Friday, December 30, 2016

My Life: The War Years

I have been telling my wife some stories about my life and she has encouraged me to write about it.  So I will.

I had spent the war in the Aleutians, South Pacific and now I was my on way to Europe. We took a troop ship. We marched down the highway in New York with crowds gathered around, cheering us off.  People rushed up to me to hand me things, mostly beer which I did not drink. But we were treated like heroes already. Getting on the ship was another matter.  Hundreds of us packed into what looked like beds but were jut light cots. This was not a three star voyage and our comfort was of no concern to anyone. Many got seasick, which was highly unpleasant because no one planned for that. Just like when I got to the Aleutians there was no foul weather gear. In 40 degrees below we were wearing towels. An officer stopped by to give us all nose clips. I asked what it was for?  He said, “You’ll see.”  And I did as everything in my nose froze into solid ice and I could not breathe.

Back on the troopship to Europe began the chase: submarines everywhere. It was obvious we were a troopship and so a grand prize for the Germans. If they could wipe out a few thousand troops how happy they would be. They chased us across the Atlantic until we got to England. Because I had been a Commando, they transferred us to South England to a base. We were getting ready for crossing the Thames to land just before D-Day to capture the submarine base in Brest, which even to me was a suicide mission. Their base was half underground and built with steel and cement. A guy who wanted to see Paris offered to trade with me. We got the papers and the deed was done. I don’t know if he made it. 

Speaking of being chased by submarines, we had a hard time leaving the steel enclosure near Kodiak because we were told that Japanese subs were waiting for us to come out. We finally did to fight in the islands of Kiska and Attu with fog so thick we could only hear the shells coming overhead but could see nothing.  We then chased Japanese ships all the way back to their homeland. Remember I was on a 365,000 ton battleship. It was in Tarawa that they sent over a massive fleet of Mavis bombers to put us out of action.  They were right above my head; they never saw us.  It was so dark. 

Meanwhile I traveled all over England in a band, which was wonderful. They had Tea Dances everywhere and we played  their favorite songs, ending with, Good  Night Ladies, Til We Meet Tomorrow.  On leave, I went to see my pal Larry Allred from Chicago who wrote to me years later. He drove for the Admiral in London and there were bombs just before I got there, which left Piccadilly Circus in complete rubble.  Hard to believe the blocks had been wiped out by the Germans with their buzz bombs. The Brits got to work right away to rebuild; brave souls. 
I stood amid the rubble in the area for a long time, seeing what people can do to each other; and for what?

And then I was ordered to go kill.  I would not kill in anger; I didn't even know who I was killing. It was my “job.”  Imagine, I was convinced to kill as a job. And I did in the Pacific. I was a machine-gunner, don’t forget. It left me with an antipathy for war til this day. We invaded an island and the women and children natives ran into the sea to escape our big guns. We shot our 20MM shells into the sea where they were. A guilt I never got over.

By the way, I was transferred to many battle areas because I was marked low down on priority due to my color blindness. The commander who gave me the test took me to the street and asked me the colors of various signs and I got them right. But still I was marked “failure” and shipped out. I got help to pass the test later on and went on to become a fighter pilot trainee on a carrier. I never got there because the war  ended. I was discharged at 
Tacoma, Washington, where I was at the day the war ended and some of the women in the street danced naked. What a jubilant scene. I went straight to UCLA and signed in. More than 12 years and 4 universities later, I got my doctors degree and became staff at Los Angeles Children’s Hospital, Psychiatric Dept. After a few years, I could no longer take sick and wounded children so I left, but some of the kids stayed in touch for years. I wish I could say that I learned about human life and the human condition but that would be a lie. It was all statistical and numbers and graphs.

Back to Europe. I traveled Europe with my band the same time as bandleader Glen Miller, one of my idols.  He disappeared in an air crash and was never found. I danced to his music for years.  Such a loss.

