Art Janov, one of the pioneers of fetal and early infant experiences and future mental health issues, offers a robust vision of how the earliest traumas of life can percolate through the brains, minds and lives of individuals. He focuses on both the shifting tides of brain emotional systems and the life-long consequences that can result, as well as the novel interventions, and clinical understanding, that need to be implemented in order to bring about the brain-mind changes that can restore affective equanimity. The transitions from feelings of persistent affective turmoil to psychological wholeness, requires both an understanding of the brain changes and a therapist that can work with the affective mind at primary-process levels. Life Before Birth, is a manifesto that provides a robust argument for increasing attention to the neuro-mental lives of fetuses and infants, and the widespread ramifications on mental health if we do not. Without an accurate developmental history of troubled minds, coordinated with a recognition of the primal emotional powers of the lowest ancestral regions of the human brain, therapists will be lost in their attempt to restore psychological balance.
Jaak Panksepp, Ph.D.
Bailey Endowed Chair of Animal Well Being Science
Washington State University
Dr. Janov’s essential insight—that our earliest experiences strongly influence later well being—is no longer in doubt. Thanks to advances in neuroscience, immunology, and epigenetics, we can now see some of the mechanisms of action at the heart of these developmental processes. His long-held belief that the brain, human development, and psychological well being need to studied in the context of evolution—from the brainstem up—now lies at the heart of the integration of neuroscience and psychotherapy.
Grounded in these two principles, Dr. Janov continues to explore the lifelong impact of prenatal, birth, and early experiences on our brains and minds. Simultaneously “old school” and revolutionary, he synthesizes traditional psychodynamic theories with cutting-edge science while consistently highlighting the limitations of a strict, “top-down” talking cure. Whether or not you agree with his philosophical assumptions, therapeutic practices, or theoretical conclusions, I promise you an interesting and thought-provoking journey.
Lou Cozolino, PsyD, Professor of Psychology, Pepperdine University
In Life Before Birth Dr. Arthur Janov illuminates the sources of much that happens during life after birth. Lucidly, the pioneer of primal therapy provides the scientific rationale for treatments that take us through our original, non-verbal memories—to essential depths of experience that the superficial cognitive-behavioral modalities currently in fashion cannot possibly touch, let alone transform.
Gabor Maté MD, author of In The Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters With Addiction
An expansive analysis! This book attempts to explain the impact of critical developmental windows in the past, implores us to improve the lives of pregnant women in the present, and has implications for understanding our children, ourselves, and our collective future. I’m not sure whether primal therapy works or not, but it certainly deserves systematic testing in well-designed, assessor-blinded, randomized controlled clinical trials.
K.J.S. Anand, MBBS, D. Phil, FAACP, FCCM, FRCPCH, Professor of Pediatrics, Anesthesiology, Anatomy & Neurobiology, Senior Scholar, Center for Excellence in Faith and Health, Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare System
A baby's brain grows more while in the womb than at any time in a child's life. Life Before Birth: The Hidden Script That Rules Our Lives is a valuable guide to creating healthier babies and offers insight into healing our early primal wounds. Dr. Janov integrates the most recent scientific research about prenatal development with the psychobiological reality that these early experiences do cast a long shadow over our entire lifespan. With a wealth of experience and a history of successful psychotherapeutic treatment, Dr. Janov is well positioned to speak with clarity and precision on a topic that remains critically important.
Paula Thomson, PsyD, Associate Professor, California State University, Northridge & Professor Emeritus, York University
"I am enthralled.
Dr. Janov has crafted a compelling and prophetic opus that could rightly dictate PhD thesis topics for decades to come. Devoid of any "New Age" pseudoscience,
this work never strays from scientific orthodoxy and yet is perfectly accessible and
downright fascinating to any lay person interested in the mysteries of the human psyche."
Dr. Bernard Park, MD, MPH
His new book “Life Before Birth: The Hidden Script that Rules Our Lives” shows that primal therapy, the lower-brain therapeutic method popularized in the 1970’s international bestseller “Primal Scream” and his early work with John Lennon, may help alleviate depression and anxiety disorders, normalize blood pressure and serotonin levels, and improve the functioning of the immune system.
One of the book’s most intriguing theories is that fetal imprinting, an evolutionary strategy to prepare children to cope with life, establishes a permanent set-point in a child's physiology. Baby's born to mothers highly anxious during pregnancy, whether from war, natural disasters, failed marriages, or other stressful life conditions, may thus be prone to mental illness and brain dysfunction later in life. Early traumatic events such as low oxygen at birth, painkillers and antidepressants administered to the mother during pregnancy, poor maternal nutrition, and a lack of parental affection in the first years of life may compound the effect.
