Friday, April 16, 2010

On Heredity and Epigenetics


There are some late findings that contrary to the notion that muscular dystrophy and other so-called genetic diseases are direct descendants from heredity, it may be that they are not. That is, nearly all of us have the mutated MD gene in our systems. What seems to make it manifest in us is what happens in the womb and at birth: epigenetics.

I am of the belief that nearly all of us are pretty normal and that it is adversity that changes us and deforms us. In the case of MD we all seem to have the capacity to be abnormal depending on experience. I think that may be true of many of the so-called genetic diseases from allergies to migraine and high blood pressure. And the bad experience happens so early, in the first three months of our lives in the womb, that we cannot distinguish it from pure genetics.

That is why it is so critical that we understand how gestational life can effect us for the rest of our lives; whether the carrying mother is anxious, depressed, takes drugs or drinks alcohol. Whether she sips cokes or drinks many cups of coffee, the baby’s life is being malleated during this period. And it will run the rest of our lives in a major way; whether we suffer multiple sclerosis, migraines or high blood pressure; whether we will have constant seizures or whether we have impulsive act-outs that makes us behave before we think.

This is of such magnitude that it must be taught in schools so that we begin to understand both behavioral and medical disease. It will help doctors understand some of the causes of the diseases in their patients; and it will redirect therapists to periods in our lives that are truly crucial. No more the useless focus in the here and now when so much can be explained way back when. No more the idea that by changing attitudes we can change emotional disease. No more guesswork. A bit more science.

38 comments:

  1. Art, I know, from the very core of my being that what you are saying has a great deal of validity. However, I doubt that pure thinkers, without a back-up experience are likely to even consider your point. They have invested billions in their labs and studies based (erroneously I contend) on notions from 'out of the blue'. If your prognosis was to generate among some, that most of these conditions are generated in the womb and in early gestation, then there might be some hope. Alas, I fear not.

    I see no real chance of change until a major catastrophe besets mankind. The economic melt-down if carried through, could be the way forward. Such a trauma, devastating as I foresee, might just jolt humanity into realizing we've been on the wrong path for way too long. Those seeking Primal Therapy know there is something radical amiss. It takes a trauma to know a trauma. I don't see, without some major world event, bringing us back to feeling-fullness. Oh! that I could be wrong.

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  2. This is depressing in a way. If trauma starts this early ( 1st trimester) , then there is no hope to reverse it through therapy . All that's left is prevention

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  3. Art
    Don’t you have any idea about a production of some medicine… I mean attracting the pharmaceutical industry to manufacture a pill that only serves Primal Therapy’s need? They my would help “us” then?
    Frank

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  4. When my mother was carrying me, she thought I may be the devil's baby. She saw the movie Rosemary's Baby in the theatre when she was pregnant with me and was worried I was Satan's child. The only bright light--I think--during my gestation, was that my mother learned to drive. I know this would cause a lot of stress, but I would also think finally getting her license at age 28 must have been an uplifting experience. When I was born (I relived this in therapy) I truly felt the depth of her rejection: every fibre of my being knew I was utterly unwanted. This reminds me to really be kind and gentle to myself--I have been thru a lot!!!!!!!!!!!

    I wonder about all the autistic kids out there these days. They say it may be because it was not detected in the past and therefore the numbers were lower, but that doesn't explain why there are so many cases of autistic children in San Jose, CA. It has been dubbed "The Geeks Disease." Could it be that the parents of these children are so into computers, i.e, logic, not feelings, that they have shut down their kids?

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  5. It is possible to surgically remove the brain's right hemisphere and still survive. Animals are symmetrical because duplication of one half is the most simple and efficient way to create an organism that can balance it's weight or movement. It makes me wonder how much of the brain is in duplicate. The two halves certainly look duplicate just like the rest of the body. If the two halves function differently, one has to ask "how differently?". It also makes sense that if the brain was originally exactly duplicated on both sides, then this would give one side the ability to evolve in experimental ways while the other unchanged side acts as the 'recovery program' when things go wrong. If this is how we evolved then it makes sense that the two halves work independently from each other. They don't 'need' each other - but they can talk to each other. Perhaps this is why we can block that communication between left and right without becoming entirely disfunctional. The simplest place to create that blockage would be at the point where the two halves are joined. Perhaps most of the gating/blockage can be found right down the middle, all the way from top to bottom. If I was a neurologist (and I certainly don't want to be one) I would study the join between the two halves. If we want physical evidence, instead of theories, we might find it in the join.

