So Why Have Primals? or Relive? What's the Point?

Apart from the obvious answer of not living in pain and not being driven incessantly by unconscious forces there is even a more compelling reason—living longer and healthier. This is even more true of reliving the first line—the very early imprints that are more or less devastating. I want to explain why it is so necessary.

We know now that imprints during gestation, at birth and in early infancy carry a whopping impact, and that force is constantly rummaging around low down in the brain where it creates havoc and drives us unmercifully to act-out or to explode in anger at the slightest input. That imprint or imprints wears down organ systems and deviates the normal operation of key systems; the neurologic, immune, circulatory, and so on. And so too soon we fall ill of heart problems, immune problems or blood circulation difficulties.



But more important when there is almost constant anger eruptions driven by first line then a stroke is in the offing. How do we know that it is first line? Because as I have written many times, a little annoyance on the third line in the present, someone doesn’t move fast enough for us; to a real anger on the second line that makes us rip out someone: and finally pure fury and out-of-control anger that emanates from the first line tells us what line the person is on.



So there is slight emotion in the present resonating with similar but stronger feelings on the second-line, and finally pure fury or terror on the first line. That is the contribution each line contributes to a feeling. Now, when there is an out of control feeling from low down we have to keep it down all of the time. If we don’t have enough internally manufactured repressants such as serotonin, we have to buy them. If we cannot go to our internal pharmacy and order it we have to travel to one around the block and order it. The first is automatically done for us; when there is great pain the system knows it and supplies substantial painkillers, but sometimes the set points have been changed and there just isn’t enough to kill it completely.



These eruptions of anger in a person can be suppressed with drugs and pills but it will kill us, nevertheless. And the way it will kill us is mostly by cerebral stroke. The pain and its energy will rise up into the brain and destroy cells. In my view, the only way to prolong our lives is to relive and exorcise and expurgate that pain and its energy, finally vitiating its force and calming us. “Did he die of a stroke?” Yes, that is the proximal cause, but the ultimate cause is first-line pain. If someone is constantly losing his temper, beyond his control, we can pretty well believe that he is destined for a stroke or heart attack. It can be prevented, not by a cerebral therapy that uses the neocortex to do what serotonin does—repress, but by an experiential therapy that digs out very deep, underlying forces.



All of what I am writing is based on the notion of resonance; how each level in its own way represents a single feeling. Adding emotion or great energy to a feeling. As we evolve from the womb on there are radiating nervous circuits higher up that take on the feeling and add their take to it. And it also happens from the top down; something in the present causes a resonance, dipping down deeply to add to the force of a feeling. So a slight misunderstanding in the present can only set off deeper violent forces if they are already there, imprinted. Without that pain there probably won’t be that force that drives unceasingly. Of course we can be angry or fearful but without first line being involved there will be not murderous angry or paralyzing terror. If we stop therapy early, having resolved a lot of second line emotional pain, there still may be a significant residue of unresolved first line to deal with. It has to be address and integrated.