Huuto sisimmästä: primaaliterapia: vapaaksi neurooseista

by Arthur Janov, Juha Maasola (Translator)

Arthur Janov -- filosofian tohtori, psykologi -- oli toiminut analyyttisenä psykoterapeuttina 17 vuotta kun hän eräänä iltana joutui kokemaan odottamatonta:

"Eräs nuori mies makasi lattialla terapiatunnin aikana ja hänen sisimmästään purkautui kauhea huuto. Sitä voi verrata ääneen joka lähtee vain murhattavan ihmisen suusta."

Tuo huuto muutti Janovin koko ammatillisen uran ja hänen potilaittensa elämän. Psykologiset teoriat ja psyykkiset hoitomuodot saivat osakseen arvostelua ja parannusehdotuksia enemmän kuin koskaan sitten Freudin päivien.

Janov esittää miten toivoton ja jo ennalta epäonnistumaan tuomittu omien tunteiden pakeneminen voi vihdoin loppua.

"Kärsivälle neurootikolle... sanoisin vain sen että jättiläismäinen tehtävä on olla sitä mitä ei ole. Helpoin asia on olla se mikä on.", Janov päättää kirjansa.

Freudin kirjat käännettiin Suomeksi noin puoli vuosisataa ilmestymisensä jälkeen. Janovin The Primal Screamin ilmestymisestä on nyt kulunut vajaa puolet tuosta ajasta. Se on käännetty useille kielille kuten ranskaksi, espanjaksi ja saksaksi 1975, ruotsiksi 1976 ja siitä otetaan jatkuvasti uusia painoksia. Esimerkiksi saksalaisesta käännöksestä on otettu uusi painos lähes vuosittain ja kirjaa on painettu yli 100 000 kappaletta. Janovin oivallukset ja kokemukset eivät ole hetken kulutustavaraa, vaan hänen sanomansa vakuuttaa, se kestää ja sen merkitys näyttää kasvavan ajan myötä.

"Luin Arthut Janovin kirjoja ja tunsin että tämä mies oli löytänyt hyvin merkittävän tien", kirjoittaa Alice Miller kirjassaan Karkotettu tieto.

Kädessäsi on yksi vuosisatamme tärkeistä kirjoista.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Self Help, Research, Psychiatry, Philosophy

316 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Psychologist, psychotherapist, and the creator of primal therapy, a treatment for mental illness that involves repeatedly descending into, feeling, and expressing long-repressed childhood pain. Janov directed a psychotherapy institute called the Primal Center in Santa Monica, California.

Janov wrote that his professional life changed in a single day in 1967 with the discovery of what he calls Primal Pain.During a therapy session, Janov heard what he describes as, “an eerie scream welling up from the depths of a young man lying on the floor”. He developed primal therapy, in which clients are encouraged to re-live and express repressed feelings.

Janov's patients included John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_J...

Reviews

[Monty J Heying · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read this book in 1974. I still have it, a paperback held together with rubber bands and kept in a Ziplock bag. This easy to understand book not only saved my life; it gave me invaluable insight into human behavior.

I never met my father or had a conversation with him until I was 29 years old. My mother was an alcoholic. I have no memory of ever being held by her or acknowledged by her in a loving way, verbally or visually. I experienced torture at age 2, before being left in a Texas orphanage in 1955, where I was further tortured and witnessed routine ritual torture in the form of arena beatings.

Not having the money for Primal Therapy, I practiced the theories in this book throughout my life. I have spent many times what Primal Therapy would have cost on conventional therapy, pharmaceuticals and mood supplements.

How doesn't matter, but in July of 2013 I gained access to a memory of myself as a terrified infant, gasping for breath as he was being drowned. I never knew such fear was even possible. Suicidal ideation soon followed. Thanks to what I had learned from Janov's book, I realized what was happening, called a crisis line and got help through the VA. I was reborn a happier, less angry, more sensitive, settled and accepting person, and came to realize my previous 68 years had been lived in a semi-conscious state.

There's no getting around it; the path to healing from childhood trauma leads through a hall of pain and tears.

