On My Rants Against Cognitive Therapy

I know I seem to rant against what I call “Half-therapy,”  or “almost therapy,”  that is, a therapy that encompasses only a piece of us and neglects the feeling-human part.  But there is a reason for my rant,   I read yesterday in science journal about a complex study of sleep problems.  And they plunged and plunged into neuronal circuits and came to bizarre conclusions, which seem quite rational to them.   “It was because of overactive cortical function, activated limbic circuits,” and on and on.  And that may be entirely true.  It is too technical to go into except that it is almost impossible for a non neurologist to understand.   Ok so what they say might be true, so what is wrong with that?  It is a half-truth.  You can’t get well half-way.

Therein lies the rub, as I often say.  All that is missing are causes; ultimate causes.  What made those circuits detour and over-react?  Why does various  chemicals seem too high?  Is that the cause?  Well,  we could go on guessing and batting down associated symptoms, until we actually see causes at work.  How do we know they are causes?   For many reasons; one important one being that the problems seem to disappear after reliving the key factors and imprints that drive the neo-cortex later on, into a frenzy that cannot seem to be turned off enough to let us sleep.  And not surprisingly, he was a hyperactive child who, according to his teachers, could not sit still.  Always in motion; the same drive to produce a hyperactive mind that cannot relax and fall asleep.  Still driven, but now also mentally.

Wait a minute.  Is there a correlation?  It is what we have found because we look at history.  If you don’t you will always get only half the information you need.  Cannot continue to investigate de novo each new case of sleep problems and still think it is a matter of displaced neurons.  You may think that it is all in your mind but where?  Could it be way down deep, reflecting trauma to the brainstem?  Yes, but who looks there?  Who sees the connection between gestational life and sleep problems at age thirty?  You cannot until you go there ; that is, until patients go there, a “there” the few recognize even exists.  Most doctors seem to work as if there is no there, there.  So why even think about going there?  For patients, too, it seems dangerous and mysterious, reinforced by the doctor who also has no idea what is down there; except something to be avoided.  And when the therapist has no idea about the brainstem all is lost, including the patient and the doctor.  Therapy becomes a muddle, each feeling rumbles around in the dark for some way out.  Alas, the way out is the way in, and that is where we part from other therapies.  One reason is that the way in, takes months, who has the patience to go there and take one’s time?  Anxiety waits for no man.

Isn’t it strange that we give pills for deep anxiety and sleep deprivation that work on the lower depths where origins lie, yet we miss the fact that maybe there are origins of this mess way back there and way down there?  All we have to do is go there!  But how?  I have written many blogs on the subject, 16 books, and now there is a precise video description coming out by Dr, France Janov, called the Primal Legacy.  It is detailed and gives readers a thorough description of the Primal Process.  Who can ask for any more?  I doubt it has been done before, mostly because the series is based in science and not haphazard musings.

We will not find answers to many perplexing psychologic problems until we stop the almost-therapy and turn to the real meaning of holistic therapy; which includes all of us, absolutely all of us.  We are not just a thinking brain; we are above all, a feeling brain that helps us treat patients, relate to others, have empathy and compassion. There is not a lot of that in a  disembodied neo-cortex.

You Mean the Brain is an Orphan?

 There is a picture in a new science magazine of a doctor holding a human brain declaring that she was going delve deep in the brain to find answers to so many maladies.   (This is the year of the brain, after all). Wait a minute:  what if the answers lie not in the brain but in the parents' brains who affected and infected that brain?   Don’t we want to know what environment that brain grew up in?   Was it an orphan?  Then almost for sure there will be brain impairment later in life.   And looking the brain cells will tell us nothing of this.  If that brain had no loving and warmth in the first weeks and months of life the brain will suffer but it won’t declare it.  All I am saying is that life in any form lives in an environment and is shaped by it, so how could we leave it out of the equation?

Could we ever understand ADD by looking at the brain in isolation?  Leaving out the events that were at the origin of the cause.  Could a kidney specialist know that his sick patient drank for thirty years?   Just by examining the kidneys?  Sometimes.  But not always.  That is precisely what is wrong with the Behaviorists; taking behavior as the sine qua non.  And worse, trying to change behavior without reference to what those behaviors were, and how they shaped us..   So we confine our field of inquiry to a vary narrow space that lets no new related information in.  They take an isolated brain without parents and try to figure out why patients have those compulsions or obsessions, and then try to change behavior into some “wholesome” idea of how it should be.  They force a behavior detour even against the biology of the patient.  His whole system moves to the left when it should move to the right.   It militates to the thinking cortex instead of the feeling one.  And he tries to obey; thinking before he feels so he is not impulsive.  Looking at full ashtrays to get over the urge to smoke and many other ploys that never look at causes. Above all, not understanding the imprinted memories lodged in the lower reaches of the brain that are deeply embedded, which force and drive behaviors.  There are roots to attitudes and behaviors. We are not decorticates rummaging around the world. But some therapies act as though we were; extracting the lonely brain for study without regard to its history.  Psychotherapy cannot be a-historic unless we are doing brief YMCA Counseling:  “You know you need to exercise more.”

Would we treat heart disease without knowing how tense the patient is or how he never exercises? We would be roaming in the dark.  When we say we are social animals it means we are affected by social events; we do not live in a vacuum.  We must study the total interplay of our physical self with outside events.  How can anyone get over his depression without knowing the originating events?   Yet that is exactly what we do.  Give pills for depression and if that does not work we give more powerful pills and then surgery for the brain and maybe electroshock, all without digging deep enough to observe those forces “alive.”  Going on blindly without seeing the brain at work deep down. Yes we can do that.  We see the brain live, meaning alive and living.  We see the pain memory and what it does and how strong it is; finally we see how it drives behavior.  Did I say “behavior”?  Yes I did. We see origins; no more guesswork.  Aah.