In making the case for a brand-new, unified field theory of psychotherapy, Dr. Janov weaves together the evolutionary theories of Jean Baptiste Larmarck, the fetal development studies of Vivette Glover and K.J.S. Anand, and fascinating new research by the psychiatrist Elissa Epel suggesting that telomeres—a region of repetitive DNA critical in predicting life expectancy—may be significantly altered during pregnancy.
After explaining how hormonal and neurologic processes in the womb provide a blueprint for later mental illness and disease, Dr. Janov charts a revolutionary new course for psychotherapy. He provides a sharp critique of cognitive behavioral therapy, psychoanalysis, and other popular “talk therapy” models for treating addiction and mental illness, which he argues do not reach the limbic system and brainstem, where the effects of early trauma are registered in the nervous system.
“Life Before Birth: The Hidden Script that Rules Our Lives” is scheduled to be published by NTI Upstream in October 2011, and has tremendous implications for the future of modern psychology, pediatrics, pregnancy, and women’s health.
Editor
Re LSD: I had a short term girlfriend who told me that she has had lifelong psychological consequences to a or some LSD trips that she had over 40 years ago! As for me I had enough bad trips just from the weak weed of 30-40 years ago so I was always afraid to try anything harder (the marijuana these days is MUCH more potent!). Not that LSD or mescaline was around in my circles, but even had it been, I would have refused. Once some jerk offerred me LSD and I said no. This made him mad, imagine! That in turm made me furious that anyone would try to pressure me!I have never been one to conform to peer pressure. And to think that this guy became a New Age type chiropractor with all sorts of New Age knicknacks and crystals, and living in the country in a round hippy house and all the rest of it.
ReplyDeleteIncidentally, it was Janov`s remarks on marijuana in "The Primal Scream" that first turned me on to his works. It was the first I had read anything that made sense of my bad trips on marijuana.
Marco
Hello Art. No wonder and how convenient then, for powers that be (were?) to keep posting news about far distant planets they say may host intelligent life (whatever this may be) as we experience it here. It is consistent with the dark agenda aimed to keep sheep in the fold. I still believe Life can be healed again on this planet. We as newcomers sure cannot be found guilty of the so called global warming of a 4500 billion year old planet. I wish both You and France all the good you deserve. Lars
ReplyDeleteThanks Lars Always need good wishes. art
DeleteHow Pain Can Be Translated / Intellectualized Into Beuty / Feelings / Emotions.
ReplyDeleteWhy Don't We Know We Are in Pain? That is today's question in Janov's Reflections. Yes, it is certainly interesting that the lack of awareness / consciousness is a fact. It demonstrates the rational intelligence in the process of evolution, which maneuvers the majority of us through life, with success, though, at the price of suffering. Most of the works in our daily life, like arts, politics, business, etc., are screaming out their statements about the pain that are inprinted in us, all the time without a break.
Bach, Picasso, and Janov are outstanding people who are among those who are / were in pain, suffering something they didn’t know much about. However, they used their pain to “intellectualize their feelings” and in art, music and literature express the dilemma of the human tragedy. They do it with a beauty and sensibility which gives our lives a meaningful experience. It takes different beliefs, not only religious, to survive in a cold, negligent and often loveless world. The aforementioned, pain propelled, beautiful spirits are special through their ability to capture, to counterpoint / interlace the beauty and tragedy of our short lives. Their neuroses give us satisfying experiences, while evolution grinds on.
Johann Sebastian Bach came from a musical family, was orphaned early, but got through his sibling's help, first-class musical education. Throughout his life, he used, in the fight against tradition / zeitgeist and religious control his ingenious musical talents to express his own inner beliefs despite the fact that the church and the established powers were his superiors. He developed his creativity, musical talent and knowledge of music to the point where it grew out of the protestant church's religious possession and became everybody’s emotional musical heritage of today. Although - thanks to - being discouraged and criticized, he used the church / contemporary official worldview to show the tragedy of all our pain propelled / bloated complacency.
Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born into an established family of artists and devoted almost 90 years to drawing and painting and fascinated his surroundings with a never-ending ability to express his naïve capacity. A severe trauma, a violent earthquake, combined with the sister's complicated birth in Malaga when he was 2-3 years old characterized left imprints, in the work of art, which his artistic talent expressed. Picasso's success became prolonged due to the constant renewal of his pain propelled symbolism and thanks to the exponential / absurd growing economic valuation of art in the last century. Picasso, who was registered communists into his death, is probably the artist, all categories whose works brought in the most money. Again, a reflection of the beauty and tragedy of the neurotic human trauma.