Pain is a messenger, but to learn from it, you must feel it. To feel pain means resisting the reflex to withdraw from pain. How many of us will not naturally try to avoid pain? But herein lies the route to healing.

Feel it, and heal it.

Repressed feelings exert a force which, if not released through feeling, will manifest physiologically as illness: autoimmune deficiency (lupus, asthma, allergies, etc), addictions, food sensitivities, diabetes, depression, anxiety and others. Remember the Fram filter commercial: "Pay me now or pay me later."

Thank you Dr. Janov, for my life. And I mean it.

[Allison Roy · Rating 1 out of 5]

What. A. Load. Of. Shit. I honestly don’t remember where I picked this up but I think it was from a free bin in one of the colleges I went to. I will read anything, obviously. I most likely picked this up due to the sexy font on the front and that splatter...I mean LOOK AT IT.

This was a step above the worst book I ever read (The Mermaid and the Minotaur), most because the writer wasn’t trying to impress with vocabulary. Basically this is about the authors form of therapy where he gets people to cry out to “mommy and daddy” and scream in primal fits to release deep seeded primal pains that split the self at an early age. Once people can feel their pain and not cover it up with vices, THEY ARE CURED.

Primal therapy (according to its creator) can cure all sorts of neurosis, homosexuality, can fix terrible posture, men can grow beards for the first time, woman’s breast’s can grow larger, cramps and PMS...and pretty much everything. He also is very adamant in that this is the ONLY form of therapy that is right and the rest are wrong.

The book is awfully repetitive and all of the journal entries he provided by his patients all just seemed like they were characters he created. The vocabulary was too similar and non-convincing. I can’t believe I read through this whole damn thing. Supposedly there’s a documentary made about one of the patients and I briefly YouTubed a session of it for about 10 seconds until I realized I was free from this nonsense.

[Nikola Pejić · Rating 2 out of 5]

Simplistic and reductive theory of neurosis. It basically says that neurosis is an unconscious way of coping with our unmet childhood needs, for which he blames the parents exclusively. Literally, he thinks that if you smoke, it's because your mother didn't breastfeed you enough. It's nearly comical at some moments. The weakest part of the theory is that the only possible way to really cure neurosis is through "primal therapy" at the author's clinic in Los Angeles. In essence, he claims that pretty much every other method of "curing" neurosis is now obsolete and disproven, and never really worked. Even though I mostly didn't agree with it I still managed to find interesting notions nad perspectives of the human condition in this comprehensive book (there's even a chapter on transcendental meditation). I wouldn't really recomment it as the essential psychology book to most people (although it was very polular and influential in the 70s), but if you're just curious about different psychological theories, you could find this book somewhat interesting.

[Benjamin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting approach to psychotherapy. I've become interested lately in holotropic breathwork, and Janov's approach to therapy seems to be a type of theoretical foundation for what happens doing deep breathing. It's amazing how many emotional and social neuroses and other problems can stem from completely accidental and often seemingly trivial childhood incidents. Janov's work seems pretty helpful in rooting out these causes and opening up space for hearing.

[Heiki Eesmaa · Rating 1 out of 5]

A limited model claiming to be all-encompassing. Would do the scream though.

[Samy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Highlights:

Those achievements, no matter how real, serve as a symbolic quest for parental love.

The hope of the neurotic must, however, be unreal because it forces him to try to get via the neurotic struggle something from the world that simply does not exist: feeling parents

Being meek was Anne’s away of avoiding total rejection

The stronger a person’s defence, the sicker he is – that is, the more unreal.

In the neurotic, then, the real feeling self is locked away with the original pain; that is why he must feel that Pain in order to liberate himself; feeling that pain shatters the unreal self in the same way that denying the pain created it.

A person can be held by dozens of lovers and never resolve the need for warmth from a parent. A person can lecture to thousands of students and still have a desperate need to be listened to and understood by his parents – an unfelt need which will drive him on to more and more lecture. The struggle is unfulfilling precisely because it is symbolic and not real.

The hope of the neurotic must, however, be unreal because it forces him to try to get via the neurotic struggle something from the world that simply does not exist: feeling parents.

