Janov's reflections on the Human Condition

On Vital Signs in Primal Therapy

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Janov) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 06:41:00 +0000

For many years we have measured the vital signs of patients before and after each session and over the long term. Our results show a normalization after one year of the therapy (when we took the final measurements). Of course, when we measure vital signs we are measuring vital functions; those functions that keep us alive and allow us to survive. When any of them exceed normal limits we are in trouble. Whether too low a blood pressure or too high a heart rate or a continual body temp far over normal range, the minute we are dislocated one way (high) or the other (low) the body is telling us that something is wrong. And it tells us in what way is something wrong, and sometimes even why, if we know how to read the signs. Over the years when these signs are excessive we can almost be sure that disease will occur early in life, followed by life threatening illness later in life. It is ineluctable.

These vital signs mean vitality. And they reflect our imprints quite accurately. They also reflect what nervous system is in charge and is dominant. We know, for example, that many vital functions are either controlled by one of two nervous systems mediated by the hypothalamus. I thought for some time that the parasympathetic, that of rest, repair and repose, controlled body temp. But it may be that the direction of the dislocation depends on two different nervous systems. Thus, high is controlled by the sympathetic, the galvanizing, mobilizing, alerting system, while a swing to the low end is controlled by the parasympathetic. (This may also be true of the systolic and diastolic blood pressure). Thus, the direction tells us the kind of imprint we are dealing with. Today I heard from an epileptic, a breech birth, suffocating and strangling on the cord who had to conserve oxygen and energy to survive. His modus operandi was to hold back, not use energy. His imprint was parasympathetic, something that will dog him for a lifetime and determine his interests (writing), his non-interests (exercising), whom he marries (the aggressive one) and how he will treat his children (passively or with indifference). And that is not the half of it.

Now why all this? Because the very first life-saving effort becomes imprinted and remains as a guide for future behavior; what saved her life at the start will go on being utilized despite any reality to the contrary. Personality is formed out of this matrix and a certain biologic state. Of course, later experience helps shape it all, as well. But that first imprint is vital, in every sense of the word.

When patients come in for a session and we do measurements, we already have an idea of where we have to go. One of my depressives came in consistently with a very low body temp of 96 to 96.5. She was mired in hopelessness. As our session went on (almost 3 hours each time), she started to normalize. That was important because a whole lifetime was wrapped around the vital functions. It wasn’t just the body temp that normalized but a whole host of biologic responses and personality features. Later on, she smiled, had energy and felt “up.” She could go seek a job, something she could not do previously. And of course, she never had enough money to buy proper food because she could not hold a job. A previous therapy informed her that hers was a “loser trip”. That didn’t help much except to put a label on her behavior. As she went on reliving the prebirth and birth traumas, a mother smoking and taking tranquilizers, suppressing her whole system, which was also imprinted, her body temp came up and stayed up to 98 degrees.

When a patient comes in with a very rapid heart rate and a brainwave signature of beta (very fast) our first job is to bring him into the feeling/primal zone. If we do not do that he remains above the primal zone. He will not feel and certainly not integrate. When the patient is too low the same law operates. We can only feel in the primal zone. We need to adjust medications to allow that to happen. We cannot and must not cajole a patient into trying to feel (and often the fast ones are also the tryers).
I believe that the parasympath operates on the low end of all vital signs. We can go to different doctors and be treated for a heart rate that is unsteady, another doctor for high blood pressure, and yet another for lack of energy. But the leader who sets the tone is the imprint. Unless we recognize this we will be bifurcated in our efforts and miss the essential. One key thing we want to know after each session is was there integration? Sometimes there is, after weeks of feeling one key feeling. But often there is a dredge effect; the patient feeling one feeling which resonates with a connected deeper feeling (hoplessness and helplessness). We know here that there is more to come. It may be that the patient will need tranquilizers temporarily to get over the hump. We need not be afraid of this since it is not an end in our therapy but a means. It is not THE therapy, as is the case in so much psychiatry, but something to use for a bit of time. We want patients off drugs, not on them. While on them there is a superficial and artificial state. Drugs nearly always hold back feelings and aid defenses. That is not the business we are in; quite the opposite, we want feelings to come up but in ordered, measured ways. Primal Therapy will get you there if you let it. If you stay with it the direction is nearly always right. I often say, “It is not a miracle but it is miraculous.”

Help! There is a Reptile In My Head.

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Janov) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 22:25:00 +0000

Here is what I need help on. We know about the reptilian brain, the mammalian brain, etc. That means that the remnants of those animals still reside in our heads. Isn’t that strange? And in sleep and in Primals we go back and meet those animals. But why? Why in deep sleep and in first-line Primals do we have to visit our reptilian brain? And also, when we discuss whether man is basically this or that, good or bad, we need to find out which brain we are discussing. But the reptile still runs our energy, lightening fast responses, terror and impulsiveness. If we want to understand us humans we also have to understand that reptile. And then the reptile has to talk to the chimp brain which then has to communicate with that human brain, the neocortex. So complicated.

Primal Pain And Primal Therapy is a Matter of Life And Death

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Janov) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 22:23:00 +0000

The question is, “Why I am writing all of this? What difference will it make? Am I drowning the fish? Without appearing too dramatic I think it can be a matter of life and death. And Primal Therapy a matter of life!

An article reported in Science Daily (Oct. 7, 2009) indicates that those who had trauma while being carried and after in childhood died on the average 20 years earlier than those who did not have those risk factors. The average age of death, according to the Center for Disease Control, (David W. Brown) was sixty; not long enough and not close to the age 79 of the non-risk group. What the study showed was that those children exposed to six or more risk factors were at “double the risk of premature death.” Lack of love, that is, lack of fulfillment of need very early on, can be fatal. (see also, The American Journal of Preventive Medicine. November, 2009)

The risk factors included: living in a household with subtance abuse, witnessing domestic violence, a battered mother and its effect on the fetus, verbal and physical abuse, mental illness in the home, parents who were separated or divorced. Any of one these is powerful enough to create life-long damage. This is data from over 17,000 adults.

Lifetime trauma exposure to the mother was very important. Was she, while carrying, under stress?

The two most popular ways out of this planet are heart attacks and cancer. It is fairly well established now how womb-life affects heart function later on. Now there is evidence how that same set of traumas while we live in the womb can lead to cancer. University of Toronto researchers have completed a study on physical abuse early on and the occurrence of cancer. What they did not study is the more subtle abuses originating during our time in the womb. It can only be inferred. But from our experience observing patients this kind of trauma is shattering. (see July 15, 2009. Neuron. Esme Fuller-Thomson). They controlled for the usual factors such as smoking, drinking and being inactive physically, and still the rates of cancer were very high. They hypothesize that there perhaps is a deregulation of cortisol production. This makes sense since our starting patients were quite high in the stress hormone and normalized after one year of the therapy, and have a low incidence of cancer after the therapy.

The Anxious Mind

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Janov) — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 18:06:00 +0000

Look at this review in the Sunday N.Y. Times (Oct 18/09): “For millions of children with anxiety disorders, Jerome Kagan*’s groundbreaking research has relieved a burden of blame by identifying highly reactive responses as hard-wired and thus nobody’s fault. The other burden that can be relieved is anxiety itself — the most common mental disorder but, luckily, the most treatable. With empirically proven cognitive-behavior therapy, children can learn to reinterpret their overprotective brains and their unreliable first-reaction data and, in doing so, outsmart the worry and not let their amygdalas ruin their days. Although Robin Marantz Henig’s excellent article ended on a note of resignation, given the proper tools even the most anxious children in this age of neuroplasticity can override their neural presets and make a world of difference in their lives."

This is a professional’s view of Kagan’s work. If I interpret this right it is our job as therapists to ease the guilt of patients. Since most anxieties are hard-wired according to this, it is no one’s fault. And they say, very treatable. I think it is just the opposite: anxiety is the most difficult to treat because it starts its life almost when we do, at the very beginning with a newly developing nervous system that organizes the midline responses generated by the lower brain such as respiration, digestion, heart rate… blood pressure, body temperature, stress hormones, and so on. It is our most primitive system that alerts us to the presence of danger. It is basic to survival. Anything that profound is not trivial and certainly not so easily suppressed. Remember, this is a basic survival strategy not some esoteric bizarre reaction that comes out of nowhere. Kagan is a well-known name in our field, which is why I shall spend time on his ideas.

What happens is that very early trauma, in the womb or at birth causes great pain because of the danger, for example of lack of oxygen, and it is immediately repressed in the interest of survival. Constant pain and life-threatening reactions to it are a menace to the system. So what happens when early-on the pain is compounded by infancy, childhood neglect and lack of love there is an increasingly compacted agony so that alarm reactions (more cortisol secreted), are set in place. Those primitive reactions continue their life extracted from their painful roots. Thus, seemingly “out of the blue.” A mystery? Not if we access to the deep unconscious where we can observe raw terror as it is taking place. And we now see the context of it all, which in the reliving, is resolving. We don’t have to guess any more.

We see a situation where the patient is in full terror mode with no words or scenes to put to it. Afterwards, the patient will know exactly where the terror, now called anxiety, comes from. Absent this one must guess. In science we call it something else, (hypothesis) but it is still a guess. What if we did not have to guess? Isn’t that preferable. We guess because we don’t think we can access the deep unconscious, and we are not even sure it is there. I have not seen this level of consciousness/unconsciousness discussed. It is not in the lingua franca of the scientists in our field.

But it is not just observation that counts. We have done blind studies of our patients and found that cortisol levels (stress hormones, part of alarm system), high when entering therapy, normalize after one year of treatment. The only variable to account for this is primal therapy.