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  6. Jack, you think we are more likely to learn when we are jolted by more trauma? I hope all those mock therapists won't read that. What do you want...war and starvation? Trauma breeds trauma, it doesn't make us stronger. Primal therapy is not traumatic.

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  7. Stevenb: WAIT there is hope. read my soon Life Before Birth. It explains how to do that. AJ

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  8. Frank: they would not want me. I am the antimedicine. art janov

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  9. Richard: Read up on the corpus callosum and you will see how that works. Read Teicher who discusses it fully. art janov

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  10. Richard; Primal Therapy is "RE-LIVING" trauma. I didn't say 'trauma breeds trauma' I said "Such a trauma, devastating as I foresee, might just jolt humanity into realizing we've been on the wrong path for way too long." The holocaust was indeed a trauma on several levels and it sure jolted us/humanity. Many accepted notions about our current way of life needs something of a jolt to get us beyond our complacency of the status quo and sadly, it might well be horrific. I am not recommending it; merely predicting its possibility.

    Once I had experienced an early trauma I was changed for ever.

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  11. Dear Art, "history is a nightmare from which Iam trying to awake"..this statement by James Joyce I can I can strongly underscore by replacing one word with heredity!! I d o earnestly believe that we are a l s o victims of heredity -long before life before birh-simlpy by the facts of amphimixix!!In my case I had to endure !! my body height of 204 cm with almost no muscle development after adolescence and many other genetically determined bodily features .So my point is t h e r e is predetermination of one`s psychic wellbeing through heredity!! I k n o w!! that I would have been a "normal" neurotic without all these aforementioned heredited features (behaviour of my mother etc.notwithstanding) Yours ! emanuel

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  12. Jack, Primal Therapy is not "Re-Living" trauma. To re-live a trauma is cruel and most likely the repression will get shifted into other defences. Primal Therapy is about re-living the repressed PAIN. Pain that needs carefully, step by step, integrated into consciousness.

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  13. Dennis: I wonder why I need to write. art janov

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  14. Emmanuel: very well put. art janov I don't know what 204 cm is.

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  15. Dennis, We are both of us 'playing on words' You say: "Primal Therapy is about re-living the repressed PAIN." I agree, but isn't pain repressed cos it's traumatic? Why otherwise would we repress it? Re-living trauma (repressed pain) is not cruel, it a natural process ... if we would allow it. It is defending (acting- out) against re-living that has cruel consequences ... IMO

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  16. Hi. This is off-topic, but I thought I'd include it here because it troubled me. There are allegations of abuse by Reichian practisioners as explained below by a certain Hugh Brenner from a Reichian organisation. I wonder how come Reich or his direct followers allowed these people to practice, just as I wonder how Dr Janov could not see the exploitive tendencies in those he trained to be therapists and who then went on to form a cult: "The Center for Feeling Therapy".I find this all distressing.

    Marco

    Report on abuse:
    A note from the IOS president: I am heartsick to report that over the last several years we have heard mounting evidence of terrible patient abuse at the hands of past orgonomists and others associated with orgonomy. These reports were from occurrences in the 1940's 50's and 60's. This news has been sad and distressing to members of the IOS, and has consumed much of our time. Dr. Morton Herskowitz, D.O. asked that we publish his following statement.



    September, 2009:

    "We have recently been advised of allegations of gross sexual violations committed by several psychiatric orgone therapists on their patients many years ago. The alleged perpetrators are deceased, unable to admit their guilt or offer a defense.

    The charges are shocking to contemporary practitioners because, if true, they represent a defiance of standards that Wilhelm Reich promulgated. Unfortunately in every profession - from politics to religious clergy, to business and the healing professions there are spoiled specimens who bring dishonor to their calling.

    Within the past decade one member of our group violated the ethical standards of our profession. Since we were apprised of the transgression we aided the prosecutor in preparation of his case. The culprit consequently was deprived of his license to practice.

    The goal of therapy is to enable the client to function more wholesomely in his/her world. Therapist as predator is antithetical to this goal and must be eradicated."


