So my Primals for the split in my family were, “Come back and get me. I can’t make it without you. Save me, please; want me.” I never even knew where they sent my sister. I was simply alone and abandoned, but I never KNEW it. I felt it but it lingered on not articulated. Feelings always precede ideas. The facts were not there yet but the feelings flourished. And were embedded deeply. Those feelings drove me even though I never knew hat they were or what they were. There they lain, unformed, un-delineated, unexpressed and unfelt. That was my unconscious. It all lay below knowledge; it had to. Far too much to feel and accept except for 90 years later. I will discuss how this drove my act-outs, later. And it did. Feelings moved into cortical behavior, silently, stealthily and without my knowledge. They infused my work, attitudes, interests and beliefs and still, I never knew it. “Help me. I am waiting to be rescued. Please.” I needed advice and to be told what to do and so became a good student reading book after book; from someone who never read a book before. I wanted to know what the world was like, what happened to me and why. With my psychoanalyst I never found out; they were too busy figuring out the meaning of my dreams. Now I could tell them.
I never learned how to fix things because my mother was so afraid that if I got hurt she would have to take care of me. If I got near an electric plug she would scream out of her anxiety. I stayed away from all that and went to my head which worked OK because it was always driven by feelings near the surface. My life’s leitmotif was “Help me. Show me how. Save me.” It was acted out in not knowing how to fix anything. I was helpless and acted being helpless. My act-out was “help me, teach me talk to me. Explain explain explain.“ And when someone knew, I attached onto him. I found ways to have people talk to me because I never felt worthy of anyone talking to me. I became a shrink and people paid to talk to me. Wonderful. A terrific act out. People did confide in me because I could feel their pain, not in so many words but in my empathy. Animals too. A far cry for when my father let out my dog in the street and drove away. And I do mean, “A far cry.” How can anyone do that to a bewildered animal?
How could a rejected and neglected kid feel he had a right to be talked to and loved? How could that kid feel worthy………..of love or anything? He never did; always thought it was an accident. He was very grateful for any act of kindness and gave away his prize possessions to feel loved by others. I learned from my parents; how not to be, how not to do. I did the opposite; that was my education from two inhuman souls.
Show a picture of where we are in our brain alive for what our imagination can ally with to experience its consequences!
ReplyDeleteTo understand that the suffering we are experiencing is because of our fysiologiska capacity to repress emotions... it at the time impossible to experience them... which for us now is the catch-22 all humanity is suffering... it without the slightest idea that this is the case.
So how do we introduce the right people have and they so well need and deserve to know about them self?
Are there any limits in our attempts to give people their rights? No... except not to use violence!
This is not for the whole world to know about it is for those who can understand the impossible and what it can achieve for what the whole world needs... need to know about them self... a process extremely important and we are in a hurry!
Frank
You write: a far cry for when my father let out my dog in the street and drove away. And I do mean, “A far cry.” How can anyone do that to a bewildered animal?
ReplyDeleteIs the answer: the same father who let the bewildered child alone and drove away?
You write that when you hear of a caraccident you first look for animal victims.
Do you think your feelings for animals are a reflection of how you felt as a child, vunerable en totally dependant on two inhuman souls?
Thank you so very much for sharing your feelings and primals.
It's helping me to accept my strong needs and accepting that I tried/try to fullfill these needs with the wrong persons and wrong acts, because the need is so strong and the hope is so strong that now my needs will be fullfilled. Your writing is helping me to pay attention to these driving forces in me in stead of (only) hating them.