No matter what position a man has attained in life, no matter how sober or ‘mature’, his defence, when one scratches a bit, I have a hurt child beneath the veneer.

Why do people symbolically ‘marry’ their ‘mommies and daddies’? In order to turn them into real, loving people.

Memory is intimately associated with Pain. What will tend to be forgotten are those memories too painful to be integrated and accepted concsciously. So the neurotic incomplete memories in some critical areas.

The patient who was raped by her father at an early could come to that memory only after some thirty primal sessions – and then only in stages.

Since a neurotic can use all sorts of defences in his everyday life, there can be no pure type. Usually, he will settle on a style (being over-intellectual, for example) which for convenience we may label a certain kind of neurosis.

Clenching the muscles of the stomach (and the entire abdominal area) seems to be the neurotic’s internal painkiller. Wilhelm Reich made this discovery decades ago. Reich developed much of his early therapeutic methods around easing the patients abdominal tensions

When the abdomen automatically tightens, when an individual swallows a feeling, when the face tics under pressure, the body is clamping down against feeling.

Defenses operate continuously, night and day.

Defences are, by and large, what the parents demand from the child. One child may talk continuously and use big words while another plays it ‘dumb’. Both are responding to a sensed demand by their parents, both are closing off part of themselves.

The need for love is nor just something cerebral which can be changed by changing ideas. The need pervades the entire system.

A child who is not held sufficiently in his first months does not consciously know what he is missing, but he hurts, nevertheless. The need, then, is not just something mental stored away in the brain. It is coded into the tissue of the body.

There is no way to permanently massage away memories from a tense shoulder when those memories innervate that should below the level of consciousness.

The greatest contribution of Primal therapy is to allow people to experience their own feelings.

The person does not talk out of a feeling like talking; he talks out of tension. You can sense the difference because it is easy to lose interest in someone who is yakking to fulfill an old inner need and hard to lose interest in someone who truly feels what he is saying.

Until he connects that tight sensation in his neck (which becomes pain soon enough( with the more profound feeling, he must spend his life in the sensation exchange.

“For it has become clear that the inhibition of respiration was the psychological mechanism of the suppression and repression of emotion, and consequently, the basic mechanism of “neurosis”.

The nervous guest on a television show interview show seems unable to catch his breath. This may be ascribed to trying to present an image which isn’t in accord with his real self.

Most prone to cancer are those who deny their emotions

It is the neurotic who is trying to be superman; eating twice as much, working twice as hard, using twice the energy to accomplish twice the misery

One cannot wash away their memories; one can only defuse them so that these memories no longer exert the force which made the neurotic act out symbolically

To the neurotic, the struggle, not the result, is important. Thus he often cannot complete what he starts. He justifies inadequate jobs on the basis of having so much to do. But he has so much to do because he does not finish. To finish and feel unfulfilled is to hurt. This is why so many individuals have a hard time in the last months of working for an advanced degree. It is also why some people cannot rest content with money in the bank. Just after getting out of debt, they must borrow again so as to maintain the struggle. To feel ‘I have arrived; I have money I the bank, and I still feel unhappy’ is intolerable. The struggle takes care of that. Some neurotic housewives rarely get up eearly and finish theirhousework completely. Then they would have to face the emptiness of their lives. Instead, they have one or two rooms in constant disarray, in this way they maintain their struggles. They can look forward to having the house furnished or cleaned and that keeps them from along ‘And now what?’ once the chores are done.

Because he is constantly on the move away from his real self, he tends to be flightly – if not physically, then mentally. His mind is filled with what he plans to do; he cannot sit still.

The neurotic is too often a whirlpool of distractions; his eyes, like his mind, seem to dart from one subject to another, unable to focus for any length of time.

Part of the neurotic need is to surround oneself with people, not to feel alone, or to join clubs, to cover the feeling one ever belonged to a real family. All this incessant struggle is over for the normal.

Nothing is ever exactly right for the neurotic, because he was never right for his parents.

For the nerutoic, disappointment is the handmaiden of hope. Hope which obscures reality often ensures that the person will be hurt by his unrealistic expectations

The normal is not only more health but much more nergetic. His energy is used for accomplishment of real tasks, not for struggling to achieve the impossible.

