The Unconscious As The Last Frontier

How come the unconscious is constantly neglected.  I know:  No one knows what it is or what it contains.  Best to let sleeping dogs lie, especially since we don’t know what kind of dogs we are dealing with.  One could be dangerous; but that cannot be true cause all we do is dredge up our own feelings; how dangerous could that be?  Well, let’s see:  no one likes or loves me.  Nothing will change.  There is no hope to ever be loved by two people  who cannot love.  I know those feelings and have relived them; they are painful but they cannot drive you crazy because you are feeling them. That means that your compulsive behavior, migraines, high blood pressure, epilepsy will go away for good because there is no residue of pain to drive the symptoms again.  What a relief; no recidivism.  The end of criminality.  But………but you need to feel a lot of the pain and not stop in the middle.  Otherwise, there is that residue.

So let me ask you this.  Why is all this love, this hugging and kissing so important?  Why is it the linchpin of primal therapy?  Because it is essential to our life, longevity and healing.  Nothing matters when we lack it and success means nothing without it.  Life is empty not because you don’t have it now but because the lack of love was imprinted even during gestation and overshadows everything in life.    So even when someone comes along who is warm and kind we cannot feel it because the imprint dominates and colors our lives.  And what happens? The person thinks it is others’ fault and seeks out love from others; alas, it will not happen.  What will happen is divorce.

So what really happens to us when there is no love, even during womb-life?  Your brain shrinks and you no longer play with a full deck.  I should add that most brain studies are on children but the results play an even more important role for the evolving brain of the fetus.  So how do we love a fetus?  Correct nutrition, careful behavior while pregnant; no very hot baths or sweat cabins, no flying, no extreme sports;  but most important you need to be normal. WHAT?  Janov is nuts, it seems. But if you are chronically anxious or depressed it seeps into the fetus and affects is functioning.  It will be either uploaded or downloaded; not normal.  And the physiology of the mother will be visited upon the baby.  He will end up with many of the maternal traits.  But wait a minute; how do we get normal?  Get rid of what makes us abnormal and that means imprinted pain.  Better yet, be born to loving parents.  Aah.

Look.  After we make for the best gestational life possible, we need to sleep with the child, hug and kiss him and help him feel wanted and welcome to this planet.  Talk to him, approve of him and lay off all the criticism.  Not so hard?  When it does not happen you have a brain that does not function well; does not remember well and cannot focus.  It is a smaller brain.  This is a brain that underwent serious neglect and abuse early on.  What they found is that the smaller brain has a right hemisphere, the feeling one, that lacks some essential elements.  The larger is nearly always the smarter one and the more socially adept.  When there is no close bond with parents, starting with gestation,  there will be faulty relationships throughout life.  But why do those with smaller brains seem smart?  Because they become intellectuals and that ain’t smart.  (For more on all this look up the Health Freedom Alliance. April 8, 2014, and also Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Early Edition). When we think about smart we need to think about emotionally smart, yet neglect causes the limbic structures to become smaller.  As they get smaller we find ADHD and lack of good focus.  Not surprising, there is diminished growth of the left hemisphere.  All this from lack of love?  Yes yes.

When scientists discuss this research why do they not follow suit and address those very early events that lay imprinted deep in the brain? Instead of using the higher level neo-cortex to suppress it?  Why do we need to plunge into the abyss of the last frontier?

When there is inadequate stimulation early on we do not get the full quantity of neurons we need; the half-full deck.  And, I might add, we lack the full arsenal of repressive chemicals we need to block pain; hence anxiety as a chronic state.  Chemicals such as serotonin get “used up” in the battle to keep the gates closed.  As a result the gates get “leaky”.  Pain passes through the porous brain, and we are very uncomfortable and can turn to drugs.

So where does addiction come from? Those in pain who need to kill it.  We usually address taking drugs and never “why”.  The key element is left out of the equation—pain.  And the rest of the equation is where does the pain come from?  Neglecting need, the most basic physiologic need to the needs of a growing child.  It is those very early needs we cannot see and never know exists.  If we leave those early imprints untouched we can sure addiction will thrive again.  Do-gooders help with higher levels but never the deeper levels.  Lo and behold; the one with the smaller brain is much more likely to be addicted.  And he will be violent. Why?  Because the early damage can exist on the deep brainstem level where violence is  organized and imprinted.  This means very early and deep damage.  We have found a way to go deep and we hope others will allow us to teach them and there abort so much suffering.  We need to travel where there are no words and even no tears; into our prehistory.  That is what this has made it all such a mystery.

On the Rationale for a Diagnosis

There is an article on attention problems in the NY Times (April 13/2014. “Idea of a new attention disorder spurs research.”; http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/12/health/idea-of-new-attention-disorder-spurs-research-and-debate.html) There is the claim of an entirely new diagnostic category: Cognitive, Sluggish Tempo (CST). The brain seems not to be active enough to focus and concentrate; another facet of ADD.
 So what is wrong with that? A new category? Everything is wrong with it. .