    If individuals wish to contact the IOS on this topic they are invited to do so, preferably in writing. Contact information is at the bottom of this page. There will be more on this topic in the next Annals.
    - Hugh Brenner

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  17. Just a word about some pregnant women that I know/ had known: I usually feel sad because I see a lot of them still not aware of what they do to their baby when they keep on drinking alcohol,coffee or smoking cigarettes. In many cases one can see troubles before they happen and I don't feel I have any right to say a word (a friend of mine had a caesarian section) her baby was so small (800 g)at birth. An other friend keeps on smoking while pregnant (6 month) and she told me yesterday that she is fed up with people advising her she should give up smoking. She tried before but she's crying all the time after a few days and can't stand it. She told me "it's as if your belly doesn't belong to you anymore". By the way Ericka is the only woman who wrote something on this topic since friday...Doctor Janov's idea of teaching those things at school might be a good one because in our western cvilizations nobody seem to care about this time of our life (I mean on "a common place" basis) as it seem to be the case in India for instance.

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  18. Jack: There's a big difference between re-living the original trauma and re-living the repressed pain. Let's look at rape for example, why would anyone have to go get raped again (re-live it)? If you don't see the cruelty in that, then my short comments aren't going to change that. There are traumatic experiences that can last several years, sometimes a whole childhood. A mother telling her child every day that he's stupid, for example, Why would anyone have to relive that for so many years? No wonder some people are stuck in endless primal therapy. To re-live is to re-enforce the defense mechanisms, just like it did with the original trauma. People change, but they change into other neuroses.

    Arthur, I'm not sure if your question is rhetorical, but I suppose the answer to why you have the need to write can be found when you stop writing. For me, writing is about communication, not only with others but also with myself. Perhaps it's a way to not be alone, to find validation in what we believe. Writing can also be a sincere attempt to share with others. I know I wouldn't have survived mentally if I hadn't read the books by some authors, including yours, who presented me alternative views outside the totalitarian power of a dysfunctional family.

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  19. Dennis when a patient relives, and locks into the feeling all of the vital signs normalize. When she abreacts without proper connection the signs do not change or change in sporadic fashion. Abreaction means no connection and no resolution. It means harm, not the case with a real primal. art janov

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  20. Marco: You know when you have several hundred patients and fifty therapists/interns, and when some of those interns met in secret for a long time there is no way to control it. The damage they did was enormous and all we could do is warn all of them about the disaster to come. This was in the very beginning of the primal movement. art janov

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  21. Hello Dr Janov,

    -A bit off topic, but I think the point's of interest...

    Interesting listening to the guy (on the included link) talking about childhood trauma. He noted that when lecturing to large groups of physicians he would (reliably) notice people's faces change to anguish, where he got the impression that he was "waking people's own personal ghosts". The point was that this is not a comfortable topic for so many people to look at, and he somewhat suggested that that is why the psychology world (and the world in general) does not confront the issues of trauma and its impacts, like it should.

    Maybe this is a substancial part of the reason why people are "just not interested"? Maybe people are not going to be capable of understanding you until they are first *compfortable* to understand you - that is, comfortable at least with the fact that the damage has been done, and its impact is rather serious. I must admit that I had to go through a bit of an 'accepting' phase myself.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRaNwIdrKuc&feature=PlayList&p=B3F2CF45EEB95C80&playnext_from=PL

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  22. To "live" something is to experience it fully. "Re-living" is not quite the right word. Repressed pain is pain which was not felt fully during the time of the trauma. The primal patient becomes able to "live" the pain for the first time....long after the trauma was originally pushed out of consciousness. He/she is not actually re-living it. I think the word "re-living" is close enough to illustrate how a patient returns to the traumatic event and adopts all the same body positions and behaviours which happened during the original trauma. Primalling allows us to feel the pain fully for the first time, but over a shorter period of time. The pain must be felt long enough to find resolution, not necessarily as long as the original trauma.
    I think Jack understands all that. We are splitting hairs. My main point was that a 'shock to the system' is a very attractive concept to an impatient therapist. There's a little bit of Hitler in all of us. I keep returning to the point about mock therapy in my posts because it is having devastating consequences on patients and the spread of real primal therapy. People must understand there is no quick fix. A collapsed economy won't help. Electric shocks won't help. etc.

