Sunday, October 9, 2011

The Permanence of Needs



Allow me to relate one research experiment we did to verify my point. It was at the UCLA Pulmonary Laboratory.We wired two patients to a number of instruments, oxygen levels, carbon dioxide, and blood samples every 3 minutes while they relived, as it turned out, oxygen deficit at birth, something we had not planned at all. Neither patient observed the other so we had a rather pure experience on the part of both men. After the reliving, we did another experiment where each patient mimicked the primal in every way (same movements and breathing) except being in the past. Both almost fainted after 3 or 4 minutes in what was clearly a hyperventilation syndrome (clawed hands). While in the past feeling they breathed very deeply (I call this “locomotive breathing” because that is what it sounds like and seems to emanate from the brainstem--medulla), for about twenty minutes with no hyperventilation. What the researchers from the pulmonary laboratory found was that when the patient was back in the old feeling and its context of anoxia at birth the body needed oxygen; the patient was “back there” in every way, not the least of which was physiologically. It was evidence of the veracity of reliving; that patients can and do go back in time. And they not only go back psychologically but in a complete biologic state. The corollary to this is that the early need for love stays the same and does not change throughout our lifetime. We seek symbolic, substitute fulfillment but it is never fulfilling and compels us to go on seeking more and more, always in vain. The critical time when need must be fulfilled has past.


3 comments:

  1. > " the early need for love stays the same.... We seek symbolic, substitute fulfillment but it is never fulfilling and compels us to go on seeking more and more, always in vain."

    Wouldn't that depend on how great the need was and how much was unmet?

    If only "perfect" amounts of love will do, then most of us are screwed. Yet even perfectly-loved people die. So what's the point?

    Well, I suppose if you get "enough" love you don't worry so much. We all die, but only some really live.

    Getting or not getting love is the difference between the "intellectual" Karamazov brother (who talked abstractly about God's death permitting all) and the family servant (who took him literally). It's like reading about people being shot versus getting shot yourself.

    I say all that feeling a mule just kicked my guts. My near-90 father just moved from 3 hours away by car to 3 hours by plane. He and my stepmother will occupy an assisted-living unit near her kids in the Midwest (USA). It's been in the works a while, but no one told me.

    Why not?

    Forced to suddenly move 2 years ago (my rental unit being converted to a condo), I asked my father for a small loan (he has money). He balked. Crushed, I cut off contact.

    I was REALLY asking if he loved me, if I mattered to him. I ended up feeling angry, shamed, like a "loser." The rest of our nuclear family then nuked ME.

    Dad's always been emotionally constipated. His flat-line introversion was matched by my mother's bipolar ping-ponging. In both cases, they failed to give us 3 kids "enough" love for us to feel safe and secure. There were no relatives around to witness things or help, either. So I've had a life-long craving to be told by my father that he loves me...without my having to tell him I love HIM first.

    It's not that he hates me; it's just that he's reserved to the point of indifference. He lavishes love on plants, though. I envy his vegetables, fruit trees, and flowers.

    His moving now moves me because it was unexpected. And because even though I didn't visit, it anchored my world. Now, it's like a life-long friend dying. And another reminder that the love I need from my father won't be forthcoming. He denied me the regular, repeated, ongoing "tender mercies" I needed. And deserved.

    It's hard feeling validated/confident when your own parents don't love you enough. "Thinking about" children is not enough. Love requires demonstrations, acts. My now-tender stomach knows that much.

    Yet my "keep my distance" stance crumbled completely. I scrambled to call him to say I loved him. Scrambled to visit, too, before he left (he'd already gone).

    So was my Primal Need taking over? Perhaps. Even so, I'd settle for The Old Man saying he loved me now and again, meaning it, and acting like he did. Perhaps holding me spontaneously.

    Oh well, Maybe PCs loaded with cameras and Skype can bring our family together.

    One can hope.

    Yet doesn't Art say hope is not helpful?

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  2. Trevor: We all die but some too soon. And some live in pain. The point is to stop the pain. I have written that if I bring your father into a session and he hugs you and says "I love you" very little will change. But if he stays outside the door and you feel terribly unloved by him and scream "love me!" everything changes. art janov

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  3. Hi Trevor,

    The tears are rolling down my face as I tap the keys.

    After reading Alice Miller (and then getting onto this blog) I realised that for my own sanity I had to reject my Father, fully.

    I don't know which is worse, your waiting endlessly for the love your father gives only to plants or me waiting for my father to acknowledge the abuse he perpetrated and also 'delegated' to the staff at the boarding schools he incarcerated me in.

    I think, I feel it's all an unjust and traumatic horror for us kids and we are f****d up adults now because of it.

    Anyway I decided to tell my father what I thought of him and our 'real history'; for a while all communication was cut off. This was very tough because he had recently been forced to separate from my demented mother and he was struggling indeed. Family falling apart his end as well as mine, etc.

    That period for me was the pits (about 9 months ago) because I was beginning to get to my true feelings about separation from my mother as a child distinctly 2nd line and different from the grief of separation from my spouse of 15 years. I was very down and am still struggling, but for having totally ruled out my father and any hope of reconciliation there I also rid myself of a real obstacle in my regression.

    Nevertheless after finally giving up all hope of getting the parenting I should have had from the parents that never were I realised inside of me my own unmet needs. I now know my wounds and I now am better equipped to protect myself from future wounding, particularly other stupid men, particularly at work.

    As it happens my ex mother in law is also a 'touch-less' unfeeling gardening obsessive control freak so I really understand. All the more so because the former 15yr love of my life is following in her mothers' footsteps, (she is loaded also). Worse, I see my ex' and her matriarchal symbiosis utterly controlling our daughter. As I make plans to finally move out of the family home (and the tears are still rolling) I wonder what fathering I will actually be able give our daughter in the future? Already it seems the plants and the garden are far more important than family relations;( y'see plants don't answer back or give hugs do they)?

    You are not alone, you are not alone.

    Paul G.

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