It is interesting that, by the by, they agree that there are neural pre-sets, that certain biologic functions are in place. They think they are genetic, that is, hard-wired. And the general effort, they believe, is to over-ride the genetic tendencies, to hold them back, suppress, and get on with life There is not much discussion of epigenetics; what happens to those genetic tendencies as a result of trauma in the womb and at birth. If scientists don’t pay attention to the latest in neuro-biologic research they are going to neglect an awful lot.

It looks like science, the fancy laboratories, men in white coats, all the accoutrements of science. But it lies within certain boundaries that bind the investigators; that the deepest levels of the brain are inaccessible, that they are fixed and unchangeable; that these basic hard-wired tendencies are not changeable and are genetic. There is no question as to why they are in place and their basic biologic function. They take it all as a given and go on from there. Kagan sees in children a way to outsmart their pain and fear and keep the amygdala from ruining their day. This is basic cognitive therapy given the patina of research, but the guess (hypothesis) already has a frame of reference lodged in cognitive therapy; that we can think our way to health, that we can overcome our biologic reactions, that thoughts, beliefs and ideas can hold down all difficult feelings. This is forgetting that feelings and sensations are survival modes and are not meant to be suppressed. I suppose for intellectuals, locked into their heads, it is a solution but a costly one.

Just because we can suppress anxiety doesn’t mean it isn't doing great damage on lower brain levels and their bodily counterparts. Eventually strokes and cardiac attacks are the result. The brain wasn’t meant to suppress its survival mode except to keep the thinking brain functioning. Hiding the truth, which is their basic proclivity, is not a healthy option. Since intellectuals do that as a matter of course, they think it valuable for all of us. This is a neurotic strategy raised to the level of a scientific principle.

*Jerome Kagan, Yale Child Study Center.

On Being Touched

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Janov) — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 10:55:00 +0000

I saw a movie last night. The mother walked by her son and ruffled his hair and moved on. A seemingly innocuous event. But wait! So many of us never had that; so what does it mean? It means that someone acknowledges your existence. If parents walk by you, never smile, touch you or make you feel you exist, you come to believe you don’t. No one has to say you’re bad, I don’t love you. It is all in those very little events. Having hair ruffled day after day means you exist and are wanted, important and loved. When it does not happen day after day it means the opposite; and you come to believe it without ever realizing it. You begin to act as if you don’t exist for anyone. You shy away, never say the kind things you should because who you are and what you do does not matter.

When a parent massages you head it says volumes; I like you, I love you, you are very important, my attention is totally on you, I want to make you happy. That is all absorbed unconsciously and sometimes consciously. “Sometimes consciously” because if you never have had it you then realize something, but if you always had it, it is in the nature of things; nothing exceptional. You deserve just by who you are; and it means you can be who you are without anyone saying anything like that because it is implied and absorbed. You don’t think it matters? It matters.

On Revolution

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Janov) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 17:10:00 +0000

I have discussed the importance of evolution in primal therapy. Now I want to address revolution, the overturning of the basic structure of psychotherapy as it has been for about one hundred years.

It is my belief that profound change cannot take please within a reformist attitude, making the system work better. The problem is the system. Just take the 50 minute hour. It is based on the comfort and profit of the therapist, not the healing of the patient. Our patients stay as long as necessary. No time constraints. Or take the fine furniture and well appointed drapes. It is designed to not getting at the deep unconscious. Our patients are in a therapy room with mattresses, relatively sound proof and somewhat darkened; all to encourage the descent into the unconscious. You cannot get there in a well lighted therapy room with a sit-up chair, ashtray and fine paintings on the wall. Early on, I tried that with primal and soon I had holes in the walls and broken furniture. I learned.

The theory and the therapy have to be revolutionary and not egocentric. In cognitive/insight therapy the doctor is the last word. He/she knows more than the patient and they even know what is in the patient’s deep unconscious; which is nonsense, but we all hope there is some godlike human out there who really knows us and will direct us properly, like a good daddy. The theory has to put the patient first and foremost. She knows best and she knows when to come for a session and when not to. She knows when she has had enough therapy, period. No one has to tell her that she needs three times a week therapy when that is a profit decision not usually a therapeutic one. And no one has to tell her that her time is up for the day. Can you imagine a patient crying deeply and then ushered out of the room? What magic is there in coming twice a week instead of three times?

Remember in every domain including the political, reform will never get us there. We can tinker and tweak all day long and still be dealing with a flawed system that turns out bad techniques and faulty logic; just like in neurosis where almost every bit of behavior is neurosis-generated. So we go on changing behavior and change not at all the basic problem.

Yes, overthrow by force and violence is disturbing and unsettling but necessary, and neurosis will not yield its arms easily. After all, it is there to protect us and keep us from feeling. But we are feeling human beings and need our feelings to guide us. We do not appeal to the patient’s good sense to help us overthrow the neurotic structure. We appeal to her feelings to her unconscious, to the subtext to surplant that devilish prefrontal neocortex. That is the revolution; feelings over thoughts and beliefs; insights will never get us well; they just help us rationalize how we behave. Our problem is not the lack of insights; it is the lack of feelings. A therapy of feelings will humanize us; what more could we ask for?

On Evolution and Revolution (Part 3/3)

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Janov) — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 06:12:00 +0000

A patient who never wants to discuss her life but sinks immediately into her past will abreact and not get well. And when we observe a person’s history we are also witnessing ancient history at the same time. A patient who cries like a newborn can never duplicate that sound after a primal. One way we know this is in observing a patient make motions during reliving birth, and cannot duplicate that movement later on, no matter how hard she tries. Too often we see abreaction in patients who start in the present, begin a feeling and then immediately skip steps and goes to some kind of birth trauma. That kind of reliving becomes a defense. It interrupts and does not enhance connection.

In dialectical fashion we descend to deep unconscious levels and immediately become conscious on that level. The unconscious is transformed into consciousness. This means that we will no longer be driven by those specific unconscious forces. We have access to our inner states. We thereafter will not suffer from such things as a bleeding ulcer or colitis without being aware of it. Chances are, however, that we won’t suffer from such afflictions.

Each lower level of brain function is designed to keep us alive. We can use lower levels to modify higher ones but it does not work in reverse. Imagine if that were possible; the higher level neocortex could permanently modify brainstem functions?
But we survive because it cannot. Thus feelings can certainly sway ideas but ideas can only suppress feelings, not eradicate them. We see in our therapy how physiology and limbic feelings directly affect ideas and beliefs. A very rapid heart rate can push someone to go and do, yet no matter how hard we try we often cannot alter the heart rate, especially the rate that is accompanied by anxiety. That is why we cannot “will” a slower heart rate over time or consciously drive away anxiety. Ideas are hundreds of millions years away from physiological and emotional functions.

I remember seeing a patient who had just started therapy who told me that since he forgave his parents he feels much better; proof that ideas can trump feeling. Yet when he was measured his stress hormone levels (cortisol) never changed. Thus the neo-cortex can trump what we think are feelings without ever touching feelings, per se. The neo-cortex is most adept at deceiving itself. It can produce the thought of being well without really being well. Ideas here function as anesthetics. In therapy we certainly don’t want to being anesthetized in order to get well.

The brain is a complex proposition and to stay on any one level in therapy to the exclusion of the others means that any progress made in therapy is partial. To do reprogramming of the brain to achieve so-called “normal brainwaves” (biofeedback) is deficient and cannot lead to cure.

When we wonder if we should call a therapy scientific we have only to ask, “does it elucidate and clarify the properties of nature?” We do not ask if it works because that is subjective and not always accurate. It is the difference between asking a scientific question and one that requires a moral perspective alone. Do we know more about humanity in this therapy or are we only after some sort of pragmatic, mechanical solution? Are we doing deep breathing or matching brainwaves to some ideal? Here the focus is on the technique, not the patient nor evolution; a major difference. When we focus on how the patient evolves we learn; when we decide on how we treat her beforehand we don’t. In short, can we learn from this therapy how to treat other human beings in psychotherapy? It is not a matter of defying evolution, but of harnessing it for the good of mankind. That is Darwin’s legacy.

On Evolution and Revolution (Part 2/3)

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Janov) — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 18:46:00 +0000

The Brain's Evolution and Therapy

Do you ever wonder why it is that we fall asleep in reverse order of evolution? And why we come out of it in correct order. In means, first of all, that we are prisoners of the brain’s evolution; and when we start to become consciously/aware we move to the highest level of the brain. We come out of antiquity into modern life as though we have gone through the centuries or the millennia in proper order each day in order to achieve consciousness. We do the same thing in Primal Therapy; and in doing so we must strictly obey evolutionary edicts. We can no more change that order than do so in our sleep. And when we trump that order in sleep, psychosis lurks. If we do not have enough dream (second-line limbic consciousness) sleep we suffer. And we develop physical and mental symptoms. Now what is crucial here is if we trump that order in Primal Therapy we suffer from those very same symptoms. That is why re-birthing is so dangerous; it trumps evolution. That is why cognitive therapy cannot work; it trumps the feeling areas of the brain and ignores evolution.

As with dream sleep, Primal Therapy enters the deep unconscious, slowly in ordered progression. Down on that deep level lies so many of our remote and life-and-death pains. It shows itself in our nightmares which are associated with terrible terror/anxiety states, and it is demonstrated in deep Primals where heavy pains reside. Until we have access to those imprints we can never know about life-endangering memories, nor include them in a therapeutic process. What this tells us is that we are evolutionary beings who biologically must adhere to the history of mankind; there is an order to the universe of which we are part. I cannot stress this enough. We do not take patients into birth traumas in the first weeks of therapy anymore than in dream sleep we go directly into deep sleep. Evolution is an ordered affair. We must not superimpose our ideas, our theory or our techniques on patients. The rule is that it is not up to us to decide for the patient, as for example, that she needs dream analysis, or neuro-feedback or rebirthing. It is always the patient and her readiness that dictates our approach.