I already wrote about my return to the south Pacific and more battles including the most beautiful island I ever saw: Majuro. When you see photos of WW2 there is a picture of Kwajalein with a giant plume of smoke rising over the island. That was us. We saturated that island and blew down every house and building and then we decided they were hiding under the trees so we destroyed every tree there. Thank the Japanese for that. Why on earth would they attack a country as well armed as the USA is beyond me? But they did. Not “they” but those crazy leaders far removed from battle decided it might be a good idea. And millions died, some horrendously, burned alive by the Hydrogen bomb.  These were thousands of children, mind you. President Truman believed it was the only way to end the war.  It helped but there might have been a more human way. We bombed citizens near Japan, not the fleet of ships in the harbor, but people going to work. The US helped keep their fleet intact. But hang on, mine not to question why, mine only to do or die. And we did. I was in the bloodiest of pacific battles: Tarawa. They knew we were coming and put out false reefs and slaughtered thousands of us; bodies floating in the water everywhere. We were the first ship in and bombed them non-stop and used gasoline spray to burn them out of the caves where they hid. After all, they were the “enemy.”  And then I learned an important lesson:  if you make someone an enemy, even in politics, you can do anything you want to them with impunity. We burned the “enemy.”
 
I have written how out at sea en route to another battle the captain called me in to say that I was being picked up by a destroyer and taken back to the States to go to the university.  The shock of my life; I was sure they made a mistake but my intelligence test said I was smart so I went on the destroyer whose screws had been shot off, making it list heavily to the right. And we entered San Francisco and I traveled to Oregon, a most beautiful town. Soon I organized a 26 piece band with two gorgeous singers, one of whom was my girlfriend and we traveled and broadcast over KOA Portland.  Is it still there?  More than 50 years later?
 
I never would have considered university without the Navy sending me, even without my asking.  They even chose the University for me: Oregon State,  and then I chose UCLA, USC, and then Claremont Graduate School… But  I never realized that my father had to make me stupid over and over again until we were driving East on Melrose when I was in my twenties, and he stopped at a signal where all alone, to no one, he blurted out, "I’m a failure." He never looked at me or addressed me.  It was so importuning that he could not hold it back; he was an utter failure. I mean, driving a meat truck is not the summum bonum of success. And in trying to be smart, he was obsessed with making me dumb. And he did. That is why I never considered university. My grades were terrible. I felt it was way above me. When I started Oregon 
State, I studied Portuguese for no rational reason and got A’s. For the first time in my life, my teacher asked me to stay because I was such a good student. That was a major epiphany of my life and a turning point. I felt I could do things and I began to study voraciously. I became a top student and an academic hall of fame. I received a lifetime achievement award from Los Angeles High School. All because I needed to hear just two words of praise. That is all it took. Parents remember that: PRAISE. You never build character through criticism.  NEVER.  Just “you are good and you can do it." That is what we all need and it is what I see in patients screaming out their need. HOLD ME,TOUCH ME, SEE ME, LOOK AT ME, WANT ME, CHERISH ME. How how hard is that? My neurosis made me well prepared for a therapy of pain.

End of part A

50 comments:

  1. I guess being in the war and seeing people being murdered made it easier for you to be with that first Primal in your office? If you'd lived a sheltered life perhaps that young mans Primal expressions would have freaked you out instead.
    I find it amazing that you somehow detected some meaning in that first Primal expression that occurred by accident all those years ago, and that you even went so far as to try it yourself, and then to keep going. How did you do it, I mean you had no one to sit you? How did you keep going? Perhaps the horror of war drove you in part to save lives and made it easier to understand people's cries of agony and torment.
    Growing up with a parent who was recovering from 10 years of childhood sexual abuse was like living through the after effects of an emotional atom bomb. As a child I didn't understand that my mother was returning home from a kind of war, but I do now and it's a relief.

    Katherina

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    Replies
    1. Katherina: How I did it is the subject of forthcoming blogs in the next weeks and months. Stay around art

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  2. Art , Thanks for writing this. Really means a lot to me.

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  3. Happy New Year everyone!

    I happened to watch a video about Japan's history and, if I remember correclty, Japan had made some sort of agreement with Germany (before WW2), so that the former would exert imperialistic policy over soil that now belongs to Korea. That agreement also resulted in Japan's joining WW2, as an axis ally.