The conditioning process of having to perform for approval begins almost at birth, where the child is ‘koot-chykooed’ to try to get him to smile (look happy). Later he is asked to wave ‘bye-bye’ or to dance for the grandparents or to say this word or that, irrespective of how the child may feel at the moment.

If there some key principle concerning real behavior, it might be as follows: Reality surrounds itself with other reality in the same way that unreality seeks out reality. Real or normal people will not have continuing relationships with unreal people, and the converse would also be true.

He will not be late, for example, to try to feel important or to try not to feel rejected as in the case with the neurotic. For example, being late can mean keeping unreal hope alive. It’s one more way the neurotic is not straight with life. Or he will contrive a busy that never leaves him time to feel. He keeps on the go, feeling a pressure from outside really lives inside.

Many neurotics manage their lives so that there is never time to live leisurely. They plan so many projects (time fillers) for the prupose of never having a free moment to feel or reflect.

Death is evidently not a real trajedy for those who do not feel life. It is in this sense that being ‘dead’ internally makes the actual death of others less real and, there, less horrifying.

Being totally insensitive to the fact that he is dominating the conversation. He is too busy acting out his need for attention and importance.

The normal no longer suffers from ‘looking forward to’ in order to escape the emptiness of the present.

If you can enjoy everything at each moment, you don’t need anything to look forward to.

He may plan for a future situation, but he doesn’t keep himself so full of plans that he has no present. It would seem that some nerutoics keep things in the future so that they can never quite take pleasure now.

That simple question – ‘what should I order?’ – is often a sign of the neurotic’s deadness. It is saying ‘I have no wants, no feelings, no life. Live my life for me.’ How deeply one feels his life (the life inside him) is how meaningful it is.

Other neurotics sense that something is missing and set out on the quest for meaning. They may travel to gurus, study philosophy, steep themselves in religion or cults – all to find a meaning that lies but a deep breath away. Because the nerutoic cannot fully feel his own life, he must find his meaning through others or things outside him.

The neurotic, unable to feel the full meaning of his life, must often invent a superlife or an afterlife – places where real living will go on.

“I kept myself and everything around me well organized so as not to feel my real disorganization.

As one patient put it, ‘Now that I know that I am all I’ve got in the world, there is no reason to try for “them” any more. I plan to be nice to myself and realx.’

Post-primal patients do less, but what they do is something real so that the quality of their contribution to society is beneficial.

Much of the world runs on neurotic motivation. Too many neurotics produce in order to feel important, rather than do what is really important to them.

Post-primal patients often report complete changes in their co-oridnation – how they run, catch and throw a ball. A tournament tennis player found that he was beating opponents who could ordinarily trounce him with ease. Part of this can be xplained by the absence of tension – the removal of the spltit which kepts parts of his body and respiratory system from functioning in co-ordination.

Excitement in the neurotic means excitement by tensuion. This means that the neurotic is constantly n a state of inner excitement, and he often manioulates his life to match that internal state. He cannot sit still, so he plans many things which look as if they would be exciting but which are often nothing more than outlets for his tension. Indeed, the neurotic often manoevres himself into more and more actions o that he can finally feel. He may fly, scuba drive, travel, go to parties and feel ‘up’ only for the moment. When the activities cease, he begins to be filled with tension again.

In a way the post primal person is a new kind of human being. For example, he is never moody. Moods are gradations of tensions, of oldunlabelled, unconcemptualised feelings. The gradient patient is neither elated nor in the dumps. He just feels and knows what that feeling is. These people give off a definite aurea: ‘I am what I am, and you can be what you are.’ It is very hard to look at an unreal person in the eye because there is the feeling one is communicating with someone who isn’t there.

‘I used live for my job; now I live for me.’

Overwork, unrealistic intellectual ambitions are not part of the post primal patient. Perhaps this is a reaction to a society where self-cardifice is apotheosized.

When the son or daughter, irrespective of age, stops struggling for the parent’s love,, the parents begin their struggle the child’s love.

If the parent was made to feel worthless and wrong about almost anything he did as a child, then each day of his life as a prent he may try to feel right (by making his children ‘wrong’) and worthwhile (by making his children feel unimportant).