Each new brain level in evolution helps out with survival, otherwise it would not be there. The brainstem and early limbic system have everything to do with survival—breathing, blood pressure, heart rate and body temperature. Evolution continues with its survival strategies finishing up with the neocortex. What this structure can do is detect enemies not only without but within—our feelings. And when it does it helps us survive by disconnecting us from the source of the pain; a self we will never meet again until we have access to deep brain structures. That may be never; and that may kill us prematurely.
As we travel through evolutionary time to the neocortex each adds its physiologic contribution. The reason that ideas cannot trump feelings is that feelings are integral to survival. They are a survival system. The neo-cortex is also very important to survival but in a different way. When we are in a coma without any neo-cortex really working our survival functions (heart rate, blood pressure, etc), are still operational. Animals survive very well without a complex neo-cortex. They won’t survive if the brainstem is damaged. We have to breathe no matter what.

Each lower level of brain function is designed to keep us alive. We can use lower levels to modify higher ones but it does not work in reverse. Imagine if the higher level neocortex could permanently modify brainstem functions? We survive because it cannot. Thus feelings can certainly sway ideas but ideas can only suppress feelings, not eradicate them. We see in our therapy how physiology and limbic feelings directly affect ideas and beliefs. A very rapid heart rate can push someone to go and do, yet no matter how hard we try we often cannot permanently alter the heart rate, especially the rate that is accompanied by anxiety. That is why we cannot “will” a slower heart rate over time. Ideas are hundreds of millions years away from physiological and emotional functions.

We know that the amygdala is pretty well mature at the time of birth so that we can code and register inchoate feelings. But the hippocampus is not yet fully developed for several years so that precision regarding the time and place and scene or origin is beyond its capacity. So we can dredge up feeling on the experiential level but not on the verbal one. So for those who claim to practice rebirthing we have to ask if there are any words to go along with the event. If there are, it is not a true event. We cannot overlook brain evolution in our therapy and perform what amounts to magic.

On Evolution and Revolution (Part 1/3)

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Janov) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 06:21:00 +0000

When scientists were polled recently about the greatest discovery in science, the majority chose Darwin’s Evolution. It explained so much in so many fields of scientific endeavor. That includes psychotherapy. In my opinion evolution is essential in the treatment of emotional problems. To put it differently, no one can make significant progress in psychotherapy when evolution is not central to its process. The brain developed in three major cycles, first described by Paul MacLean. I describe them as instinct/energy, feeling and then thinking. Each evolved and has many connections to higher levels. If we do a therapy with only the last evolved; that is, cognitive/insight therapy, we have neglected a great deal of our evolution. It is tantamount to neglecting most of our ancient history and, of course, most of our early personal history. When we ignore two thirds of our brain how can we possibly get well? I think that the thinkers (the cognitive/insight therapists) “cure” their patients so that they think they are better. This leaves out physiology and feeling.
Therefore, we need to systematically measure physiologic changes in our psychotherapy. Otherwise, we can have great new attitudes but our bodies may be degenerating.
I have often called my therapy, “evolution in reverse.” It includes evolution as its kernel. And it is that sense of evolution that makes it revolutionary. Because it overturns most current thinking about the value of thinking, particularly in terms of measuring progress in psychotherapy. What we feel is what we feel no matter what exhortations take place. And those often buried feelings determine our actions. Feelings can be deviated but there is always a home for them in the brain. They cannot be changed; though we can change our thinking about them, denying or projecting them.
Thoughts, bereft of feelings are, in essence, homeless; they have no roots. So any proper psychotherapy must adhere to the laws of biology and evolution; we need to find our roots, the basis of some many of our thoughts and beliefs. The history of mankind is found in us today, and the history of man/us is found in us, as well. When we follow our history in reverse it again must adhere to the natural order of things. In therapy if we do rebirthing it defies evolutionary principles by attacking the most remote and early imprints first. We must start in the present, give ourselves a good foundation in regard to our current lives and associated feelings and then finally arrive at the reptilian/instinctive brain a long time later. These are biologic laws that cannot be disregarded. Thus it is clear that rebirthing cannot ever work; indeed it most likely creates damage; and I have seen and treated the damage it does.
Any ploy or mechanism by a therapist that defies evolution will end in failure because evolution is merciless and unrelenting; it is how we survived. It will not allow us to cheat on its principles. If evolution is neglected it will perforce end in abreaction; the release of feeling without connection and resolution. Bioenergetics, focusing the body and muscles violates that law. Focusing on bodily release (the Gestalt Therapy, “act like an ape!” is inadequate). LSD and hallucinogens completely disregard the neurologic order of the nervous system, and spray feelings everywhere with no possible connection. A primal will teach us evolution because it will follow the neuraxis precisely and tell us where and how evolution took place.

On the Nature of Science

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Janov) — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 05:24:00 +0000

There are critiques of primal therapy as not having enough science behind it. Apart from the fact that we have done four brainwave studies, neurochemistry and physiologic studies, having done several double blind studies (discussed in Primal Healing), there is yet another aspect to all this apotheosis of science. Before the observations of Jane Goodall and her seminal work on chimps in the field there were hundreds of statistical studies of chimps and apes. But until she had living experience there was not much progress. Her work involved clinical observation and inductive logic. And her impact on the field was revolutionary. I think our situation is similar to Goodall’s. We have done the usual statistical work but watching how it all works out inside human beings is critical. Further, seeing how we can reverse early traumas is of major importance. We can see what causes migraines over and over again in our clinical setting. Patients come in all “down” and migrained and relive oxygen deprivation, leaving without the symptom. We never suggested the correlation, we only observed and wrote about it. We worked in the “field,” as it were. This is not to deride science; on the contrary, it is to state that science has many shapes and forms.

Or in the case of high blood pressure, we watched it rise and fall with the reliving of early pain; in particular, reliving anoxia or hypoxia. And that the deeper we go in primals the more migraine and high blood pressure can be eliminated. These are biologic truths, something beyond facts that clarify the overarching truths. There are layers of truths. It is possible to explore and relive more recent hurts but the migraine will not disappear until the prototype is addressed. Migraine, then, will stop occurring when the original reason for it has been experienced; that is, during birth when oxygen was insufficient, engendering the massive constriction and then dilation of some of the brain’s blood vessels. This is the reason why it is so important not to have a personal agenda for our patient. If we do, the patient will go to where we decide instead of where her biology dictates. Because once there is a migraine the system knows that we must address oxygen impairment. They are tied together. We will start reliving only related pains and finally descend to remote causes. We don’t have to decide anything; her biology will decide for us. But if we don’t pay attention to this basic biologic law the patient will suffer. That is, symptoms are related to specific causes; not immediately apparent.

We are a therapy of nature, of following basic biologic laws, not an intellectual theory to be superimposed on patients. We need to trust biology, not defy it. We need to know that human need is the kernel of civilization and the jewel of any psychotherapy. When we find need we will find deprivation; and when we find deprivation we will find neurosis. And when we relive need and its deprivation we will resolve neurosis.

On Connection (Part 6/6)

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Janov) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 18:51:00 +0000

The test of connection is an equilibrium of the nervous system with vital signs falling below baseline. We have done four separate brainwave studies of our patients. Our beginning patients have greater power (hemispheric amplitude) on the right side of the brain, but after one year of therapy, there is a shift of power to the left. This implies for us a more balanced brain. There was a strong correlation between patient’s feeling of well being and the shift in the brain. We have completed a two-year follow-up study of fourteen of our patients. Over time the power of the brain moves not only from right to left but also from back of the brain to the front (higher alpha frequencies) where there is more control. There are higher frequencies in the frontal area, which may mean better integration and control of feelings. An anxious patient, not well repressed, may come in with a higher brain voltage of 50–150 microvolts at 10–13 cycles per second. Just before a reliving (a primal), the alpha amplitudes can reach double or triple the normal resting rate (300 microvolts). This tells us how close to conscious-awareness the memory/feeling is. It gives us a diagnostic tool to measure access in the patient.

Connection means the liberation of the right feeling prefrontal cortex from control by the left. The left can now perform its important function of integration instead of suppression. And of course, the relaxation of the patient and her sense of ease is another key piece of evidence. Most important, once there is a lock-in of feelings, the insights become a geyser. After a feeling, one patient discovered why he could never dine in an indoor restaurant; he wanted nothing over his head (which turned out in a birth primal to be smashing into the pubic arch). He could never have anything above him, even symbolically, like a boss. Of course, his father was a tyrant; he avoided authority like the plague. Thus, there was the first- and second-line components of the feeling. Disconnection often means, “I am relaxed and calm,” while the right side is abuzz with pain.

We cannot be healthy and emotionally strong so long as there is disconnection; so long as there is a war going on between the two halves of the brain, mental health is not possible. Neurosis means there is a disconnection. It is not possible to get well through more of it, which is what happens in hypnosis and all cognitive therapies, where the left is driven further from its right counterpart.

Connection has neurologic roots. The Swedish neuroscientist, David Ingvar, using a CAT scan of the brain, found that a perception of pain involved both sides of the prefrontal area working in tandem. When emotional pain is repressed, I would assume the right side is more involved; the right amygdala picks up volume. There is information that the right amygdala tends to swell when there is feeling. Thus, disconnected pain is more active on the right side than the left.

It is as though there is a secret underground in the brain where messages are passed back and forth, but on the side that should be aware there is no recognition of them. So the right side “tells” the left side, sotto voce, “Look, I can’t take any more criticism. It means I am not loved.” And the left side says, “OK. I’ll defend you against having to feel so bad. Just don’t tell me too much. Anyway, I’ll twist the criticism by the other person, and make them wrong.” And the left side jumps in immediately and automatically as soon as there is a hint of criticism. “Don’t worry, my right-wing friend, I’ll keep those feelings of feeling unloved and criticized under control even though you haven’t told me what they are.” So the left side acts out the feeling; the act-out is unconscious because the right side feeling is not connected. The left is not yet consciously-aware.

