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 27, 2011
A Bit More on the Feeling and Non-Feeling Brain
I cannot trust it when people say they got a lot out of therapy, unless of course, they are feeling. I can trust their right brain; it is to be trusted, like when they tell me their dreams and I know that the feelings inside doesn’t lie. That feeling comes from the right brain. That is why I always go for the feeling inside the dream. It tells us where the patient is. The story the feeling tells is just that—a story, a concoction derived from the feeling. It is a concoction that makes rational the feeling and gives it some kind of sense; but the story is only important to help us get to the feeling. The feeling gave birth to the story so let us not waste time on it. Analyzing the story changes nothing because that same feeling will make up another one, and another until the feeling is felt and integrated. No different from the obsession driven by a feeling. “I don’t feel safe”, "I’ll be safe if I check the locks twenty times a day.” Let us not focus on check the locks; let’s focus on feeling unsafe and why. That forms the emotional leitmotiv.
So some say we in our therapy need to do follow up studies. I agree, but they want self-reports from the patient re: their progress, and I say it is rarely to be trusted. But the machines that measure feelings and pain, the blood and urine studies do not lie and reflect for us the truth inside.
Yes, it is also important for what the patient says but it must be accompanied by physiologic measurements, blood pressure, cortisol levels, heart rate, etc.
So why the skepticism? Because the feeling of happiness and progress in therapy is most often left brain and that can be very deceptive. That is why using that brain to get to the past is an oxymoron. It cannot be done; talking about the pass won’t get us to feeling. I repeat, the ability to retrieve old memories is right brain. It handles feelings present and past. We need that road to go back, otherwise we are discussing the past but without feeling and experiencing it. We are on the left road and it is not the right one, if you follow me. Intellect and cognitive memory won’t get us there. The problem is today in psychologic science that they won’t followup studies using the very brain that is leading us astray. And we really think that if we discuss our past that is fine. It is not! It is a head trip and we have had enough of that.
Art , your insistence on the uselessness of insight generation to actually restoring feeling is very important. Insights no doubt give us some hormonal buzz but ultimately only maintain the split in ourselves. I think Primal therapy is the only therapy that actually recognizes that simply thinking or talking about one's pain is a limited exercise. Yes, it is the feeling that underlies the idea (dream content) that should be our focus. I think this point of view is consistent with all of the knowledge that ethological and evolutionary approaches to psychology have offered. This is that as humans we are constituted of species-specific behavioural needs, fixed pattern actions and evolved sequences (bioprograms) that must be expressed and not disturbed if we are to live loving lives. Where these patterns are prohibited by our environments we will suffer and develop compulsions, disorders etc. that reveals necessary human sequences have been disrupted. Talking about the problem wont fix it that is for sure. Trying to reconfigure the disturbed neural circuit is the only way and to do this getting beyond the limitations of words seems really apparent.
ReplyDeleteI am about to do some research into trichotillomania (hair pulling and eating) at Turku Univ. Finland and if ever there was a problem that told us that we need to delve below words it is this. Ancient grooming biograms are enacted here but the disorder means the grooming behaviours have become self-directed in the absence of an object (person) to whom normal loving behaviour can be directed. No amount of talking is going to fix that. In this way Art's insistence on the need to engage with the right brain at the frequency of arousal that evokes the original trauma makes so much sense to me.
Art: Have you ever been interested in Wilhelm Reich's work on orgone energy and do you feel it has any importance to psychological/physiological well-being? Reich's emphasis was from outside in and not inside out but his focus on reducing muscular armour and changing the phenotype are really interesting.
ReplyDeleteWill: Makes sense to me too. AJ
ReplyDeleteWill: I t was interesting many decades ago but no longer. He was onto something then got lost. Art Janov
ReplyDeleteA facebook comment:
ReplyDelete"I hate how some people want to make everything of the story of the dream; like Jungian analysis; wallowing, indulging, analysing and attributing various things- they may as well be doing a creative writing class! When I ask them the feeling they look at me like that is trite, overly simple, beside the point. I know psychiatrists even who work like this; in private practice; even incorporating astrology. They leave people even more f--ked up than when they came in!"
Will, are you saying we still have the desire to eat each other's head lice? An ancient hominid biogram for bonding and personal hygiene? If we don't have someone to groom we will turn on ourselves? I'm pulling my hair out trying to find the science behind this, and hypnosis, and psychology in general.
ReplyDeleteWill, the psychology world is full of wild theories. I hope you are thinking without assuming.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteIn our own brains there's a way information can be collected and stored like a menu. Then like a child playing at running a restaurant, we can replay that information and it finds it's way back onto the guests' plates.
There seem s to be a tendency to continue offering some of that information to 'guests' even when more recent info supersedes the old.
Discarding 'out of date' food (and info) is a challenge for us when we have worked so hard to acquire it. Seems a waste doesn't it?
Thus out of date and not very nutricious food finds its' way back into unsuspecting patients 50 minute hr. I'm sure many psychotherapists know they are offering out of date food but they can't help themselves. The 'therapeutic alliance' is so well established (the guests keep coming back for more) that they have little personal choice than to continue
with the old menu.
There are psychotherapies that focus on feelings and sensations (Integrative Bodywork for eg) but they are still limited by the 50 minute hr.
Eventually such out of date meals rushed through in 50 minutes will become obsolete, I hope. I certainly don't go to those restaurants any more.
Paul G.
Paul: I stopped eating at the cafe of lost souls a long time ago. AJ
ReplyDeleteArt: Me too! So much "level B" knowledge is just a substitute for "level A" knowledge.
ReplyDeleteThere are a trillion ways to push back symptoms. Only one core way to address the cause. Why be an expert on the former?