Anonymous, you get it. art
DeleteAnonymous, Art: I completely empathise with Art on this, and Art, your empathy for animals makes me want to hold you, if I might say, in my arms. The reason is that it finally proves to me that you don´t have a cold, scientific attitude towards animals. I did wonder, given your use of animal experiments in your writing, but I no longer do, and I would love to see you with animals, giving them what they need, making them feel safe, loved, taken care of. I feel slightly uneasy pouring this out, and I feel it is for the same reasons men in general feel uneasy when they feel they are being asked to show or allow tenderness, nurturing, love....my experience of expressing my humanity is generally that of being humiliated or rejected by other men....and some women. The most important beings in my life are my dogs and puppies. Male or female, it makes no difference: they receive and give love freely, unconditionally. Every day I lie amongst them as they climb onto me, lick my face, show love with their bodies, their voices, their eyes. I don´t know what I´d do without them. Christ...I feel like someone is going to write an angry, cutting, humiliating response to this, like "Get a life, you sad bastard!". That is the sort of attitude my father had, I don´t remember it being articulated, but my present feelings, as I write this, remember something though my mind doesn´t....I remember always being made to feel there was something wrong with my "softness" after I reached puberty and couldn´t put on the tough, callous mask patriarcal society expects of males. So I got humiliated, ridiculed and rejected a lot. Now, aged 54, my few friends are non macho males and females, and mostly animal rights campaigners. What I see in animals in factory farms and on the street, is, I am sure, really the lost, lonely and vulnerable little boy I once was, and of course still am (though those animals are hideously abused and murdered and anyone who consumes them or their "produce" is responsible). When I lose it those who are completely "scientifically detached" when I tell them how their chicken breast was produced, from birth to murder, they often just contemplatively stroke their chin as if i am talking of nothing more important than the price of fuel. And that is how serious neurosis is. It takes a lot, as you yourself know from witnessing thousands of primals, dear Art, to transform a highly sensitive, feeling baby into an unfeeling computer. And it happens imperceptibly, almost invisibly, and by the time we are adults, few of us have any idea of the hell we´ve just been through. Gary
DeleteThere was a blaze on the hill near the houses, we all watched from the safe distance. The youngest was my niece, around 8 years old. So we were explaining to her what the airplane was doing, what the firefighters job was and how they will stop the fire to reach homes… and then, to our total surprise, with voice of a worried child she asked: “what will happen to the animals?”
DeleteYuko: I think it is because young children generally still relate naturally - to varying degrees - to animals. They have not yet become conditioned into seeing animals as nuisances, pests, vermin, commodities whose lives are worth nothing beyond what humans can exploit them for. It is only adults and speciesist societys "teaching" us otherwise which causes us all to stop treating them as our friends and equals. Gary
DeleteAgain!
ReplyDeleteTogether with the scientific content of what catch-22 shows about primal therapy... we can not lose in court! In order to get a job so I have to have experience but to get the experience I have to have a job... the catch-22! How should I understand my neurosis when I'm neurotic not to feel why!?
Show a well explanatory picture of where we are in our brain together with a clinical process of why our imagination can play us a game without us understanding why we dont can feel causes... causes and consequences of why?
To understand the suffering we are experiencing because of our fysiologiska capacity to repress emotions... is working that way... it in process of survival... but leaking sometimes (always) and we are suffering terribly... which for us now is the catch-22 all humanity is suffering... it without the slightest idea that this is the case... and we have the understanding and the scientific content to it! Did you hear that?
A psychiatrist who do not perceive the physiological catch-22 can't do anything but obliterate lives!
Frank
Frank, There is a new book coming out in 2 weeks, Beyond Belief, reputation books, and I am finishing 2 others with my crack editor, Agustin Gurza, The First Science of Psychotherapy...........and The Psychology of Everyday Life. Art
DeleteArt: you wrote: My life’s leitmotif was “Help me. Show me how. Save me.” It was acted out in not knowing how to fix anything. I was helpless and acted being helpless". Do you remember meeting me during a Primal Center retreat in 1998, you turning up laden with a load of food, fumbling nervously with a jar you couldn´t open, and handing it to me to open? I was astonished then that the same man who had performed miracles for over 30 years could still have such pain. Now of course I understand. I remember thinking then similar thoughts to those you express above. "Help me. I can´t do this." Gary
ReplyDeleteGary, And now I am in a position to help; I no longer feel helpless. thanks art
DeleteArt: That´s good. Can I ask you how your pain manifested before you started primalling? Also, when your biography is due out?. Gary
ReplyDeleteAn email comment:
ReplyDelete"Dear Art!
When I read this lines about your childhood, I feel so sorry you had to suffer so much. You are more than o.k., you are a wonderful person! I`m so happy, that you are here and you Art, you gave the world the best I ever read in respect of Psychology:
You touch the source of everything which is so important: Feeling
Our world is full of Primal Pain. Everywhere you look is war, terrorism, or people who damage other people, because they see money as more important than healthy or life! We know, that money can never be something like Primal Needs! But on the other hand, there is the chance to go through the pain and feel. Because all people in this world do have the same Primal Needs.
So thank you so much for your intuition! For the impulse to see things in respect of Psychology from the real perpective and bring everything to the real point! I wish you the Best:
to feel - there is nothing more important!"