First of all the diagnosis should inform us, not simply describe. So OK the person’s mind works slowly, does that help tell us why? Which brain is sluggish and where? The same can be said for ADD. She can’t pay attention. OK. Anyone on the street can make that diagnosis: He muses; she seems too active, her mind is racing and she cannot sit still. So what? Is that indeed a separate category? In what way?

Description alone is not a proper diagnosis. The bacteria below infection is. So if I say, he sweats, has a high continuous fever, shakes and often seems to chill that is still a description; not a diagnsos…….no cause. If I say he is depressed, that is not a diagnosis; it is a description. What is depression? What is behind it? Oh, I see, he seems sad and down, has no energy and moves in labored fashion; is that any different from what the ice cream vendor could say about him? I doubt it. If we find that the vendor’s description parallels the doctor’s, throw them both out; no, save the vendor’s.

And there is then the other type of error in diagnosis. “His locus ceruleus is too active and there is an anomaly in his hippocampus”. In short, he is only a bunch of neurons and some seem deviated. No connection to his life, now or previously, no human touch; pure neurology. What’s wrong? It is a diagnosis in a vacuum. The same for biochemistry. We are not just cortisol; we are humans who respond to EVENTS with changes in biochemistry. No event, no real diagnosis. Unless we really do live in a vacuum.

And how about psychology?

Yes we have made all the diagnoses and see that the brain runs too fast and with far too high amplitude……he is therefore “”. And once we are certain of our diagnosis we rush to give drugs that are proven to slow down the brain? And they do achieve that and the person is far less anxious.
I forgot to ask, does he have a history? Traumas, lack of love, etc? Was there a key traumatic experience? Was there a trauma at birth or during gestation? When we have no frame of reference on the human level we are wandering in the dark, acting on half truths. …seeing only part of the brain and only part of the human.

We need a diagnosis, especially in psychology that is more encompassing; that goes below the obviously observable. That really explains and tries to find origins. It is not enough to find medicine to ease anxiety without ever knowing what it is and how to deactivate and decouple if from pushing our brain so hard. Until we do that we are forever in danger of recidivism; of it coming back again and again so long as the cause remains intact.

Worse, so long as the primal source remains intact there will be a need to drug the symptom and that is partially what this discussion is about: drugs for symptoms. Big Pharma at work. They have no incentive to find causes and put themselves out of business; so long as they dominate research and medication we become the losers. The source is what provokes the symptoms into life. The problem is that the source and origins are imprinted and can stay for a lifetime. And that is not just in the brain; the cells are found throughout the system, which is why cognitive therapy is lame against early imprints. It is not just ideas; it is in the lungs and kidneys, in the heart and blood vessels.

Let me tell you about a sluggish brain. In my earlier books I describe 2 kinds of birth; sympathetic nervous system dominance due to child successfully struggling to get out; and the parasympathetic birth where there was no possibility to move through the canal easily—a blockage. This describes the active person with an active brain versus a slugish person with a sluggish brain and that works more slowly….the sympath versus the parasympath. This is a complete systemic event and is not limited to brain function.

 There is more: a mother taking drugs or painkillers or tranquilizers while carrying can produce a down loaded baby who is very sluggish; I have seen it so many times during relivings. And that same mother drinking a lot of coffee or cokes can up load the baby and make him hyperactive. It becomes imprinted as a normal way of life, first for the mother and then the baby. The baby begins to adapt to his environment, which in this case means either too much stimulation or too little. It becomes “normal” and he adapts accordingly. So “sluggish” has very early effects. And a diagnosis needs to include that possibility.

 Oh my! Did I mention that this new diagnostic category is supported by Eli Lilly? That means financial support. They also pay him for speaking tours. It is good for them that a diagnosis requires drugs, but not so good for us. We need a real diagnosis not supported by drug companies.

On Dreams and Nightmares

Have you wondered why my patients have less nightmares and have dreams that increasingly become more and more real and present? No?  Oh dear, I had better explain.  What does it mean to dream?  It means that the limbic system is actively processing feelings as it does during the day when we are feeling something. Except at night it is going over feelings from the past and trying to integrate what? Not the dream: the feeling.  It may have been events from way back that were traumatic and could not be integrated at the time.  We were too young and fragile and perhaps non-verbal.  It is a mass of vague sensations and discomfort.  They bubble up when there is not too much external input and put pressure on the neo-cortex to do something with those feelings.  The cortex accommodates and provides images and thoughts.  The limbic system joins the cortex to mount a story to rationalize and  make the feeling coherent. This is what our therapy is about.  Dream processes lay bare the evolutionary path that we must follow in therapy; evolution in reverse.  We do not go straight to the emotional past; we anchor the patient in the present and focus her feelings in the present; from there the brain takes its own piste below.  Ideas, then go to meet their maker; they go to where the feeling is cemented in; where it began.  I dreamed for years about being chased by the Nazis and could not escape. The feeling? My father was unrelenting in his chastisement and would not let up.  He was always after me: sit up straight, don’t talk through your nose, why are you lying around and not doing something useful?  That dream disappeared with those felt feelings.