    From the other hand, USA wanted to test its brand-new nuclear bombs. And what was better than an "isolated" country, quite far away, when the nuclear fallout would spread. So, when japaneses attacked Pearl Harbor, USA grabbed the opportunity to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki. US military chiefs, although had seen via radars the japanese air-force approach, they only send away in the ocean their aircraft carrier and few other powerful vessels, so that every american would agree on bombing the enemy, after the japanese assault.

    The whole WW2 is a flawless example of how neurosis can change the borders and every human soul around the globe.

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    1. Hi, Yannis Xs,

      According to Encyclopedia Britannica, in the American public there was a majority against entering the war. After Pearl Harbor Dec. 1941, there was no choice but to declare war.

      At the attack, three US aircraft carriers were already out at see. An American private at the radar screens saw the Japanese airplanes approaching. He was told to ignore it, as US bombers were expected to arrive soon.

      At the time, USA and Germany had no atom bombs, so a race developed to be first. After TESTING on American soil, the bombs had to finish the war in summer 1945, as the Japanese generals refused to capitulate. Only after the emperor had said so, came the capitulation.

      If the bombs had been ready sooner, some hundred thousand US soldiers' lives would have been saved, and as many Japanese lives, in the firestorm attacks on Tokyo and other Japanese cities.

      Without the bombs, the war would have continued for many more months, untill the Japanese mainland was conquered, costing further hundreds of thousands of lives of Japanese civilians and solders, as well as US soldiers.

      Japan, being an island nation with few natural resources, needed to expand to gain access to oil and other necessities. The reason for this war, like for most other wars, was economical. The reason for dropping the atom bombs was the neurotic pride of Japanese generals. Die with honour, rather than live in disgrace. Civilian Japanese lives did not matter, in their opinion.

      Your conspiratorical theory is unfounded.

      Erik

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  4. Your story is inspirational to those of us who also feel like losers. My parents have never expected my siblings and me to excel at anything but just want us to be like others in my culture and conform to the stereotype. I wonder what you think of the modern wars America has waged. I would also really like to request you write on here about autism in relation to primal therapy. Thanks for reading this, and please moderator publish my comment as it has been ignored and I am bored of reading the same people's comments on here again and again.

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  5. Your story is inspirational to those of us who also feel like losers. My parents have never expected my siblings and me to excel at anything but just want us to be like others in my culture and conform to the stereotype. I wonder what you think of the modern wars America has waged. I would also really like to request you write on here about autism in relation to primal therapy. Thanks for reading this, and please moderator publish my comment as it has been ignored and I am bored of reading the same people's comments on here again and again.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. R: I do not know enough about autism but I can tell you that carrying mothers need to be extra careful during gestation to not eat anything that could harm the baby,  and not take anything,  any medication, that can get into the baby’s system  and do harm.   Caution.  When the baby is born with a neuro biologic defect look carefully at what happened during life in the womb.  Smoking, drinking and drugs are deadly.    Art

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    2. Autism:

      Just a suggestion. Maybe autism rates are increasing, in part, because we have improved our ability to bring children back from the dead? We've got all these babies coming into the world who, historically, would have just died from their damage.

      Couple that with the possibility that we're doing more damage to babies today(?). It seems from my observation that the use of drugs and medical intervention (such as elective c-sections) is more popular than ever.

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  6. I feel the only reason I still exist is because you didn't die in war.
    My father who was on a destroyer in the Aleutions as you were didn't die either so now I exist after 35 years of your life saving therapy having gone through my own horrific traumas in Vietnam. Still, there are times I wish I didn't.

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  7. (Private message)
    Dear Art,
    Sir,

    A proper comment is not possible to make. How can one assess a Cinderella or Phoenix fable? What I just read is so incredibly fantastic, I can only say 'Thanks for sharing! It's a most tragic and beautiful story, leaving me in awe. Thank you so very much!'