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  23. "Jack: There's a big difference between re-living the original trauma and re-living the repressed pain." Oh really Dennis! what is the difference?

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  24. Dr Janov: Thanks a lot for replying to my post about abuse by Reichian practisioners and the troubles you had many years ago with those cultists in your own orbit. You at least took the time to reply to my concerns with a mostly convincing answer, whereas not one of the six principal Reichian or neo-Reichian organisations that I addressed my concerns to have yet to reply after 2 days, and I do not expect they will. I find this outrageous. Sure we can all accuse the Catholic Church for their outrages , and here, abuse happenned within therapeutic movements that we all consider more enlightened than these religious people! And this also infuriates me because I myself was exploited in a cult 30 years ago and it still rankles to hear stories of others being exploited, especially from quarters that I thought were beyond cultism and abuse (I was in an offshoot of EST for 4 years).Furthermore, imagine this situation: someone is distressed, looking for therapy, and they learn of these Reichian abusers and The Center for Feeling Therapy situation; yet, they have read Reich, Janov, Lowen and others and are convinced THEORETICALLY that there are possibly some therapies that might help them out. So they are confused and want answers to some key questions: do these therapies have anything to offer PRACTICALLY ? and if so, why did the abuse occur within them, and what is the demarcation line between the abusers and the competent therapist? If I were troubled and looking for therapy, I would want clear answers to these questions. Is that not reasonable? Now, in my own case, I am not very distressed and not seeking therapy (I do Bioenergetic exercises on my own and they are very helpful),but I still feel upset by all this because I always want to deepen my practical and theoretical understanding of Janov , Reich, Lowen,and others, ( to be happier, to put it simply ) and I have now hit a roadblock of doubt: am I wasting my time with Reich, Lowen, and Janov? I have not gotten clear answers, except from you Dr. Janov; and even then I wonder why you could not see through these cultists at the stage these people applied to be trained and rejected them. It seems to me that a person who wrote such an apparently profound book like The Primal Scream ( I still , for the most part, beleive that it is profound), which required an apparent rare depth of intuition into people, should have been able to see the "evil" in these people before it was too late.Or is that having unreasonable expectations towards you, or anyone(no one is perfect)? In any case , thanks for replying.I am still on yours and Reich's side, but I am troubled by all this stuff.

    Marco

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  25. I just read about "the center for feeling therapy" in Wikipedia, and recalled how a few years ago, after I started therapy, there was a point when I felt it was all a cruel hoax too, because I kept going deeper and deeper into my pain, and the only string I had to hold on to for pulling back up, was the notion that I'll find something down there which would be worth the terrible suffering. But there was nothing down there except more and more pain, which made it feel like I dug my own grave of eternal suffering and there was no way back - sounds like a religious notion of hell...but it's also an account of how therapy can go wrong, anywhere, by anyone, no exemptions, no guarantees.
    And, about the remark on why we need to write, either here or anywhere - when a tree falls in an empty forest, it makes no noise, because there's no one to acknowledge that noise. Now, when considering a tree, we may call it philosophy, but when a child is concerned, it's something completely different - that child, who was not heard or watched, has no acknowledgment of his existence. It's like some sort of neurological stamping. If you don't get it early - you're defected for life. If you got just a tiny bit - you're doomed to keep chasing it.

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  26. Jack, the difference is that you don't get re-traumatized when re-living a trauma. Pain lies at the core of the repression, nothing else. Too much pain and you'll split off. Do you know the major difference between regression therapy, rebirthing therapy and Primal Therapy?

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  27. macor 22

    Pain is governing in the smallest detail ... so… a minimum of wonderings which gives concern because of displacement will be confusing…how do we know that? Otherwise it is not confusing… that we don’t know. A state of confusion is rooted for protection against awareness of suffering ... a symptom against awareness of its source.

    Frank

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  28. It is my feeling, Richard, I do understand Primal Theory very well and have benefited greatly from Primal Therapy over the last 29 years. I felt that Dennis was confusing the meaning of re-living with re-enacting. Re-living in the Janovian sense is going back mentally in time and feeling that feeling that was blocked/repressed/split-from/amnesiated-against, because it was too overwhelming for the fetus, baby, small child to make total sense of and express. Since a chance event in my early 30's (mid-1960's) where I had a 're-living' of a very early childhood event and was floored by the experience, but in my mind I considered it a memory which made me re-consider what I had previously deemed memory. It was such a momentous event in my life and I could not quite figure it out, until some several years later when I read "The Primal Scream". At that point re-living made total sense and 'remembering' came back to me as I had originally understood that word (looking back, not going back).