I could not escape the Nazis because I could not escape the feeling; someone was after me and trying to harm me.  It was never the Nazis; they were only a symbol for my feelings.  See, a symbol for my feelings; and that is how we develop dream symbols; same process.  I never knew it was my father because my system only knew the feelings, not the source.  Until I had a developed cortex I could not know what was wrong.  The feelings predated cognition and were properly registered limbically.  We must pay attention to that evolution when we do therapy:  feelings first, long before our ability to think.  In therapy feelings first, long before insights.  There is no defying evolution.

  So how do we explain this?  The imprints form a prism through which we see the world; they distort reality and give us symbolic dreams.  The first distortion is from our true feelings and then it moves up the neuraxis to the neo-cortex which joins the distortion with ideas.  Hence, “They are out to get me”.  But it is not that just because we dream that they are automatically distorted and symbolic. It is because repression holds back the pain and produces distortions; awake and asleep.  As we experience the imprinted pain and lift the gating force that keeps pain locked away there will be diminished  distortion awake and asleep.  Neurosis is systemic, not sleep determined. We carry it around always. It won’t let go.

Patients have more real dreams because they are more real;  they are less repressed and more open.

And of course we can spot where dreams come from.  First line dreams rarely have elaborate symbols; they are direct and short—“I am stuck in a washing machine and I can’t stop it.”  “I am in a  dark cave and cannot find a light to show me the way out.”  Pre-psychotics are awash in first-line pain and continue to have first-line dreams and frequent delusions.

Second line dreams are more intricate have a more coherent structure, contain some but not a lot of words, but they are more difficult to understand. “ I went to see my old teacher and tried to talk to him but I could not make him understand me.”  The real feeling was, “I could never get through to my parents and could not make them understand me.”

So more direct, non-symbolic dreams is a good index of a patient getting well.  We corroborate with vital signs, cortisol levels, behavior changes and a host of other measures. We get well systemically.

Where and How Does Deep Repression (and therefore depression) Get Its Start?

There is a new research that sheds light on this problem;  (See http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131030125540.htm ) only it is not this problem of repression that they target. Their target is how pain in infancy alters response to stress later in life. They studied early life stress (prematurity) among infants who had undergone prenatal treatment, without anesthesia or painkillers. They were all patients in neonatal intensive care who had a number of invasive and painful intrusions. They found that when this happened, and when the pain was not dampened by medication the whole pain regulation system was changed and brain circuits were altered.

They found that when pain was not suppressed there was a lifelong change in stress and anxiety reactions so that later reactions to pain were lessened. In short, the pain reaction was repressed and not reacted to fully. So here we have evidence of repression of pain very early in life, and that this reaction set up a prototype for further reactivity.

The first thing that stands out is that doctors still treat newborns as unfeeling blobs that has allowed for physicians for the last many decades to operate on fetuses and newborns as blocks of flesh with no pain response. This was systematic during the beginning of the last century.

The infants who were studied spent an average of 25 days in intensive care with often undergoing 10 to 18 painful procedures. It is not surprising that the system becomes activated to suppress the pain response when he is assaulted over and over again before having a life on earth. This becomes a prototype and that means blocking input as an habitual response to any kind of assault later on. This immediate reaction can affect the development of severe and deep depression later in life; the blockage accumulates and occurs over and over again as the prototypic response. The point is that it begins so early which we have always suspected. What is new in their research is that when pain is blocked early on there is less of a prototype; the imprint is less forceful and the brain circuits are not so readily altered. The imprint is not so readily stamped-in to control later automatic behavior. In other words ameliorating a child’s pain with a hug, kiss, soothing words or painkillers might abort the depth of the imprint.

That is something new and important. After a surgical procedure the child needs physical support and caresses; just as we all do when undergoing a trauma.

Now we see why having a parent there immediately after birth is critical. Otherwise, it can imprint a basic loneliness and fear of being alone for life. When the parent falls ill on the arrival of the baby there is great trauma for him. If he then undergoes a time in an incubator we can imagine the damage being done…..all alone with no one to reassure and hug and kiss, no physical contact and support figure there. This on top of no parent to hold right after birth. The imprint is set and fixed. The researchers noted that in the children studied about 65 percent of them had procedures done without any analgesia.