    Wishing you and France all the best,
    sincerely,
    Erik

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  8. It is so great you decided to write about your experience in war, it will help a lot of people. While you where battling out there, l was battling in utero, with the shocks of the siren noise making me kick my mother hard each time they went off, she told me many times. After l was brutally born with forceps, l was nightly 'shocked' into waking, by these same sirens for several more years. I doubt my parents even knew about it, l was put in my crib, door closed. I have vivid memories of this room, where the window, fireplace and door where in relation to my white crib. This l think was the start of my lifetime of insomnia. I need a strong medication to let go to sleep, and if a noise gets through the drug, and my eye mask & ear plugs, l am still 'shocked' into waking and unable to get back to sleep. It was serendipitous that many patients who came to Primal Therapy where children or babies of war! in a way Art, you then got to help the children traumatized by this same war. John Lennon and l are close in age & locality, l ponder if he ever got close to those feelings. I would like to here sometime France's experience in this war in France.

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  9. Thank you for sharing ALL your humanness with us. It means so much !

    I wonder why the war years are coming up at this time in your life?

    Katherina

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    1. I also wonder why. I will let you know. Art

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    2. Hello Katherinanina!

      Art may just takes a "walk" through life... where he might not was as exposed as times as a little child. In war it may sound wrong as a walk and not be exposed. But at war and in a strong cognitive defence and not so vulnerable as a child we are still not so exposed as when it come to life with no cognitive ability of defence. But the danger then in war in a cognitive defence has obviously a life-threatening experience as remains to be experienced.

      In my therapy my heart has been hit very hard by memories as I was a growing up... where I obviously was in danger but I then managed to repress and now at my therapy experiencing as I feel those moments... memories which also stands in the way of my life at rest.

      Frank.

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    3. How soon we forget and how quick we grow old. We were active young studs fighting a war in places we never heard of, and now we were just a bunch of old guys who fought some war. art

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    4. Hi Art,

      My parents lived through the blitz. Not like your war experience but as powerless observers in Sussex & London. when you talked about your Dad saying he was a failure I just felt the total powerlessness of our situation. I wonder if there's a line from when your father simply ignored you through the total powerlessness of war to where you got to prove yourself and be saved. . . Sometimes life is so much more amazing than fiction. . . You really couldn't make this stuff up.

      (PS, as a 'lay linguist', have you noticed that when you write about those years you use completely different grammar and syntax)?

      Maybe you get some answers from that?

      With all my best wishes in this new year dear Art.

      Paul G.

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  10. Wow that sounds rough. I've read a lot about war situations, seen a lot of war movies, but nothing can have an impact like a personal remenissince, except like actually being in a war situation, which I hope I never have to experience.

    It just so happens that I have been reading a biography of Tony Bennett, someone about Janov's age, and he actually helped liberate the concentration camps in Germany.He wrote that a morale boosting variety show for the troops emotionally helped save his life, and that partly inspired him to give to others via his music throughout his life.

    I am Italian, and last year, some sick local Italian cultural organisation issued a revisionist report making it sound that the local fascist Italian majority during the war years wasn't so bad. It seems that they were both patriotic Canadians and patriotic Italians...blah...blah..blah. Yeah right. Well, the Canadian government rightly put the local fascist leaders and some others in jail during the war, including my maternal grandfather ( no overt fascist who might not have deserved jail), who messed up my mother, who then messed me up for life.These slimy fascists actually painted a portrait of Mussolini on the ceiling of the main Italian Church,a fresco which is still there to this day! Outraged, I complained about this to the media, Jewish organisations, everyone I could think of: no one cared, not surprisingly, except notably for one left wing marginal journalist who wrote a fine story (thank you!).

    And the insanity goes on. Just before Christmas, we had the Aleppo massacre in Syria: SICK Humanity continues its course into oblivion, notwithstanding the mighty efforts of humanists like Janov to find and extirpate the roots of our collective neurotic malady.

    Marco

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    1. Marco, I sailed on a boat with Tony and his girlfriend. Very very shy. During the war I was also charged with guarding Italian prisoners of war. I was so amazed tha the seemed so happy as a group art

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  11. Hi Art
    some days ago I had a phone discussion with someone living in Berli...
    My "suggestion" to see the h o r r o r ! of the event in perspective to the DAILY in "our" traffic events more than twice victims each and very day!! only brought her remark :it.. would not be justified by "that"...