Because brainstem and limbic structures on the right largely make up the unconscious the task is to bring the right brain into symmetry with the left. Remember, events are unconscious because early trauma impacts the right brain far more than the left, and that brain loses touch with conscious-awareness.

In order for the feeling to remain in storage the forces of repression must remain intact. That takes effort and chemicals such as cortisol, the alerting chemical for imminent danger. Once memory is stored as an imprint it is always an “imminent danger.” Hence nearly all of our starting patients are high in cortisol.

Any time a therapist orders a patient to do this or that, mistakes are being made. It is now the therapist’s timetable rather than the patient’s. The minute a patient is “done-to” we are in error. Feelings will come up in natural order when we let nature guide us, the patient’s nature and also our own.
There are many levels of connection: it means the right-left brains become coordinated (via the corpus callosum). And not only from right to left but also from bottom to top. This means that the feeling centers are connected to the areas of the neocortex, specifically the prefrontal brain. So that feeling is organically joined with knowledge, not by separate processes but as an integrated whole where feeling seeks out and links to understanding on higher levels. Earlier-on, heavy and painful feelings were too much to absorb and integrate so part of it was rerouted and kept apart from knowledge. It began an underground life, creating damage. The problem is that similar feelings are kindled into similar pain so that the compounding of all of it is too much to connect and integrate. It is like a storage locker; each new added pain builds until there is no more space for feelings.

The true meaning of optimum mental health is harmony and balance. It is also the meaning of emotional-intelligence, which allows our feelings to guide us toward a sane, intelligent life, and not one filled with broken loves, drugs, tobacco, alcohol and esoteric intellectual pursuits. Harmony and balance enables us to lead not only an intellectual life, but a healthy and intelligent one, as well, one not driven by compulsions and the inability to relax. Connection will take care of all of that.

On Connection (Part 5/6)

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Janov) — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 16:24:00 +0000

Recall is processed by the frontal cerebral cortex. It recounts but cannot relive. Thus, there can be a recounting of an abuse by an adult when we were four, which may not be true—a confabulation. Contrarily, reliving is systemic and all encompassing. In reliving there can be bruises from birth that reappear (the doctor’s finger marks on the newborn’s skin), or one begins to gag and choke as one relives oxygen deprivation at birth. That is a sure event not to be confused with a recounting. Reliving includes how the lungs reacted, how much mucous was secreted during birth—because during a reliving of birth it is again secreted. Recounting has nothing to do with it.

When I discuss right brain control, it is the orbito-frontal right cortex that has direct connections to the amygdala of the limbic system. With a well-functioning right brain, there will be the ability to modulate our emotional output. But we also need right-left connections. There must be right bottom to right top connection, and right top to left top connection, and right bottom to left top for total integration. This may sound complicated, but for the healthy brain it is a “no brainer.” The inhibitory neurotransmitters also work to prevent information from traveling over the corpus callosum to the left pre-frontal area. So we may have an awareness of an early trauma such as, “My mother gave my dolls away,” or “She sent me to boarding school,” but the part that hurts is repressed: “I need my mommy!”. It is the suffering component that remains unconscious in the right brain; it is that part that wants to inform the left frontal area, but to no avail. We have a paradoxical need: to feel the hurt, and not to feel the hurt; to be protected from shattering pain, and at the same time, to connect to it and have it over with.

The encoded imprint is registered throughout the system. Recall treats an encapsulated left frontal brain as an entity in itself—confusing that brain with the whole individual, so when the person understands we believe he is getting well. Only her left brain is getting well. The rest remains sick. The left-brain, expert in strange concoctions, can really believe all is well while the dissociated aspect of memory, the suffering component, is writhing with its silent scream. It is the right that gives us an overview of our lives and how we manage in it. The left dissects, is analytical but cannot see the grand picture. It can criticize but not create. Now we know where critics go. And those in conventional insight therapy are talking to a brain that has no words and wondering why therapy cannot cure anyone. It is a dialogue of the deaf from those who cannot see.
When the critical period is long gone, and we are able to tolerate serious pain we can begin the connection process. In order to change, we need to go back to the critical period when fulfillment was absolutely necessary for life. Recall can never do that. As adults we have a stable environment, are no longer dependent on neurotic parents, perhaps have love in the present, elements that allow us now to face our childhood. Meanwhile, the brain has done its best to block the feeling, providing detours from the right-limbic information highway heading upwards and leftwards. The blockage is not complete, however, because the feeling drives act-outs. “No one wants me,” becomes trying to get everyone to want her—being helpful, kind, unobtrusive, etc. The feeling becomes transmuted into physical behavior. The energy, which needs connection, has gone to our stomach and created colitis, to our cardiac and vascular system with palpitations or migraines, and to our muscles, making us tense. It may make us act meek and diffident as if no one wants us around. It causes an inability for males to become erect. What we try to do in our therapy is to allow feelings to go straight up the feeling highway to the right OBFC and then to make a left turn to reach their destination.

Connection is always the brain’s prime destination. If we only turn left and never go right, we will never make the connection. I believe the system is always trying for connection, but it gets blocked by gating. Because of the constant push to connect, feelings tend to intrude and disrupt our thinking—hence, the inability to concentrate or focus. Once connected, those diversions will no longer be necessary to drain the energy. The energy always spreads to the weakest link. “Weakest” means a vulnerable area or organ either due to heredity or to damage done earlier in life; a blow to the head in infancy may end up as epilepsy. A history of allergies in the family may result in asthma later on.

Our therapy is chosen by those who hurt, who often have too much access (access from below is not the same as access from above. The former means flooding), and not enough control. The therapist needs right brain access so that she can empathize with the patient, sense what she is feeling, and know when pain should be avoided for the moment. A therapist will earn the patient’s trust when the patient senses that the therapist knows what is going on inside of her, does not make inappropriate moves, and allows for the free flow of feelings. A therapist who interrupts feelings, who cannot sense the readiness of a patient to feel certain levels of pain, cannot be trusted. That distrust is inherent in the situation. No therapist who is left-brain contained, who is circumscribed by ideas and insights, can be trusted. None of that sensitivity can be taught. We cannot “teach” feeling. We cannot teach connection to the right brain; we can only allow it.

On Connection (Part 4/6)

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Janov) — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 12:27:00 +0000

In neurosis there is a loss of integration among brain sites so that memory cannot be conflated with inner sensations and external reality. We lose our wholeness so that past and present cannot be differentiated. Remember again that when animals are traumatized and then put again in a similar situation without the trauma, the brainwaves are practically identical. The brain cannot tell the difference between past and present, and forces us to react as we did in the past even when that reaction is not called for. In neurosis we live in the past without being aware of it. We are shy with others because an angry father forced us to give in and submit unquestioningly. This kind of father takes the child’s “no” away so that later on she cedes to other’s wishes all of the time. Thus, she reacts in the present as if it were the past.

Without lower level connection to higher levels, we are only considering the late developing cortical brain and not the brain as a whole. Sadly and happily, no one can make a connection (insight) for us; it must come out of a feeling, and it must do so in slow orderly fashion. When the patient has the connection, we know it is time. When the insight is forced by a therapist, it usually is not the time—organically; it defies evolution—ideas after feelings, not before. Neurosis manages to fragment that reality (disconnection). Feeling therapy reestablishes that total reality. There is a unity of nature that happens only with connection. Connection, therefore, is the merging together of related neural networks on all levels of consciousness.

It should be clear that dissociation restricts consciousness, not awareness, and we need consciousness, not awareness, for control. I can make this same impatient individual aware (left frontal area) in therapy that he is terribly impulsive and cannot stand waiting, but that does not produce the bottom to top connection that allows for control—the connection between deep right brain and left pre-frontal brain. Even with full awareness, the right lower brain sends impulses throughout the body that gnaws away at various organs. The result may be colitis (often first line originated) or bleeding ulcers, which cannot be stopped without first-line access. The aware person can be totally unconscious of all of this. The unconscious has no way to become conscious in the neurotic. Neurosis means an altered state of consciousness. That includes defective or impaired bottom-to-top brain circuitry. In brief, the brain is rewired. In the adult, instead of feeling the need for love and caress, one may feel immediate sexual impulses or the drive to eat. The more that those circuits are deviated and continue to fire in a specific way, the more the rewiring becomes reinforced.
We need to go back and relive the times of first deviation if we are to make headway to resolving it. We go back to reset the set-points toward normal. That is why in our therapy, the naturally produced inhibitor or repressor—serotonin—is enhanced after one year of sessions. Its set-points have been reestablished. It is sometimes possible to get relief by delving only into later childhood traumas, leaving the prototype in place. If the threshold for symptoms is raised by this approach, all the better. There will be no overt symptoms but the tendency is still there. Thus, an alcoholic may not be forced to drink when some of the pain is relived, but he will always be in danger thereafter. If we are looking for total personality change, it will not be possible without addressing the imprint. If one is happy with having no symptoms, then so be it. It is the patient’s life, not ours.

Early trauma, birth, and pre-birth, will generally interfere with the proper evolution of the right brain and its connections to the left. It remains so excited that even neutral events can set it off. Do we need a therapist to help us see outside reality? No. We need a therapist to help us find the internal one; the rest takes care of itself. To be specific: We need to access the right brain because that brain (specifically the orbito-frontal cortex. And the lower brain, as well) contains a map of our emotional history and our internal state. With access we don’t have to figure out what happened to us at age two, we can re-experience and know it. And we will immediately know how that experience drove us. That is why recall is so different from reliving.

(Let me hasten to add that there are any number of limbic structures and adjacent ones that are involved, including the ventral anterior cingulate which seems to “straighten out our perceptions”. It is beyond my competence and intent to discuss them).

