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
The last paragraph has an unbelievably profound meaning and projections!!
ReplyDeleteA really good one, Art, a really good one indeed...
Hi Art,
ReplyDeleteI so well recognize what you're talking about. I believe this is what DSM 5 labels cPTSD, a chronic traumatic stress level. That, plus the ordinary PTSD surely ruins life, both emotionally and physically.
Without insulin, and without you, I would have been dead decades ago. Thanks.
Erik
Art
ReplyDeleteIn the bull's eye. Touching as usually.
Love is an emotional experience which we suffer from without it and we become thinkers... in to "hell" if so!
ReplyDeleteNo thoughts in the world can solve the issue of their cause (there is a cause for them) without first having been there thoughts have their source for its importance... only then we see how thoughts have limited ourselves... why they never been able to answer the question of the significance of missing LOVE!
Primal therapy is very... very... very much more serious than what we could ever imagine. Primal therapy gives life which is impossible to imagine that it do! What I mean is that there are no living thinker who can empathize with what primal therapy is all about... it is very... very... very much more serious. It gives us life from a totally different perspective... a physiological perspective... which we otherwise repress with all that we are in the sense of being thinkers.
Frank
Frank, A pretty profound idea, there are no great thinkers who can understand what feelings are all about. That is why most Ph.d s cannot master the therapy. You need the opposite of smarts. For my therapy I would choose those who care for animals. Requirements for doing our therapy includes a sense of empathy, above all. If applicants cannot relate to animals they may not do well in our therapy.
DeleteOr, as Jethro Tull sang: "and your wise men don't know how it feels to be thick as a brick..."
DeleteErron
Hi Art,
Delete-"Requirements for doing our therapy includes a sense of empathy, above all. If applicants cannot relate to animals they may not do well in our therapy"-.
Of course all therapeutic methods (and medical/nursing training) make this requirement of trainees & practitioners but the interpretation of the words is very different depending. Let me elucidate: At a corporate coaching event I attended the facilitator asked us to define the difference between empathy and sympathy; I said empathy is an emotional response and sympathy an intellectual response. He argued that each was nothing of the sort. . . Then much later agreed with me. I feigned and changed the subject - which is exactly what some 'facilitators' want you, their 'client' to do when faced with the need for empathy from them.
It's like the menu at that cheap diner: - Beans on toast is on the menu and you ask for beans on toast but it's not available today, nor is anything else on the menu except what you don't want.
This is exactly what therapy is like in so many other methodologies, the blurb (menu) mentions 'empathy' but when it comes down to it words is all you get.
I am reminded of a book by Eric Berne on Transactional Analysis, I think it's called: "I'm OK, you're OK", in this book the author discusses the cognitive understanding of small children and cites the situation where a Dad is explaining something to his 5 year old. The child says: "You tell me what words to say Dad and I'll agree" (or words to that effect). My point (and Eric Bernes) is that we can act out a feeling life and deceive ourselves that we understand and have empathy when in reality we are merely repeating words parrot fashion. Sadly that is exactly what is expected by some therapists and professional helpers.
Of course the irony of this particular scenario is that the 5 year old probably has more empathy than his Dad. An irony that perhaps did not escape the author, and certainly not this reader.
Paul G.
Hi Art
ReplyDeleteHello compadre art
DeleteTo quote an excerpt from the above article:
ReplyDelete"... It is like touch. It is not what we feel on our cheeks. It is what that does to the whole system; the warmth, the caring and love. A ruffling of the child’s hair can carry with it a note: you are loved, appreciated and wanted. A mussing up of hair carries a biologic message that says so much. You are wanted, I feel close to you and want to be near you. One touch contains pages of monologue without any verbal discussion...."
Totally.
Marco
I do not go to bed in life, I go to bed and suffer for what life has been!
ReplyDeleteFrank.
Excellent writing... Thanks Art.
ReplyDelete