Happy Birthday Letter

This is a “Happy Birthday” letter from a series of letters sent to Art by patients, former patients, friends and readers from all over the world that show how Primal Therapy have impacted their lives.


Dear Art

The email inbox entry merely read and the accompanying thought said ‘oh my God, Janov’s dead – but he can’t be dead, he still has so much to give….;

Thus, the relief to read that your 90th birthday is just around the corner was quite palpable, and I am glad you are still alive and able to receive emails.

As you know, my father died on 5 July. He was 93 years old and was diagnosed with dementia last summer. He lived out the rest of his days in a dementia resident nursing home where the care given is magnificent. But I think my dad knew that he had lost control of his mind and he didn’t much like it.

One of my reasons for undertaking primal therapy last February was a response to your remarks about dementia in your book Life Before Birth and subsequent comments in a recent email. At 68 years old, I like to think I now know myself well enough to have no surprises waiting for me. It seems I had quite a good birth.

I have attached a snapshot from a video I took in the summer of 2012 when my son JJ was just 6 months old and my father was 91. I included the following in my eulogy to him at his funeral.

That summer, we visited dad at his house the Sunday before the Olympic Games. Even at the tender age of 6 months, little JJ was quite particular about who he would let hold him. Aside of his mother and me, there was no one really. But when he lay in his grandfather’s arms, something magical happened. They both gazed into each other’s eyes, JJ every now and then sitting up and looking around and then back to his granddad; totally relaxed was JJ, as if he was being let into a secret denied everyone else, and had found the ideal resting place from which to ponder the Universe and bathe in the warmth and security of his granddad’s arms. That was me 68 years ago, and I know just how JJ felt.

So, happy birthday dear Dr Janov, you have been one of the guiding influences in my life, alongside people like PD Ouspensky, Mahler and Dr David Yurth.

For some reason I’ve set myself a goal to cast this mortal coil at 102 years old. Assisted dying will probably be law by then. If I was going to plan when I die, I would first ask the doctor, how long it will take for the pills to set in before I lose consciousness? Assuming it was minutes, I would then play the final 12 minutes of Mahler’s 2nd symphony – the Resurrection. If you don’t know it already, I heartily recommend you listen to it and his 8th symphony. I would want to lose consciousness at the moment of the final crashing chord, and thereby go out in a blaze of glory with my family around me.

R. C., UK