On Connection (Part 3/6)

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Janov) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 16:02:00 +0000

Connection cannot be achieved when the connecting cable (corpus callosum) has been impaired or thinned out due to early trauma. Once the event has been dissociated, the right lower brain areas have a “mind of their own.” That is, the energy of the pain innervates (lead to, connect to) the heart and key organs and begin their ever-so-subtle damage so that years later, there is a serious illness and no one seem to know where it comes from. Suddenly the person develops high blood pressure or heart palpitations, or worse, a stroke. Because the origin is so remote, one could never dream that it was due to a birth trauma. The treating doctor says, “Have you been under stress lately?” “Not that I know of.”

How can we speak to a brain that has as yet no words? And no comprehension. The suffering component of infancy has direct connections to key organs of the body governed by the right brain. The left brain insists that all is well while the right is sending messages to the lungs, immune system, circulatory system, and heart saying things are terrible. All done “sotto voce.” After all, it doesn’t want to be overheard by the left. Once the secret is out it has to be dealt with, and the left just cannot do it. The truth of the hurt is already out, only it is revealed indirectly through the organs. There is a pain in the gut or in the heart (ischemia, angina). These are the somatic aspects—fragments of the memory— of an overall pain imprint, which as yet is not conscious. And it is not conscious because it is overwhelming in its force. Remember that there are nerve fibers from lower down that impact the pre-frontal brain area that can and do change its structure and function, particularly the right frontal area. A Primal means putting it all together, connecting the various disparate symptoms into an overall whole.

In neurosis there is a different brain. UCLA neuro-psychologist Allan Schore believes that early trauma overrides genetics in our personal development, and I agree.

The reason for the descent down the chain of feeling to be orderly and methodical is that as we descend, the valence of the pain increases. Thus, in birth where death may have loomed, the pain is horrible. It should only be experienced after many lesser and later pains have been felt. If we try to get there with hallucinogens, for example, as some therapists have done, the result is often wild symbolism as the neocortex scrambles to circumscribe and contain it. If the therapist sees this as normal and even healthy, then all is lost because the patient is lost. He now lives in a labyrinth of convoluted ideas that have no relationship to internal reality. Instead of feeling that reality, he is encircled and dominated by it.
Early trauma impairs the proper evolution of the right brain so we later misperceive, cannot sense nuance, and over or under react. We cannot sense nuance because that is right brain, and we are disconnected from it. Thus there is a tendency to be literal and not see the implications in certain situations. Right brain impairment may also cause us to lose our ability to empathize because that too is right side. Anything that involves feeling, in short, is missing with disconnection. It is critical for a therapist to have right brain access, and even more importantly, to be right-left brain integrated. She must see beyond the words of the patient. Or more important, see beyond the words of a politician. The right brain senses insincerity.

In the example of the inability to wait, it is clear that unless we go all the way down the chain, we will not have complete resolution and change. If we relive the waiting in childhood (the need to go home after being in boarding school), we would resolve only a part of the trauma. There will still be an urgency about waiting but not so desperate as before. What gives waiting its life-and-death urgency is the birth trauma, which, indeed was a case of life and death. This is a general rule about any problem or act-out. The compulsive-obsessive aspect of it is largely driven by preverbal traumas, which are usually pure impulses. It is what makes sexual act-outs so difficult to treat. And unless a therapy arrives at the prototype, they will not be eradicated fully. The difficulty here is that first-line trauma underlying the act-out already has an urgency about it. The devilish aspect of this is that there is no way to go deep without first going shallow—no visiting the past without first dealing with the present. We must obey evolution, albeit evolution in reverse.

On Connection (Part 2/6)

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Janov) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 18:17:00 +0000

With connection, feelings have found a home, and the system can rest. The person no longer has to engage in compulsive hand washing because she unconsciously feels “dirty.” Remember, that the higher pre-frontal regulatory systems have connections with the brainstem/limbic areas with information going in both directions. We can feel our feelings, and we can block those feelings when they are too hurtful. With a weaker pre-frontal cortex to handle input, we have amygdala-driven feelings that impact our higher centers directly, possibly driving us into unceasing mental activity. If there were ever a universal affliction, it is that unceasing activity. People cannot sit still and relax. Movement as an imprint may have meant life at birth, and it does so now as a memory.

Reconnecting the Brain

There is more and more evidence that brain tissue at the extreme anterior (front) part of the pre-frontal cortex is responsible for integration of emotional states. The recent work of a Yale team, Patricia Goldman-Rakic and Pasco Rakic, focused on the corpus callosum (the bridge between right and left brains) in which they developed a model of symmetry in the brain. What they state is that cells in the corpus callosum are marked so as to attach to mirror image cells on both sides of the brain. There may be either a certain resonating frequency that helps each side recognize each other or there may be a chemical affinity that allows cells on one side to join up—connect—with cells on the other side (or both). As I mentioned, (unproved) connected memory may exist when lower level imprints resonate with the same frequencies higher up in the brain. When the pre-fontal cortex and sub-cortex meet, there seems to be a pattern of recognition; it’s kind of like finding a soul mate. More possibly, the lower level imprints rise to seek out their other half higher in the nervous system. Once joined, they form an integrated, unified circuit.

It would seem that brain cells “know” when they have arrived at connection because the receptors on axons are found only on the correct target nerve cell. There is some evidence now that even in the womb, the brain is preparing itself for life in our world. So the fetus has recapitulated life in ancient history and is now preparing for life on the planet where each new level broadens our conscious/awareness. Each new level is an elaboration of the previous lower level until we arrive at full consciousness. Critical here is the concept of connection; the merging together of related neural networks. There is a unity of nature that happens only with connection. Neuro-psychologic laws do exist. It is up to us to find them.

Very early feelings exist in a sensory-only language have, in the past, been impossible to access and resolve. The lower levels “talk” to us all of the time in their own language (racing heart, highs blood pressure), but we never listen and have lost the ability to communicate with them. We don’t talk their language, and yet we must for survival. Otherwise, we fall sick early in life and our lifespan is much, much shorter. Because though the language is a one-way street we continue to drive on the wrong side of the nervous system (the left intellectual) and lose our orientation. We try to get to the right feeling side with the left, and we can’t get there from here.

We know that early events even before birth are imprinted throughout the system and largely onto the right brain. These events can occur before there is a functioning left pre-frontal cortex to make sense out of them. And by the time we do have that portion of the cerebral cortex the pain on the right, severe because it involves matters of life and death at birth and before, is repressed and results in a disconnection between the two sides and from lower to higher brain centers. Moreover, the connecting links are not as yet matured. This process is called repression or gating or, as it is often called in the scientific literature, dissociation. Remember, it is the very early prebirth traumas that find their way onto the right brain. The right brain, then, becomes the repository of the unconscious. Becoming conscious means reconnecting the pain to conscious-awareness. Connection means awareness even when the event has no words or scenes. We can be aware of a lack of oxygen during birth or of the agony of being twisted around due to breech presentation. That awareness is every bit as crucial as an awareness of events at the age of six even though there are no words to explain it. Sensing/experiencing the pain is awareness. It doesn’t need words.

On Connection (Part 1/6)

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Janov) — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 20:03:00 +0000

Someone wrote to me asking about the difference between abreaction and a Primal: the key difference, of course, is connection, which takes place in a Primal but never in abreaction. Why is that? Several reasons, not the least of which is that it takes great skill to produce a connected feeling and no skill to permit abreaction.

The two most important factors are: 1. that the patient arrives at a feeling/pain/need untrammeled by other feelings, (often compounded by a history of unrelenting pain from childhood trauma) and neglect. That is, the therapist must be acutely aware of the leitmotif in the session; which feelings are critical and which are peripheral. It takes years and much experience to know how to do it. If the wrong feeling is addressed we get abreaction, which is the discharge of the energy of a feeling on a different level. Secondly, We need to know on what line or level the patient is operating on so that we confine her and us to a single level and not a mélange of levels. The idea is to remain in the feeling zone, the only zone where connection can take place. If the pulse is too high or the heart rate too fast we will be over or under the feeling zone (I call the Primal Zone); no integration can take place.

Once abreaction takes place the vital signs go up and down in sporadic fashion. In connection they rise and fall together. Generally those on the high end of vital signs stay there and then have to keep feeling and feeling because nothing gets resolved.

Now why is the wrong feeling addressed? Because when a therapist has unresolved feelings of her own she will tend to drive the patient where she needs to go. Or worse, she will avoid feelings of the patient that she is not ready for. As for example, anger. If the therapist is terrified of hostility he will shut it down in the patient. He won’t let the patient go near it, and the feeling will remain unresolved. If the therapist cannot be criticized she will dodge any blame and try to make any error the patient’s fault instead of hers. This is the most widespread of problems with therapists.
What we are after is to hook up the feeling/instinct brain with higher levels so that there is a proper lock-in. This means that the historical need/feeling/pain has been fully addressed and experienced (with all of ourselves); experience means that it is not confined to a neocortical level where intellect lives. It would seem that there may be a chemical affinity between higher and lower sites so that feelings recognize each other through their chemistry. But in any case when the vital signs do not reflect integration you can bet that connection never took place.