That’s the thing about this therapy – you are constantly being amazed at how much poison you’ve stored up in your body.

Whenever you feel shitty, think how lucky you are that you’re not in a worse predicament.

Aesthetise himself against feeling pain by thinking up something to think about

Intellectualism is human-kind’s curse. I felt that my own crazy pursuit of ‘knowledge’ for soo many years, brought me, paradoxically, further from it. For now I know there is only one kind of knowledge: self-knowledge.

When I felt myself for those brief seconds, I felt my beautifulness, my majesty-almost, my being, my grander. That, I feel sure, is loving my me. That feeling is one of being full, very full, and then and only then can I love somebody else. Then I will have some love to give. At that point once I have me, once I can love me full time, I can then love a wife and children. Love to means giving and the graciousness of receiving , not wanting/taking.

Being cut up by parents’ tongues.

Primals dislodge chunks of cemented sickness.

The tears that want to flow are the tears of years, the tears that have been stored up.

Whole life could have been so vastly different had my needs been fulfilled as an infant.

My own family living so close to another, yet miles away from one another in our emotions, closed off from each other with our non feelings.

They were just as much victimized by their own early life’s events as they victimized me.

I am extremely proficient (in contrast to efficient, which is what machines are)

I am only sometimes moody when I deny deelings. (I would stay generally morose)

I don’t need to stuff my head with information about a particular topic unless iam interested in knowing about it – which usually I am not.

Life is not struggling. I was never able to feel the knowledge of this before. For me, life or living isn’t winning a struggle or battle; it’s giving up the struggle, the battle.

The notion of self destructive meotions is foud in many theories. I do not think that there are emotions which destroy the self. Rather, it is denying those feelings of the self which destroy.

A person who is straight with himself will tend to have straight ideas and attitudes and philosophies. The more pain I feel, the less pain I have.

We must remember that one can meditate daily and still not reduce the need to meditate. Somehow the demon tension arises anew each day to be meditated away.

Real happiness, then, means that old unhappiness is resolved and out of the way,

We do not get a feel of someone else. We learn to feel ourselves, and then feel ourselves feeling others.

For people to be brought closer together, they must be first brought closer to themselves, to their feeling selves.

Infants brought up in institutions where there is little affection or personal attention develop flattened or dulled personalities. There is an apathy or deadness about them which continues into adulthood.

A frigid woman cannot be loving because she cannot give of herself totally. Only a fully sexual person can

---

The major reason I have that children become neurotic is that their parents are to busy struggling with umet infantile needs of their own.
Those achievements, no matter how real, serve as a symbolic quest for parental love.
The hope of the neurotic must, however, be unreal because it forces him to try to get via the neurotic struggle something from the world that simply does not exist: feeling parents
Being meek was Anne’s away of avoiding total rejection
We were born real. Being real isn’t anything we t ry to be.
The stronger a person’s defence, the sicker he is – that is, the more unreal.
In the neurotic, then, the real feeling self is locked away with the original pain; that is why he must feel that Pain in order to liberate himself; feeling that pain shatters the unreal self in the same way that denying the pain created it.
Pain is both the way in and the way out.
A person can be held by dozens of lovers and never resolve the need for warmth from a parent. A person can lecture to thousands of students and still have a desperate need to be listened to and understood by his parents – an unfelt need which will drive him on to more and more lecture. The struggle is unfulfilling precisely because it is symbolic and not real.
The hope of the neurotic must, however, be unreal because it forces him to try to get via the neurotic struggle something from the world that simply does not exist: feeling parents.
No matter what position a man has attained in life, no matter how sober or ‘mature’, his defence, when one scratches a bit, I have a hurt child beneath the veneer.
One can receive dozens of compliments in an evening, but one small criticism makes all the compliments unimportant because set off lifelong feelings of being worthless, inadequate, un wanted, etc.
Why do people symbolically ‘marry’ their ‘mommies and daddies’? In order to them into real, loving people.
Memory is intimately associated with Pain. What will tend to be forgotten are those memories too painful to be integrated and accepted concsciously. So the neurotic incomplete memories in some critical areas.
The patient who was raped by her father at an early could come to that memory only after some thirty primal sessions – and then only in stages.
Since a neurotic can use all sorts of defences in his everyday life, there can be no pure type. Usually, he will settle on a style (being over-intellectual, for example) which for convenience we may label a certain kind of neurosis.
Clenching the muscles of the stomach (and the entire abdominal area) seems to be the neurotic’s internal painkiller. Wilhelm Reich made this discovery decades ago. Reich developed much of his early therapeutic methods around easing the patients abdominal tensions
When the abdomen automatically tightens, when an individual swallows a feeling, when the face tics under pressure, the body is clamping down against feeling.
Defenses operate continuously, night and day.
Defences are, by and large, what the parents demand from the child. One child may talk continuously and use big words while another plays it ‘dumb’. Both are responding to a sensed demand by their parents, both are closing off part of themselves.
The need for love is nor just something cerebral which can be changed by changing ideas. The need pervades the entire system.
The drug addict is an example of someone who has run out of inner defences.
Insight therapy has been the central treatment of the intellectual class.
A child who is not held sufficiently in his first months does not consciously know what he is missing, but he hurts, nevertheless. The need, then, is not just something mental stored away in the brain. It is coded into the tissue of the body.