    Surely NOT -but whatever sacrificing human (and animal for that matter..) suffering mutilation, disease, being killed etc.
    to get some "good i.e. ethical end result ?..
    I would propose -in a meta natural ... purely ethical view

    N O N E .
    But we do not live in an ethical natural world so one has to howl with the wolves???


    I really can not imagine how soldiers feel after having killed so many people (just 4 years ago I have had my car accident with a little pony...-
    and still each time I drive along that spot I think of it`s pain and horror !!! emanuel

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  12. Excerpt from the poem " September 1, 1939" by W. H. Auden :

    "Defenseless under the night
    Our world in stupor lies;
    Yet, dotted everywhere,
    Ironic points of light
    Flash out wherever the Just
    Exchange their messages:
    May I, composed like them
    Of Eros and of dust,
    Beleaguered by the same
    Negation and despair,
    Show an affirming flame."

    Marco

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    1. Marco, Thanks, I love his work. art

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    2. Yes, love Auden also. And perhaps on topic, from Ford Madox Ford's 'Antwerp':

      This is Charing Cross;
      It is midnight;
      There is a great crowd
      And no light.
      A great crowd, all black that hardly whispers aloud.
      Surely, that is a dead woman—a dead mother!
      She has a dead face;
      She is dressed all in black;
      She wanders to the bookstall and back,
      At the back of the crowd;
      And back again and again back,
      She sways and wanders.

      This is Charing Cross;
      It is one o'clock.
      There is still a great cloud, and very little light;
      Immense shafts of shadows over the black crowd
      That hardly whispers aloud. . .
      And now! . . That is another dead mother,
      And there is another and another and another. . .
      And little children, all in black,
      All with dead faces, waiting in all the waiting-places,
      Wandering from the doors of the waiting-room
      In the dim gloom.
      These are the women of Flanders.
      They await the lost.
      They await the lost that shall never leave the dock;
      They await the lost that shall never again come by the train
      To the embraces of all these women with dead faces;
      They await the lost who lie dead in trench and barrier and foss,
      In the dark of the night.
      This is Charing Cross; it is past one of the clock;
      There is very little light.

      There is so much pain.

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  13. Why was my comment not published as it was not offensive or negative towards Art or primal theory. Instead you publish the same people's comments on every blog, whose comments are often long winded and tedious to read.

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    1. Sorry R, just a bit of delay in publishing comments.

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    2. Art, I love these stories from your life. It fills in the man behind all the theorising. Will these stories form part of "Art & Science"?

      Erron

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    3. Erron, I never thought about it so now I will but not sure at all. art

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    4. Hi R,

      It is interesting that you think a comment would not be allowed, if offensive or negative. Why is that?

      Dr. Arthur Janov is not a guru, not a preacher, not a politician. Primal Therapy is not a political party, church, cult or sect. The Primal Movement and Art's reputation are strong enough to take criticism and resistance, which has been the order of the day for 50 years.

      In fact, the whole idea of Primal Therapy is to create individuals who are healthy, indipendent, and clear eyed, as opposed to the masses who worship and blindly follow authoritarian leaders like sheep.

      So keep commenting, so we get some variation here.

      Erik Lundholm

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    5. Hi Erik, I am assuming "R's" comment is in response to a feeling of rejection. No matter how valid I think my comment to be, if there is a delay in publishing or it gets lost in the cyber-sphere, I just assume it was not good enough, that there was something objectionable about it, and that "I am not good enough" feeling that resonates from early life. But I keep on risking, so that is good. I'm sure the Center means no emotional harm at all--it is just an individual pain that some of us have when we interact with people and risk rejection or acceptance.

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  14. God is the ultimate cognitive therapy without its simile!

    Beyond god we are alone without any help why we don't get past the illusion of guds promises... and all is in our heads! One might ask what it is that happens when we seek solace in god? One consolation of our needs is what it is all about... a cognitive behavior in the sense to avoid our self and we are cemented for what god is an obstacle... an obstacle to get beyond for what god is an illusion... it in our own heads. It all happens in our own heads! We are in need... our whole body is in need!

    This is to all of you who do not know... god is an illision and leave it for what it is a need of love... a need we at the time do not feel.