To put it differently, we can often tell how much of a feeling has been resolved by the amount of change in cortisol levels, all vital signs or other biochemistries. I must emphasize that abreaction is a non-feeling event. It looks like feeling, often to both the patient and therapist but there is a qualitative difference. It produces awareness without consciousness. And of course the most important is that with feeling we get well. Abreaction is destructive to any feeling therapy. To a well-trained therapist there is a hollow ring to abreaction. It doesn’t “smell” right. A therapist who is not feeling cannot pick out the difference. A patient may use abreaction as a defense against feeling, slipping into crying the minute she lies down. Or simulating a birth primal. If the patient doesn’t have her feet and arms in a specific position we know it is abreaction. Each level of consciousness is an entity onto itself. If someone is reliving something emotional and then begins birth movements it means to us that there is intrusion from another level; it may be that it is a defense against too strong emotions. If she says one word or tears up during a session of reliving birth we know it is abreaction. Defenses are tricky and we need a long training to pick them up correctly. In Primal Therapy we make it safe not to block pain, because feelings are preserved with their early scenes intact. Because each higher brain level elaborates the same sensation/feeling/need differently, we can ride the top level down and it will eventually take us to the bottom—to origins. Once down there, the system on its own will move upward toward connection automatically, following the paths of evolution for connection. We then move again up toward the right OBFC and then to the left prefrontal cortex for final connection. How do we verify this? We note that in almost every reliving there is a mounting of vital signs to inordinate levels; these levels drop with connection to normal, healthy measures. In a feeling without context, which is an abreaction, there is never this kind of organized, coordinated vital function movement. A random discharge of the energy of the feeling/pain will find its reflection in the disorganization of vital signs movements. There is no harmony to the system. And our brain research found that after one year of our therapy there were systematic changes in brain function toward a more harmonized cerebral system

On Being Emotionally Damaged

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Janov) — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 19:49:00 +0000

It seems like in psychology today the lingua franca in describing patients is “emotionally damaged.” So what is that? It means someone who is neurotic, full of pain, damaged by years of abuse, etc. So I got to thinking about it and tried to define it in a more precise way. There are two aspects to this. One: There is a timetable of needs beginning in the womb. How completely they are fulfilled or not determines one aspect of the pain. Secondly, needs that require fulfillment are the most painful the earlier they occur. And this is pretty much true for all of us. Early primal needs are nearly always a matter of life-and-death. Their lack of fulfillment can be catastrophic. This is imprinted and endures for nearly all of our lives. There are secondary, non-lethal needs that require fulfillment but when not fulfilled hurt but do not change our basic neuro-physiology. These needs come late in the evolutionary time-table.

So let us assume that of the many needs, to be touched, talked to and listened to, to have our needs acknowledged, to be understood and have our moods mirrored by parents, there are only one or two that are fulfilled. The rest means pain. There is hierarchy of needs; those that are involved in life and death—oxygen at birth, a calm environment while being carried, feeling safe in one’s surroundings and being protected. Above all, being touched and caressed and kissed right after birth. Parents need to show their love. Lesser needs such as being talked to are important but they do not alter the great pain of not being held and caressed as an infant. We can adumbrate the amount of pain by measuring the vitalness of the need and how much it was not fulfilled.

Those who are most damaged are those who have in my lingo, first line pain. The only damage equivalent is something that is commensurate with first line such as incest at age six or eight. But in addition to that there are other needs not fulfilled, then you have the makings of serious mental illness. When the parent who is supposed to protect you becomes the danger, damage is inevitable. When a child has no one to express her feelings to, damage is also evident. In my books where I write on the nature of love, I have discussed the various needs and their need for fulfillment. If you have been touched and held but not talked to the damage is much less. If you have not been held but have been talked to the damage is much more. So damage increases as deeper brain areas are touched. That is why Hollywood does not ordinarily ruin people. Those who are already wounded seek out Hollywood.

More on Beliefs (Part 3/3)

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Janov) — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 10:27:00 +0000

In the paper recently is a story about a female astronaut driving one thousand miles to do away with a perceived rival for the affections of another astronaut. All of her amazing education and brilliance could not stop her from doing something absolutely crazy. She could not think out this problem and decide on a different course of action; she was compelled to follow her deep feelings of past rejection into oblivion. Could there be a better example of rationality living side by side with irrationality in the brain? In cerebral terms, it is deep feelings of rejection in the right hemisphere and in the forward top brain (the orbito-frontal area) that sends the message over to the left prefrontal brain and says, "Stop the rejection by any means possible!" She could not do it as a child — helpless before parental neglect and indifference, but now she can do something about it. But ay any ay, what she did was nuts. So the left advanced brain tried to find symbolic solutions to an old imprinted problem that had only one solution — love by the parent — at that time and no other. So here we have the perennial dilemma: the left prefrontal brain always tries to find current solutions to old historical problems; and it therefore always fails.
This seeker gives up everything in exchange for the hope of receiving what was deprived her long ago. She becomes an extension of the leader's will. She and the other disciples will kill others or themselves at the leader’s behest, turn over their money to him, live by capricious rules he makes, think thoughts he inserts in their minds, eat what and when he allows them to. They act like devoted children, and his authoritarian bearing reinforces that childishness. Women will even give over their bodies to the leader, and their mates will allow it because they have learned obedience to authority. That obedience is one of the most dangerous facets of human life. All manner of crimes exist in its wake. Fascist dictators can easily get thugs to do their murderous bidding because those thugs are loyal and obedient to the leader. Those in war can kill because it is their job; they usually don’t kill out of anger. It is a job like any other, devoid of passion. In need of order in a world of chaos, hope and magic instead of confusion and pain, they swallow the ideology the leader dispenses hook, line and sinker. In the case of our homegrown cult leaders, women will even submit to the leader's sexual whims, will leave their husbands, and abandon children in order to please him. In the case of one cult leader, the wives’ mates bunked in a dormitory downstairs while they slept with the guru. Parents went along with their leader's penchant for their pubescent daughters. But the leader has to have the answer! And he must exert his ideas with certainty and force. Beliefs are medicine for the hopeless. They attenuate despair, vitiate parental substitute. He gives love and can take it away from those who are not obedient. For those who were rejected by family, to be again rejected and thrown out by the "new family" is intolerable. Some prefer death to this pain. loneliness and dissipate helplessness. Not a despair necessarily arising out of one's present circumstances, but one that is imprinted physiologically and emotionally in the individual — the despair of a baby in the crib who cries her heart out for days hoping someone will come to feed, cuddle, caress and soothe her. The despair of a child who sees his mother die in an auto accident or his father leave the family for good. A despair long ago forgotten by the mind but not by the body, consigned to the unconscious, covered over by layers of newly constructed hopes ... and best of all, the hope for a different and better life. Later on, it is no wonder that person becomes radicalized, looking for a better world, trying to destroy symbols of his current world, becoming a utopian who must find the perfect system or perfect place — all because his early life was such hell and so hopeless. We need hope more than we need truth. Hope feels good, but truth often hurts. The truth hurts because to feel that "my parents don’t like me, don’t want me around and they never will love me," is intolerable for a youngster. If the Bible is your bag, you can be born-again. The medicine of hope dispels the misery of our pre-born-again life. Hope's assurances shield our ears from the child screaming below the surface of consciousness. She is screaming yet even she cannot hear it — until, we take her back to her childhood and help her cry and scream, at last. Now she knows what has driven her.

More on Beliefs (Part 2/3)

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Janov) — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 07:17:00 +0000

Sometimes people only respond to feelings and vote for political candidates who reflect them. But often they vote for an idea that reflects their underlying needs and feelings: e.g., "This man will make our country safe." We can ignore the reality of what he does because his rhetoric soothes apprehensions and salves fear. But of course, the leader has to first install fear — the enemy is planning secret attacks. Then, I will protect you by arming heavily. "Yes, yes I will vote for more and more arms so I can feel safe." Too often individuals vote their feelings in the guise of an idea. The more neurotic (heavily repressed) a person is, the greater the distance between his ideas and feelings — what I call the Janovian gap — the more symbolic her ideas. By neurotic I mean someone with a high degree of imprinted, blocked pain that distorts the whole system physically and psychologically. It is not just that someone has far-out ideas. They are linked into a major system. They have anchors into a personality. There are certain traumas imprinted in the system that require repression, and the interplay between them is the hub of neurosis. The outcome of that interaction, the resulting symptoms, is what we generally call neurosis. Belief systems are just another form of symptoms. They do not spring full blown out of the air. There are historical causes. Once we understand this, we can see how one can give up drugs and booze in favor of being born-again; ideas smother the pains just as well as, if not better than, drugs. That is why those who are unwell will tend to fall ill prematurely, stricken by an internal reality of which they are not aware. The more warped the ideas, the more likely the person will have a warped physiology, and vice versa. It isn’t just ideas we are dealing with; it is a whole human being whose ideas reflect his buried needs and feelings. Twisted ideas and beliefs, in my view, presage a shorter lifespan. The system is neurotic not just one’s beliefs. In psychoanalysis and cognitive therapy they tend to help change ideas without realizing that they part and parcel of a human, and a human with a history. And of course, there are the various tests for progress in therapy usually of the verbal variety so that if one says one is better, one is considered better. Or on certain questions, "Are you more comfortable with yourself now after therapy?" We see that the more one is defended and thereby feels more comfortable, the more progress we consider the patient has made. Key psychological factors lead people into belief systems, cults and self-destructive situations. The Arab suicide bombers, the followers at Waco and Jonestown were in the grip of something much stronger and much older than reason and good judgment. They were victims, first, of a culture that extolled death and the hereafter. That is: We don’t die; we just go on in a different form. Thus death is rather meaningless. They were also victims of basic unfulfilled need; the need that meant survival early on. A matrix of unconscious feelings and unending neediness impelled the suicide bombers, People’s Temple and Heaven's Gate members and the Branch Davidians to search for what had been deprived them in childhood, even though they had forgotten and, for the most part, had no memory of the existence of such needs. Deprived childhood need (the need to be caressed, soothed, valued, loved) had driven them into the hands of an equally needy demagogue who had promised them fulfillment; in return they would follow, adore and deify the leader. Each cult member is as naive, needy and vulnerable as an infant turning toward its mother for warmth, sustenance, protection and guidance. They look like adults but they are basically babies.

