tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3420173096635836108.post6716111341665672094..comments2024-02-11T18:16:53.445-08:00Comments on Janov's Reflections on the Human Condition: The Simple Truth is Revolutionary: Elements of Primal Theory (by Peter G. Pronzos, a Friend and University Lecturer)Arthur Janovhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16709863014923629409noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3420173096635836108.post-87774248223968867602010-12-29T05:48:29.114-08:002010-12-29T05:48:29.114-08:00Comments to Elements of Primal Theory
I like the ...Comments to Elements of Primal Theory<br /><br />I like the image you borrow from Isaac Newton, when he said that the reason he could see far was because he “was standing on the shoulder of giants”. That is the same metaphor, I feel adequate when I am thinking of what Dr Janov has meant to me. This I don’t say just to support his Primal Principle about how pain can be relived and dissolved in the reverse evolution order. I have over 40 years on my own body, in my psyche and behavior experienced this revolution. I now feel that I can see much further than before.<br /><br />Last night I brought home “The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy” by Cozolino from Kindle, and read it in order to see if I finally could find someone giving credit to Art and his invention. Of course I found nothing. However, you had in an elegant way bridged over this fact by referring to Carl Rogers and Wilhelm Reich, which both are quoted in Cozolino. (“Rogers emphasized the individual’s opportunity for self-discovery”).<br /><br />(Regarding Reich, I cannot stop myself from quoting Ida Rolf when she in her book “Rolfing and Physical Reality” is saying: “Reich began to put a material body onto Freud’s theories, this kind of thinking and working that we are doing is forming the bridge between psychology and physiology. We too are standning at that point, that very vital point. We need to collect our clinical information together so that we can bring the psychologists down from the clouds and put their feet on the ground.” Said in the 70-ties...)<br /><br />A couple of days ago NYT had a brilliant analyzes of the Deepwater Horizon’s final Hours in the Gulf of Mexico. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/26/us/26spill.html This is the story about what seemed to be an inevitable casualty of the blowout of the Macondo well. It was not. A top paid, handpicked crew of well educated, well trained and experienced, tough, strong and well coordinated people were frozen by the sheer complexity of the Horizon’s defenses and by the policies that explained when they were to be deployed. The chief counsel for the presidential commission that is looking into the Horizon disaster, said Tansocean’s handbook was “a safety expert dream” and yet after reading it cover to cover, he struggled to answer a basic question: “How do you know it is bad enough to act fast?”<br /><br />When I read Cozolino’s invaluable book “The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy”, I struggle to find an answer to my problems. How to approach the pain behind my epilepsy and my feelings of not being counted, loved and behind my hurting nose and fingers, etc.. Why doesn’t Cozolino include Janov and the Primal Therapy? Is he so burdened by all the theoretical aristrocrazy in his reference lists that he against better knowledge chooses to exclude him? I like when he’s quoting Albert Einstein: “I never came to any of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking.”<br /><br />1977 I had a different epileptic seizure. I didn’t cramp but climbed a high oak tree subconsciously driven by a memory how a boy (in a novel by Danish Nobel Prize winner Pontoppidan) had done the same after his father had assaulted him, very similar to what my father did to me when I was 9. The boy fell down and was killed. I was helped down by neighbors and paramedics and brought to a hospital where neurologists and psychologists gave me a treatment like that Jack Nicolson was given in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.<br /><br />1984 I came to Bergen, Norway, after 750 miles / 15 hours drive from the south of Sweden to visit a Primal retreat held by Dr Janov. I went to the meeting and felt tense and scared. Inside the door in the group room I met Art and he only needed to see me, and he said: “It is a feeling” and I laid down and felt safe to follow my feeling into a deep birth primal, in stead of having an epileptic seizure. Art followed his intuition. He was not bogged down by no handbooks!<br /><br />Thank you for your positive comments to Dr Janov and The Primal Therapy.<br /><br />Jan JohnssonJan Åke Johnssonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15107966321155297159noreply@blogger.com