The neuroscience department at Georgia State University studied rat pups who had a single trauma on the day of birth. There were site- specific changes in their brains. These changes determined how they responded to stress later on. Without medication to suppress pain, they call it unresolved pain, children under-reacted to pain later on. May I add? They were deadened because they already had so much assault that they could hardly react any longer. I think this is the missing link in the research; they show what happened but not why or what it really meant. There was no broadened implications, no wider context, of the research. Still it is damn good.

On Mental Resistance

A confession:  a year ago I was recommended to a naturopath for stem cells.  He was even near my house.  But I never went to him because “naturopath” didn’t sit right with me.  I was resistant; had mental reservations, and was prejudiced.  And then a few weeks ago my old MD called me and re-recommended anew this same stem cell group.  So I went just after going to Cancun for adipose tissue stem cells which did nothing and cost a fortune.  So now it is 2 months into the new stem cells and for the first time in 45 years I talk and am out of pain.  And this is a naturopath.  What does this tell me?  Stop with mental prejudices and resistance.  It kept me from getting well for over a year.

And they were recommended by a "proper" medical doctor.  The same is true of most medical doctors who cannot see and adopt the new.  This is especially true for shrinks, several hundred thousand of them in America.  After my 17 books, published in 26 countries, not one has come to us and wanted to know more about our work.  Thousands of scientists downloaded my scientific articles in the World Congress of Psychiatry (It is considered one of the most downloaded pieces in their history),  yet not one has contacted me.

I have found that most MDs stay in their groove and never seek out other alternatives.  And the question is, why?  One answer is, "I have the tools and will use it hither and yon, whenever I have a patient."  This is true in psychiatry where "I have the shock machine, the favorite pills, the rigid adherent to one single therapy often with no basis in deep science".  And what is wrong with that?  It is therapist oriented, not the patient.  It is he who has the power and the magical therapy; he is the holder of all the secrets.  And we the patients remain powerless.  Their "tool" is applied to all kinds of patients with no acknowledgement of individual differences.

So what is wrong?  Doctors are doctors, without a broad perspective.  They are rarely inclusive, mostly exclusive.  My prejudice came from the fact that when I grew up there was nothing else. Our MD was the be-all and end-all of status.  So therefore I began to suspect anyone who was not a "real" doctor.

On the other hand, the "natural" healers I have known, whom I call booga booga merchants, were not high on science. They were more loosey-goosey.  Which is not a bad thing; they were open to everything; sometimes too open so that they lacked the discipline needed.  Their open-mind became a sieve.  And they used every vitamin in the book to treat patients.  They purveyed received wisdom.  And they too often say, that you have to believe to make it work; a bit of circular reasoning.  So if you are slightly skeptical it won’t work and they say, aha!, you see. So that field attracts believers and people who through wish fulfillment think they are doing great and say they feel wonderful.  Who can argue with that?  Nevertheless,  my current naturopath is curing me which 40 previous MD’s could not do over many decades.  They lacked the essential curiosity and willingness to look at all kinds of solutions, not just their bag of tricks.  So when I had surgery, and when it did not work the doctor washed his hands of my case.  He never explored about what others might do for me.  Why?  Because they do not know what others in the field do, and mostly, they are not interested.  This is what I call medical rigidity.

So here is what happens:  as we mature the zeigeist and all its ideologies, perpetuated by the medical establishment spin a web of ideology inside us which then takes charge and directs our choices.  We are now driven by inner forces.  And I for one, avoided the one thing that could cure me.  How tragic.  What is even more tragic is that the Big Pharma and the health institutions prevent them from even using the term stem cells. So what cures is banned. Not because it can help but because they flouted the regulations of “real” science:  double blind studies with plenty of subjects, and plenty of controls,  done at reputable science centers, blah blah.  The top guys don’t even want to look at the actual people who have been cured; they want statistics and proper procedures.
Following the rules is the summum bonum.

Why all this?    Because they can keep a monopoly on the whole business of science.  And extracted from their feelings, what they see and feel does not count.

In my field,  no one who has spent 10 years on his studies is going to say, Oh yes, I get it. I will start to learn something new all over again.  So it is not mental resistance so much as pocket resistance and energy resistance.

Let me diverge for a moment: today in science they reported that children who suffered emotional neglect were more likely to suffer stroke later in life.  Now if those researchers were to read a bit more they might stumble on my work and the notion of enduring imprints that lead to stroke. They lack curiosity. They remain in a medical cloister about what is out there; about what more there is to learn.  They lack a broad frame of reference, so what has been known for fifty years is ignored.  This is typical; everyday there is a new study stating the obvious. Researchers could not feel what was right because they lost touch with that baby inside of them.  They should guess that early neglect would lead to disaster, and they should say to themselves, “maybe I should follow up on that?”.  First, you need to feel what is right.  Living in your head for too long robs you of the innate sense; feeling.

Maybe it is not lack of curiosity? Maybe it is just indifference?  No matter, science and humanity will suffer from it.