Arthur Janov was an unloved son of immigrated Russian peasants. He was an “asphalt-flower” from a metropolitan ghetto, who with the Navy’s / WW2’s help became prepared for a work / life, in various mental institutions with people with repressed pain. We needed him to understand / access information about the difference between a good or bad life before, during or after birth. It has required an extraordinary amount of repressed pain / empathic intellect to create an economic wealth / independence that was invested in the explanation of the lifesaving ability of evolution to repress what threatened our lives. He took us on a tour beyond our and his own belief.
No pain, no gain!
Jan Johnsson
Why Don't We Know We Are in Pain? I would add as an answer because we've been told very early by our parents or grandparents that we were not, when we were crying or begging. Making us lose our ability to feel hurt, to express our pain, to feel.
ReplyDeleteReading Beyond Belief at the moment. About political leaders : do they act out their needs of everything by giving false hopes to people to make them vote for them or are they doing it on purpose because they want power to act out their needs ? There is a need for more equality in societies around the world and among people. The différence lies in the intensity of the claim for a better society, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteAnd I would like to add that the trouble with your work is that it's revolutionary on every aspects of our life in society...that's why you try So hard to keep it on the scientific/psychological side 😊
ReplyDeleteAbout what you wrote in BB about people raising when hope doesn't work anymore Maya Angelou's poetry Still I rise. Sorry no link to share it but easy to find.
ReplyDeleteFeel before you know to much!
ReplyDeleteThis is the first time I register that I do not feel good in my body. I can not say that it is anxiety... it is just a sadness... it's as if my whole body crying... a grief without limits of its "announcement". There is a big difference between anxiety and what I am experiencing... a sadness that is my self... my body... it seems as if that is what I am... sorry of all what I am.
Frank
I have heard this lately. From people who are older than 25 and I do believe a lot of it also is from the way life is now. The future, to look at it now, and do see what people are doing to America it gives one a sad feeling. Now along with birth trauma, one has to deal with people who are just plain not willing to try, not willing to resolve their problems, not willing to be kind, not willing to believe that we as a nation can turn this mess around somewhat soon. We must go "against the grain" in a way, because many of the youth of today are not growing up well; and it is a sickening feeling. Of course, one cannot "take on" the atmosphere of today's generation and today's world; just one more fight.
Deletein·ef·fa·ble
ReplyDeleteinˈefəb(ə)l/
adjective
adjective: ineffable
too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words.
Art, in your writings this word comes to mind. I know you've used it in the context of description or explanation of your therapy.
It is what Primal pain is. An ineffable sadness unexpressed. Having the insights gained from knowing and experiencing this pain, I can see in others what is so obvious now to me.
I want to whisper in their ears and say you are in a pain you are not conscious of or to. The world goes on obliviously to it all looking into the stars.
Hi,
ReplyDelete-"Those most erudite who seem to know the most, actually know the least about the problem at hand"-.
That's harsh, but I know my erudition helps me let off the pressure from my ADD. That can take all morning. How many people use social media and 'blogging' for that eh?
Paul G.
To all of you who know so much... but do not understand a thing!
ReplyDeleteIf I can not bring myself on my trip in my therapy how will I then ever be able to succeed with it? What is then myself? That's all I can not be at the psychiatric and psychological institutions for what they fail in their own therapy!
I am doomed to remain sick for what they failed to understand primlaterapin!
Frank!
An email comment:
ReplyDelete" Art: Another great article. I watched Stephen Hawking on PBS about "Genius" and his attempt through some experiments with three ordinary people attempting, as I saw it, to prove there was the genius in all of us ... if only we could get our 'heads' around it.
Sad to see him with all his motor skills absent, from Lou Gerrick's disease.
Some couple of years ago I wrote to him with a view to turning onto feelings but was unable to get beyond his gate keeper. I sent him my book "Feeling Therapy: Real Health: Yourself" but to no avail.
My mind boggles at the Neuro Physiological departments of the medical profession. Where are they at; not seeing the absolute simplicity and logical progression, that you put forward with Primal Theory? It's almost criminal.
Human kind, I fear, is on the brink, and now with Donald (duck :) ) Trump if he makes it to the White House; I'm outta here. It saddens me no-end."