Articles on Primal Therapy, psychogenesis, causes of psychological traumas, brain development, psychotherapies, neuropsychology, neuropsychotherapy. Discussions about causes of anxiety, depression, psychosis, consequences of the birth trauma and life before birth.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Attention Deficit Disorder
There is a new book out by a specialist in ADD which claims that there are at least five different kinds of ADD, each diagnosis peculiar to certain kinds of individuals. I often wonder what do these specialists believe is actually in the brain. Are there five different disease forms of ADD? Perhaps some genetic and some not? Are there five different areas involved in different kinds of ADD? I don't think so. The brain is complicated but it is not mystical, holding five different aspects of the same disease in its reservoir. ADD is first and foremost a failure of repression. There are not many different kinds of repression. There is one mediated by various kinds of neuroinhibitors. It is pain that overwhelms frontal cortical function and fragments its abilities to contain impulses from below. Certainly, there are differences in personality so that some manifest ADD in one fashion while others manifest it in another. But it is still ADD at its base. And it all can be treated in the same way: diminish the power of deep-lying imprinted pain by reliving early traumas, allowing the frontal cortex to develop and control because it is no longer bombarded by lower level shattering input. It all depends on how severe the early trauma was that compromised the development of the frontal cortex, and how much cortical tissue was implicated. As I discussed elsewhere, very early severe trauma can leave a cortex so impaired that the person is awash in impulses which cannot be controlled so that he is violent and can kill. In any case, the deficit is not just "psychological." It is a deficiency in frontal tissue. When someone like this is described as not "having all his marbles," now we know what that means. It should read, "not having all his frontal marble."
Hi dr. Janov, ADD, a failure of repression? That may fit me. I remember that my inability to concentrate became severe after my parents marriage started disintegrating. They fought alot and my nerves got so bad that I would start shaking all over and go hide in the wardrobe. The next day in class every little sound would distract me so much that it was just about impossible for me to follow anything the teacher was saying. I was not repressing very well at that time. In years following their divorce I was able to repress much of what had gone on before they split, and my concentration improved. Then I started having panic attacks. My mother began expecting me to do even better in school and I knew I was not up to it. Reading had always been a challenge - words would move around the page or change their spelling on me. It was not until the 10th grade that I discovered there was a name for what I'd been experiencing all those years(dyslexia). My life has been a continuous struggle with anxiety, panic, memory loss and episodes of debilitating depression. During the last three years, I've lost everything that mattered to me and at this point have no idea what to do next - am living one day at a time with no hope, and been feeling more dead than alive. Only thing keeping me going is playing around on this computer for a couple hours everyday. I can't sleep without taking a pill, and wake up each morning with an anxiety attack (then take a pill for that). You present some interesting ideas on your site which seem to be quite valid. I will watch more of the videos. -Nan
ReplyDeleteOK Nan if you agree to read I will agree to write. AJ
ReplyDeleteI am a 28-year-old Greek dancer and translator living in Sweden and I am bipolar. I have observed that my condition often resembles ADD, in the sense that during my episodes, particularly my manic and mixed episodes, I may have a very very short attention span. I cannot focus. I am distracted all the time. This makes it incredibly difficult to complete even the simpler tasks, especially mental work -if it's physical work that has to be done it's usually easier, because it allows me to be "on the run" and constantly moving, which "helps" the situation both by relieving what you would call my first-line imprint of being unable to move and by allowing me to keep escaping from my feelings. I have been on antipsychotic medication (risperidone) in the past, and one of the few ways it helped me was that I was indeed able to concentrate and work while taking it. I know why and that makes me inevitably agree with you. I did feel less while on medication. Which is why I slept a lot and could not wake up -not to alarms, not to phone calls, not to people trying to wake me up. My whole system was suppressed on medication, I had awful nightmares at night because of the things the meds didn't allow me to feel during the day, but in daytime I could eventually focus better on my work -it was my only benefit from the drugs really. Without them I find it hard to concentrate exactly because my feelings are bursting to get out all the time, they demand from me to be preoccupied with them and nothing else but them. But at the same time my defences, however weak, make them evasive enough -and for a good reason. My racing thoughts also stem from the same need -they cannot stay focused because there are such strong feelings underneath that refuse to be ignored -it's as if they are telling me "no, you are not gonna deal with your stupd translation or essay writing, you have to deal with us first. In my hypomanic periods this flight of ideas is milder and my attention span slightly better, so they can contribute to very interesting and original ideas if I am doing creative work, because of both the great "leaps" my thoughts make and my constant involuntary access to feelings however incomplete. SO if I have some creative work on hand and I can pull myself together into focusing, the result can be good, but generally speaking my condition is detrimental to many aspects of my life. I am a peculiar case of a self-destructive person, I do not smoke, drink or take drugs, I am a vegetarian, I use protection in sex, I put sun proof lotion on when I go out, I do not take the kind of dangerous risks bipolar people are known to often take, and generaly speaking I am hardly ever doing anything harmful to myself. It is the things I DO NOT DO that harm and destroy my life, because I cannot pull myself together and focus to do them. Particularly lost job opportunities or anything enjoyable or useful I could be doing instead of spending 40 hours trying to complete some work that would normally require 1/4 of the time. Considerable lack of sleep because it may take me all night to complete some project. Then lost opportunities or tasks undone during the day because I have to eventually sleep then.
ReplyDeleteTo cut a long story short, I believe that what you have repeatedly said, that there are many symptoms or diseases but only one common cause, could not be more accurate.
(continued from the previous comment) I do not have ADD -because during my stable mood periods I am able to focus decently well- yet I have the same symptoms, because of course the cause is the same. And the manic depressive condition, with its constant alternating between hope and despair -that's what it is really- could not be more representative of the first line imprint, just like ADD -because most people have ADD from so early on that it is rather obvious that the source is also very early (and I had these symptoms from quite an early age myself, which made school an added source of misery despite the fact I loved new information and knowledge and stimuli). I've heard of bipolar people being treated with Ritalin, and it's no surprise to me. It's just one more sign that all these "different" mental (and often physical) conditions could be successfully cured with a single treatment. Your therapy is the therapy of the future I think, because finally people will realize it has to be given more attention and become an essential part of the national health systems worldwide -but it will take a very long time I fear. I think neither of us will be here to see it happen. But you are the hope of the world.
ReplyDeleteStella