    Frank

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  15. God is the ultimate cognitive therapy without its simile!

    Beyond god we are alone without any help why we don't get past the illusion of guds promises... and all is in our heads! One might ask what it is that happens when we seek solace in god? One consolation of our needs is what it is all about... a cognitive behavior in the sense to avoid our self and we are cemented for what god is an obstacle... an obstacle to get beyond for what god is an symptoms... it in our own heads. It all happens in our own heads! We are in need... our whole body is in need!

    This is to all of you who do not know... god is an illusion and leave it for what it is a need of love... a need we at the time do not feel.

    Frank

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  16. That Tony Bennett: what an interesting story his life.

    Maybe those Italians you were guarding were happy because they would not have to fight anymore, and knew that they would be treated better than their fascist fellow soldiers and Nazis and crazed Japanese allies treated Allied soldiers. Of course, I don't really know. I do not like to generalise about peoples but I would say that Italians then, as they are now, tend to be sentimental and "emotional" (thus the apparent happiness you witnessed) ,unlike tightly wound Germans and Japanese. But sentimentality is not serene emotionality IMO; the flip side of it is BRUTALITY, just another way of expressing the same sadism as the Germans and the Japanese. I see it so clearly in my mother, the total DRAMA QUEEN: weepy, needy, over-solicitous, and harsh.

    Marco

    Anyways this fascist Italian thing has tormented me all my life. I remember sitting once in the church I mention above with the still existing frescoe of Mussolini (and 4 Blackshirts on horses). It was at my grandmother's funeral mass. I got si upset looking at that frescoe that I had to leave the church because I was about to start SCREAMING right in the middle of a "solemn" ceremony.

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  17. Yes it helps what you write Art!

    To ensure that life gets a good start is much more important than any therapy can ever achieve... to it... you must been given that opportunity... you had to have the opportunity... which is almost non-existent where people are. So primal therapy is still what ultimately can save mankind from their madness as it is adults who decide what should be... from life to life... or otherwise we will remain unconsciousness... it in one way or another without ever been part of our life.

    But knowing what to do when panic rolls in as you lying down and heat arises and your thoughts rushing in all directions... it in an attempt to escape the panic and it is still there when you sit up... where to go? If hell exists... it is this! And all this long before any experience of crying has been of any help. And you have absolutely no one there who understands what's happening. So it is easy to understand why so many avoid addressing it.

    It is better to know than not to feel why... but the best is to feel why!

    I could need some help.

    Your Frank

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  18. There is an ending in TROY movie (by Petersen):


    "If they ever tell my story, let them say...

    ...I walked with giants.

    Men rise and fall like the winter wheat...

    ...but these names will never die.

    Let them say I lived in the time of Hector...

    ...tamer of horses.

    Let them say...

    ...I lived in the time of Achilles. "


    If there ever tell MY story...

    Let them say I lived in the time of Arthur Janov

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    1. Piotr, how very very sweet of you. Thanks for much. art

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    2. Hi Piotr,

      I am moved to tears because that's exactly how I feel. To be on this blog is a privilege. I try not to put Art on a pedestal, because he is already teetering on a pile of his own books, whilst writing yet another. All of which I will be reading and referring to for a long time to come.

      Paul G.

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  19. Dear Art,

    Will you write about narcolepsy? And hypersomnia? I am very curious about that subjects.

    Nenad

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    1. What is hypersomnia? Narcolepsy… People do lose it in Primal Therapy but it has multiple causes, mostly first line, sometimes almost dying at birth and suddenly being jarred awake. Sometimes the memory of losing oxygen and fading away is a sort of flashback. I have many cases of it and I will check with staff. Art

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  20. Dear Art,

    Hypersomnia is excessive sleeping.

    I would appreciate if you would write more about your cases with narcolepsy.

    Nenad

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  21. https://www.facebook.com/199357390191520/videos/776812972445956/

    compared to humans wolves and dogs look disadvantaged. don't think their anatomy is cuddle-friendly like ours. yet, their pleasure is beautiful to watch.
    it is not off topic. "make love, not war". )) wonder about our possibilities.