More on Beliefs (Part 1/3)

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Janov) — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 06:08:00 +0000

All belief systems have something in common. They are maps, something to help us navigate through life more effectively. And belief systems all respond to an almost universal, hard-wired need. It is not that we need to believe; we believe because we need. The belief itself, whatever it may be, comes later when we have the conceptual apparatus for beliefs. A one-year-old doesn't have that possibility. The need/feeling doesn’t go away; it begins its subterranean life.

My task is to see how, when feelings are blocked and rerouted, they turn into defensive ideas. These ideas have a dual role; to reflect previous experience and at the same time serve to mask the pain of it. The ideas that flow out of feelings remain symbolic derivatives of them; for if one were to feel the real feelings behind them, one would be in great pain. One patient relived suffocating during birth. He wanted to leave his wife because she was "suffocating" him and not giving him any breathing space. Those feelings saved his marriage. Clearly it is not always one-to-one, but I underline it because it offers clues to understanding "les idées fixes." They are handmaidens of feeling.

The first thing to understand about ideas (and here I am always discussing defensive ideas) is that they evolve, just as our brain evolves. We don’t start out life with ideas, and mankind didn’t start out in its journey from reptiles with the ability to think and conceptualize. It all evolved. In the brain this is what happens. We start out with the deepest part of the brain, the brainstem, which houses instincts and basic needs and most survival functions (heart rate, body temperature, blood pressure), which evolve into a limbic, feeling system that offers us the capacity to feel; and then the brain produces the neo-new cortex, especially its front part (prefrontal), which allows us to think in words and ideas. Remember, the brain produces itself. There is no deity that does it, but it enables us now to call upon a deity to quell our pain. And lo and behold! It does. The need for more and more cortex meant that brain cells had to migrate to higher levels to take on new functions. Those functions included beliefs that allowed us to flee danger; only this time the danger was internal. We could flee "into our heads" and away from ourselves; from imprinted feeling/danger.

In our personal evolution we develop ideas out of our previous early experience that dictates who we are and what we believe and think. Ideas and beliefs don’t just stick out there waiting to be corrected and changed. Pain is never set down just as an idea; it is an experience, and it is that experience one must revisit and relive in order to understand the origin of one’s ideas. We must go back to finish the sequence that began with an angry look by the father when the baby cried loudly in the crib — feel that experience again, only this time feel the need that the baby dared not to express at the time. The need never just disappears; it is capped and sequestered under a lid of resignation and despair. Later, it becomes a "need for;" the idea that someone else can fill the bill, which is never true. Someone else can paper over, but not fulfill. The only fulfillment was possible at the time. Thereafter, all fulfillments become symbolic. What better symbols than words — I love you, will watch over you, guide and protect you. They are just sounds but sounds that have a meaning, and that meaning is surcease, relief and soothing. Sounds that now have a physiologic base.

On Being Smart Versus Being Intellectual

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Janov) — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 19:18:00 +0000

I have to read in my field every day for hours just to keep up. I read a book this morning about false memory syndrome. Basically it analyzes the brain structures, specifically the hippocampus, which may be damaged causing false memory (I simplify). These are Harvard trained scientists. I am suggesting that unless one feels, that is, first feel one’s needs and pain from their lack of fulfillment, it is difficult to know profoundly what the truth is. And when one relates how “scientific” this proposition is, it can be unassailable. In short, intellectuals must rely on abstractions, statistics and not a “wild” proposition that comes from observation.

I believe that intellectuals, and I include some of the great minds of the century that I have treated, generally live “in their heads”, cut off from feelings yet driven by them. Their sex life is a shambles because they are often sexless and fuckless. They cannot use their head to help become sexual, nor to do their bidding. In fact, they use their heads to flee from feeling. If they did not they would be wallowing in pain all of the time. So they are left-brain dominated and cannot see the nuance or subtleties in social intercourse. And they cannot see obvious emotional realities. Trust a man or woman who can make love. We see how a president is more dangerous, the less he fucks.

In psychology it means turning to the intellect for answers to great emotional problems. In short, being stuck in the left brain means to depend solely on that brain’s indices, relying on what numbers tell them because they cannot trust their emotions. So the intelligent person sees reality far better than the intellectual. Being intellectual is, by and large, a defense, no matter how smart the person is. He knows facts and figures but knows very little about the human condition. He often cannot make the leap into imagination or possibilities. He is stuck “listening” to the orphaned voice of intellect. Because he is constantly channeled into the thinking brain, he cannot see beyond his needs and is a victim of philosophies, no matter how dressed up they are in complex notions. He will never adopt a feeling therapy when he has no idea what that is.

The Critical Window: Why We Can't Change

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Janov) — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 06:30:00 +0000

If we have trouble in our emotional life we need to examine our life before birth. When the whole system is gearing up for life on the planet, gestational life has already constructed a crucible for that life outside the womb. Life in the womb is perhaps the most important time of our lives; so much of adult symptoms and behavior can be traced to that epoch. So what happens in the womb becomes a harbinger of what to expect, all on an unconscious level. So we anticipate a catastrophe, ruminate constantly about it, never realizing that the bad thing has already happened. We are actually worried about the past, not the future. If we could drop into those past feelings there would be no more worry about the future. But that past is remote, maybe occurring before we set foot on earth. No wonder it is a mystery.
I have written about the prototype, the “now print” that is engraved in the neurophysiologic system even before birth. Any severe trauma while the mother is carrying can be imprinted into his system where it may well remain for the rest of his life. Here it may change the brain circuits and cause a permanent deviation in the function of organ systems. There is less possibility of that kind of imprint occurring after birth. It is “now print” because it is setting down a prototype of heuristic (guiding) value that will direct behavior thereafter. It is memory of survival, of what worked before to save our lives. And it worked when the input stimulus may have been a life-and-death matter as so many traumas during womb-life are. This will happen despite the fact that there is no fully functioning neo-cortex to remember the scene; it happens below the level of conscious/awareness, which is why we cannot get there through the vehicle of language. Here we have a learning system that is distinct from the verbal learning/memory system that we will develop later. It is neurophysiologic memory.
The prototype folds all that surrounds a feeling/memory, compresses and instills it into a general principle that directs behavior. The principle is survival. When confronted with an obstacle, for example, “it is best to retreat,” not confront. Here is where passivity was life-saving. What the body learns is not struggling for air when the mother is anesthetized at birth, but retreating into less use of energy and oxygen—passivity. To undo that imprint, not so easily done, we need to return to the brain that registered it. We need to relive it. Why? Because the deviations of the system are built on that memory/imprint. All this has already been decided sub-cortically. She is no longer leading a conscious life. We can begin to see why adults do not make profound change even though many have undergone psychoanalytic therapy or have taken LSD or Extasy, can claim deep change. Biologically it seems that this kind of metamorphosis cannot take pace. For the imprint of pain is sealed in and cannot be opened again. It has a label, “Not to be open before feeling therapy.”

Once the window for fulfillment of need is closed, that is, when the need must be fulfilled to avoid pain, I seriously doubt that any comprehensive change can take place.
If someone says that the patient must then be offered a new ending for what he relived, or that she needs extensive insights afterward, we understand immediately that we have enlisted the aid of the adult brain and undercut what the patient has felt during the session.

We know that in reliving gestational life or the birth trauma we are succumbing to deep and long, slow-wave brain signatures, which denotes life before birth. To then appeal to the late developing new-comer, the neo-cortex, with its faster frequency wave to finish off the sequence cannot work. When we add a complex intellectual discussion to the mix we confound the work of the deep unconscious. Essentially it takes the patient into higher brain centers—the neo-cortex. The same can be said for early childhood pain where the brain that should be employed, the right feeling side, is abdicated for the left-brain explanatory, understanding one. In short, we continue to talk to the wrong brain.
A patient with a very rapid, left frontal cortical signature cannot be feeling until we bring her into the feeling zone. The frontal thinking apparatus must recede for a time. And again, language only plays a secondary role. One way we help patients into the primal/feeling zone is to offer tranquilizers to the patient for a short period of time to push down some inordinate pain from gestation or birth. The overload of pain and all levels may prevent a person from integrating one feeling at a time.

We must remember that in dealing with very early life we are mostly describing the work of the right brain. The left-brain focus will not get us there. Yet after a year of our therapy the left-brain often achieves its full force so that each side is more in equilibrium with the other—a more harmonious brain. It’s not just the brain that is in equilibrium; it is the body temperature, blood pressure and key hormones. In short, the person is in equilibrium. Except in rare cases (of perhaps genetics) no person who is in harmony should show high resting cortisol levels.
For a therapist to offer a patient an understanding of his motivation,or to propose a different ending for his feeling/ pain, negates the whole notion of the critical window. That is a time when needs can only be fulfilled; and at no other time. That is an awfully important idea. That means that corrective emotional experiences by a therapist cannot make profound change; indeed strategies by a therapist, no matter how well-meaning, can have only a limited impact. To rely on a more advanced, later-evolved brain to produce change is a vain exercise. The only way to resolve the earlier trauma is to travel back there neuro-physiologically and resolve on that level. Once the critical window is over with/closed, nothing can reopen it but feeling.

Transforming Feelings Through Resonance

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Janov) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:39:00 +0000

How do we transform sadness into depression? Anger into rage? Fear into terror? RESONANCE. The deeper we go in the nervous system the more unreasoned, out of control, impulsive feelings/sensations there are. For good reason. The deeper we go, down into the brainstem the more survival, animalistic, immediate reactions are elicited. Rage and terror are there to help us react quickly to save our lives. Also there is deep hopelessness (the basis for severe depression). It is all there and can be triggered off in the present through resonance. It seems to me that all basic feelings are held together through specific frequencies which unite such feelings as anger and rage. Rage and terror are the first line components of feelings that are triggered off, resonate, with/by current feelings which are far less severe. Nothing in the present is ordinarily meant to be terrorizing. Yet giving a speech can be just that. Why? Because when one’s childhood is ridden by constant lack of love and neglect and often hatred by parents, the defense system is weakened and resonance can go deeper without impediment because of weakened or leaky gates. Those early traumas when early and severe damage our ability to develop a good gating system.

