. He thinks he has achieved feeling, but he doesn't know that he doesn't know the difference. His overt crocodile tearing makes me cringe a bit, to be honest.
Regardless, again, I think he has made an excellent contribution in his own right. He should be celebrated for that much I believe.
Hi Andrew,
Delete-"He's an intellectual who has over-elevated the value of intellectualism. They all do it. They glorify their own defense systems rather than see them for what they are"-.
But it's not just intellectuals who do this. . . What you've described IS the human condition for 99% of us (I do it too, though is it really "Doing"?)
What rankles me about some of these 'intellectuals' is that they have the neo-cortical capacity (conceit?) to keep re-defining the boundaries of their defenses according to the varying social environments they encounter. Or in other words, the intellectuals are often infuriatingly adaptable (capricious?) INSIDE of the social paradigm. Put these intellectuals in the Siberian Forest to survive for a fortnight and you would see something completely different again, what exactly I'm not sure; but after the event you might be going: "Oh shit! NOW I get it"!
I watched Stefan doing 'ad - hoc' psycho analysis on his radio show, whereby to my mind he seemed to be totally destroying some people whilst favouring others. . . But more importantly, HE seemed to be the person MORE important than the callers who undoubtedly gave him the benefit of the doubt and thus the 'moral high ground'. . .
And yet he describes himself as a mere blogger and philosopher !
To be perfectly honest Andrew, watching Stefan convinced me of only one thing:
The seemingly endless denial and conceit of us humans in our attempts to avoid pain.
This is also why I would now be very careful about how EXACTLY I were to promote Primal because us humans are so willing to hijack an idea and use it to prove the opposite.
Paul G.
Hi Art ,Apropos heart surgery :
ReplyDeletea twelve months old baby just underwent that kind of medical treatment...
Has he any chance to "forget" that physical and for sure mental stress in the course of his
recovering process.
Imagine that tiny chest has been opened and for 5 hours the (female surgeon for that matter..)
worked on it ...!
Besides the the fact that he is now under morphine -something perhaps gets through his defense line-to his remembering centers .
Hopefully he will succeed and live happily with his twin brother till 2100......
Yours emanuel
Talking about orphans...My cousin and his partner just succeeded in their second attempt to "buy" themselves a child. Weird as it sounds it can't be further away from reality. Let me get deeper into it. He and his beloved Mathew wanted so badly to experience parenthood that both agreed to not only rent a woman's womb, (so there's a market for those purposes, naïve me), but to make sure the egg one of them -finally his husband- was to fertilize not even belonged to that woman but to anotherone who in her turn would donate hers for who knows what philantropic purposes. It seems they wanted to make sure the newborn baby would never ever be able to connect any dots to his/her ADN lineage (that's no surprise if we pay attention to their own childhoods, filled with overwhelming motherhood and, of course, deprived of loving fathers, too busy trying to comply with the Patriarchal legacy of productivity and profitability). Whatever the case, they both deeply believe they have the right to build up a "normal" family despite the fact that none of them is able to carry, let alone labour, the forthcoming child. At firts attempt the unborn succumbed to those plans at sudden death, short before it was brought to light. No problem, we'll get a better carrying mother, the best that money can buy (what better investment for our money that that of helping a woman in financial disgrace) and we'll try again. And they did. Hannah finally agreed to be born regardless of the despair she will definitely carry and see grow month after month as she was taken away from her carrying mother right after birth.
ReplyDeleteBoth Mathew, the genetic father, and my cousin, the "second" father, are proudly filling ever since, their facebook walls with countless pictures of the new family. In their defense I'd say this is a habit of heterosexual beginners as well. Did they ever consider the right of the baby to chose her place in the equation? No. They simply acted as their thinking brains thought was best for their common goal. Of course a couple of heterosexual partners is not deprived of that evolutionary impuls (rather it is driven unconsciously by it), but in a way, and despite the dangerous liaisons involving natural progeny, family crap is family crap after all. I would beg the reader not to get me wrong, but I won't. And that is because however much heterosexual partners fail to express love, however much homosexual couples will care for their purchased babis, they are litteraly stolen from her moms, and not even given the chance to be breastfeeded for a minimum lapse of time. If kittens do get plenary indulgence in that regard before adoption, why does not a human being merit the same? . Of course the carrying mother played her part, making herself believe she didn't feel anything for the baby she had worn in her womb for 9 months. She got her paycheck. It was not her firts successful attempt into eugenic business.
Hi Lars,
ReplyDeleteIts amazing what people can do when they have cast iron gates / no access to real feelings.
Having defiled, deforested and overpopulated this one, we will soon be populating other planets and congratulating ourselves heartily on our meritorious achievements.
Paul G.
An email comment: Part 1
ReplyDelete"Evolution Will Keep CBT Only As Long As It Is Needed
Why is Art constantly ranting about CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) and other “half-therapies”. Why! What is the deep lying reason? He is right (and I’m one evidence of that his Primal Principal is working). However, he won’t get credentials easier for that reason due to missing scientific papers, which none has seen so far. The most important thing is that the holistic approach to the Primal Therapy must cover both psychological, physical and social complications/repressions in a free interdisciplinary mix.
Abraham Maslow, who also was a genius who was ahead of his time, tried, for decades, to justify dynamic psychotherapy and self-discovery. “ If we have a need for vitamin B12, psychotherapists can say, that we have a need to be loved or a need for safety.” He was, however, “cool” and knew that blind love for one’s subject leads to subjective conclusions and a missed divergent truth. “In the effort to achieve “scientific,” uninvolved, don’t-care objectivity, the anthropologist, for instance, may buy the whole package that he mistakenly ties to this kind of objectivity. He may become scientistic rather than scientific, may feel it necessary to drown his human feelings for the people he studies, may quantify whether necessary or not, and may wind up with accurate details and a false whole”.