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  22. Really interesting definition of Narcolepsy from Wikipedia, note the last sentence:

    "Narcolepsy is a long-term neurological disorder that involves a decreased ability to regulate sleep-wake cycles.[1] Symptoms include periods of excessive daytime sleepiness that usually last from seconds to minutes and may occur at any time. About 70% of people also experience episodes of sudden loss of muscle strength, known as cataplexy. These spells can be brought on by strong emotions."

    Erron

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  23. Wow. My mum (b. 1920) lived through the Winter War in Finland. (and got a medal.) She had to clean, cook food etc for the soldiers. (and hated war for the rest of her life.) It was she who told me to read "The Primal Scream". (in 1973.) Advised to do so by a friend who was a therapist. (German immigrant to Sweden. Had been forced to be a nazi boy soldier. Wrote the book "Don´t let yourselves be fooled". In Swedish.) My favourite line by a poet: "I am the enemy you killed, my friend."(Wilfred Owen. Killed in the trenches in 1918.)(gay just like Auden.) Ciao from Inga

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    1. Thanks Inga, I always learn from all of the blogs. It broadens me too. art

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  24. Stockholm 2017-01-12



    I'm about to "fill up my life"!

    I want to compare it with that I fill up my life... and less and less is wasted. Every time I stand there as ten years old and try to poke away paint on the house we live so my experience becomes more and more present and the view around is becoming more and more real... and I become more and more myself as a child.

    I could wish that I had someone to talk about it with... but it's probably not more than there was as I already experiencing as I'm there as small. And this is what I'm about to fill my life with... my consciousness as a little child. But even then at ten years old I had repressed feelings... repressed what I had experienced why it is to come.

    In between all of this... so does my sentences grow together with what I feel like and I can express it in sentences. But sometimes... so I think about it more than I feel and it's devastating. But it finds its solution when I fill up my life with more of my memories.

    Frank

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Review of "Beyond Belief"

This thought-provoking and important book shows how people are drawn toward dangerous beliefs.
“Belief can manifest itself in world-changing ways—and did, in some of history’s ugliest moments, from the rise of Adolf Hitler to the Jonestown mass suicide in 1979. Arthur Janov, a renowned psychologist who penned The Primal Scream, fearlessly tackles the subject of why and how strong believers willingly embrace even the most deranged leaders.
Beyond Belief begins with a lucid explanation of belief systems that, writes Janov, “are maps, something to help us navigate through life more effectively.” While belief systems are not presented as inherently bad, the author concentrates not just on why people adopt belief systems, but why “alienated individuals” in particular seek out “belief systems on the fringes.” The result is a book that is both illuminating and sobering. It explores, for example, how a strongly-held belief can lead radical Islamist jihadists to murder others in suicide acts. Janov writes, “I believe if people had more love in this life, they would not be so anxious to end it in favor of some imaginary existence.”
One of the most compelling aspects of Beyond Belief is the author’s liberal use of case studies, most of which are related in the first person by individuals whose lives were dramatically affected by their involvement in cults. These stories offer an exceptional perspective on the manner in which belief systems can take hold and shape one’s experiences. Joan’s tale, for instance, both engaging and disturbing, describes what it was like to join the Hare Krishnas. Even though she left the sect, observing that participants “are stunted in spiritual awareness,” Joan considers returning someday because “there’s a certain protection there.”
Janov’s great insight into cultish leaders is particularly interesting; he believes such people have had childhoods in which they were “rejected and unloved,” because “only unloved people want to become the wise man or woman (although it is usually male) imparting words of wisdom to others.” This is just one reason why Beyond Belief is such a thought-provoking, important book.”
Barry Silverstein, Freelance Writer

Quotes for "Life Before Birth"

“Life Before Birth is a thrilling journey of discovery, a real joy to read. Janov writes like no one else on the human mind—engaging, brilliant, passionate, and honest.
He is the best writer today on what makes us human—he shows us how the mind works, how it goes wrong, and how to put it right . . . He presents a brand-new approach to dealing with depression, emotional pain, anxiety, and addiction.”
Paul Thompson, PhD, Professor of Neurology, UCLA School of Medicine

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