So giving a speech elicits terror, which actually has nothing to do with what is going on in the present. But what is resonated with is real and tells us a lot about what lies down there in that primitive salamander brain. Is there an immediate life-threatening event? Often yes. A mother smoking or drinking or taking drugs. A pre-psychotic mother can do it due to her high levels of mobilizing chemicals. The excessive vital signs speak to us in the language of the body, and they tell us how severe the early event was. This is particularly true in psychotics. I treated a young man who was born on a marine base to parents who were divorcing. The mother abandoned him and he was reared thereafter by a father who was nearly always absent, sent to war zones. There was trauma after trauma, meaning no love.

The problem is that we often do not recognize the resonance factor and treat the top level as the problem. In cognitive/insight therapy the patient is convinced that there is nothing to be afraid of. Ay ay ay. There is a lot to be afraid of only we cannot see it. It is like anger management. We treat rage through top level cortical pleadings when the real rage lies sleepily but stealthily down deep ready to pounce. Here is where words are but a weak, weak weapon for dealing with it. We must understand resonance, for that is what we must treat. We must attack what we cannot see; the imprint that has been there for decades, something that will eventually give us cancer or a heart attack, and we will wonder why?

How can we be sure about all this? One way is through vital signs. We systematically measure all patients’ sessions before and after. As the resonance factor kicks in, we find that the deeper we go in the brain the greater the vital sign measures. So down in the brainstem where much of our birth trauma and prenatal trauma is registered is where we find the long slow-wave brain signatures in our patients as they approach the deeper levels. It is where we see blood pressure of 200 over 110, and of resting heart rate of over 100.

Thus, the terrific impact these very early imprints have is demonstrated every day in almost every session. A patient comes in very hopeless and depressed and her blood pressure is very low. Another comes in with great anger and his heart rate is exceedingly high. It is of a piece, and we literally see the contribution of each level of consciousness during the session. We rarely if ever find a patient down on the brainstem level without resonance. This alone should guide us in the therapy of those who are ridden by out-of-control impulsiveness.

Someone comes to a doctor with chronically very high blood pressure and they immediately give blood pressure medication. And they should offer medication. It must be controlled. In our therapy, we have an idea already of where the origins lie because we are a therapy of genesis, of genotypes, not phenotypes. In fact the phenotype (appearances) is one way to arrive at the genotype. If we suppress the phenotype with medication we can almost be sure the patient will not get well. We know very little of the minute details of a malady but we know a great deal about genesis. This tells us a great deal about the status of the gates, how leaky they are, how solid and impenetrable or refractory they are. As soon as the patient comes in her body is sending out information. If she is awash in first line input we know where we have to go in therapy. Either help her into the imprint or perhaps helping with the gating system through the temporary use of tranquilizers.

A new patient with very low blood pressure and body temperature already signifies parasympathetic excess. We may have to boost her vital functions for a time with energy boosters. We may have to offer something that enhances stress hormone output. As I have pointed out, in our therapy we attack the conductor of it all, not the individual players such as blood pressure or heart rate. And that is the difference between what we do and what other therapies do. We have an overview. We know the music and it often has no lyrics.

On Becoming Homosexual. Is it Becoming?

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Janov) — Sat, 23 May 2009 07:11:00 +0000

There are those who think I have taken an anti homosexual stance. So let me clarify. I have no “stance” about homosexuality. I only try to follow the science and not shy away from facts that are politically incorrect. That helps no one, especially those who want to change.

Can we cure it? Wait! Is it an illness, a deviation that needs curing? If you ask anyone whose defenses work and have always worked they would say, “Why would I need curing? And since I am not in the priesthood (most of all being Jewish) I don’t have any desire to cure anyone of anything if they don’t want and need it. But I do want to help those who suffer. Some suffer from being gay and others are very comfortable with it. Why would I or anyone want to treat them? I have no mission and never have had a mission to save the world. I have found a way, to me the scientific way, to help those who hurt, who are anxious and depressed, who can’t function and who are miserable. We don’t advertise and make outrageous claims about homosexuality or anything else. We have “cured” some homosexuality. We didn’t start out to cure anything but two or three of them came to me after some time in therapy and said, “My orientation has changed.” I said fine. If it makes them happy so much the better.

What causes it? That is a sticky wicket. I have the feeling that with all the new research there is a hormonal base to some of it since traumas in the womb can and do change the later sex hormone levels. That is not all. There has to be a familial configuration that deprives the child of fulfillment of need, somehow, somewhere. I do think heterosexuality is normal, given the need for survival of the species, to say nothing of how the parts fit together to make babies. I really don’t care if homosexuals think they are normal. That is their choice. I do not agree or disagree. I try to follow my experience for over fifty years of therapy and of all the new research, including brain changes in homosexuals.

There seems to be general agreement in late research that traumas while in the womb can predispose to homosexuality. This is certainly true in animals where females show mounting behavior. Yes, there are many animals who show homosexuality. I am sure and do not dispute that. But I am an expert in humans, not homosexuality. I don’t know who is. I have no spin whatsoever about this anymore than I know that gestation and birth trauma lead to migraines later on. If a migraine lobby tells me I am dead wrong, I can only indicate my experience over many decades with it. And since we have cured many migrainers I will stick to my story. Incidentally, my new book (manuscript) cites many of the studies I mentioned above. Let’s get off the posturing. If I can help those with epilepsy, migraine and high blood pressure there must be something to the theory. I do not know of any other psychotherapy that helps epilepsy nor deep depression. That is because they cannot go deep enough to make profound changes. What this means is that the causes and origins of many afflictions lie very deep in the brain. Therefore all therapies that use words to help people are talking to the wrong brain.

About being prejudiced. Members of my staff have been gay. I engage those who are competent, period. When I am in doubt about something I check with my homosexual friends. When I want to know more about high blood pressure I check with my patients. I do not have to be the repository of all wisdom.

On Psychosis

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Janov) — Sun, 17 May 2009 22:25:00 +0000

Is psychosis a different malady from neurosis? Is it treatable? Curable? What causes it? Heredity? Epigenetics or just plain bad experience?

I wrote this recently about how we manufacture inhibitory/repressive chemicals such as serotonin.

“What is very important for us to realize was that a mouse fetus does not make her own serotonin until the third trimester. It seems like the mother supplies what is needed until the baby can take over. But when the mother is low on supplies, she cannot fulfill what the developing baby lacks. Therefore, the baby carries around a load of pain. Now if we apply that to humans, there seems to be a time in gestation when pain or noxious stimuli impinge, but we are not yet able to produce our own gating chemicals—ungated pain. This residue will continue and may lead to bouts of anxiety later on in life. It becomes free-floating fear or terror. This is not due to heredity but rather to experience in the womb. This is why we should never neglect womb-life when addressing neurosis.

Part of our in utero life, therefore, takes on hurt at a time when our system can do nothing about it. Nevertheless, it affects all later development. At thirty we may suffer from panic attacks that began its life in the very early months of our mother’s pregnancy. It is pristine and free-floating, ready to spring forth whenever we are vulnerable. No talk therapy can make a dent in it. It leaves us fragile for a lifetime so that any insult in infancy and childhood weakens us all the more.

It seems to me that there may be a genetic component to psychosis but equally if not more important is epigenetics; what happened very early on in gestation. My guess is that the earlier the trauma (mother smoking, drinking, high anxiety state or depression) the more we have the makings for psychosis. For the reasons cited above; the fetus takes on hurt before he can do anything about it. Worse, this alteration in the first months of gestation alters the set-points permanently so that the person is forever low in inhibition or repression. Of course, as an adult he will need the very chemicals he lacked in the womb; inter alia serotonin. And the heavy duty drugs we use on psychotics are enhancers of serotonin. Why? Because early trauma depressed its output and made the body think that was normal. Of course the body doesn’t think in words, but it does in chemicals. And that communication begins with the advent of the secretion of key chemicals while in the womb. It is just an accident that effective pills simply make up for what is missing in the person’s system? What pills do is supply the missing link, help out our physiology and try, therefore, to reestablish normality. So sometimes the mentally ill feels normal again. That is no surprise since we are artificially normalizing the person’s physiology. In Primal Therapy we normalize in the normal way; that is, we reestablish setpoints. That is why after one year of our therapy there are normal levels of serotonin.

What is the hallmark of psychosis? Usually it is hallucinations and delusions. Delusions are a later development than hallucinations. They indicate a more organized cerebral/thinking apparatus. But both manifestations are provoked by upsurging very, very early pain; usually there is no content to this pain other than pure agony.

Can they be treated? We have done so with some success but in-house therapy is needed. Otherwise there is too much stress out there for the mentally ill to adapt. There is evidence that when the psychotic hears voices there is an activation of the brain system where those voices originate. For delusions; there is usually the notion that someone “out there” is out to hurt him. The pain/hurt is already inside, and it is now rationalize as being out there. But the brain is reacting to the hurt. Since the person has no idea where that hurt comes from and how early it occurred, he has no choice but to project it out there: “They are plotting to hurt me.”

There are many ways to go crazy. The body does it with cancer, a cellular out-of-control event. The brain does it with ideas, but it is always the same pain they are dealing with. Psychosis merely means that the normal defense mechanisms do not work. The brain is stretched into wild and unreal ideas because there is no other way to get a handle on the pain. As we add pain killers to the psychotic the delusions lessen. Clearly, they are associated with pain. The great question is where does it come from? I think I know, but we will let research help out here.