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, January 12, 2011
Another Mass Murder
It happened again recently and it will happen again in the future. Someone goes crazy and fires into a crowd, killing many. And now the media begins their handwringing frenzy. We need to reflect on what makes this happen. I have already reflected so let me add to what kinds of things make it happen.
First of all, these individuals don’t just “go crazy.” They have been going crazy since birth and before. So what does that mean? It means there was tremendous pain during womb-life, perhaps a smoking/drinking manic mother that loosened the gates. Then a terrible birth and no love from anyone afterward. The gates are flooded with pain and cannot hold it back. What is worse, the first-line deeply embedded pain is surging through at all times so that eventually the first line becomes the third line. There is now no cortical ability to discern reality; only internal reality is at the fore-front; all the hurts, neglect, insults, beatings and indifference are in the fore. The person has a far-away look about them as they are living totally in the past, not the here-and-now. They therefore seem dazed and unresponsive.
Here they are vulnerable to the zeitgeist, the latent ambiance, that will channel their rage and their pain. It is like a giant cloud that overhangs their world and forces them to think and act in certain ways. Decades ago it was to kill the communists where conspiring against them. So my psychotics would nail up the doors and put foil on their heads to block the communist conspiracy. Trouble was, they were already inside and there was no defense against them, “them” meaning the menace and the danger. It was imprinted and inescapable.
Today we make the danger physical, the liberals; they have to be “stopped.” So when congresswoman Giffords appears, and is known in the press as a liberal, hence, danger, she must be stopped, and everyone else around her. Enter the gunman who is trying to do everything he can to get rid of the dangers that plague him. If only he knew it was all inside.
But no, Sarah Palin has drawn crosshairs on gifford’s face in the press, an open invitation to shoot her where she stands. She can claim they were not gun crosshairs but the damage is done. The zeitgeist did not make the killer crazy and did not force him to take up the gun, but the ambiance channeled it all for him. The right wing denies it because they too are creatures of the zeitgeist and help make it real and widespread. They really believe that liberals are the enemy; not fellow-Americans who simply disagree or have a different view. They are the enemy. Why? Because any differing idea or ideology threatens their defense system, fragile as it is.
These people need an enemy to justify their fear, terror and rage. Otherwise, where would it go? Would they implode? They would be bereft, bereft of any defense or outlet. Now they have a socially institutionalized belief system that they can slip into that justifies everything they believe. But please don’t challenge it; don’t question their notion or perception of reality, cause it ain’t reality. It is a socially institutionalize belief system. An artificially constructed reality that keeps their feelings in place and justified.
Why are they right-wing? Because of all their pain that drove them away from feelings and made feelings and kind-hearts an anathema. Because they cannot see reality and don’t want anyone else to. All delusions love company; that is why cults work and why it is so dangerous to leave the cult—to have a new idea about the world. I have seen it and treated those who were in cults. They do not tolerate dissent.
I never remember growing up with this kind of mass phenomenon. A guy killed someone for personal reasons. Now he has a social rationale for it all. He can feel guilty with a clear conscience. It becomes really dangerous when many join in on the delusion; they reinforce each other and reify the beliefs and make them impenetrable.
Hi Art,
ReplyDeleteLots of 'pieces' in this post but interesting.
Do you think society in general is a "cult"...in that it co-functions to support certain base collectively-held beliefs that have more to do with defences than realities?
-Can anyone reading this blog define a cult for me? I've never been too sure as to what it really is, in substance.
Andrew: I have written a book, Beyond Belief, which I hope to sell one day which defines and discusses cults and uses case histories. AJ
ReplyDeleteGreat writing Art! Please post to as many "Letters to the Editor" newspaper pages - and comparable forums for comments - as possible!
ReplyDeleteI have a question to you Arthur, can you tell me why you and all other people in the world,who like you have this knowlaged and others who are sensible for the problem of childabuse do not get in touch with each other? (it's so simple now with Internet to find each other) AND FORM A BIG GROUP to have more force so your vice can be hear in the crazy world! Working on your own is not the best solution....and we see how it's difficult to reach and deliver this knowlaged to the society.
ReplyDeleteIn one discussion on FB regarding just this subject, I wrote so:
...". People are used to believe in “sick authorities” in old myths, stereotypes regarding violence, educations like we did before.
But what I personally do not understand (and this make me more CRAZY and SAD) is why ALL those psychologists, therapist, psychiatrists, authors of books (and in the world there are a lot of such people) do not get in touch with each other to form a big group and press the mass media to spread their knowledge. Today it’s so easy by Internet to find each other and have contacts and find ideas!
And my impression is that even they still have some problems but do not understand what kind of the problem it is: are they NOT able to work in a group? -:)))) Or ?????