[Alexandra Kulik · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't speak to the credibility of this therapy, as I don't have experience with it and it doesn't seem to exist anymore, but the book itself is offering me an awakening, sometimes frightening experience. It's changing my life in 2020 by giving me a pretty simple logical conclusion into the cause of my "symbolic" behaviors. I see myself more clearly; I can carry the truths I've discovered through this book into my daily life and my relationships with others. Every line resonates with me. Maybe in 10 years I will look back on it and say, "no, this isn't it, this isn't the conclusion," but right now I'm resting with it, and it's making a lot of sense. I'm grateful for this book and I will recommend it to anyone I think would benefit from the author's research and wisdom.

[Gabriel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Es un libro que propone una interesante teoría explicativa para la génesis de la neurosis, pero no creo que el método que se presenta para curarla sea totalmente efectivo. De hecho, considero que lo que se propone aquí es una panacea, además faltan muchos datos para corroborar esta teoría. Quizá el material teórico posterior de este autor abordó o cambió lo que aquí se propone, pero no lo sé. Los primeros dos tercios son recomendables para neuróticos como yo, el resto es una maraña setentosa de concepciones muy básicas sobre la sexualidad, la violencia y las drogas. Promete mucho al comienzo, pero luego defrauda.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is truly one of the most valuable books I have ever read.

It is a breakthrough book, still revolutionary 38 years after its initial publication.

A human can be twisted by his parents and his milieu, but a human has the ability to untwist himself. The Primal Scream is about untwisting yourself. It is about "creating yourself anew."

[5 pound poi · Rating 2 out of 5]

You people really freak me out. Horror movies & haunted houses do nothing for me, but if I ever feel inclined to get scared all I need do is view the absolute freakshow that is humanity & its doings. This book was terrifying and therefore hard to read for more than short bursts. I gazed into the abyss and it molested me. I need a primal scream and a shower. And a beer.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

AAAAAaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh haha

this was hot shit especially when John Lennon experienced it...

[Tami · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scared the hell out of me.

[Vera · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read it a long time ago when I was 18-19 and at that time of self-discovery it helped understand few things about human psychology.

[Jason Comely · Rating 4 out of 5]

A psychology book that reads more like a pulp novel. Love it. Probably works too.

[Sonia Azyu · Rating 5 out of 5]

I finished from audiobook last week and I intend on reading it again. The book was eye opening for me especially what he elaborated about "symbolic behaviour". As a person who went through a lot, I can relate to many things he described. I googled about the author and I am saddened to learn that he has passed away, may his soul rest in peace.
There is also a claim about this therapy that it only has 40% success rate and one patient committing suicide, the author diagnosis and intention seemed genuine. I believe it has alot to do with the therapist as well so I hope people are more careful about who they approach.