    Traumatic events in our lives that we do not 'amnesiate' from, have an enormous impact on our lives, thinking and ideas (notions). History is replete with stories of certain people having these experiences and attempting to explain them and in many cases causing many of us to follow and re-think previously conceived notions. These are some of mine:- Abraham, Moses, Buddha, Jesus, Mohamed, Joseph Smith, Isaac Newton, Einstein and Max Planck. IMO many of these had 'Primals', but in attempting to explain them missed the deeper issue. It was not until Arthur Janov had the genius to not explain it until he had seen some of his patients experince it and then experienced it himself.

    It is my contention that had the recent economic crisis been allowed to totally crash, the notion of money as a means of controlling us, would have been re-assessed. Yes, I feel it would have perhaps had some very devastating consequences, but IMO humanity as a whole would have eventually settled to live without this (unbelievably stupid) symbol. Other traumas like earth quakes, volcanic eruptions, major civil upheavals, might have a similar effect causing us human to re-asses some of our deeply ingrained per-conceived notions. We neurotics have a great tendency to "box ourselves into" many pre-conceived notion without really thinking them through. Breakthroughs occur when someone questions these pre-conceived notions as I believe the above mentions persons attempted to do during their lifetimes.

    It is for this reason that I consider Janov's discovery (Primal Pain) and his ensuing formulation of Primal theory is the greatest discovery mankind ever made OR will ever make. That's my feeling: and I'm sticking to it. Jack:

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  29. Delphi: Indeed, that center for feeling is a good example of what can go wrong. No only did they do bad therapy but they, as often the case, became autocratic and actually beat up patients, that is, when they weren't having sex with them. I warn all of the time. It is most dangerous in untrained or in the hands of psychopaths. Trust me, there are some 500 centers in the world using my name and the pictures of my books to deceive people. AJ

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  30. Dear Dr. Janov

    Alice Miller has died April 12. at the age of 87, says her Berlin publisher.
    Sieglinde

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  31. Oh my I Didn't know. She added a lot to the literature. She came to see me in Paris to learn about the therapy and then opened a center with a lamp salesman. I am convinced, people, that primal will give us a much longer life. art

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  32. AM asked me in 2000 to help her with her German forum. After she learned that I am for PT, she locked me out of her forum. It’s very sad that she never gave herself a chance to feel her pain.
    Sieglinde

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  33. Sielinge: It is very strange. She (Alice Miller) told me how fascinated she was with the therapy. Such small-mindedness. art

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  34. Is not Alice Miller a clear example… we understand much more than we feel ... a huge problem for primal therapy! A perfect defense to ourselves then... against ourselves now as adults. This is one nut to crack.

    Frank

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  35. Alice Miller wrote very positively about Arthur Janov's Primal Therapy in "Banished Knowledge", referring to it as a universal truth. Then she heard some success stories from people who had undergone therapy at Stettbacher's Institute and Miller decided to do Primal Therapy. Unfortunately she went to a mock therapist in Switzerland (not Stettbacher) and was seriously damaged after that. She didn't understand the warnings Arthur wrote about. After that, she didn't write for 10 years. She publicly scolded me at her public forum in 2001, threatened to sue me and banned me, not wanting to discuss, not wanting to listen, not wanting to give me the opportunity to explain. How she rejected Barbara Rogers last year was another sign of a confused and damaged person. We can only learn from her mistakes and take her childhood discoveries to a new level.

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  36. Sieglinde: what criticisms did Alice Miller have about Primal Therapy?

    Marco

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  37. Frank: She did add to the literature explaining science to the lay public and that was good. But her feelings drove her to do things that were beneath her. art janov

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  38. Art
    I have today submitted a notice to JO… justice department in Sweden for the purpose of neglect. A notification about an individual's exercise of power in society. One serious action… aimed at clarifying how they justify information for their own purposes. It is about the denial of Primal therapy eligibility in the Swedish society.
    You my will hear something about it… I don’t know.
    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