We all know how painful it is to heal and it takes years often do not with success so I understand more people who do not want to listen to us then those professionals who tell and write about child abuse and do not try to contact colleagues in their countries and abroad to create a big group and try to find out some idea to spread faster their knowledge only work on their own.
Arthur can you explain it to me why?
Andrew: "Do you think society in general is a "cult"...in that it co-functions to support certain base collectively-held beliefs that have more to do with defenses than realities?" YES!
ReplyDeleteI would define cultish as anything were two or more people BELIEVE in the same belief system. If you are BELIEVING, you are essentially saying you do not know, BUT hope, somehow that your believing has some authenticity with others.
We often use the phrase "I agree" but do we really? The context and perhaps the intent may not necessarily be explicit. We can make agreements, like one and one equals two, but it is nothing more than an agreement ... not a state of being in the ether out there.
Following your own feelings about anything and everything is all any of us require for ourselves. Jack
Oh, let me in on this one ;-) Agreed, both left and right are seriously deluded? I ask, is it possible both are being cultivated and used? Now, pain surely drives these short sighted people on both sides. But how sad they will not give things more thought. Perhaps it is because their heads are scrambled by the noise from below disrupting. But if they just would give it 2 minutes of thought and rational thinking, they could see how stupid either side is. I note throughout politics and religion, even science at times, that they love simplistic easy mindless pat answers to life. Find something you like, and gamble everything you have on it.
ReplyDeleteFor instance, one might say, Life is a Gift. From there, they ignore any good responsible breeding and perhaps engage in unbridled reproduction, perhaps to the slighting of the ones already previously born or create hardships in trying to support such a large family. “Life is a gift” becomes an excuse and escape from responsible behavior.
Declaring enemies also justifies many hideous things. It starts with blind irrational hate and where it ends, if it ends, one can only guess. Truth is the very first casualty of any war or attempt to incite war. Vilify and demonize and dehumanize the enemy and then you can do what you want with them.
But in much of this, there is a refusal to activate or use the mind in a sensible reasonable fashion. So there are primitive strong emotions from deep below but also a complete lack of any control or attempt at control from above, either. A lack of using one’s mind is as dangerous as bottled up primal emotions and impulses.
On Cults, Yes, many cults. All governments are top down and pretty much totalitarian as I see it, regardless of mock claims of democracy, freedom, rights etc. Those are all tricks to fool the simple. What greater cult is there than the military? Most religions are cults since they seek to control the flock, usually for the benefit of the ruling government. Been that was since Constantine the great about 324 AD, if not far earlier.
Everything in our world is about controlling information, what you hear and what you are not wanted to hear. PT ends up on the bottom, resented for the freedom it threatens to bring. Newspapers and media promote a vague cult. Control of information is the goal. Our education system is definitely a cult. Challenge the teacher and see what you get for grades.
Now if PT were to gain prominence and start to enable thinking and freedom of thought, what do you think the various cult leaders of our world would do? It would not be nice. We might end up looking a lot like early persecuted Christians being fed to the lions or burned at the stake. Leaders do not like ideas contrary to their own. Just saying ;-)
Andrew, here are some of my suggestions about what a Cult is. A cult is a group controlled by an elite group but most commonly by just one person. In a pure cult, the leader controls everything. Your entire existence is controlled by him. You food, when you eat, what you do, what you think and believe, when you sleep. Your labor and service are all for the leader and his goals, which of course, are always said to be in your behalf as he knows better than you what is in your best interest, you know ;-)
ReplyDeleteSome groups do not control all parts of the lives of their members. They might live in their own houses and have their own jobs and means of income. But within the group, they will seek to control what you think and believe. They will not tolerate any dissent. They discourage any association with anyone outside the group. They isolate you and keep you very dependent upon them for social contact or anything else.
Such dependence makes it difficult to leave or break away. They try to limit what you hear from the outside and continually promote only their view and often with little to no appeal to reason or logic. It is all about trusting them since they are supposedly led by God and obeying because they are an authority, not because they have good reason that does not fear questioning.
Now, if you think about it, We are dependent upon the system for our jobs. We are dependent, if we do not seek out dissent otherwise, our mainstream sources of knowledge and info. If we dissent at work, at school, at college, at church, in government, we will be branded if we get very loud or very convincing. So really then, might we perhaps be in a large society nation wide cult? Just asking!
To me the greatest of life’s pleasures is to be allowed to let my mind wander wherever the truth will lead it. That has gotten me to PT and many other insights. A mind is a terrible thing to imprison. Yet most minds are happy to accept that incarceration. I have just never been one of those to accept such bars and chains. Its just not me.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteThere was a documenty on telly last night about the brain and emotions. Straigtht away there was no mention of the womb and birth issues. I watched because i knew what the concerned presenter didn't and it was obvious why his "line of reasoning" was the way it was. He didn't know. I felt really uncomfortable as he showed archive footage of babies being traumatised and moneys running to furry models etc. All in the name of science.