[Ypatios Varelas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Classic. Invaluable. Impressive. Every psychotherapist (at least) should own a copy. Janov showed in a very comprehensive manner how things going wrong in our very early years can create serious mental, behavioral and health issues. He demonstrates how releasing the primal pain can lead to healing and even a change of identity. Most people may know him and this theories because of some of his famous clients , such as John Lennon, but it's not just hype, it's one of the biggest advancements in the history of mental healing. Whatever form of mental/emotional intervention a therapist uses, knowledge of Janov's writings is essential since very often problems in our adult life begin from our childhood. If you are not a therapist you can still benefit a lot from this classic work, especially if you are wondering why you still are not well after psychotherapy or psychoanalysis, or if you are considering going into such kind of therapy (classic or alternative form).

[Evelyn Jiang]

I saw this book at the bottom of a pile in an old Vancouver bookstore and I couldn't resist getting a copy. I was thoroughly fascinated by Jankov's postulates, though many of his ideas don't hold up in light of 21st-century neurology and psychology. His background in Freudian psychology is deeply embedded in his philosophy (not surprising). I love the concept of the primal scream, but in practice, primal therapy feels more barbaric than it is an effective psychosomatic treatment for neurosis.

[Giancarlo Fisichella · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really great book, explains how the split between fake self and true self (buried together with unmet needs) is produced (via the Major Primal Scene) and maintained by a strong fear that keeps the neurosis going.

[Joshua · Rating 3 out of 5]

Curious read thus far. Amazing that the neuroses can happen just from the act of seeking love, being denied it in some form, and the onslaught of fully understanding what that means.

[Roger Quick · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought this was life-changing in 1975.

[Berenika · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book completely changed the way I see the world.

[Kurly Fry]

Started off feeling valuable but pretty quickly became overlong and redundant. (*and I say that having only made it halfway through before putting it down.) after like the third instance of pathologizing homosexuality my enthusiasm started to significantly wain. but yeah still clearly well-intentioned. we do all be having primal pains that need expressing and a lot of people still aren't as aware of that as would help society, but this definitely isn't the complete cure-all it claims to be. wish it were, a lot of y'all need to process and let go a whole host of gunk from childhood, but I don't think it's gonna be as conclusive and simple a journey as Janov wanted. nevertheless, this definitely provoked a bit of thought, and might be useful if you're conducting a survey of how the concept of trauma has come so meteorically into the zeitgeist. no stars since i didn't technically finish. shout-out all my neurotics trying to become "normal"

[Jemmie · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Insight is the nucleus of pain"
"The hercularian task is to be what you are not"

Janov describes the methodology and theory behind a therapy he created called "primal therapy" that is designed to allow the patient freedom through reliving and expressing the pain of a formative childhood memory. The uncovering and feeling of these "primals" leads the patient to healing in his own life that he has been living in service of that child that felt unloved, rejected, hurt, etc. Janov makes a point to say that "this therapy is dangerous in untrained hands". Patients in the primal state become easily manipulated, so the track record of this therapy is unsurprisingly low. The Freudian backbone of the argument seems legitimate. The author is insightful, and provides us with many quotable lines. I plan on reading more of his work.

[Rebekka Van straalen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Interessante theorie: iedereen is ziek en alleen Janov kan je genezen. Toch zit er, denk ik, wel een kern van waarheid in. Het interessantste aan het boek zijn de dagboeken van de patienten. Janov zelf valt veel in herhaling. Vervelend terugkerend punt is dat homoseksualiteit volgens Janov een te genezen neurose is. Verder vind ik de aanpak van de therapie veel weg hebben van hersenspoelen (als men daar in geloofd). Maar dat is slechts mijn mening.

[Meghan MURPHDADDY · Rating 4 out of 5]

Janov describes the methodology & theory behind a therapy he created called "primal therapy" that allows the patient freedom through reliving & expressing the pain of a formative childhood experience.

[J · Rating 1 out of 5]

book is ass

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

DO ALL NEUROSES ORIGINATE FROM "ORIGINAL, EARLY HURTS"?