Maslow referred to common phrasings as “science can tell us nothing about why, only about how”. “Science is not an ideology or an ethic or a value system; it cannot help us to choose between good and evil.” “The unavoidable implication is, then, that science is only an instrument, only a technology, to be used equally by either good men or villains.”
I don’t know which buttons Art is pressing in my feelings. It hurts me when he is using/pleading/referring to his scientific proofs as a weapon against “half-therapies”. The realization of the Primal Principle that correctly, individually, applied may cure childhood traumas and resolve neuroses does not work in general. Evolutionary survival mechanisms are not only psychologically strong, they also form, together with physical and social factors a complex pattern of dead ends.
Within the 200.000 shrinks, Art (we) are usually ranting against, there are a number of bright people. Louis Cozolino, well known to Art and his pals, has written a book “The Making of a Therapist”. The book is being read by current and future therapists among wich several certainly CBT-related (and I hope Primal Therapy-related). A wonderful book showing the imperative of a “skinless” sensitivity both towards himself, as a therapist, as against his patient. The book fits my time with the Primal Principle and the way I learned to see, interpret and understand myself in my social interactions. I truly hope it will be a “must-read” at Duke University, Duke Integrative Medicine, in their Leadership Program in Integrative Healthcare."
Part 2: "There is now in my life, a woman, Eva, who worked as a researcher, leader and pedagogue in a well-recognized university. As the successor to her father and grandfather, she has led, lived and breathed research, in search for the truth. During their combined 100 years of research, they have in their environment, probably, seen more talents come on, develop and flourish to Nobel Prize candidates and laureates than there are patients who can stand up and say that they have been cured by PT.
ReplyDeleteDespite her compact research background, my friend Eva has become completely convinced about the possibilities of the Primal Principle/Evolution in Reverse. She knew me already when I was a charming (her words), headstrong teenager. Our paths parted among other things due to the consequences of my epilepsy. We did not see each other for 53 years, though, we had another in mind. As a result of our re-established emotional ties, due to my book about my epileptic journey and due to Art Janov’s Reflections, her approach to the mechanical truths of Science have been revised.
Eva has, over four years, using interdisciplinary methods, in a sensational way regained normal vital signs, throwing her diabetes and goiter medications and lost 30 pounds. She is very fond of Art Janov, possibly more than I.
You shouldn’t incriminate/nag at cognitive therapists, Art! Evolution will only keep them as long as they are needed!
Jan Johnsson"
We must do something about our way of thinking! NOW.
DeleteEvolution does not care about what we think... but evolution is affected in the sense of delay in view of what we believe. In other words... our thinking causes a hell because we "entitle" us to believe in something that does not benefit the human foundation! We need love to develop in a healthy sense of what evolution purposes! We also know how the "process" must be in order to experience love. January we know today.
Frank
Another email comment:
ReplyDelete" Dear Art thanks for writing.
I always feel a little saner, after reading something you wrote. Its maddening, that people who are often so far removed from their feelings seem to have so much influence on the profession. And yet after all this time, they the chronic followers of CBT, have made no progress, in helping people. I feel that's because, there are more interested in just having the power of an authority figure. They are looking for laws, that can turn therapy, into something like physics. But instead, are perpetually chasing their own tails. They won't feel it, and won't look deeply, because they don't speak the language, and don't have a feeling nature to begin with. "
Hi Jan and Art & 'email comment',
ReplyDeleteThe issue here seems to be whether or not imprinted traumas during the critical window can be ameliorated at all through indirect intervention, alternatives , palliatives , exercises etc.
Art has stated that it is physiologically impossible to reverse methylation any other way than through the DIRECT regaining and reliving of those imprinted 'memories', so that they become re-connected as opposed to split off and incarcerated in the repression of gene expression. Blah.
I believe him. I believe him because of what I understand about biology & chemistry and mechanics and physics and from my own profound emotional experiences and observations of INGRAINED behaviour in myself and others.
For these other palliatives to 'work' (I have tried many) I have always had to 'believe' something fantastic about them and thus having regressed back to old ways later have realised that what I believed was actually a fantasy producing another different kind of mild (therefore socially acceptable) psychosis, an image of cure, not real cure. Scheherazade. . .
Don't get me wrong, I also know I could live a healthier lifestyle, but to gain that now I will have to 'go sick' for a substantial period of time because the current work demands on me keep my act outs firmly in place. My biggest act out is of course my unhealthy lifestyle filled with substitutes for the love lost in infancy. . .
A vicious circle not easily broken and though I am now ensconced in my new bedsit it still feels like another one of those 7 'places' I have put my head down in over the last 5 years and NOT my own. I still feel 'on the run' and I still feel a fraud, even more than before.
Paul G.
knowledge about epigenes is promoting all kinds of approaches including minfulness... is epicenetic still useful as a primal pain index?
ReplyDeletethis outside half science could be the perfect companion for all those half therapies. what will be left after the epigenetic pill? a system that is precisely regulated from outside towards perfect obedience.
vuko,
Deletebrilliant example of the power of reductionism. . . how it 'incorporates' half of what is needed to make the other half impotent.
Or another way of putting it is: "I agree with you so that I can rob your ideas". . .
Paul G.