Dr Janov, you brought up the subject of prevention rather than cure. So far you have written books for adults. How about a book, or series of little books for children and young mothers on the subject of "Natural Gestation & Birth" and why it is a good thing. Could there be new myths to tell stories about the Snake, the Monkey and the Prince (or Princess)?
I would buy these for my children and friends, some of them want so much to be natural mothers, one has recently given birth in a pool, under water without painkillers. . . Our local Infirmary has a water birth suit. . . Children and young mothers books, for them. . . not us "grown ups".
PG.
Pbef: You know that is not my thing. You can do it. art janov
ReplyDeleteSabina. I always tell my students that it is some kind of miracle that out of 250,000 shrinks in american they all have managed to ignore my work. One would think that even by accident someone would discover it. But alas, no. art janov. By the way, I write my blog so that we can all get together. That is the whole idea of it. I think all of you readers need to get together and pressure for some kind of change.
ReplyDeleteSabina. I have written dozens of letters to professionals in the field offering to show my work and films about what we do. No takers. Scientists are an incurious lot. art janov
ReplyDeleteJack: you believe so that you don't have to know. Beliefs supplant knowing; it is safer and more comfortable art janov
ReplyDeletePG: You know you say, "write a book." do you know that it takes me 5 to 6 years to write one. Every day when I write I have to read all late scientific journals and books. it is a full time undertaking. I am 86. There are others more talented than me to write such a book. It needs to be written but I cannot. art janov
ReplyDeleteApollo: So then according to you is the army a cult? art
ReplyDeleteArt:
ReplyDelete250,000 shrinks are wilfully blind to what you have to say? Yes - incredible. I tried to think why. My best guess is that they are not interested in ANYTHING that cannot be assimilated into their pre-established concepts. They do not want to be demoralised and confused (though they are probably confused in real terms anyway). Especially considering they are earning much more than the average wage, and don't want to feel uncomfortable about their existing practice - too threatening on too many levels.
I once explained Primal Theory to a young (and interested) guy who had just finished his masters degree in psychology. He believed he was open-minded about it. He was not. It was obvious to me that he was still working overtime holding onto his established assumptions - he could not dare put it aside for the moment, so as to see what I was saying from my position, which is what it takes to really understand what someone else is saying.
I think these shrinks just want to swallow themselves up into their own intellectual womb, and then go to sleep there for the rest of their professional lives.
That's my best guess.
I learnt about you Arthur about 8 yers ago reading forum on Maria Rita Parsi's webside http://www.mariaritaparsi.net/parsi/bacheca/bacheca1/ShowWall.asp where she reccomend to one of her readers your book
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ibs.it/code/9788883583179/janov-arthur/potere-dell-amore.html.
She know you -:)) Do you know her?
I mean get in contact with such people in the world.
Andrew: In my opinion the most difficult voyage for scientists is to go from the left to the right brain. That is a few centimeters and light years away. art janov
ReplyDelete"They do not tolerate dissent."
ReplyDeletehey, what happened to my earlier post?? anyways, more and more evidence is coming out from the shooter. He was focused on the congressman since 2007, long before Palin was famous in 2008
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703667904576071191163461466.html
"He wasn't especially political, Mr. Marriotti said, though he expressed frustration with the Bush Administration."
so the second half is still wrong
I agree with Jack and Apollo and Andrew. Everywhere you look, things have a cultish flavour. The army is a shocker. Disgusting advertising campaigns that tap into the inferiority complex in young people. "Are you man enough?"
ReplyDeletePeople are encouraged to kill and risk their lives to protect a set of rules which are not necessarily good for the common people.
The army has confidentiality rules to stop outsiders from learning about it's huge suicide rate. The army puts medals on the chests of the best killers and biggest risk-takers because the military leaders know that it's all about self-esteem and inferiority complex.
Soldiers don't believe in murder. They believe in protecting some strangers who don't really care whether a soldier lives or dies.
Everywhere we look there is a brainwashed, cultish stench. It even seeps into TV shows and into the people who watch TV.
Have you seen the way little seven-year-old American girls dance? And teenage girls walk around on the beach wearing bikinis that show almost their entire breasts (I'm not complaining) but I don't think those girls feel naked. They SHOULD feel naked. They ARE naked. It's like they want to be sexy but they are completely de-sensitised to their nakedness and sexuality. It's all just a game to them.
That's how far the brainwashing can go -- right into the most private part of a person's self awareness -- until there is no individuality left.
The world is severely cultish.