Arthur Janov (born 1924) is an American psychologist, and director of the Primal Center in Santa Monica, California; he has written other books such as 'The New Primal Scream: Primal Therapy 20 Years On,' 'Life Before Birth: The Hidden Script That Rules Our Lives,' 'The Janov Solution: Lifting Depression Through Primal Therapy,' etc.

He wrote in the Introduction to this 1970 book about how a 30-year old patient of his "led to writhing, near-convulsions, and finally to a scream... I have come to regard that scream as the product of central and universal pains which reside in all neurotics. I call them Primal Pains because they are the original, early hurts upon which all later neurosis is built. It is my contention that these pains exist in every neurotic each minute of his later life... Primary Therapy is aimed at eradicating these pains. It is revolutionary because it involves overthrowing the neurotic system by a forceful upheaval. Nothing short of that will eliminate neurosis, in my opinion." (Pg. 12-13)

He asserts, "The dazzling variety of neurotic symptoms from insomnia to sexual perversion have caused us to think of neurosis in categories. But different symptoms are not distinct disease entities; ALL neuroses stem from the same specific cause and respond to the same specific treatment... This does not mean that post-Primal patients will never again be upset or unhappy. What it does mean is that... they will confront their problems realistically in the present. They ... do not suffer from chronic, inexplicable tension or fears." (Pg. 16-17)

He adds, "each time a child is not held when he needs to be, each time he is shushed, ridiculed, ignored, or pushed beyond his limits, more weight will be added to his pool of hurts... I call the Primal Pool. Each addition to his pool makes the child more unreal and neurotic." (Pg. 21)

He states, "The point of Primary Therapy is to connect the body's needs with the stored and unconscious memories and so unify the person." (Pg. 61) He explains, "The Primal patients are prepared in advance for the fact that this is not an ordinary treatment procedure... the patient is sent a list of instructions... These instructions specify that he must give up all alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs for the duration of Primary Therapy, a period of several months... he will have three weeks of individual treatment where he is seen daily... The new patient will be the ONLY PERSON SEEN for individual therapy during the three weeks. He will be given all the time he needs each day; only his feelings will determine when the session ends... The total financial outlay is about one-fifth the cost of a psychoanalysis." (Pg. 79-80)

He notes, "The Primal Scream is not a scream for its own sake. Nor is it used as a tension release. When it results from deep, wracking feelings, I believe it is a curative process, rather than simply a release of tension. It is not the scream that is curative... it is the Pain. The scream is only one expression of the Pain... The real Primal Scream is unmistakable. It has its own quality of something deep, rattling, and involuntary... [the patient] screams because he is wide open to his truth." (Pg. 91-92)

He cautions, "NO ONE WHO IS NOT A FULLY TRAINED PRIMAL THERAPIST SHOULD ATTEMPT IT! The results might be quite harmful..."(Pg. 107) He concludes, "I believe that Primal Therapy works because the patient finally has a chance to feel what he has been acting out in a myriad of ways throughout his life. He no longer has to act grown-up and controlled; he can be whatever he never was allowed to be, to say what he never dared to utter. The disease, I submit, is the denial of feeling, and the remedy is to feel." (Pg. 412)

Once one of the more "trendy" therapies of the 1960s (when people like John Lennon and Yoko Ono used it), Primal Therapy has nevertheless stayed on the scene for more than 50 years. This first book remains a good introduction to it.

[Sillerdis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ja ma olen veendunud, et kui patsient on võimeline tundma, siis pole vajalik kogu see kaardistamine, testimine ning diagrammide ja skeemide koostamine, mida me oleme teinud selleks, et inimlikku käitumist mõista, sest paistab, et need ei ole mitte midagi muud kui inimeste sümboolsete tegude sümboliseerimine. Teen ettepaneku, et me väldiksime selle analüüsimist ja käsitlemist, mis on mittetõeline, ja läheksime otse selle juurde, mis on tõeline.

(lk. 530)

[Julie · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I was a kid, Janov and his primal scream therapy were mentioned a lot in the media. In my late 40s I enjoyed reading the book and theory I'd heard so many references to. Would I want to make a therapy trip there? Sounds like incredible fun for one's ego but extremely exhausting.

[Peter Delorenzo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Does this stuff really work or was it just a fad?