Sabina: no sorry I never heard of her. Dr. Janov
ReplyDeleteThis is a comment I got in an email:
ReplyDelete"1. Four main features characterize the right-wing stance: a., Inordinate anger towards and mistrust of a fictionalized government b. Denial of reality (e.g., of climate change, of war facts, etc.) c. Emotional rigidity d., hatred of vulnerability (and of vulnerable people, except fetuses)
2. These attitudes bear no direct relationship to actual facts: government is not out to control in the way the right wing imagines; the climate is changing
3. The rigidity and hatred of vulnerability are deeply ingrained psychological defenses, as is denial: that's why there is no dialogue possible
4. People like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin exemplify in their language and ESPECIALLY their body language these defenses, and provide a rationale for them. Hence their popularity.
4. These defenses are in response to and arise from early childhood trauma and emotional loss. Beck's mother was an alcoholic. Beck is a paranoiac in many aspects of his life, not just politics.
5. However, the right-wing personality is grounded in denial of trauma (beginning with their own, and therefore of others who are victimized by the system, at home or abroad). So their political denial begins and remains rooted in a personal one.
6. Not willing to face their own pain, they deny the pain of others. Their emotional rigidity--see Palin's frozen facial movements during her post-Tucson videocast--is only a defense against pain.
7. Their distrust of "government" is actually an emotional memory of the people who ruled their lives in childhood, i.e., of their parents. Hence their distrust and fear and anger.
8. All this is implied by the recent brain scan study that showed the brain's fear centre enlarged in "conservatives." That fear centre is shaped in its development by the early environment.
9. Reagan: father was an alcoholic; Reagan was completely emotionally shut down all his life and in denial of reality: so much so, that even before his Alzeimer's he confused reality and fiction, such as when he told a Second World War anecdote as historical, when he actually it was fiction he had seen in a movie.
10. George W. Bush always had the befuddled and scared facial language of a scared child (e.g., when he was announcing the assault on Iraq.)
11. The reason the right wing personality assaults the vulnerable is because it hates its own vulnerability. It's always on the defensive against feeling its own vulnerability.
12. The right wing personality fears "big government"--but by that they mean help for the vulnerable. In fact, they completely identify with authority, hence the emphasis on power and control.
13. That identification with having to be the biggest and most powerful is, again, a defense.
14. Of course, these personality traits completely favor and support the needs of the powerful and the rich--that's why these are the people who rise high in the media and in politics.
To whoever gave Art the recent email:
ReplyDeleteRemember! An individual having a neurotic relationship to their ideas/beliefs does not, in itself, make their beliefs invalid. Don't write people off *just* because they are "in a feeling".
Don't give your government a blank cheque of trust. Of course you know where the most horrific (and vast) acts of terrorsim have come from: not isloated individuals and groups, but governments.
Remember also that it's hard to compete with an intelligent psychopath, so they tend to suck themselves up to the top of the political world (and other). Unfortunately competition functionally means: survival of the most ruthless. I have long thought that that is its great weakness. The competitve world is terribly psychopath-friendly!
Did you know: New Zealand, my home country, had the highest living standard in the world around the 1950's, and also a very small government. It was remarkably egalitarian - poverty was virtually unheard of. It had a properly managed economy/society so it didn't create the very problems that led to the need for "big government" in the first place!!!
As for global warning views, I recommend my own link on this:
http://andrewatkin.blogspot.com/2010/12/global-warming-saga-simple-view-on-over.html
You need to abandon your fantasy that the left-ist Greenies are always the good guys. It's a dangerous fantasy too - comes back to that "blank cheque of trust" thing.
To say, I actually believe in collectivist social systems. But they need to be small-scale and developed primarily bottom-up, not top-down. When centralised governments want to turn the world into THEIR one big happy family, things tend to get a bit creepy.
An email comment:
ReplyDelete"Hi Art,
Great post on the Giffords shooting. Were you aware of this article published today in the NYT? Loughner used pot, mushrooms and especially salvia, a potent and dangerous hallucinogenic that puts one into a "different world."
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/18/us/18salvia.html?_r=1&hpw (PDF attached in case you can't download the link)
So you are exactly right. His gates were blown to hell and he became completely psychotic. I would sure like to know more about his early life, especially his prenatal life.
Iacoboni completely and utterly misses the mark. "Anger management" after years of pot-induced frontal lobe dysfunction? "Deranged cognitive control mechanisms in the service of a disturbed goal" after psychosis-inducing salvia?
After all these years, no one gets it - to get control you must lose control. As you've said for years, if you've never primaled, you'll never know what real control is."
And my response to it:
ReplyDeleteI never saw that article but it makes total sense. he blew his gates wide open. art. psychiatric training is so so poor. There is no clinical experience now.